Reya loved to fish.  She loved lots of things.  She thought that everything around her was wonderful: the beautiful birds, the lush green reeds, and the crystal clear water – especially the water.  She adored the cool soaked feeling of her wet outer fur as she remained dry and toasty warm from her short insulating layer of fur underneath.  She often darted aimlessly around the river.  She loved the wonderful feeling of water being pulled around her in a current.  It was like a soft massage from Mother Nature. 

It wasn’t surprising when Reya found herself at the river, once again avoiding her brother Gither.  She was sure that he was close on her tail because he had always had a good nose for tracking, but she relished every minute of escape she got.  She knew how the conversation would go when he found her.  It would be exactly the same as every single other time.  She sighed a bubbly underwater sigh and let her naturally buoyant body float itself up to the surface.  She rolled onto her back and waited.

Before long, she heard the expected clomps of light otter pawpads on the shore behind her.  “Jeez Gith, am I not allowed to have alone time?”  She called out.

She expected to hear the casual, time-tested reply, “Just get your rambunctious furry ass back to the den.” The voice never came, however.  Silence pierced the air like needles.  Reya had no idea what Gith’s problem was this time, but she knew it couldn’t be good.  She pulled herself up to face the shore as Gith let out a loud grunt.

The otter wasn’t Gither.

He was a big otter.  She’d seen larger, but he seemed massive compared to Reya and her Brother.  He was slightly longer than any of the otters she had known in passing, but his weight was absolutely intimidating.  Just by looking at him she could tell that he had at least five pounds on her in pure muscle.

His coloration was unlike any otter that Reya had ever known.  Dark brown fur covered his body head to toe.  More unusual was his neck.  Whereas most of her species had a large white patch of fur running down their chest from their muzzle, he only had a few small spots of white dotting the underside of his neck.  A pattern of red fur was visible on his front left paw.  No, she realized, that’s blood.

Reya, however, was not scared.  She firmly believed that otters were good animals.  Gither always told stories about otter heroes.  She couldn’t remember a single otter villain.  Besides, she was certain that she could, considering his bloody leg, outrun him if he tried anything malicious.

“Hey!” she called.

The other otter looked up, narrowed his eyes, and then slowly began to place his wounded paw in the water. 

If there was anything that upset Reya, it was being ignored.

“Do you need some help?  I can bind that up really quick!  I’m pretty good at medicine.  I mean, I’m okay… my brother taught me everything I know, but he’s the best healer you’ll find from here to Fenbury!  He’s really good!  He once completely fixed up a raccoon who sliced his paw nearly half off chopping up some celery.  I… uh – I helped too!  I’ll heal that paw of yours in no time!”  The male twitched his ears.

Reya took that as a sign of encouragement.  She swiftly paddled back over to the shore where the water had begun to take a slightly crimson hue. 

“C’mon, you can’t hope to get that clean with just one paw!”  She enthusiastically yipped. 

This scenario had played out in Reya’s mind many times before.  A dashing stranger stumbles out from the forest, mortally wounded.  He looks around in desperation only to find Reya, the stunningly beautiful otter maiden.  Catching a whiff of blood from far away she would know that she was needed.  She’d rush over, and the male would swoon at the sight of her – and also his lack of blood – as she begins to help.  He would wince in pain as she treated him, but the entire time, his eyes would be looking straight into hers and…

The male bared his teeth as she reached over to help, his glare daring her to go any farther.  He didn’t expect her to.  She didn’t expect to.  Yet, she refused to let her fantasy go unfulfilled, her wounded prince unaided.  She pushed right through with her nose and started to clean the wound out with her dexterous paws.

The expression that flooded the stranger’s face was a mix of shock and pain, as her fingers gently poked and prodded at his wound.  He initially jerked the paw back, but slowly let it back out for her to clean.  He wasn’t stupid.  If he didn’t want the wound to fester, it would have to be washed and bandaged.  Otters were notoriously terrible at giving themselves first-aid because of their short limbs.  She knew that he needed her help whether he liked it or not.

“How did this happen?”

No response.

“Okay then, where are you from?”  Reya asked through gritted teeth.

No response.

“Can you at least tell me your name?”

No response.

She was angry.  “If I’m going to help you, you’ve got to talk to me!” Her voice was almost at a shout.

Reya wasn’t the only angry otter on the shore.   The stranger glared at her, eyes narrowing.  He opened his mouth.

Reya’s lunch left her and joined the crimson water.

The stranger had no tongue.  In its place, at the back of his maw, was a large festering scab.  It covered what she could only assume had been the path of a long and – judging by the festering – at least week old gash along the inner left side of his jaw. In all of Reya’s time treating friendly creatures of the forest, she had never once encountered a wound that had looked so vile.

“Oh gods…” she muttered.

Her brother would know what to do.  Gither always knew what to do, although she rarely agreed with his plans of action.  She didn’t want Gith chasing the poor mute away, he never liked having strangers around.  But the mute hadn’t tried to hurt her or anything, and his mouth was in desperate need of attention.

“I’m going to find some leaves to bind your paw.”  She spoke fast, not looking at the stranger.

Her legs trembling slightly, Reya set to the forests edge, keeping her eye on the mute, now lying down with his paw resting in the water.  The blood and vomit had not taken long to disperse in the light current.  It wasn’t long until she had plucked some big heart shaped leaves from a nearby tree. She knew from previous experience that they would hold together well.

She turned back to the shore.  The male had moved.  He was backing away from his location slowly.  Something was obviously there.  There were not many feral predators in the area, but snakes were always a concern.  She crept closer, staying as hidden as she could behind the shrubbery that lined the forest edge as she tried to get a better look at what the bigger otter was looking at.

It wasn’t a predator, it was her brother.  He was hissing, creeping forward at the retreating otter.  Gither, about to jump the stranger, paused as he smelled a familiar scent.

“Gither, what do you think you’re doing?” Reya shouted, the leaves falling from her muzzle. “Get away from him right now!  Look at the poor thing, he’s wounded! ”

“Get back Reya, he’s dangerous,” Gither glared.  He wasn’t the only one ready for battle.  The mute had his haunches drawn back, ready to jump in an instant if Gither made a move.

“Dangerous?  He’s hurt!  It’s always like this with you!  You see some poor hurt person and just go for the throat!”

“He is dangerous,” Gither repeated. He tilted his head slightly, revealing a bloody set of claw-marks running behind his ear.

“Oh!  So he scratched you!  I’m sure you’re in a lot of pain!  Are you the one who did this to the poor guy’s leg?  Don’t even try to lie to me Gith, you know I can see right through you!”

Gither stood stoic for a moment before turning his attention to Reya.  He stepped forward and stopped.  The mute had repositioned himself between Gither and his sister, baring his teeth at Gither.  He was tense.  Gither was tense.  Reya was flailing, shouting, and trying to calm them both down.

“Sir… Uh… Stranger – Mute – dude!  Its ok!  He’s my brother!”  Reya made her move.  She quickly ran up next to the mute, who only offered her a cursory glance before resuming his stare-down with Gither.

“Gither, calm down.  You hit him first – and don’t you dare lie to me.  He’s completely innocent!  What would you have done if some crazy otter jumped you and tore up your leg?  You’d beat the crap out of him!  He barely even touched you!  Look at the size of him – he could have wrecked you if he fought back!”

“He would not have beaten me!” Gither growled.

“Are you serious?  Is something wrong with my ears?  You just ravaged this guy’s leg and all you can think about is your pride?  He’s just a wounded mute, Gith, get a freaking grip! Shut up, go over to that pond right there, and get some algae to bind the mess that you made of his paw!”

Gither stood in place, stunned.  Reya was breathing heavily.  She had been growing less and less patient with her brother in the last few years, but not like this.  He had always been the boss.  He told her what to do and, albeit after grumbling and arguing, she’d do it.

“Gither,” Reya snapped, “now!”

Gither did what he was told.  He looked curiously at the mute as walked to the stream, still cautious.  Reya guessed that she hadn’t realized that the spotted otter was a mute.  He dove down into the river to grab a mouthful of algae.  Meanwhile, Reya collected the leaves that she had dropped, bringing them over to the mute, who was more than slightly confused.

“You aren’t also deaf, right?” The mute nodded.

“Alright, this is going to sting again.”

Reya leaned over and began cleaning out the wound once again.  Specs of dirt and grime had collected in the gash during the confrontation.  There wasn’t much, however, so Reya finished quickly.

“I’m going to need you on your side,” Reya said, nudging the larger otter.  He obediently laid down.

She grabbed the first leaf and gingerly pressed it against the open wound.  She had parted the wet fur around the wound to the best of her abilities, but some fur still got in her way.  She balanced two more leaves over top.  They wouldn’t stick, but Reya knew the importance of a thick bandage.  Gither wordlessly dropped the algae next to her as she worked.  She look he gave her could have killed a lesser otter.

While holding the leaves down with a paw, she reached over and grabbed the end of a first strand of algae in her mouth.  She pressed it against the side of his leg, and then slowly wrapped it around the bandage, the wet weed sticking to itself effectively.  She repeated the process with several more strands of algae before tying it off and stepping back to admire her work.

“Now sit here until the algae dries off.” She said in her best soft endearing voice.  The male grunted in acceptance.

“Gither, I think that now would be a good time to apologize to our guest.  You put him through a lot, and if I wasn’t here to save him, who knows what would have happened!  You know how incredibly dangerous these woods are.   You owe me one Gith!”  She spoke down to him like a mother to her pups, in as condescending and demeaning of a tone as she could muster.

“Don’t be an idiot – these woods are perfectly sa –“

Reya cut him off, “Gither, right now!  Go apologize right now!”

Reya felt empowered.  She hadn’t been in charge of anyone ever.  She had always taken orders from Gither, albeit begrudgingly.  She couldn’t help it most of the time.  When he got angry, she just did what he said. 

Gither sat next to the mute, who stiffened at his approach.

“My sister is right, I should apologize.  You looked like a threat, so I did what I had to do.  Next time make it obvious that you can’t speak or you’ll probably get killed.”

“What the heck is your problem?!  I asked for an apology!  That was nothing!  I – How dare you hurt this poor guy and then act so callous about it!”

Reya was going to continue, but she stopped, startled, when she felt the mute’s good paw give her a little shove.  She turned her head around curiously.  The wounded male looked at her thankfully and then nodded at her brother. 

“Gither, I… I think that you should look at his mouth.”  Reya gulped; she didn’t have any food left to retch up.  Even after seeing it twice, she still wasn’t quite sure of her resolve to look a third time.

The mute was stiff as a log as Gither prodded his jaw with his paw.  He opened it with a nod from Reya, though.  She immediately looked away.  Even Gither, with his extensive medical experience, turned his head at the sight. 

“How long has it been since this happened?” Gither asked.

The mute leaned down and drew a symbol for into the ground with his good paw.  Gither’s eyes narrowed.

“Where the hell did you learn the old runes?” he hissed.  Reya pushed up next to the spotted otter and glared at her brother.

“Save the interrogation for later,” Reya growled.  Her brother looked conflicted in a way that she had never seen him before.  Finally, however, he relented.

“Fine.  It’s definitely infected, but you probably knew that.  Get me some aloe vera.  You know where it is.”

“No way!  I’m not going to leave him with you in this awful mood.  I can deal with whatever he needs until you get back.”

“What he needs is for someone to pick off that scab.  So unless you’re up for the job, get moving.”

Reya didn’t need any more encouragement.

The small otter rushed to the den like a wolf was on her tail.  She ducked into the small otter-sized door and bolted for the herbal pantry.  She returned as fast as she could, aloe vera and other minor herbs to help with open wounds clutched in her maw.  Aside from a putrid smell in the air around Gither, who was busy poking away inside the mute’s mouth, everything seemed to be as she left it.  The stranger’s eyes were watering in silent agony, he twitched in pain with every movement of Gither’s claws.  She sat still as Gither finished the first stage of his work, staying far enough away for the pungent odor to be at least somewhat bearable.

“Are you finished yet?” Reya began to grow impatient soon.

“Shut up Reya.”

She quietly continued to wait uncomfortably for her brother to finish.  Fortunately for Reya’s patience, or lack thereof, he didn’t take long.  Gither held the wounded otter’s mouth open as he called over his sister.

“Reya, I need you to hold his jaw still while I apply the aloe.  It’ll sting like a bitch for him and I don’t want to lose a paw.”

Reya didn’t dare open her mouth, not for fear of Gither’s condescension, but because of the vile taste hanging in the sickly air.  She closed her eyes and gripped the mute’s mouth, precariously balancing on her back feet. 

She didn’t want to watch, but she forced herself to.  The small otter had seen plenty of gruesome wounds while helping her brother, but this one was on a completely different scale.  Without the scabs it was even worse.  Reya thought that she’d lose her grip several times as the aloe touched new parts of the reopened wound. 

She almost began to doubt the commitment that she had to learning her brother’s profession.  It was easy to treat scrapes and bruises, she could deal with blood without a problem.  However, when she saw the awful mutilation of the mute’s mouth, she couldn’t handle it.  She wanted to help her new friend so badly, but she couldn’t bear his looks of agony.  It hurt her to see a living creature so similar to her in such pain and it hurt her to know that without her brother she wouldn’t be able to help, and not for a lack of knowledge.

It seemed like she stood there forever, arms sore from holding the wounded otter’s jaws open.  With a nod from her brother, she slowly pulled her paws away.  They were covered in a disgusting mixture of blood and pus. 

“I know it’ll feel horrible, but you have to hold these herbs in your mouth until the wound begins to scab over again,” Reya shakily said, taking over for her brother.  Gither had gone to wash his fur in the river.  She couldn’t blame him.   She felt disgusting herself. 

The mute stood up and took a tentative step downstream.

“Hey, our den is the other way,” Reya invited.  He nodded but gestured with his head downstream.

“I think he wants us to follow him,” Reya spoke to her brother.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“I was being facetious.”

“Well maybe you should shut up and come with us.  I think it’s important!”

“All he did was nod!  How does that make you think it’s important!?  And what do you mean by us?  You’re not going with him!” Gither shouted.

“Gither, I’m going whether you like it or not.  You should come too, I’ll need help redressing his mouth.”  The mute winced at the thought of paws invading his mouth again.

“Fine, but if he so much as looks at me wrong, that mouth will be the least of his problems,” Gither threatened.

Reya rolled her eyes at her brother as she walked alongside her new mute friend.

2: His Way

 “… So I got Githy to come out to help me the day after I found the raccoon den.  It looked like their mother had been missing for at least a day when we got there.  So, my brother here sent me off to find his friend Mayel, a really nice old raccoon lady.  I swear, Mayel never grows tired of kids!  She doesn’t have any herself, but last time I visited her, she had at least fourteen kits and pups and chicks of all sorts of different species running all around her house!  And they all listened to her and did what she said!  I swear, its witchcraft to me getting one kit to listen to you, let alone fourteen of them!  I can’t even imagine trying to watch fourteen kits.  But anyway, so I find Mayel.  She wasn’t actually busy this time.  I mean, she’s a busy lady… tough too, she works in the farms.  But the spring harvest had just come in, so she had time on her hands.  Well, we walked back to the den and –”

“Reya, is this really necessary?” Gither snapped.

“You’re just embarrassed!” Reya taunted, “so I brought Mayel back with me and –”

“Reya!”

“There’s Gither, his face looking almost exactly as red as it does now.  He’s lying down on the den floor with all of the little raccoon kits gathered around suckling at his belly!”  The spotted otter covered his maw like he was hiding a smile.  She caught him steal a glance at Reya’s brother.  Gither was not happy. 

“It was absolutely the most adorable thing,” Reya cooed, “mommy Githy –“

“Reya, shut up.”

“Despite what he’s saying right now –“

“Reya, shut the fuck up.”

“Jeez Gith, language!  We have a guest here!  Anyway Githy absolutely loved it –“

“Reya, I mean it – shut up!” Gither was a furious shade of red under his fur.

“But look at him!  Our new friend loves my stories!” The mute grinned and winked at the angry otter.

“Can you be quiet for once in your damn life?  If you have to talk, make it about something other than me!”

Reya sighed, exasperated.

“Oh yeah!  Have I told you about the time that Githy dated a ferret?”

It was a long walk for Gither.  For Reya, however, time passed quickly.  She had never had someone around who was such a good listener.  With how much she talked, she wore people out pretty fast; her brother rarely took the time to hear the bits of gossip that she had picked up around the forest.

Reya had almost exhausted her voice by the time that the mute indicated for them to stop.  A large hollow tree lay on the forest floor, rotten and falling apart.  Next to the tree were the broken remnants of what used to be a simple pull-cart crudely constructed from sticks, vines, leaves, and algae. The mute motioned inside the log.

It looked like the stranger had only spent a single night under the rotting wood.  Leaves and moss had been pushed together for something to sleep on.  There were still small twigs and dirt in the bedding; it looked hastily put together.  Decomposing wood and lichen had fallen into the nest as well.  Reya cringed at the thought of the mute being forced to spend the night inside the log.

He moved farther in; It was too thin for Reya and Gither to follow, but after rummaging around, he pulled out a coarsely woven sack.  He nodded at the Gither who moved forward and accepted the package from him.  As the spotted otter continued to rummage through the leaves, Gither cautiously sniffed the bag.  Reya wondered what was inside that was so important.  It looked light and limp in her brother’s jaw.  Finally, it looked like the mute had found what he was looking for. He backed out and motioned for Reya.

“What do you need?”  She questioned, “Is there something else under here?”

He nodded.  She found what he was looking for without much effort.  The large male pulled a looped vine out from under the leaves gave it to her to hold in her maw.  He moved to the other side and, after some more digging, uncovered another loop.  He tentatively lifted the cord and Reya followed suit.

The otters slowly unearthed a small square package.  It was about the length and width of Reya’s head, but only about as thick as her tail.  It was wrapped tightly with leaves and bound with twine.  The two otters carefully moved it outside of the hollowed log and set it down on the grass.

“What is it?” Reya asked.  The mute walked over to Gither, and nosed at the sack.  Gither dropped it on the ground.  The spotted otter pushed it open, and pulled out a short stub of charcoal with his paw.  Gither’s eyes narrowed.

The mute motioned over to a smoother portion of the log where less had rotted away.  Reya and Gither followed his lead; Reya went enthusiastically, Gither suspiciously.  He started to mark the wood, drawing small lines, curved and straight.  His paw moved carefully and precisely as the charcoal scratched against the wood, relegating the strokes to the upper part of the open surface.  He finally stepped back to reveal his message – short and simple.

“Can you read?” 

Reya looked at the characters quizzically.  She didn’t understand.  Gither had taught her basic writing, but she was terrible at drawing pictograms, so she never studied them.  These characters weren’t pictograms.  They didn’t look like anything she’d seen before.

Gither on the other hand looked like he had been possessed.  The tip of his tail twitched back and forth.  Reya hadn’t ever seen his tail twitch before.  Not even when he got so angry that his whole body trembled.

“Yes,” Gither said after a minute of staring.  The mute looked relieved.

Gither had told Reya about the old runes before.  They were marks of the gods and the spirits, dangerous and not to be trifled with.  She was shocked that Gither could read them.

“Please translate for Reya.”  Gither repeated the writing out loud.

“My name is Torren.  I need help.  It is three days since I lost my tongue.  I must speak with others, but I am almost out of writing.  In package is a way to speak with me.”

As Torren wrote, Gither spoke the words.  Reya guessed that it was more for his benefit than hers.  Gither never told her about anything that seemed even slightly dangerous.

And she could tell that her brother thought that Torren was dangerous.  His fur was standing and his tail was twitching even harder.  Reya stayed quiet for a moment, but she couldn’t help ask a question.

“So, um, why did someone do that to your tongue?”  Torren’s face contorted into a grimace.  He tossed her the tiny fragment that remained of his chalk.  It was obvious to her that he didn’t have enough of the charcoal stick left to write any more.

“I guess we’re back to yes and no questions then!  Should we open the super mysterious package here, or take it back to our den first?  I think we should go to the den… It might rain and that’d probably be bad for whatever’s in there.”  He seemed conflicted for a moment, but the obvious choice settled in his mind quickly.  The speckle coated otter nodded his head in approval.

“We’re going back?”  He nodded once more.

“Alright then, Gith, you and Torren can carry the thing back.  We can leave that crappy bag, we have plenty of pouches back at the den.” 

Gither glared at the otter girl.  “No.  You are going to hold the damn bag in your giant fucking maw and I hope to the gods that it shuts you up long enough for us to get some peace!  Look, your new buddy Torren agrees with me!  Right?”  Torren looked to the side, not meeting Gither’s eyes.

“Gods-dammit!”

“C’mon Githy, let’s get going!”

The sun had already set.  Despite having her mouth free while Gither and Torren worked together to carry the package, Reya didn’t talk very much.  She started off the trip with one of her stories, but got distracted by a yowl from a creature off in the forest.  Shivers ran down her spine. 

Something about the darkness unsettled Reya.  She liked being able to see everything around her; she liked having an air of certainty around her life.  Right now, nothing was certain.  The moon had waned until not a single sliver of moonlight lit their path.  The stars dotting the vast sky seemed distant, but she felt like each of them – each departed soul – was watching as they marched forward.

Luminescent yellow eyes flashed from the bushes for a split second.  They were her only warning before a large mass of teeth and claw shot from the darkness like a javelin aimed directly at the group of otters. 

Everything was still.

She was frozen in place.  The world around her ran in slow-motion.  Thoughts raced through her head like buzzing hornets, disrupting the serene horror of the moment.  She didn’t know what to do.  She couldn’t move.  She couldn’t speak.  She wanted to shout – to alert her friends of their impending doom.  She stood straight and still – unable to do anything.

The large creature – a massive cat – was terrifying.  Two strands of disheveled fur hung from its ears down either cheek, dropping underneath its face into a point.  It was like some grotesque furry war paint.  Dark spots speckled its tan hide.  Its eyes, however, bright yellow drops of neon, were surrounded with patches of ghastly white fur.

Everything happened almost too fast for Reya to register.  Gither tried to duck back, but the cat’s claws raked across his face.  He yelped in pain as blood started to drip down his face and around his muzzle.  He tried to compose himself to fight, but Reya could already tell that it was too late.

The large spotted cat drew back again, ready for the kill. Its legs pulled taut and it pressed its ears tight against the side of its head.  The cat’s long thin tail brushed across the grass with barely a sound.  Its muscles reflexively expanded.  Its rear legs pushed hard against the ground. 

Gither tried to jump to the side, but Reya could see that he wasn’t ready. He wouldn’t be fast enough.

“Gither!” Reya screamed.  She looked back and forth, looking desperately for something that she could do to help in the precious moments before her brother was slaughtered by the cat.

Torren collided with the leaping cat mid-air.  He slammed into the ground on top of it.  The beast tried to slash and bite at the otter, but it was growing weaker and weaker.  Torren’s teeth were wrapped around its neck. 

Reya stared in horror as the cat spasmed once, twice before going completely limp.  Torren let go and, as if in a trance, began to stagger towards the river.

It was as if the little otter knew what was going to happen before it did.  She leapt at Torren with all of her strength and barreled into him just as sharp teeth clenched shut where he had been standing only a moment before.  He recoiled, startled.  The cat, with its dying breath, had lunged for its killer, hoping to exact a final revenge.

Torren stood still, breathing heavily.  Reya leaned over him; she was motionless, but thankfully free from harm.  Gither pulled himself up from the river back onto the shore, the water having washed away the most prominent signs of his wound.

“Why the fuck didn’t you run?”  Gither demanded.

“How could I run?  That… Cat-thing was going to tear you two apart!”

“It’s called a lynx; and you need to look out for yourself, Reya.  You just fucking met this otter and you’re already trying to throw your life away for him!”

“Torren would have cat fangs stuck in his fur right now if I hadn’t helped!  And you… you’d be nothing more than this… lynx’s midnight snack if it weren’t for Torren!  Do you hate life that much?  Because it certainly seems like you wish that both of us just left you to die!  What if I ran away, Torren saved your sorry tail, and then was killed for it because I followed your stupid orders?  You’d rather throw away the life of this person that you know almost nothing about than to show a little bit of gratitude!  I’m so fed up with you Gither!  You know what?  Maybe Torren should have let the cat tear your… your fucking brains out, because you obviously would have let it happen to him!”

Reya started at Gither, out of breath.  She was shocked her own speech.  He looked back at her with a sudden determination.

Gither’s voice rose with word he spoke, “Reya are you trying to kill yourself?  You stuck your ass out for this blood-stained psychopathic piece of shit enough in the last two days.  Do you realize how easily he could have killed you?  Look at him.  He’s a killer!  He’s covered in blood – he just tore out the throat of a fucking lynx –“

“–That was about to kill you!”

“Reya, you will not be around him!” Gither shouted, “look at this, he’s made me look like a villain here!  All I’ve ever done was keep you safe!”

“Get the hell off my tail!  I can live my own life!”

“Well, fuck off then.  Live your own life.”  Gither turned in a huff and left.  Torren stared on in shock, blood still dripping from his maw.         

“You can clean yourself up,” Reya spoke after a short period of silence.  Torren nodded.  With measured steps he walked over to the stream and rinsed out his muzzle.  He still seemed shocked by Reya’s fury and she couldn’t blame him.

“Where are we going then?”  She asked when he had finished.

Torren tilted his head slightly, confused, before nodding in the direction that they were moving beforehand.

“No!” Reya almost shouted, “I am not going back to my den.”  Her voice dropped to a low growl, “if I get what I want, I’m never going to see him again.”

Torren placed a paw on her shoulder and then nudged her towards the package.  “You’re right, we better move that somewhere safer,” Reya sighed.  Torren nodded in agreement.  He grabbed a handle in his mouth and Reya followed suit.

“I bet you’ve got more experience with this survival stuff than me,” Reya mumbled through the strap, “lead the way.”  The spotted otter seemed to agree, gently pulling her along into the woods and away from the river.

“I guess I can talk all I want now, with Gith gone… if you’ll listen to me, I mean,” Reya spoke, her words slightly muffled.  Torren grinned and nodded at her through his strap.  “I mean, it’s not like Gither was a bad brother to me… He could be nice sometimes.

“I remember back when I was just a pup… talking to Gither wasn’t like pulling a thorn out of your paw back then.  We’d just sit and talk for hours about all sorts of things.  He taught me all sorts of stuff about different herbs and plants… He’s a great healer, you know.  He was pretty famous in our little corner of the woods.  He’d have ten to twenty people lined up daily to see him and he helped as much as he could.  It was really wonderful.  I wanted to be just like him.”  Reya laughed bitterly. 

“I could tell that he really cared about them too.  Every single time I saw him lose a patient he would just mope around for days.  I think that he put so much into helping his patients that his failures just hurt all the worse. 

“I think that’s what happened.  As I grew up his temper just got worse and worse.  He shouted at his patients all they time and before long they stopped coming as often.  I mean, they’d still come for help because he was the best around, but they’d always get out as quickly as possible. 

“It’s funny actually, I got a lot better at medicine because people started asking me for help instead of Gither.  Of course I had to go to this healer Talip in the next town over since Gither got furious whenever he found out that someone went to me instead of him.

“I started avoiding him around then too.  Gither hated me helping the patients.  I don’t know if he was jealous or if he was worried about baby rabbits slitting my throat at night or something ridiculous like that.  He got worse and worse every time he caught me.  You know what that jerk did?  He started following me.  Every single day.  At first he was inconspicuous about it and I didn’t mind as long as he didn’t bother me.  Then he began to try to stop me from going near certain animals that were avoiding him, the ones that I was treating – I guess he thought that they might have a grudge against him or something.

“He didn’t just stop there, though; he started keeping me from going more than an hours walk from the den.  It was ridiculous.  I let him stop me too, because somehow I had convinced myself that it was for the best.  It’s hard to explain, you know?  Even though I was angry and upset at everything, I thought that he knew what I needed.  Gods that was stupid of me.

“Don’t get me wrong, though, I loved him for everything that he did for me as a kit.  My mom and dad… I don’t remember, but my mom and dad died when I was really little.  He’s taken care of me and kept me safe… And he was my friend too!  He used to actually be my friend, but now it’s like I’m just his responsibility.  He treats me like I’m some feral animal he has to take care of...

Reya began to cry, “I want to be his friend again.”

Torren gently set down the package and nosed Reya.  She was biting deep into the vine handle.  He rubbed his paw against her wet tear-stained cheek. 

“Th… Thanks for listening, Torren.  You’re a great friend,” she choked out, “I think that I need to talk to Gither… I… I want to at least try, you know?”

Torren nodded and nuzzled her.

“H…hey, I know this place… Are we?”

He nodded, and nudged her towards a line of brush, revealing the forested riverside where she had first found him. 

3: A Book

Reya half expected to find her brother sternly waiting for her as she walked into her den.  She wasn't quite sure how to feel when she didn't see him.  An ache in her heart told her that she missed him, but she couldn't even think of talking to him again without her stomach clenching.

She noticed Torren sizing up her den.  The entryway wasn't very big.  It was only slightly taller than the bigger otter and just wide enough to fit in four small cloth doorways.  Cedar planks lined the room with several stout support beams keeping the overhead planks suspended above them.

Reya loved the smell of cedar.  Gither wanted to use oak because it was so easy to come by, but she had insisted that they use cedar instead.

She pushed through the portal to her room.

"My brother's room's on the far right.   Actually, on second thought, you probably shouldn't.  If he comes back to you sleeping there he'll angry as a wet cat!  C'mon, you'll stay in my room with me."

Her small spherical room was a mess of bedding, toys from when she was a pup, and crude wooden sculptures that she had carved in hours on hours of boredom.  The larger otter followed her in.

"You can sleep on that side.  Okay?"

He nodded.  Reya collapsed on her bedding with a sigh.  "What a day," she muttered.  Torren lay down opposite from her.

The next day she woke up to an empty room.  Torren was outside, vigorously carving symbols into the ground with a lump of charcoal.  Reya stumbled back.  Was he marking her den with runes?  Was it some sort of witchery?

"What are you doing?" she stuttered in shock.  Torren jerked up and stared at her like caught prey.  He gestured with his paws, but Reya didn't understand what he was trying to say.  However, she clearly understood the expression on his face.  It was as if he was screaming, 'it's not what it looks like!  You don't understand!'

Reya took a deep breath and then decided to give the spotted otter the benefit of the doubt.  Witchery was only the stuff of legends.  Besides, even Gither could read the old runes; surely there was no real danger.

"What are you doing?" she repeated slowly.  He stood still and then dropped back to all fours and beckoned the otter girl closer.  Reya took a single step forward.

"What's all this for?" she rephrased.  Torren suddenly perked up.  Careful not to make any sudden moves, he shuffled past Reya and back into the den.  She cringed as he brushed against her stiff body, but she didn't stop him.

He grabbed the package he had collected the day before.  It was still sitting in the middle of the entryway.  The wrapping that had seemed so careful was torn away in moments.  Inside was a musty old tome.

"You went through all this for a book?" Reya asked suspiciously.

Torren opened it with the care of a mother pulling burrs from her kit's pelt.  Reya, despite her hesitancy, couldn't help but inch forward to see the pages better in the dimly lit room.  The male continued to turn the pages until finally his face lit up with satisfaction.  He pointed at a set of illustrations in the midst of runic text.  One side depicted a maple leaf.  Next to it was a diagram showing two paws gesturing in an odd manner.  Torren stood on his hind paws and repeated the gesture himself.

A wide smile spread across Reya's face as she had an epiphany.  "You're saying maple right now, aren't you?"

Torren grinned.  He closed his paw into a fist and made a tapping motion.

"Is that a yes?"

The spotted otter nodded eagerly.

"Wow, that's amazing!  You can speak without even talking!  I used to make up secret words with my friends when I was a pup, but I never thought of anything like this!  I mean, it didn't take long for Gither to figure out that whenever I told Castor, my badger friend, we were going to play in the thicket by farmer's hill that we were really exploring across the river.  Gither never would've been able to chew us out if we'd known how to speak like this!"

At first Reya had found Torren's quiet laughter disconcerting, but this time she couldn't help but to join him with her own chuckle.

"So what's with the runes outside?"

Torren pointed at her and then dropped back down to his paws and pointed at the book.

"Oh!  You want me to be able to read this!"  She eagerly exclaimed.

He nodded happily.

"Well, I don't know about that," she said, the enthusiasm draining from her voice, "I don't even know how to read Script."

Torren still led her outside.  However, he didn't stop at the runes carved into the ground outside of her doorway.  Instead, he led her up to a maple tree.  Reya waited expectantly as he carved characters into the dirt.

"Does that also mean maple?" She impatiently asked before he finished.

Torren smiled and nodded.  He swiped the stick under the first character in the word and wrote a bigger version of it underneath.  The stick tapped against the word and then lightly against Reya.

"Wait, so you can break up these runes?"  The small clawed otter asked in confusion.  She was used to Script where each drawn character represented something on its own.  It was a hard language to master.  How well a person could write was decided by how small they could draw each picture and still have it be perfectly recognizable.  In fact, very few non-rodents bothered to learn how to use Script.

Torren nodded again vigorously.  He pointed at the large character again and then pointed back at Reya.

"Huh?  Does that character have something to do with me?"

He shook his head and mouthed a silent word.

"I don't get it," she muttered.

In response, Torren once again pointed at the character, mouthed a silent sound, and then gestured towards Reya.

"Mmeh?"  She guessed.  The mute looked excited, so she figured she was right.

She had a harder time with the other letters in the word 'maple.'  She struggled trying to separate the first two and last two letters.  It wasn't until the sun was past its zenith that she finally figured out all five of the symbols under Torren's increasingly frustrated tutelage.

The two otters only managed to work their way through the sounds in 'table' before stopping for lunch.  Reya was happy to jump back into the warm late-summer water.  She darted around Torren, playfully tugging at his tail and whiskers.  He responded in turn, trying to bat back at the lithe female with his heavy paws.

Eventually, they each got around to hunting down fish and crayfish for their meal.  Reya built up a fire in the small fire-pit next to the den, while Torren skewered the catch on polished oak fire spits.  Reya often ate her meals raw, but she didn't want to make Torren uncomfortable if his family of otters only ate their meals cooked.

"I really expected Gither to come back today," Reya said through a mouthful of trout.  She surprised herself with how indifferent her voice sounded.  There wasn't a hint of a lump in her throat as she spoke.

"I guess he -" Reya stopped, surprised, as Torren rolled onto his side and began to gesture with his paws.  In slow deliberate motions, he pointed off into the woods and then brought his paw back to his head only to cut down with it in a straight line.  He then held his paw out to the side, fingers straight up, and then brought it to his chest where he curled all but two digits into his palm.

Reya laughed.  "You're trying to talk to me, aren't you!  I don't think that's going to cut it though."  She sternly mimicked Torren's cutting motion, setting him off on a bout of silent laughter.  "You just give it a week and I'll be waving right back at you!"

Her second day of learning was the most difficult.  It seemed as if there were an endless amount of written characters to learn.  Furthermore, the more she concentrated on Torren's paw gestures, the more she realized that she couldn't understand what he was saying at all.  It all felt hopeless.

The work was arduous and she spent most of her waking hours studying the mystifying characters, but her dedication began to pay off as Torren's previously impenetrable writing began to make sense to her.  She was exhilarated the first time that Torren was actually able to express something to her through a sentence - a simple question about whether she was ready to eat.  She was ready for anything that didn't involve scratching runes into the dirt with a stick while muttering their pronunciation to herself.

By the end of the third day she realized that she had seen all but one or two characters in each word that Torren was writing for her.  By noon the day after, there were no symbols left for her to learn.

'Thats it' Reya slowly pieced together the sounds of the two words written on the ground in front of her.  Torren was smiling like a baboon gone mad.

"I'm done?"

He held his paw out, with his thumb and two fore fingers extended, and then clamped the three digits together.  He had responded this way often enough that Reya understood that he was saying, 'no.'

"Oh!  You're going to teach me those hand movements now?"  Reya asked, excited.  She had looked forward to learning his paw motions ever since he had started teaching her the old runes.  She was amazed at the speed and fluidity with which his paws moved whenever he began to talk, and she wanted desperately to be able to respond in kind.  Besides, the old runes left an uneasy feeling in her gut when she stared at them for too long.  She much preferred communicating with Torren using gestures.

Reya had barely noticed the musty old book since Torren unwrapped it, but it still lay on the floor of the den in the same spot where they had set it down.

She opened the book delicately.  It was fragile and worn with age.  The cover looked as if it could fall off at any point in time.  The symbols in the tome were small and hard to decipher.  Reya guessed that a rodent had been tasked with writing them. 

"Sign Language for Thumbed Mammals, Third Edition, written with the collected efforts of the conclave," she slowly read.  Torren, leaning over her shoulder, corrected her many pronunciation errors with gentle nudges.

Torren reached a paw to the side, and began to gently thumb through the frail pages until he found the first page with an illustration.  He pointed to the start of page's text.  After squinting at the small writing, Reya slowly began to read again.

The first paragraph was the slowest for the small otter.  There were lots of words that she had difficulty piecing together from their sounds.  However, much to her relief, the sections of text were not very long.  They each contained a word, a definition, several example sentences, and an illustration of the corresponding paw gestures.  She enjoyed the illustrations immensely.  The author had drawn a different animal's paw for each word, so Reya kept herself entertained by trying to guess the species for each.

After a week, her brother still hadn't come back.  Every morning she woke up expecting to see her older brother mulling around the various herbs and poultices in the den.  Instead, she usually found the big mute otter proudly carrying a large basket of fish back to the fire-spit.

Reya tried not to let his absence phase herself.  He'll be back tomorrow, she kept telling herself, he'll be back next week.  However, as weeks passed, there was still no sign of his return.

The little otter distracted herself with studying as much as she could.  She worked through the chapters like she worked through fresh trout every morning.  Her only breaks were for meals and her ever-important fishing time.  Reya joked with Torren that if her friend Sylvia the rabbit showed up, she wouldn't even recognize the studious otter.

However, Reya struggled to convince herself that nothing was wrong.  She struggled to convince herself that her brother was out on some important quest, like one of the heroes in the stories he always told her as a kid.  She struggled to convince herself that she didn't care that Gither was gone.

But she still woke up crying in the middle of the night.

'Where are you from?'  Reya signed, looking down at the example sentence from the end of the book's second chapter.

'Good job!'  The spotted necked otter congratulated her.

"C'mon Torren!  Tell me!"

'Sign it!'

She sighed in exasperation and rolled her eyes.  'Please say, Torren!' She signed.

'I'm from the west,' he answered.

"That's not an answer!  Everywhere's west of here!"  The mute was infuriatingly oblique when she asked him questions about himself.  He always either redirected the conversation or replied with annoyingly cryptic answers.

'Sign it!'

"I can't sign that!  I don't even know half those words!"

'That's not an answer!  Everywhere's west of here!'  Torren signed with a toothy grin, 'Now sign it back to me.'

Reya groaned and did as he asked.  After her first two weeks of learning sign language Torren made her speak with it as much as possible.  He said it was the best way for her to learn.  Reya didn't mind.  She was excited to learn the mysterious language, and was eager to use it.  However, she quickly grew frustrated and resorted to spoken word when she couldn't think of how to express a thought.

Reya's sign language improved faster than a rabbit in a forest fire.  She made sure, however, not to tell that joke when Sylvia came to visit.  The rabbit girl showed up unexpectedly one day, checking in to see if Reya was alright.

"Reya!  I haven't seen you and your brother for weeks!  What've you been up to?"

"I," she hesitated nervously, "I've been helping out another otter who had this really bad injury in his mouth!  He showed up a few weeks ago with that and a hurt paw and his paw's all better and everything, but his mouth is still really bad and -"

"It's okay!  Don't worry!" Sylvia laughed.  She hopped up close to the otter's ear.  "So, is he hot?" she whispered.

Reya flushed under her fur and recoiled from the rabbit, who seemed to be in hysterics.  "Shut up Sylvia!  Doesn't even matter!  I mean, it's not like you'd care," she grumbled, "he's an otter, not a rabbit!"

The two friends talked for some time before Torren peeked out of the den.  Sylvia immediately invited him over.  For all that Reya had said about how much fun she would have had knowing sign language as a child, she didn't want to tell her childhood friend about how she communicated with Torren.  However, it didn't end up mattering because Torren began signing to her as soon as he joined the conversation.

Sylvia looked impressed between her fits of giggling about how ridiculous Reya and Torren looked when they stood on their hind paws and signed to each-other.  Torren seemed embarrassed by her laughter, but Reya took it in stride.  Sylvia's sense of humor was very easy to set off.

From then on, Sylvia visited the pair of otters every week.  However, over the course of four months, the bright green leaves of summer began to transform into the brilliant fiery colors of autumn.

With every passing day she could understand Torren more and more.  With every passing week, she asked him to explain what he was saying less.  With each of the four months that seemed to blur together like a cheetah pack on the hunt, she thought of her brother less.

And yet, when she found herself alone, sitting in the forest with no Torren nearby, no book nearby, and no river nearby to occupy herself, she couldn't help but think about the adventures that he had told her of when she was just a pup.  Back when she admired him.

She looked at the maple leaves above her, blowing in the gentle autumn wind.  She was sure that they would begin to fall by the end of the month.  But for now, she could admire their beauty in the dazzling morning light.  Reya found that it was always best to distract herself with the positives.

Although it was becoming colder, she had been feeling warmer and warmer as she sat in the small grove.  However, she prided herself on her optimism.  She trusted that everything would work out in the end.  Gither would come back.  He'd see that Torren wasn't a bad otter and that he was actually a good friend.

Then she smelled the ash.

The unmistakable smell of fire.  Her face blanched.  Reya had heard stories of great forest fires of the past, but had never experienced one in her lifetime.

And it was getting hotter fast.

What direction was it coming from?  She darted forwards and sniffed again.  It was definitely between her and the den.

There was only one way to go.  She had to make it towards the river, or she'd be stuck with nothing but woodland on all sides.  She twisted and turned, branches scraping against her fur as she raced for her life

The river was close.  It couldn't be farther than three minutes away!

But the fire roared in front of her.

4: By the Flowing River

Reya threw her body to the side just in time to avoid a flaming branch smashing down to the spot where she had stood only a second earlier.   She kept on moving, she had to.  Flames lapped at her paws and tail with every moment that she hesitated.

Despite her frenzy and the frantic beating of her heart, time seemed to slow down.  Everything was burning.  Flames shot up from the dry leaves and twigs that littered the forest floor.  Bushes were engulfed in the inferno.  She was surrounded; her only way forward was through the fire.

She leaped through a bush.  Heat billowed against her face and spread across her whole body.  She could feel her fur singing and catching fire, but she knew that there was no other way out.  She had to make it to the river where she’d be safe.

Her throat stung from the dryness and the smoke.  She coughed a harsh wheezing cough as she pushed through the bramble.  The small otter’s eyes stung and watered, but she couldn’t let herself focus on that. She had to keep moving.  

She could see nothing but leaves and fire for what felt like an eternity.  

The river burst into Reya’s view.  She whispered a silent thank you to the god of the forest and steeled herself for the final dash.  Every step she took felt like she was stepping into the red hot charcoal of her firepit, but she threw herself forward with bounding leaps.  It was torture to keep moving, but each time she touched earth she rocketed herself back into the air with as much strength as she could muster.

The small otter hit the lake with a painful splash.  The water was hot, and it was getting hotter fast.  With a strong snap of her tail against the malleable water she shot forwards into the current.  She swam forwards with all her strength.

Every push felt like she was shoving needles into body as the hot water agitated the burns all over her body.  Her naked reddened paws and tail constantly fought against the searing pain of movement as she swam for her life.

However, the pain grew worse with every kick of her webbed paws and every movement of her rudder tail.  She kept on going for what felt like an excruciatingly long time until finally she couldn’t take it anymore.  She dragged herself onto the shore. 

Reya looked back, but the fire was gone.  Smoke rose off in the distance, but it was far enough away for her to allow herself a short rest.  She didn’t know how she had managed to escape, or how long it would take for the inferno to catch up, but now that the adrenaline had worn off, every muscle in her body felt like it was being torn by some invisible claw.

She lay at the water’s edge, painfully wheezing and coughing into the grass.  Her back half was still immersed in the water – she didn’t have the strength to move it.  She needed to rest, but she wouldn’t let herself fall asleep.  She couldn’t risk passing out as the fire caught up to her.  

But when the fire came again, Reya couldn’t do anything.  She thrashed against the grass.  She screamed in agony as her fur burned and her skin melted into her bones.   All the otter could see were the red flames lapping at her body. 

But when she woke back up nothing had changed.

Her body was halfway immersed in the river as she had left it.  A wave of panic washed over her.  How long had she passed out for?  With the fur burned off of her paws and tail, the cold water was running along her bare skin.  Had she already caught hypothermia?

Reya tried to focus her vision on the ground to clear her mind.  Gither had taught her everything she needed to know about both burns and hypothermia.  Anything he hadn’t taught her she had learned from Talip, the doctor working in the nearby town of Haarshollow.  She knew what she had to do, she just had to make herself remember.

Her paws burned with a sharp constant pain.  She had lost most of the fur up to her ankles, and more in patches above them.  They were horribly swollen with blotchy splats of red adorning the pads and skin.   Worst of all, they hurt.  She tried to focus.  However, she couldn’t force herself to think

She turned her head to look at the river.  The tips of her mouth curved up in a contemptuous smile at a cruel joke of the gods.  Cattails grew high and strong at this point along the river.  Cattails whose stems Gither harvested to treat burns.

She spat a curse into the ground as the burning pain in her tail reclaimed her attention.  The river helped somewhat, the burns on the front half of her body hurt worse – an almost incalculable difference to the suffering otter.  She had to do something, but every time she tried to lift a paw her skin roared back in furious defiance.

Reya barely registered Torren make his way down past a bend in the river into her view.  She watched through the cattails as he swam in her direction.  His head popped out of the water several times to look around.  He must have been searching for her.  And then he stopped, his head pointed in her direction.  She knew that she should have been overjoyed to see his familiar spotted brown fur moving towards her, but her mind felt numb.  

He was swimming frantically now.  She watched as he drew close; her body completely motionless except for her light blue eyes following his movement through the water.  

“Torren…” She rasped the words through her dry throat, still filled with the taste of smoke.  

He fumbled with his paws as he tried to talk to her.  He did this when he got nervous.  His signing was almost completely incomprehensible, it looked more like a crazy animal trying to juggle hot coals.  Reya smiled weakly.  She couldn’t help but find him a little funny.

‘You’ll be Okay.’  She made out.

‘You’ll be Okay.’

He signed it several times.  His paws forced the words at her, as if force of will would make them true.  Breathing heavily, he dropped back down to all fours.

‘Should... Should I move you?’ he asked, signing with a single paw.

Reya weakly shook her head no.  She didn’t want to move.  With her raw painful skin any contact hurt.  It almost felt good to stay completely still – at least compared to the sharp pain of trying to adjust herself.

‘Ok- So, uh,’ Torren seemed to be struggling with his own sign, something Reya rarely saw, ‘I don’t know!  You’re the one good with medicine!  Is there something I can do?  There has to be something I can do to help!  Some poultice you know!”

He was freaking out.  Reya smiled.  It was rare for her to see her friend this frantic.  She didn’t fully comprehend why – she knew that she was hurt badly, but something within her refused to let her mind register just how bad her injuries were.  

Her eyelids fluttered.  She was tired.  She just wanted to rest.  She needed rest.  “Sleep…” She muttered.  She wanted to let Torren know that it was okay.  She was just resting for a little bit and he didn’t need to worry.  Reya’s vision blurred, but not before she saw tears at the corners of the spotted otter’s eyes. 

She didn’t mind the warm body of the larger otter that curled around her.  It should have hurt, but the pain seemed like an afterthought.  It was something in the back of her mind fighting for attention and she decided to ignore it.  She felt his head nestle into the crevice of her neck and the cold wet sting of tears dripping onto her tender skin.

If she had any dreams she didn’t remember them.

When Reya woke up, Torren was still curled up next to her.  Everything hurt worse than before, but she felt that she had her wits about her – much more than before.  It was only now that she could really comprehend everything that had happened.  Her home was gone.  She had spent her entire life in that forest and now it was gone in an inferno of ash and fire.

There were bound to be countless injured rabbits, voles, and mice near her home and she was stuck by the river, useless and within an inch of her own life.  It wasn’t until then that she realized just how bad of a state she was in.  

“Torren,” she groaned.

He didn’t move.

“Torren!”  She shoved back at his body.  For a second she only saw a searing white light as pain jolted through her nerves.  

He barely stirred.  Reya imagined that he would have been grunting and huffing if he could.  The big oaf of an otter rarely woke up easily. 

“Please,” She rasped.  Her voice was strained and raw.  She felt him rustle a bit.  Then he stiffened, as if all of the events of the past night had cascaded back into his head.  He slowly pulled himself from her, trying not to disturb her painful burns.  However, Reya could feel each strand of fur pulling away from her inflamed skin.  Torren moved in front of her – he knew that Reya sure as hell wasn’t going to turn around.

‘You- you’re ok…’ His paws trembled as he signed to her.  The expression on his face made Reya wonder if he had even believed that she would survive the night.

“Acorns,” she mumbled in response.  

He stared at her for a second like she had lost her mind.  ‘Acorns?’

“Yeah!  For the love of Bleyen the lion, get me some dumb acorns!”  She fell into a fit of coughing.  What was he doing?  He was just looking at her like she was some kind of lunatic.  “They go on my skin stupid!  I need to dress the burns!”  She paused a second.  “Sarsaparilla too!  Get me Sarsaparilla!  And those cattails over there, cut me a bunch of the heads.”

She could practically see the wheels turning in his head.  After a moment he scurried off and the little otter was left to her own thoughts.  Unfortunately there weren’t many thoughts to go to.  The pain made her irritable, and she didn’t want to be irritable, so she tried her best not to think.

She lay there, partially immersed in the river, trying to shut everything out of her mind.  But she could hear too well.  The sound of the river rushed through her ears.  She heard every splash against the shore, every twist and every turn of the current.  They beat like drums inside of her head.  The trees whispered to her.  The wind rustled the grass.  A bird screeched from high above.  Reya couldn’t take it anymore.

She stood up on her front paws.  It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes, but moving seemed just as painful as being still and she relished an opportunity for a distraction.  Reya had a plenty to do.  She needed to make a salve for her burns and collect herbs for the pain.

She dragged herself fully onto the grass, slowly lifting her back haunches out of the river, and limped up to a pine tree.  Scat!  She needed to find a rock.  She limped along the forest floor, silently muttering curse words that she would be aghast to hear her friends say as she scanned the ground.  The searing pain made her less picky and she settled for a small rock with an edge that was less than sharp.  She pulled herself back along the edge of the forest towards the pine tree she had first set out for.  She groaned more at her stupidity at having to redo the painful trek than at the actual burns.  And damn did they hurt.  Her paws were very badly injured.  After running over a forest floor covered with fresh embers she was lucky to still have all of her toes.  

With a sharp crack she struck the rock against the tree, cutting through the outer layer of bark.  She hit it two more times, panting in exhaustion between each strike, before dropping the rock to the ground.  

Then she set to weaving.  She pulled out small strands of grass and tied them together.  She pushed them in and out of each other, expertly overlaying the strands and tying them off.  Her paws hurt like nothing she had known before, but the stubborn small clawed otter refused to let it stop her. 

Torren rushed back over to her, his face plastered with panic.  He gingerly set the sarsaparilla, cattails, and acorns carefully clenched in his muzzle down on the flattest and cleanest stone that he could find.  ‘What now?’ He signed.

“Now you boil the acorns and then mash them into a poultice with the sarsaparilla,” Reya stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘How am I supposed to boil it out here?  There’s nothing for a fire!’  He gestured emphatically.

“There’s flint and tinder back underground in the den… Also a pot!  Its cast iron – should be perfectly fine – bring it over.  Oh!  Rags too!  Hopefully they were stored far enough back that the fire didn’t get to them.  Maybe Aloe Vera, no, it’d be dried out and useless –” she was cut off by a sharp wheeze.  Torren waited to see if she would finish, but quickly rushed off again when he realized that she was done talking.

In the meantime, Reya set back to work.  She normally disliked weaving; she thought that it was boring and pointless.  However, now she just wanted to keep herself busy.  Even though every movement hurt, she didn’t want to give in to her injuries.  Her paws felt like they were still on fire when she tried to squeeze her fingers around the threads.  She focused on her shaky movements as much as possible.  She didn’t want to think about the pain.  

The otter’s paws trembled as she guided the strands of grass into a loosely bound fabric.   She ended up with what she normally would have considered a sorry excuse for a bowl-like container, but at this point she didn’t care.  Reya limped her way back to the tree, bowl at the ready.

She swore; the stone was still on the ground.  She limped back as angrily as a little otter can limp and then carted the sharp stone back over to the tree.  She started slowly cracking away the bark again.  This time, she began to cut away at gooey patches of resin dried to the wood.  She slowly collected it in her grass container until she had enough.  

However, her interpretation ‘enough’ shrunk  with the each swing.  She eventually reached a compromise where her body decided to stop working and she decided that she could make do with the small amount that she had collected.

After collapsing and laying on the ground for what felt like an eternity, Reya pulled herself back to her feet and painfully walked back to the shore with her small container of sap.  She popped a wad in her mouth, squeezing her face in disgust at the taste.  It tasted like a vile mixture of dirt and rotten eggs.  She didn’t stop though, pine sap helped with pain and that was one thing that the briquette of an otter could use less of.  

Torren stumbled back on two legs, carrying the heavy looking pot in his forepaws.  It was filled to the brim with different herbs collected from the camp as well as flint and tinder that she had asked for.  His mouth was full with even more plants from Gither’s supplies.

‘I got the stuff,’ he struggled to sign without dropping the pot.

“I can see that,” Reya giggled.

The pot hit the ground with a thunk, despite the spotted otter’s best efforts to set it down carefully.  He laid the contents out on the ground, keeping the acorns, sarsaparilla and flint and steel as Reya had requested.

“Set up a fire over there,” she gestured a little bit away from her, “put the acorns in and fill the water just up to the top of them.  Don’t add the sarsaparilla.  Oh!  And thanks for getting all that stuff; a lot of these herbs are pretty rare around here.”

He nodded in acknowledgement and began to work on the fire while she rummaged through the herbs that he had collected.  She immediately noticed the mint nettle.  She made a note of it – the smoke had done a number to her lungs and nettle tea would help.  She couldn’t easily tell, but she suspected that Torren was also having trouble breathing.  There was also yarrow for bleeding and sores, rat root for headaches and exhaustion, and, much to her excitement, Alder bark.  She immediately tore a small piece of it off to chew on.  Reya had completely forgotten that Gither kept it around.  It soothed burns and sores, making it excellent to use to flesh out the poultice.  She poured the sap from her makeshift container onto a flat rock and then spat the chewed bark inside.

“Torren, when you get that fire going – try not to burn down this half of the forest too, by the way – get over here, I need your help chewing this stuff,” she spoke as loudly as she could.  Her lungs were still throwing a fit.  She wanted to start brewing the nettle tea as soon as the acorns were boiled.  

Torren brought over the mushy acorns, soaking in a light brownish juice inside the pot.  

‘What now?’

“Let it cool for a second, you don’t want your paws looking like these,” Reya playfully wagged a paw at him; it was naked of any fur and burned with nasty looking welts.  Torren turned his eyes away causing Reya to laugh.

“You know, I can probably do it,” she spoke through a mouthful of alder bark.

Reya spat out the bark into the grass bowl.  Her jaw was getting sore, but she had already collected a lot of the malleable material in her container.  “Scoop all of that stuff in there,” she gestured to the bowl, “and then grind up the sarsaparilla and add that in too.”  She cautiously tested the mixture with her paw.  It had already cooled down enough that the heat wasn’t a problem.  She began to mash the poultice together with her paws, it already felt soothing on her skin.  Torren slowly added in the other two ingredients as the mixture transformed into a soft paste.

“Looks good!”  She exclaimed, “feels pretty good too… Can you help getting it on?  I don’t think I can do any stretching right now.”

The male nodded and scooped out a pawful of the poultice, his face quenching slightly.  

“What?  Can’t take a bit of otter spit on your paws?” Reya teased.

Torren tried to respond, but Reya couldn’t understand him through the mush coating his paws.

“Don’t let it all drip off, I need it!  Gods above it hurts!”  Reya urged, tears welling up in her eyes.  She startled herself.  This was the first time she had even hinted to Torren how much pain she was in.  She had never expected herself to deal with it so well – she used to have fits over getting a thorn stuck in her paw.  And now she was only hours after a close encounter with death and she barely even mentioned her pain.  It did hurt.  It hurt like nothing she’d ever felt before.  It was like every single nerve on her body was fighting against her.  Her skin was in mutiny and trying to tear itself away off of her body.  

Torren looked stressed.  He was constantly looking back at her with worry.  His paws shook as he applied the mixture to her skin where the fur had burned off.  Yet aside from some involuntary squeaks as he poked and prodded at her injuries, she tried her best to remain composed for him.

After dressing her wounds, Torren made a brew of nettle tea at Reya’s suggestion.  They slept in the same spot that night.  She wasn’t too worried about sleeping in the open.  She didn’t know any dangers on her side of the river, despite the freak lynx attack from the previous autumn.  No signs of the beast had been seen since then, and even if it had by some unfortunate coincidence come down recently, Reya assumed that the forest fire would drive it off.  

The next day, she woke to some delicate nudges from the spotted otter’s cold wet nose. 

“What gives?” She groaned

‘It’s almost midday,’ he nodded at the sun, high in the sky.

“I need to get better, you’ve gotta let me rest.” Torren nodded begrudgingly.

That night, she woke Torren up with a sharp jab to his abdomen.

“You need to redo my dressings.”

He groaned and went to collect more acorns.  Much to Reya’s delight, he returned a fat healthy looking salmon alongside the ingredients for her poultice.  She gulped down the fish eagerly.  She hadn’t eaten since before the fire.

The next morning, Reya was up and moving.  The constant searing pain had died down to a dull throb, but contact with her burns hurt even more than it had before.  However, she was sick and tired of the riverbed they were on and had made up her mind to leave.

“C’mon we’re moving.”

‘Is that a good idea?  Don’t you need to rest?’ Torren cautiously suggested.

“Who’s the healer here?  I’m perfectly fine,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “Let’s go.”  Torren didn’t quite believe her, but he didn’t quite think he’d be able to stop her.

‘Where are we going?’

“Haarshollow.  It’s about two hours south of my den.”

‘what?’  Torren signed emphatically, ‘You said that place was days away!  why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

“Well,” Reya sighed, “after Gither left I guess I just didn’t want to be alone.  I thought that you’d leave me here if I said it was so close.”

Torren darted to Reya’s side as she stumbled over her own paws, yelping in pain.

 

5: Out of the Fire

“Bleyen’s mane, Reya!  What happened?” Reya immediately recognized the bleating voice of Blyth, one of the farm workers for the rolling hills east of Haarshollow.  The little otter didn’t quite register his voice though.  Everything in her body hurt like nothing she had known before.  Her mind was set on making it to town and any other thoughts got pushed to the side.  She stared at the ground in front of her and kept walking on trembling paws.

“Say something, otter!  You were in the fire?  Snake on a skewer, you shouldn’t be walking on those paws!”  His hooves drifted into her field of view.  Reya nodded, but kept moving forward.

“Gotta thank you, big otter guy.  Must be a cousin or something, right?”  Torren shook his head no.  “So you aren’t speaking either?  Well shit, must be an otter thing.”  He maneuvered in front of the wounded otter and gently held his hoof against her forehead.  Reya stopped walking.  The shaking of her legs was even more pronounced when she was still.  The goat turned to his side and kneeled in front of her.  “It looks like you could use a ride.  These hooves ain’t good for much, but they can sure carry a mammal in need.”

Reya wanted to protest.  She always felt weird about animals riding other animals.  She figured that it was a product of her growing up in the countryside.  Everyone tended to act more feral away from civilization.  It was never to the point where civilized predators would eat civilized prey, but she did know a beaver who turned his nose up at the idea of living in an underground den or a constructed cabin.  Instead, he opted to build his own den in the lake like a feral beaver would.

His back looked very tempting.  Reya didn’t bother to protest as Torren gently nudged her onto Blyth.  The goat carefully stood up on all fours.

“You ready?  I’ll try to go steady, but that cute donkey girl I like is such a tease.”  

Reya groaned.  She could never tell whether Blyth thought his jokes were actually funny or if he told terrible jokes on purpose.

“I was groaning at your joke, by the way, not the burns,” Reya muttered with a smile.  She winced as the goat began to walk forward.  True to his word, he moved slowly and steadily.  Yet, the pressure against the burns was enough drove her to bite her tongue in an effort not to cry out in pain.

“You were in that big fire back there?” he bleated.

“Yeah,” she muttered.

“Figures, you’re pretty hot for an otter!  You know, because fire makes you hot?”  Blyth laughed at his own joke.  Reya rolled her eyes.  “You know what I’m talkin’ about, Gither!”

“What are you talking about?  That’s not Gither, you doofus!” the little otter huffed, “He has spots!  I don’t have spots and Gither doesn’t have spots.  He’s like half again as big as Gither too!  And why would you even say something like that?  It’s gross!  Gither’s my brother, of course he doesn’t think that about me.”

“That sounds like the Reya I know!”

“Oh shush, you big dumb goat.”

“So who’s your new friend there?  And what’s up with Gither?  He isn’t with you and he hasn’t been in Haarshollow lately.

“His name is Torren, and he’s been helping me get better.”  Reya wasn’t ready to let Blyth know that the spotted otter was the reason Gither wasn’t around anymore.  “He’s a great guy, and he’s the reason I made it out of the forest.”

“And Gither?”

Reya painfully shifted on the goat’s back.  She sighed.  “He’s on an errand.”

“Otter, I can smell goatshit before it comes out of my ass!”

“Gross!”

“You know you can talk to me, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

Reya rested her head back down against the goat’s coarse fur with a groan.  She didn’t want to talk about Gither.  It had been months since he left, but she still hurt when she thought about how her brother had just up and left her.

“He left,” she murmured.

“What’cha mean?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Blyth snorted.  “I’ve never seen you not want to talk about something, girl.”

“Well, maybe it’s because I’m in horrible pain, you nunce.”  She was half joking, but her own words got away from her.  She raised her voice in a sudden surge of anger.  “I just got out of a forest fire with terrible burns and I don’t need to be interrogated about my brother abandoning me!”  The wounded otter paused with a huff.  “And don’t you dare make one of your stupid jokes about it!”

“I don’t know, I thought I was on fire with my jokes,” The goat said, looking over his shoulder with a stupid grin.  Reya was flabbergasted.  He didn’t even seem phased by her angry outburst.  A quick glance told her that Torren at least had the decency to try to hide his fits of silent laughter.  Reya groaned.  Blyth continued, “So what’s up with your friend there?  Hasn’t made a peep since I found you.”

“He’s a mute.”

“Funny, I could’ve sworn he was an otter!”  This finally elicited a chuckle from Reya.

“Mute, not mule!  Torren can’t talk.”

“So how’dya know his name?”

“Well, I guess he can kind of talk.  He uses his paws and expressions to say things, you know?  Kind of like script, where each thing you want to say is a drawing, only instead of a drawing it's a movement.”

“Well I have got to see this!  Go say something, boy!”

Torren looked down, his ears twitching in embarrassment.  His tail stiffened behind him.  He pleadingly looked up to Reya.  She teased him with a vindictive smile.  He’d laughed as she was made a fool of.  Now it was her turn.  “Go on!”  she laughed, “what are you waiting for?”

The spotted necked otter gave in.  ‘I feel like I’m being made a fool of!” he signed with alternating paws as he followed alongside the goat.  Reya laughed and translated for Blyth.

The goat did a good job distracting Reya from her injuries.  She realized what he was trying to do before long, but went along with it anyway.  Distractions were good, especially before she could get proper supplies to treat herself.

She hadn’t been in Haarshollow, the small outlet of civilization near her home, for over four moons.  However, it hadn’t changed much at all.  It never did.  The same squat wooden cabins housed the same amiable creatures.  

It was a small town.  Only around two hundred animals actually lived in the village proper.  More were spread out in the countryside like Reya and her brother.  

The wounded otter was glad not to see many other people as she was carted towards the healer’s lodge.  She felt embarrassed of her injuries.  She had treated many of the town’s animals and didn’t want them to see her in such a pitiful state.  Those she did come across offered a few words of condolences and then rushed off.  Somehow they made her feel more miserable.  

Torren stayed close to their side.  Reya certainly didn’t want him to end up alone, a stranger in a town where everyone knew everyone, with no way to communicate.

Talip the mole was highly regarded in Haarshollow.  He was a point of pride, and a slight claim to fame.  Gither was an excellent healer and had helped a lot of creatures that lived out in the forest, but he’d gone out on his own after apprenticing under Talip.  Suffice it to say, Talip was an herbal encyclopedia.  He could rattle off the names of herbs, remedies, and poultices for almost any situation that one could think of.  Reya had spent over a year of her life trying to sponge up his knowledge when she began to start seriously treating animals on her own.

However, Talip was no saint.  Gither left his apprenticeship because, in his own words, the mole was a grungy asshole who cared more about a thorn than a paw.  Reya’s own interactions with Talip just solidified that sentiment.

“Oh!  Blyth!”  The otter heard Talip before she saw him.  He scuttled out of the cabin – probably the largest in the village – and began to sniff the air around him.  The rodent looked comically small next to the huge cabin door, large enough to fit an oxen,

“Who is this who you have brought with you?  A spotted necked otter!  I did not know that there were any families of spotted neck otter that lived here.  What is he...”  The mole trailed off in his thick accent.  He stuck his snout back in the air, sniffing intensely.  “Oh!  Oh no!  Reya, you must be in pain!  Bluth, get the poor lady in here right now!  Those burns smell very bad and she needs immediate attention.”  The mole turned to Torren, his worried expression dropping from his face as if he had completely forgotten Reya’s injury.  “You may enter too, Spotty.”

Torren followed the goat into the cabin looking slightly perturbed.  He stood by as Reya was gently set down on a soft feathery bed.  These were rare for the area.  The local branch of the avian association sold their moulted feathers at what most people considered to be a completely exorbitant price.  The village had, however, managed to pool funding for the lodge’s accommodations.

‘I don’t like him,’ Torren signed, glancing at the mole.

‘Just because he made fun of your spots that doesn’t mean he’s not a nice guy!’

‘Its not that!  I just –’

“Shh – its ok,” Reya chided out loud, “just go catch some fish or something, Mr. Spotty.”

“Yes!  Fish would be a very good idea.  Our Reya needs good food to heal well!” Talip interjected.

Torren nodded and left rather grumpily, leaving the smaller otter chuckling behind him alongside a guffawing bear and a confused mole.  

“What’s the matter with him?”  The mole asked as he expertly scampered up a ladder to a carved oak cupboard on the wall opposite to the beds.  The drawer slid open and he tossed a roll of gauze  onto the floor.

“He didn’t like your little name for him,” Reya giggled.  

“No!  I mean the hand waving.  Why does he only wave his hands?”

“Oh, he’s mute.  He uses hand motions to represent words.  Kind of like how we use drawings for words on paper.”  She almost pushed herself out of the bed when she saw the gauze.  “Oh!  There’s no need for that!  That stuff’s expensive!”

“And how many animals have you fixed up at no charge?” The goat asked.  “Talip spent a good deal of money getting this stuff and might as well use it.  Besides, you need it more than anyone.”  Reya didn’t put up much more of a fight about the treatment.  She was in more pain than she wanted to admit.

“This going to sting.”  The otter girl clenched her teeth as she felt a few drops of sharp stinging liquid on the tip of her tender tail.  Her eyes watered and she couldn’t hold back a squeak, but she held herself as still and as composed as she could manage.  Blyth’s head rested on the sheets next to her, his nose pressing lightly against her fur.  The goat’s gesture was kind, but it didn’t make Reya feel any better.

“Salt water?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Yes, it cleans the wound,” the mole replied, “Gither has been teaching you?”

“Yeah – ow!”  The stinging water had started dripping down her left hind paw, reaching more painful damaged skin.

“The paw burns are very dirty,” he leaned in close to her paw, trying to get a good look around it, “The blisters are not in a good shape.  Why you didn’t make the otter, the male, why didn’t you make Spotty carry you?  With Gither as a teacher you should have the sense to rest after getting such bad burns.”

Reya turned red under her fur.  She didn’t like being corrected on her mannerisms.  However, she didn’t argue back.  Talip was a very experienced healer and he knew what he was doing.  Besides, people in the area didn’t say ‘stubborn as a mole’ for no reason.

Once, a local badger named Mela had gotten her foot badly torn up when she had carelessly dropped – top down – a basket of kitchen knives she was carting over to the town hall for a unification day feast.  Talip demanded that the foot be amputated.  The badger adamantly refused, instead, punctuated by very foul language, she demanded bandages and dressings in the hope that her paw could be saved.  Talip led her out the door with her foot still bleeding all over the ground and refused to let her back in until she agreed to let him amputate it.  

Many people in the village detested him for that incident.  However, it over ten years before and the sentiment had died down before long.  Besides, when Mela finally relented, Talip cared for her injuries sunup to sundown, as if the life-threatening argument had never happened. Needless to say, the mole was not someone Reya wanted to get in an argument with.

Dealing with pain is always easier when focusing on a conversation instead of an injury and Reya, having taken care of many patients before, knew this and would not give up on talking to the two animals next to her.  Of course, Reya rarely gave up a chance at a conversation when she was perfectly well either.

“You know how it is Talip – ouch! – you can train however much you want, but it all goes down the piss-pit when you have to take care of yourself.”

“Actually I – ”

“Yeah, Talip I know!”  She puffed up her chest and mimicked the mole’s heavy accent, “I only have hurt myself once and it was when I fought a deadly snake!  After I finished strangling it with my bare paws, I then used snake body as a tourniquet and sucked venom from my own bite.”

“That never happened,”  Talip protested in a huff.  Blyth guffawed.  “It not very funny.” The mole continued to protest

“She learned from the best!” the goat teased.

“Seriously Talip, you take jokes worse than Githy and that’s saying something!”

“Haha!  Yes, that is exactly how Gither is!  Are you otters not supposed to be fun loving?”

“Guess my mom saved it all for me.”  Reya flinched, “Ouch! that stings pretty bad!”

“You otter believe it!  That guy is about as talkative as a rock,” Blyth chimed in, still recovering from his laughter.

“Yes, I agree.”  Talip nodded.

“Oh, shut it, you two.  I just had to counteract Gither’s silence, you know!  It’s not easy talking for two people all the time.”

“How is your brother doing?  I haven’t seen you guys in forever.  I believe that the shrews, the tailors, they were going to send some people out to check on you, but the rabbit Sylvia said not to go.  So –” Talip stopped suddenly.  Reya’s face had fallen.  The small otter let out a small yelp as the mole started scrubbing at the dirt and gravel in one of her paws.

“Oh my Reya…” He muttered.

The otter lay there, silent and downcast.

“Did he?  Oh my.  You otter, you have been through so much.  Did he pass away in the fire?”  Talip spoke tenderly, but there was an odd air of morbid curiosity behind his words.

“No!  Not that.  At least, I don’t think so.”  She turned her head away.  “We had a fight and he left.”

“You?”  Talip asked, stunned, “You had a fight?  I don’t think you have ever made an animal angry in your life!  How did you get your own brother angry?  He is the calmest otter and you are the friendliest otter.  I do not understand it!”

Reya broke her solemn expression with a chuckle.  “We actually fought more than you’d imagine.  He could be really stubborn sometimes.”  She trailed off.  Her eyes felt as wet as her salt-water dabbed paws.  “I’m sorry, I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Don’t worry,” Blyth said, “You’ll be fine!  I ain’t seen anyone not come out of this here lodge healthy as a whistle in years.”

“You praise me too much,” the mole spoke sternly.

“Nope.  For once in your arrogant little life, you aren’t giving yourself enough praise.”

“You call me arrogant you giant sack of fleas?”

“I’ve been free of fleas for two months now!  I don’t see you taking a bath yourself!”

The mole raised his paws in response.  “I keep these clean and that is all I need in this job.”

“All you need in this job?  I guess that’s true.  A healer doesn’t need opium to put people to sleep when his smell knocks’em right out first!”

Reya was cracking up at this point.  “Cool it you two!  Lets be civilized here!  We’re not ferals here, you know!  The smell of either of you would make a skunk run away wheezing!”

“Ow!  Forget about the burns on your skin, otter.  That caused real pain!”  Talip put his paws over his chest like he had just been struck with a grievous wound.

Claws rapped at the door.  

“Come in,” Talip called.

The door pushed open and Torren followed, a sack smelling strongly of raw fish gripped in his jaw.

“Torren!  Where’d you get that?”  Reya asked, shocked.

‘There’s another river only a few minutes walk to the –’ Reya cut him off.

“No!  I mean the bag!  Where’d you get the bag?”

‘I..’ Torrens paws fumbled a moment as he recounted, ‘I was carrying back two of these in my mouth and struggling with the other three in my paws so I had to come back on my hind legs.  A raccoon stopped me after a few minutes trying to make it back and, and after she stopped laughing at me, ran to fetch this for me.’

“Is anyone planning on tell me what he saying?  He looks like rabid ferret trying to wave down a horse on the road.”

Torren ears twitched bashfully, much to Reya’s amusement. “Well, he apparently looked even more ridiculous when he was trying to carry the fish back in paws.  Mayel took pity on the poor guy and got the sack for him.”

‘I do not look ridiculous!’ he signed.

‘The angrier you get, the sillier it looks,’ Reya signed, giggling.

Torren reached into the bag and pulled out a fish with his paws, tossing it up to the smaller otter.

“Thanks, I appreciate it.  Listen Talip,” she turned to the mole, “I know there’s dangers of eating stuff raw, but I don’t think I’ve had anything more than tea in almost two days.  You gotta let me eat this.”

The mole just grunted and shrugged.

“I need to clean your paws, though.  They need to be wrapped and kept clean until the open blisters are healed.  So don’t touch the fish with your paws.”

Reya nodded.

‘You thought I looked silly?  This’ll be a sight.’  The spotted otter grinned at her.

Reya stuck out her tongue at him before chomping into the fish.  She only realized how hungry she was when she began to eat.  Torren had hunted food for her that morning, but the arduous and painful walk into town had built up her appetite.  It was an excellent distraction from the painful burn treatments.

Applying the honey to her paws took much less time than cleaning her burns had.  She could tell that Talip had been incredibly careful to extract each piece of dirt and grime from her wounds while trying to brush against the painful tail and paw pads as little as possible.  However, the honey was liberally slathered on before her limbs were wrapped up in gauze and wound up with twine.

“Now we will take care of your torso, okay?”  The mole said in his thick accent, “This will hurt again, but the burns on your torso are not as bad as the burns on your limbs.”

“Thanks Talip, I’ll be fine,” Reya assured through her last mouthful of fish.  A small pile of bones had built up to the side of the bed where she spat them out.  “Mind helping with those Torren?”

The male scowled and scooped the bones up into the burlap sack without a word.

He turned to leave when a harsh scream pierced the silence.  Reya twisted to try to get off the bed, but Blyth held her still.  “Don’t move,” he ordered, uncharacteristically stern for the mule.  She relaxed.  The pain of her sudden movement done just as much to make her reconsider.

A panting beagle nearly crashed through the door only moments later.

“Its Sylvia!  Her arm!  Good Bleyen, it’s awful!”  He wobbled as he spoke, nearly falling over.  Torren was staring at him like a deer in headlights.  The cries were getting closer.

“Torren!  Catch him!"  Torren stepped up to the little dog’s shoulder just in time.  The beagle fell against Torren, stumbling to catch his footing.

Torren led him to one of the sof beds while more animals burst into the room.  Reya immediately recognized Mayel the badger, wide-eyed and holding Sylvia.  Sylvia’s left front wrist was covered with a frilly blood-soaked tablecloth.  Another rabbit, shaking and pale with fright, followed holding Sylvia’s paw.

 

6: And into the Frying Pan

*Author's Note*

Chapters 1-5 have undergone dramatic revision.  Because of this, there may be inconsistencies and a different style in the following few chapters.  A bear named Artaaga might be talked about - she is now a goat named Blyth.  I'll clean these differences up as I go through and revise more chapters.

Reya couldn’t speak.  It was like something out of a nightmare.  She had seen grievous injuries before – Gither brought her to more of his healing work than she ever really wanted to attend – however, nothing ever prepared her for the first image of an animal in horrible pain.  She could see the small tear droplets at the corners of Sylvia’s eyes despite the rabbit’s attempts to blink them away.  Reya felt a horrible pity.  A harrowing pity.  She couldn’t help but to look away.

“Take rabbit to basement now with hand.  Hurry!  NOW!”  The mole was shouting commands.  He rarely got frantic, but Reya could clearly hear the distress in his voice.  “Arty you go outside.  You’re getting in way.  Spotty finish dressing Reya, she can tell you what to do.  I said move, you slow raccoon!  Hurry!”

She heard scampering as the mole fervently orchestrated the movement of everyone in the lodge.  Artaaga was pushed outside by the host of townsfolk.  Torren scampered over and tripped over himself trying to gather the dressings and wrappings that Talip had been applying to her.  The small otter, however, kept her face pressed into the soft pillow, trying not to look at the rabbit’s wound.  Her face did hurt for her actions – running headfirst into a burning bush hadn’t done any good for her complexion – but it was the best way for her to drown out everything around her.  And that’s what she wanted most.

Sylvia was a friend of hers.  To be honest, most of the animals in the village were friends of hers – the village was, in fact, quite small.  But Sylvia was a closer friend than most.

Well, she wasn’t the closest friend to the rabbit either.  Gither had been smothering and overly protective of Reya when she was a child.  She went out and played with other young animals, but Gither had limited her interactions with the other children, especially when she started to pick up on his medical skills.  Reya had played with Sylvia when she was young, but she hadn’t interacted with the rabbit in a meaningful way in a long time.

The commotion died down almost as quickly as it built up.  Reya could hear everyone rush down the creaking wooden steps into the basement.  Things got kind of quiet for a minute before, as Reya expected, the small group of animals were jostled out of the basement.  Talip didn’t tolerate visitors when he had to perform surgery.

She heard the door creak open, and some shuffling as the worried villagers left.  As much as everyone was worried about Sylvia, no one really wanted to upset Talip.  They’d probably check back in every hour or so until they were allowed to see the patient.

Reya felt a thump on the bed as something jumped up next to her.  A paw settled on her shoulder.  It was only then that she realized that she’d been shaking.  The paw rubbed small circles between her shoulder blades, slow and soothing.  She peeked out of the pillow at the otter lying next to her. 

“I’m fine, Torren,” she lied.  She could tell that Torren wasn’t fooled.  The wetness around her eyes gave her away as clearly as the quivering in her voice.

He just nodded, but didn’t pull his paw back.  She was still shaking.

‘We’re going to have to clean and bandage your face soon.  Let me know when you’re ready.’  He signed slowly.  Making the symbols understandable with just one paw to work with was a lot more difficult.  Torren was good at the language though.  Although his signing was slow, it came through crystal clear to Reya.

“Ok…” She muttered.  She didn’t know why this was all happening now.  Her breath was coming short.  Hell, she didn’t know why she was crying.  Reya turned back to the pillow.  She didn’t want Torren to see.  She also didn’t want to see him.  He couldn’t talk to her that way.

It took her a few minutes to calm down.  She lay there quivering and silently sobbing as his paw slowly traced circles on her back.    However, she slowly stopped.  Her shaking gave way to the rhythm of her chest rising and falling under breaths that were still more ragged than the small otter wished.  Reya then turned to Torren.

“I… are you ready to finish with the burns?”

‘You sure you haven’t used enough salt water already?’

“You’d have lost an ear for that if my paw weren’t bandaged.”  Reya gently batted at the larger otter’s head.

‘Alright now,’ Torren said with a smile, ‘lets take care of this.’

Torren first tried to emulate what he saw Talip do.  He took the jar of saline solution and poured some into a smaller cup.  He then tilted the cup above the left side of Reya’s head and tried to let loose a small trickle.  Suddenly Reya’s whole face felt like it was on fire again.

“Ow!  Ow!  Owwww!” she cried out, the bitter taste of the solution dripping into her mouth.  “Cow dung!  Tick infested chipmunk that hurt!  Ow!”  She grit her teeth together.  “Be more careful with those giant oaf paws of yours – you’re almost as dexterous as that fish I had for lunch!”  She spat the words out along with a sizeable amount of the solution that ended up in her mouth.  Luckily the otter’s eyes were spared the cleansing burn of the salt water.  Her eyes were as suited to water as Talip’s claws were to digging.

Torren just stared helplessly, eyes wide.

“Don’t just lay there!  Get that stuff into my skin and the corners of my fur!  I do NOT want to have to do this again.”

“Uhh… do you need some help?”

Both Reya and Torren turned and stared at the small beagle sitting in the corner.  His ears sat flat against his head and his tail wagged nervously between his legs.  Reya shot Torren a look that neither of them needed to articulate through speech or sign language.  Why the heck is he still here and how in the world did neither of us notice him? 

Reya and Torren both felt heat rising to their cheeks as they realized that the beagle had been watching them this entire time. 

“Wh… Who are you again?”  Reya asked cautiously.

“Uh, I’m Aris.”

“So, um… Aris, I’ve lived here a long time… how don’t I know you?”

“I’m new.”

“Ah.”

“So, I’m pretty good with claws…” He paused a moment at the incredulous expression on Reya’s face, “I – I mean I’ve trained, you know?  So my paws are pretty steady, I think.”

“I see.”

“So d-do you want some help?”

Reya nodded.  Torren looked a bit annoyed, but he wasn’t the one with the burns to treat.

‘Just stuff it and show him what needs to be done, ok?’ Reya signed.

‘As you command my queen.’  He pulled himself into a deep bow.

‘Oh shut up, will you?’

The beagle was standing next to the bed looking confused.

“It’s sign language.  Spotty here can’t speak.”

“Ah, I see.  Should I – er”

“Yeah, go ahead.  Hop right up.”  The beagle complied and Reya felt a thump as he landed near the base of the bed.  Torren turned to leave, but Reya stopped him.

‘Oh stop it!  We haven’t had beds like this in months.  Lie down and get some rest.’

‘You sure?  Won’t it be kind of hard for Aris to treat you?’ Torren asked.

“Whatever.  Hey, beagle, get over here.  My feet are already taken care of.  So, you have an idea what you need to do?”

“To be honest, not really.”

“Well, I’m missing a few bits of fur due to burns.  They need to be cleaned with that salt water and then wrapped up with gauze.  My feet and tail are already taken care of.  I just need you to do my head and the small bits around my back.”

“O-Ok I think I can handle it.”

“Alright, Torren, please give him the stuff he needs.  And do my face first, Aris.  Torren already dumped a bucket of that solution on, so I shouldn’t need much more.  You just need to make sure that you get it between my fur.  It’s harder than it sounds, we otters have pretty buoyant fur.  It repels water very nicely.

“I think I’ve got it.”

The beagle dipped a paw into the saline solution and slowly brushed it around the edges of the burns.  He had been right; his paws were, in fact, very steady.  Reya winced once or twice, but the salt water had already been seeping into the charred skin where it hurt the most and the bit extra that he was applying barely registered.  It was the touching that hurt and even that wasn’t too bad thanks to the dexterity of the beagle.

“Alright, I think it’s ready for some gauze,” Aris muttered.  His paws were still brushing fur aside on Reya’s face trying to find unwashed spots.  Torren passed over the roll of gauze. 

“It looks like the worst is on your left forehead here.”  He was smart enough not to actually poke the spot.  Instead he brushed against some fur on the outer edges of the burn to give Reya an idea of where he was pointing.  “You’re lucky, it seems like the edges of that burn barely missed your eye.  There are some smaller spots closer to your muzzle though.”

She winced reflexively.  Having her paws wrapped up made her feel disabled enough.  She was glad not to need her eye covered as well.

He slowly wrapped the long strip of fabric around the otter’s head.  The initial contact wasn’t pleasant, but it was almost nice having something pressing against the spot.  It was like scratching an itch she didn’t know she had.

She counted the passes of the gauze.  One, two, three, four, she watched it spin around her forehead and under her ears.  Only when she got to thirteen did the beagle wrap the fabric down underneath her muzzle and up to cover a smaller patch.  He only made one extra pass though.  Thirteen passes, Reya thought, It must be pretty bad.

Her back wasn’t as bad as anywhere else.  There were a few patches of missing fur, but nothing that came close to matching the ugly patches on her limbs.  Torren, in typical fashion, stayed quiet and contemplative next to her as she felt the gauze wrap around her body again and again.

And again and again.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit overkill?” She grimaced as Aris continued wrapping the bandage around her torso.

“Well, Its not a bad as your face…”  Aris muttered.  Reya shot him a glare and Aris’s face blanched.  “I-I didn’t mean that!  No offense!  What I meant was, there are quite a few little spots that aren’t as hurt and I figure that this will help all of them heal a bit better!”

The small otter just groaned in response.  He was right.  She knew his answer before he had even said it, she just wanted to hear it out loud.  She felt pressure from the bandages on all sides, around all of her limbs and joints.  It was like being trapped in a snake’s grip.

“I guess that’s it.”  The beagle said.

“Thanks.” Reya managed a smile for him.  It had been tough to get through, but Aris had, without a doubt, done a good job.  “That would have been a lot more painful if I had this oaf here doing it.”  Reya grinned at Torren, who faked a scowl.

“I guess I should be going then.”

“No!  Stay!  You really helped me out here.  Besides, Torren and I could use some company.”

‘You know, you could ask my opinion sometimes.’  Torren signed, rolling his eyes.

“You would have just said yes, though!”

Torren poorly pretended to pout.  'I guess.'  Reya smirked.  She knew she was right.

Aris watched with a bewildered look on his face.

“Oh don’t mind him,” Reya explained, “he was just complaining about stuff.”

“Oh.  Well, um - Pardon me for asking, but how did you learn to speak in hand symbols like that?  I know some deaf folks back at the city and they normally just write to people in chalk.”

Torren nodded understandingly as Reya thought for a moment.  Both she and Torren had communicated in written form for a good month or two while her sign language had yet to get up to snuff.  Admittedly she had been very slow at reading – she was just learning that skill as well – but even now after a season’s practice she would have a hard time talking that way.

“I can’t imagine having to do that your whole life," Reya said, dodging his question, "It’s like having a barrier put up between you and everyone else.  I can’t imagine it would be easy to make friends.”  

Aris looked a bit sheepish.  “I guess you're right.  I feel like it would be really get to know anyone like that.  Although… I guess you’re kind of like his barrier, aren’t you?  I mean, not like you stop him or anything!  I don't mean it like that!  I... I just mean that he kind of has to get through you first.”  He nervously gestured to Torren.  “So, um, what’s his name again?”

Reya paused.  She hadn’t really thought about her interaction with Torren that way.

“His name’s Torren.  And I don’t know.  I think talking through me is a bit easier than writing.  You know, I haven’t been able to speak sign language for long.”

‘You learned very very fast,’ Torren interjected.

“Thanks!  Anyway, I still get a bit lost sometimes when he speaks too fast.  His paws just get a bit too quick for me to follow.  I’m getting better though!”

“I think it’s incredible!” the beagle said, “you know, back when I was training for the rangers –”

“Wait!  You’re a ranger?” Reya asked incredulously.

“Um, yeah.  Anyway, we used to use code-words for hangouts that we didn’t want the instructors to find us at.  I can only imagine what we’d have been able to get away with if we could speak like you two.”  The beagle laughed.  It almost sounded nervous, like he was afraid that even the two otters would give him up for his mischievousness.  Given his skittish demeanor, however, Reya wondered if that was just how it always sounded.

‘Rangers?’ Torren asked.

“What are the rangers?” Reya echoed.  “You want to explain, Aris?  I guess the rangers don’t have as much influence as I thought.”

“Well, we don’t usually come out this far.  No offense, but you kinda live on the edge of nowhere.”

“None taken.”

“I guess that you could describe the rangers as a sort of royal police force.  Most communities have their own lawmaking, punishment, and systems of order, but often there are situations that are out of their hands.  I mean, not to discredit them, most times towns do a great job with law enforcement.  But we deal with some fucked up shit.”  Reya was a bit surprised to hear that kind of language coming from the small nervous beagle.  His eyes were a bit cloudy as he spoke.  Reya did not doubt his words.

'So why are you here?'  Reya echoed Torren's words.

“I – I’m sorry, I can’t talk about that!  Its sensitive information!  If someone lets someone else know, they could tell some other person and then before you know it the whole town knows that something’s wrong!  Even the guy I’m looking for!  I – I’ve already said way too much, I don’t think I should be talking about this…” He trailed off, eyes downcast.  Reya just laughed.

“Its fine!  It’s no secret what you guys do; we've had rangers around here occasionally.  It was mostly for Torren’s benefit.”

Aris breathed a sigh of relief like she had somehow absolved him of a crime.  “Yup.  Yeah.  You’re right.”

They sat in silence for a second.  Aris broke it after a few seconds.

“So – uh – you haven’t seen anything unusual around, have you?”

Torren signed almost in line with Reya's speech, “like what?”

“Um, I don’t think I can say…”

“Well, you know, the fire that did this to me was a bit odd,” Reya mentioned sheepishly.

“Oh?”

‘It was probably nothing, Reya, just a family's fire gone wrong or something,’ Torren interjected.

“I should probably be dead,” The small otter’s voice was a bit quieter now, “the fire raged like nothing I’d ever seen before.  Yet it never reached me just a little bit down the river.”

‘Maybe the wood wasn't as dry.  It is the rainy season,’ Torren commented. 

Reya translated for him and then added, “but I don’t know.  I just think it was kind of weird.”

The beagle grimly nodded, quite a funny look on the perpetually nervous dog.  “I’ll take that into consideration, but I don’t think there’s a connection to what I’m here for.”  He looked around nervously, probably wondering if he said too much again.  “I think I should go now.  You know – uh – investigate and things.”

Reya chuckled.  “See ya.”

He raced out of the room like a frightened mouse.  The two watched him go.

‘Torren, what was that?’ Reya signed emphatically to the larger otter.

‘What?’

‘I've seen Artaaga dodge a topic more gracefully than that.’

‘Oh.’

‘Seriously.  Tell me.’

Torren turned his head away as he signed back, ‘I-I caused it.  We… we can’t let him find out…’

Reya stared at him in shock.  “What are you talking about?”  She said out loud.

‘It was an accident.  I’m so sorry Reya… Oh god I’m sorry.’

His paws were muttering apologies faster than Reya could follow.  

“Oh.”  She wanted to console him, but she felt a lump in her throat.  She couldn't say anything.  She placed a paw on his shoulder, though.  A bandaged paw.  She wanted him to know at least that she didn't blame him.  It looked like he blamed himself enough for the both of them.

He stopped his frantic signing after a minute.  Reya wasn't even watching his apology anymore.  She was just staring at the ceiling. 

Time ticked by.  Neither of them spoke.  It seemed like forever before the silence was broken. 

The door to the basement creaked open slowly. A disheveled figure dragged itself up the steps. It was Talip.  His paws were unwashed, still bloody and dripping.  His unseeing eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets.  All across his body, his fur was standing on end.

And he was shaking.  Reya had never seen Talip without a steady paw.

“Sylvia is dead.”

Reya felt like she was going to throw up.  Everything was going wrong.  Everything.

“B-but I thought it was just her paw!”  The mole didn't respond to her.

Reya got out of the bed.  Torren followed, nervous.  He halted in front of Talip though.  He was clearly worried.  The smaller otter just shoved past the mole.  He didn't put up a fight.  She moved down the stairs, her paws slipping slightly as the soft gauze ran against the polished wood. 

The basement was a single open room.  In the back stood several cabinets which stored medical supplies.  To the right was a small desk with a candle slowly burning.  To the left was a collection of carts, stretchers, and similar items.  However, the center of the room held Reya's attention.  On a bed-like table, covered with cloths and blankets, lay the rabbit.

Reya approached cautiously, as if afraid that the rabbit would jump up and startle her, pretending that everything had been a trick.  It didn't.  She pulled herself to her hind paws.  She hated walking like that, but she needed to see Sylvia.

Sylvia.  She was calm.  Quiet.  Her face showed the peace of one who was dreaming.  Talip must have given her an opium tincture.  Her wounded arm had been pressed against the paw.  There were countless salves and ointments covering it, trying to keep it in place.  This wasn't right.  Paws don’t just grow back into an arm if the two parts are pushed together.

Something was seriously wrong.  She had to have died of blood loss, but there wasn't enough blood outside her body for it to make sense.

And her paw.  Reya could tell it was wrong the second she saw it.  It smelled odd, even through the salves and solutions.  The two parts fit together well, but not with precision.  And the color of the fur was slightly off.  She had no doubt.  It wasn't Sylvia’s paw that Talip had been trying to attach.

7: Snap, Crackle, and

She could hear Torren come down the steps.  He raced over to the edge of the table that held Sylvia.  Reya was still leaning over the motionless body.  Staring.  It was morbidly quiet.  For whatever reason, she felt an urge to break the silence.

‘This isn’t Sylvia’s paw,’ she signed the sentence, struggling with her bandaged paws.  She had no idea who might be listening around the corner and she didn’t want to deal with any other hysterical animals for the moment.

‘W-what do you mean?’

‘The size, smell, and fur color are all wrong.’

‘Wouldn’t it –um,’ Torren’s paws fumbled for a moment, ‘shrink and fade or something?  Dead things do look pale, right?’

‘Skin does.  The fur doesn’t lose color nearly as fast.  Definitely not in the first two hours.’

‘How did she die?’  

Reya shot him a look.  ‘What’s with you?’ She jumped down from the table and started to walk towards the stairs.  ‘She’s dead.  That’s it.’

‘Should we find Aris.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Reya?’

Her face tightened in anger.  ‘What!?’

Torren backed up a step.  ‘I just… Are you ok?’

“Does it look like it?” She nearly spat the words at him.  She turned her head away to avoid his reply and ran up the stairs.  Talip wasn’t there anymore.  She went straight out the door without looking back.  A ferret was waiting outside.  

“Hey!”  It called out, “have you heard anything about Sylvia yet?”

Reya bored into it with glare that could have stopped a cheetah in its tracks.  “Where’s the mole?”

“I-I don’t know!”

She shoved her face up against his, a hiss escaping her maw.  “Well what direction did he go, then?”

The ferret waited no time pointing her to the north.

“And why the hell didn’t you stop him?”

“W-What? Its Talip though!  He’s just-“

“Didn’t you see the blood on his claws?”  Reya accused.  She left the confused and terrified ferret as she raced into the forest.  She had to catch Talip.

She had to.

Every single step on the gravely pathway felt like she was stepping on a knife.  She kept going though.  She’d had enough pain in the last few days that it barely registered over her anger.  The smooth grass felt a bit better on her feet, but it was still sporadic pressure on burns that were definitely not trivial.

She ran forward with purpose.  Straight forward.  She had no idea how to track the mole, she didn’t even know where to start looking!  But she decided not to think about such thoughts.  She had to find him.  

Reya ran and ran.  Her paws were numb against the ground as she moved through the forest.  Everything blurred against the small otter’s vision.  She barely dodged the brown of the trees as it swirled and mixed with the greenery everywhere.  She couldn’t even register feeling below her shoulders.  She was just moving forward.  Forward and forward.  On and on.  She went and went ignoring everything around her.  

Ignoring her purpose at even running.  It wasn’t even about the mole that had taken the life of a dear friend anymore.  It was about pulling herself away.  Getting away from everything.  All of the pain.  All of the confusion.  And all of the drama that had started to show up around her.

It felt good.  She couldn’t focus on her thoughts as her mind focused on the heavy beating of her own heart.  As her mind focused on the crunch of leaves underneath her as she moved forward almost mechanically.  The rush of the wind against her face.

However, ignoring the pain didn’t make the wounds heal.  Her paws couldn’t take it.  She tripped at some point, she didn’t remember when.  She flew head over tail into the dirt.  There was few minutes where she heard nothing but her own panting.  She dragged herself up.  Gods above, her paws hurt.  They hurt enough that she could no command them and she could no longer ignore them.  She fell back to the dirt having pulled herself less than an inch off the ground.

Reya was lucky.  As she stared in front of her, she saw that she was close to a tree.  It could have ended in a concussion if her paws had died on her a few moments later.  She lay on the dirt and the long roots that stretched out underneath and around her.  She was exhausted.  Everything was exhausting.

She wearily lifted her head up and looked behind herself.  She didn’t see anything back there.  Torren must not have followed.  It figured, given how she had run off.  She had been furious at the larger otter and incredibly short with him.  Besides, she had just learned about some stuff that she really needed to be alone for.  Having knowing Torren for the past half year, she figured that the other otter would wait for her to return.  If she didn’t, he’d probably try to get her back tomorrow.  It was getting late.  It had been a hell of a day.

  Reya squeezed her eyes shut.  She wasn’t in the soft comfortable bed, but she was tired enough that it didn’t matter to her.  The soft lichen under her fur was enough of a mattress.  The root her head rested on was a feathery and buoyant pillow.  Her head was almost floating as her mind wandered off from the material world.  

“Ughh…” the small otter moaned as she felt something jabbing at her.

“Ey!  You!  You’re the Reya otter, right?  Can never tell you mustelids apart.”

“Yeah… Ow… Can you stop poking me with that stick?”

“That’s no stick, honey.  There’s no stick sharp as a genuine one hundred percent eagle beak.  Hell, ain’t even no beak like a genuine one hundred percent eagle beak!  You should be thankin’ me for the experience.”

“Shut up Weisk.  Hey, I didn’t even realize you were here.  Thought you were in Lenwick town this time of year.”

“I was, but someone had to go and get herself lost.  Needed an aerial ace like me to track you down.”

“Really?  That’s like a flight of five hours!”  Reya was fully awake at this point, looking intently at the eagle in front of her.  He had his knapsack slung tightly and firmly in a sash stretching from his short neck down to underneath his wing; Reya never saw Weisk without the oddly good looking accessory.  He was very prideful about his work and real stickler for duty.  He wouldn’t be caught dead without it even when he was on he own time.

“Well yeah, we was lookin for a lot of the night.  Townsfolk was pretty worried for you.  Afraid you’d get yourself hurt or your paws wouldn’t be holdin’ you.  Said you got burned pretty bad and ya know…” He wrinkled his beak, “it really is pretty nasty.”

“Gee, thanks,” Reya responded, rolling her eyes, “I appreciate the concern.”

“Don’t mention it honey.  Anyway, I better be grabbin’ the rest of search party.  I’d bring ya back myself, but I don’t think my wings’d hold.  And hell, if you got beautiful eagle wings like these, sky’d have to be poison to make me walk instead of fly.”  Weisk spread his wings as impressively as he could manage.  “No offense to you poor wingless types, of course.  Your legs gotta be pretty strong to take you all the way out here.  I mean damn, honey!  We’re at least an hour or two from the village.  Even if your feet wasn’t all disfigured and messed up they gotta be now!”

“Thanks Weisk.  Now if you’re done telling me how much I wish I could fly, I think I’ll be heading back to town.”

“Not like this you’re not!  Did you miss that stuff ‘bout your paws?  Fuckin’ wrecked.  I guarantee.  As someone who don’t got a secondary mode of transportation like us great winged peoples does, you’d be a fool to go walking now!  You’d be stuck gettin’ pulled in a cart for the rest of your life, I’m tellin’ ya.”

“Again, I appreciate the concern, but its really not necessary.  Its not as bad as it looks,” Reya lied.

“Your paws are super bloody Reya!  You ain’t goin nowhere.  Now one sec, I gotta let people know you’re here.”

A shrill caw echoed through the air as Weisk turned his head to the sky.  A second followed, clear and distinct behind the first.  It reverberated through the trees and left Reya stunned for a second.  The sound seemed to take on a whole new quality when it was this close.

“Fuckin’ Majestic, am I right?”

“Ugh… Just calm it down with the swearing, ok?  You know it gets on my nerves.”

“Didn’t realize ya got one of those roots stuck up your ass when ya landed…”

“I’d be happy to return the favor,” Reya insisted.

The eagle took a step back.  “Can’t reach me now, otter girl.”

Reya growled at the cocky eagle.  She started to move a paw out from under her body, but stopped immediately with a near scream of pain.  Heavens above, her paws felt like they were torn apart.  The look on Weisks face told her that he must have been expecting the reaction.

“Girl, your paws look bloody as a groundhog tryin’ to pick on an eagle.  Fuckin’.  True.  Story.”

“Shut up you – oww – you assss,”  Reya was groaning in pain.  The adrenaline was wearing off and the movement had brought her brain’s attention to the nerves that were crying out.

The eagle stepped forward.  He was quite shocked.  He’d never heard the small otter swear before in the entire time he’d been working at the village.  “Hey girl…  Reya… I didn’t mean it that way.  You good?”

“Yeah.  I’m good.  You can tell from the tears,” Reya sarcastically replied.  She was using all of her willpower to try to keep her limbs perfectly still.  It was like fire coursing through her veins.  Oh god she was never going to do this again.  Hell, she felt like she might never even walk again.

She was taking big breaths and trying to keep herself from shaking.  Shaking moved her paws.  And her paws were torture at the moment.

“Just… Just go away.  For a minute.  I don’t want to deal.  With you now,” She was speaking in bursts now, trying to focus on heavy and steady breathing with all of her concentration.

“Uh, sure.  I’ll just, ya know, try to find more guys who was lookin’ for you.”

He spread his wings and pushed off of the ground.  It was everything Reya could do not to scream out into the sky as the wind caused her paws to push against the ground.  She could feel the tears on her face.  She had no real plan for this.  

“Oh shit, otter!  Forgot about that!  Sorry.  I’ll be right out!”

There were no pain diluting herbs nearby.  Even if there were, there was no one to get them for her.  She’d idiotically send the bird off – although she questioned whether the pain might be preferable to him being around – and she’d run away from Torren.

This was the root of her problems, she decided.  She was too rash, too willing to let the spur of the moment take her up and carry her away.  She relied on her emotions too much to make her decisions for her.  She wished she was more like Torren.  He was level headed.  He knew what to do when there was danger or crazy weird drama like that awful mole that had just killed Sylvia.

Reya shuddered, blinking away tears of pain.  It wasn’t that bad at least.  She had more than Sylvia did.  And Sylvia probably deserved life more than most.  More than Reya.  For a moment Reya thought that it would have been better if she had died instead of the poor rabbit, but then she squashed the thought.  She was just lecturing herself on being rash.  She could imagine how Torren would react.  She could practically see his paws waving through the air.

‘If you value your life relative to everyone else, you’ll only ever get depressed.  You’re a good person.  You care about other people and forget about yourself a lot.  You’re humble.”  She almost chuckled to herself.  How humble was she really?  This wasn’t really Torren, it was just her pumping her own ego in her brain.  Torren would never say that stuff anyway; he wasn’t really the philosophic type.  

She heard Torren coming as he raced towards her.  She wished he was there right now.  She didn’t want to wait another minute as he made his way under the branches and through the ferns.  But he did come.  She didn’t have to wait.  And Reya was glad, she felt like she couldn’t take another minute of the rough ground.  It felt like every pebble and sharp stone in the entire forest had been piled up underneath the tree in a nice little convenient bed for her.

“Took you long enough,” she groaned.

The spotted otter moved himself into her field of view so he could talk.

‘You didn’t exactly make it easy…”

“How bad are my paws?  Weisk got here before you.  He said that they look like a hamster he beat up or something like that. “  Reya giggled despite herself.  Torren only winced.

‘Yeah, they’re bad…’

“How bad?”

‘A lot of the gauze on the bottom is torn away,’ he paused, obviously wondering if he should go on.

“Its OK Torren, I can take it.  I’m the one who fixed up your tongue, remember?”

‘Right… One of your paws is a bit bent underneath you in a... not so good way.  I think it might be broken.  It doesn’t look horrible on the bottom, but I can see a bunch of blood.  I – is that good enough?  I’m sorry, I don’t want to go on.’

Reya sighed.  “Its fine.” She gave a very pained laugh, “I don’t think it’s as bad as the bird made it seem.  The broken bone is probably the worst of it.  Its also probably the paw I tried to move a few minutes ago…”

Torren winced.  ‘I’ve had broken bones before.  I’ll try to be as careful as possible.’

Reya’s eyes shot wide.  “No!  No!  You’re not touching my paws.  Get the friggin’ beagle!  He actually knows how to be careful!”  She put a ton of emphasis on the last two words.

Torren just laughed.  ‘Don’t worry!  I won’t touch it!  Aris’ll be here in a minute.  He had to find someone to keep charge of the mole.  We were together when I heard Weisk.  In fact, I think he’ll take over for Aris.’

“Trying to get him to commit suicide, I see.  Fine by me.”

Torren smirked.  ‘I only got to talk to him for ten minutes and I know what you mean.’  Reya was quiet for a moment.

“You caught Talip?”

‘Yeah.’

“Good.”

Torren frowned.  He must not have liked something about it.  Reya could tell that he was considering saying something.  And, as he always did, he relented and fessed up.

‘He didn’t mean to hurt her, you know…’

Reya narrowed her eyes.  “He didn’t just hurt her.  He killed her.  He murdered her and left her in that cold lifeless basement.”

‘You should see him.  I think he’s more of a wreck than you are right now.’

“Good.”

‘I mean it.  You know what you said about suicide?  You were right.  That’s why Weisk’s there.  He’s doing it as much for Talip’s sake as for Aris.’

“Well maybe he should have thought about it before he snapped Sylvia’s neck.”

‘He didn’t snap her neck.’

“Whatever.  It doesn’t matter.  You seem to keep missing my point.  The rabbit is dead.  The mole killed her.  I hope he rots in hell.”

Torren frowned, his eyes looked slightly unfocused as he slowly lifted a paw back up to speak.

‘Do you want the same for me?’

Reya stared at him.  She was stunned that he would even suggest something like that.  It was completely ridiculous!

“What are you talking about?  Of course not!  I don’t see what this has to do with anything!  You didn’t kill her, Talip did!”

‘I know…  I caused the fire.’

“You said that before.  I don’t get it.  I don’t freaking get it.  You were always good at fire!  We had a good fire-pit with some nice flint and tinder and you must have lit the thing before that at least twenty times!  At least!”

Torren squeezed his eyes shut.  He had a line of worry showing even through the fur on his forehead.  He breathed fast.  Reya was still breathing as slow as possible.  The conversation wasn’t fixing her paws and she was still fully aware of each and every one of them.  Especially the broken one.

‘The lynx came back.  It was all the way down by the den.’

“What?!  Why would –” Torren just ignored her and kept signing.

‘There were a few more with it.  Listen, Reya, we can’t talk about this anywhere else.  You can’t let people know.’

Torren suddenly grimaced.  A small stick about halfway between the two otters suddenly burst into flame.  It flared almost a foot and a half into the air for a second, dancing magnificently and entrancingly.   It died down almost as soon as it rose, however.  The charred black stick and scorched earth underneath were the only reminders of its existence.

Reya didn’t quite know what to think.  She stared for a moment.  Torren wasn’t meeting her eyes.  He looked incredibly nervous.  He had every right to be.

“What?”

Torren shakily started to move his paws again.

‘They surrounded me.  They were laughing at me.  Mocking me.  They mentioned you too Reya and – and I was just absolutely terrified!  It happened.  I didn’t want it to happen again!  I’m sorry Reya.  I’m so sorry!’  Reya believed him.  She’d never seen the male fake tears before and his cheeks were already running wet with his sorrow.

“I – I don’t get it,” Reya choked out.  She had a huge lump in her throat making it very hard to talk.  “I never – I thought… You’re really… able to do that?”

He nodded.  ‘I don’t mean for it to happen… It just does.  When I’m afraid – More than that, when I’m terrified!  This right here was the first time I’ve ever done it and meant to…  I don’t know, I’m just so sorry for what I did to you.’

“Shut up!” She snapped back, “you were backed into a corner by all those stupid cats!  Blame them!  They did this to me.  They tore up my paws with those evil yellow teeth of theirs.”  Reya winced then, her broken limb continually reminding her of its presence.  “Well, I kinda made it worse, but still!”

Torren looked up a bit.  Reya was sure that he had expected worse.  She pulled in a deep breath and looked him straight in the eyes.  She wanted to help him feel better for once.

“Torren, I’d bite these paws off right now – with my own fucking teeth – if I so much as thought it’d save you.”

 

8: Scurvy

When Aris looked at Reya’s leg – the small otter didn’t want to examine it herself – he said that it was broken near the center of the bone.  Reya was relieved beyond belief.  When a bone completely snapped there were several ways it could happen.  When a joint was involved, a lot of the time small fragments of bone ended up chipped off or broken to the side.  It could still happen to a bone broken in the center, but it was rarer.  Animals who broke bones like that could end up with incomplete or unstable bones for the rest of their life.  At least in this case her leg could heal over time. 

A quick discussion between Reya and Aris had them agreeing to splint Reya’s arm right where she lay.  Aris had decent first aid skills as all rangers did; their profession was not by any means a safe one.  Reya wanted to be out of the forest as soon as possible, but she decided, finally, that she’d rather sit it out and let her two friends help set her limb than to yet again make it even worse. 

The beagle had been wearing his full gear when he finally arrived.  It was slightly odd to see the small dog wrapped up in the forest green garments.  They were without a doubt sized to fit him, but the loose fitting wrappings still seemed rather large. 

Wrapped around the fabric was a sash that was almost indistinguishable from the clothes itself. If Reya hadn’t been in so much pain, she would have been squealing in excitement and pawing all over the numerous bags and pouches that adorned the decoration.  However, her eyes were understandably drawn to the two largest objects in his outfit. 

He had a crossbow nearly half the length of his body strapped to one side.  Despite its size, it didn’t seem to hinder Aris in the slightest as he moved.  On his other side was his real treasure.  Reya had been dying to get her paws on one, but war rarely visited the north.  A leather sheath obscured the weapon.  However, its outline was clearly visible.  The grip was a somewhat tight hole in which the paw was inserted.  Most of the grips had to be custom fitted so that a paw wasn’t likely to slip out in the heat of battle.  Inside Reya knew that there several indentations for a person to curl their digits around – a further guard to keep the device stable.  The handle, a solid and sturdy mesh of leather and steel, was firmly attached to three arm length blades, making it clearly resemble its namesake, a claw.  Each one curved slightly along its length into a breathtakingly sharp tip.  Reya could only see the outline of the weapon through its sturdy sheath.  She was, however, wide-eyed with excitement.

Aris found a fairly flat stick that was slightly wider than Reya’s arm to work with and then shoved his paw into the weapon’s grip.  Reya wouldn’t have been surprised if she were drooling.  This was a dream come true.  She knew that Aris had all of this equipment, every ranger did.  She just never expected to actually see it out and ready for use.

The beagle extracted the blade swiftly.  He wasn’t putting on a show, as much as Reya was wishing he would.  The weapon was just as she had thought.  Its metallic sheen glimmered against the scattered sunlight as he drew it from its casing.  Aris set a single blade against the branch and, with a precise cut, split it in half.  Each piece was now slightly shorter than Reya’s paw, a good length for a splint.  He then set the first half upright and balanced the blade against it.  He measured his strike a few times. 

Reya knew that it had to be as straight as possible.  Too much curvature could make it worthless as a split.  He brought the weapon down quickly, the momentum keeping his arm incredibly steady.  The cut wasn’t perfect, but it would easily do until they had access to supplies again.

Oh god.

She was going back to the lodge.  Sylvia might still be there...  She opened her mouth to speak for a moment before closing it.

‘What’s wrong?  Realize that you aren’t going to get a turn?’  Torren teased.  He’d obviously seen the mesmerized expression on her face, and misidentified the troubled look that came after.

“You just shut up,” Reya retorted, grinning.  “You’ll watch your -” she almost said ‘tongue,’ but then she caught herself, “…self when I get one of those things.”

“Uh, are you? Oh!  Right, the other otter spoke.  I’m sorry!”  Aris looked embarrassed, like he had caught her in the middle of telling someone a secret.

“Its fine!  We were just talking about your claw, you know?  I mean, it’s real… isn’t it?  Of course it’s real!  You wouldn’t be a ranger out wearing a fake claw.  And look at that shimmer… It’s so pretty in the sunlight.  Wave it again!”

Aris shyly waved the claw around in a larger patch of sunlight that shone through the canopy.  Reya could tell that even Torren was pretty impressed.

“Its steel right?  They’re all steel, except for the imperial guard.  They say that the imperial guard has some strange metal that’ll cut through anything, right?!”

“Uh… not really.  They just have steel ones too…”

‘You like this stuff?’ Torren was clearly laughing despite the lack of sound.

“I guess it is pretty obvious, isn’t it?”  Reya went a bit red under her fur.

‘You’ve been out here all night, your paws are bloody as a porcupine’s mate, and you’ve got a broken leg and you’re still rambling on about it.’

“I guess so.”  Reya was slightly thankful for the bandage covering a fair amount of her head.  It covered her blush very well.

‘I didn’t mean for you to stop,’ Torren backpedaled, ‘I just thought it was kind of funny…’

“Oh sure.  Laugh all you want.”  The spotted otter looked like he was about to do just that.

Reya turned her focus back onto Aris.  He was carving the splint now.  It was good to get the bark off.  If bark was left on the outside it could brush against the fur on Reya’s other leg and rub it raw.  That was the last thing the damaged otter needed.

“Okay, I’m going to go find something to bind this with.”

“See ya!” Reya called out as he ran off.  Aris started to call something back and then realized he was a bit too far to be heard clearly.  He took a step back, looking like he was going to walk back over to respond, but apparently decided against it and bounded off.

‘How the heck is a beagle like that allowed to be around sharp objects?’

“Oh be quiet! you saw how good he was - cutting that splint up for me.  And he wasn’t the one whose shaky paws nearly blinded me with a bowl full of salt water,” she teased back.  Torren grimaced.  He still looked upset for his mishap.

“Its ok!”  Reya laughed at his consternation.  “You were probably pretty stressed too yesterday.  Completely understandable.”

Aris walked back into camp looking a bit sheepish.

“What’s up?” Reya asked.

“I forgot I had some rope in here.”  As he spoke, he reached into one of the bags adorning his outfit and pulled out a short length of rope.  “It isn’t much, but rope can come in useful more than you’d imagine.  I can’t believe I forgot about it!”

“Just tie it up and make it quick!” Reya winced, “something to keep this stupid arm from moving would be very nice!”

The beagle nodded as grimly as he could.  “I’ll try.  Torren, give her a stick to bite on, I think its going to hurt pretty bad.”

The spotted otter wordlessly began scanning the ground for a moderately sized stick.  Reya hoped he picked well.  She’d seen some animals with sharper teeth bite straight through fairly well sized sticks.  And then straight through their own tongues.  Reya didn’t like that thought.  She stuck her own tongue to the roof of her mouth right then and there.

Aris was busy setting the two wooden splints down next to her paw in just the right spots.  He looked worried.

“How long have you been a ranger?”

“Not very long,” the beagle admitted, “I got out of training only about a year ago.  Half of that’s been traveling out to the middle of nowhere – no offence!  … Um, From the capital.  That’s where the training is.  They like to keep it centralized.  The other ha-”

Reya cut him off.  “Oh!  Are you from the capital?” She asked with a glimmer in her eye.

“Uh, sorry to disappoint you, but no.  I’m from Southbank.”

“Oh my God!  That’s even better!  You’ve seen the sea?  I’ve heard its so big that you could swim all day and not see any land when you’re done!”

“Well, yeah… We’ve had ships go for almost a month and not see any land.”

“That’s so cool!  I’d love to go swimming in a place like that!  Is it as dangerous as they say?  If I were to go swimming there would I have to bring your claws with me?  – I mean, not your claws of course!  They’re very nice claws but you don’t need to give them to me!  I’d be fine with any pair really!”

Aris laughed.  “Its not really that dangerous until you get a good deal out.  That’s where all the sharks and stuff are.”

Reya stared at him wide eyed as he was talking.  She barely even noticed Torren coming back with a sizeable fresh branch.  Fresh wood was good.  It would taste worse, but it’d be a lot less likely to break.  It was good that Torren had been able to get such a nice branch.  With fall well underway, many branches were not lacking for layers of dead wood.

“I guess you’re ready then?”  Reya suddenly lost a lot of the glow that had been in her eyes just moments ago.  She knew it would be fine, but pain was never easy.  Especially when you knew it was coming.  Especially when you knew a lot of it was coming.

The pain was starting to creep back again too.  She’d been so caught up in her excitement over Aris that once again her mind had shoved the pain right to the side to focus on the super cool beagle with the awesome sharp metal stuff and green coat.

She started to shiver.  She couldn’t help it, and she knew that she couldn’t.  She’d seen a lot of patients of her own and of Gither that had gone through the exact same thing when they knew something painful or bad was about to happen to them.

She softly clenched the stick between her teeth as Torren gently pushed it into her maw.

“Bite as hard as you can right now and make sure that it holds up,” Aris said, “when I splint this you’ll bite with twice that strength.”

Reya ignored Aris and set it down in front of her.

“Before you do anything, I need to tell you what to expect.  I don’t know how much they taught you Aris, but probably not enough.”

“Hey!  I –”  Reya’s glare shut the beagle up.

“There are three possible ways that it could be broken.  It didn’t break out of my skin…” she shuddered, “so it’s not open and will be easier to set in place.”  Reya looked down at her arm for a moment.  It was all the time she could stand to look at it before averting her gaze.  “It looks kind of diagonal, so it’s probably what G-Gither called an oblique fracture.  If you straighten my arm out and set it tightly, it should grow back ok.  If it becomes too disconnected, you might have to try to get the two pieces of bone aligned.”

Aris gulped nervously.

“I could be wrong, though.  I can’t feel much of anything down there, it might be a comminuted fracture.  If that’s the case, there will be fragments of bone all around at the break.  It should be pretty obvious as soon as you feel the break.  Don’t hesitate to feel it either.  Its going to be really swollen and it’ll hurt a ton, but you’ve got to figure out what it is.  Don’t worry about trying to fit it together, just immediately get my arm straight and splint it.

“It could also be just a straight fracture.  If it broke and my bones ended up next to each other you have to get the ends pushed against each other.  If not, we’ll have to fix it at the cabin… and all that movement will make it that much less likely to set well.”

Without any more words, Reya picked the branch back up and gingerly wrapped her teeth around it.  It was pine.  Her eyes squeezed shut and she bit as hard as she possibly could.  She was ready.  Gither had always used this trick.  You tell them to bite into the stick to test it, and then you do the painful bit when they aren’t expecting it.  It was better for them that way.  There wasn’t as much anticipation.  Reya kind of screwed that up.

She tried to prepare herself for the pain as well as she could.  She squeezed down on the branch until she felt tears running down her cheeks.  And then suddenly it happened.  Another furry paw grabbed her own and gave it a light squeeze – trying to comfort her – as it tenderly lifted her limb.

“wrpf pfaw iffed!”  She spat the stick out.  “Wrong paw idiot!”

Torren very carefully set her right front paw back to the ground.

“It’s the one underneath it.  The one that’s freaking bent.  Dummy.”

‘We should roll you on your back.’

“Bad idea.  The bone could shift in ways you don’t expect.  Its best to keep me the way I am until its splinted.”

“He wanted to roll you over?” Aris asked.

“Yeah.”

“Ah.”  There were several seconds of silence before the beagle muttered, “you should really put that stick back in…”

Crap.  Reya had been kind of hoping that she could put it off a bit longer.  She had already gone through that nervous tension.  She had already prepared herself for the rush of pain.  She was already shaking all over.

She leaned her head back down to grab the tree limb.  A sudden feeling of irony swept over Reya as she imagined herself snapping the tree’s limb between her jaws.  She was a bit too far away from it though.

“Torren…” She muttered.

He moved over and picked it up in his own mouth.  He brushed his muzzle against her own as he gave her the branch.  The tan fur around his nose lingered against her for several second before he pulled away.  He smiled.  He didn’t have to sign anything.  It was going to be ok.

Reya bit down as hard as she could.  She was biting into a fresh section of the tail length piece of wood.  Once again, she wanted to avoid breaking it as best she could.  She clearly tasted the pine sap as it ran along the inside of her jaw.  It was bitter.  She’d tasted pine before.  Sometimes she needed to make a poultice out of pine bark.

Her arm was moving. 

Aris was from the seaside.  Reya wondered if he’d ever known anyone who’d had scurvy before.  Scurvy tended to be common among a lot of sailors because it was so hard to preserve good fruits and vegetables well.  Carnivores and a couple of omnivores work a bit different though and don't really get scurvy.

Reya was screaming through the branch.

Gither had mentioned scurvy once.  There was a little guinea pig who had gone months just eating vegetables and grains!  He’d tossed away all the fruits his parents had given him.  It was only natural that he ended up getting sick.

A paw was grasping at the fracture.  She almost fainted, but the pain brought her back.

He had been vomiting and had a high fever.  His muscles were sore and his legs were swollen.

Her swollen leg was being compressed by something.

Gither had recounted some little story about a rare case of scurvy he had seen before he had come up north and knew the treatment right away. 

She was biting so hard her maw was numb.

It was spring at the time, which was lucky.  Gither had had some pine sap saved up, but he always liked to show off a bit.  He took out a rough woodcutting knife and cut a nice long strip of bark off of a pine tree.  He then boiled the bark with some herbs into a tea, letting the pine sap mix in with the liquid.

She could taste the pine sap mixing with her saliva.

He was better in almost a week.

Reya woke up back in a soft downy bed.  It was sometime late in the day.  The orange glow filtered softly through the glass window panes above her head.  They etched out large boxes of light on the wall on the other side of the lodge.  It was odd.  Reya never really paid attention to those things.  She liked to consider herself a take-it-as-it-comes kind of girl.  Well, she’d sure taken a lot as it came.

“Is anyone there?”  She asked.

There was silence for a moment, but then Torren jumped up to the bed next to her.

“Hey…” She smiled at him.

‘Are you feeling ok?’

“Yeah, I think so.”

‘How’s your paw?’

Reya looked down.  She was lying on her back.  Her paw was hung against her breast with what looked like a cotton sling.  It was wrapped up tight with cloth wrappings and she was sure that there was a layer of actual gauze underneath.  She could see from how the cloth was stretched out that it had been tightly wound around several splints that rested against a thin layer of fabric around her arm.  It didn’t feel like much.  There was still pain there when she let her mind focus a bit, but after what she felt when she was getting the splint on it felt like it was barely anything.

“I – not bad.  It looks like Aris did a good job on the splint.”

‘I helped!’  Torren was quick to respond.

“I’m sure you did!”  Reya replied, chuckling.

‘I – I’m glad you’re feeling better.’

“Thanks Torren.  You know, you can come up here if you want.”

He looked thoughtful for a second, but then he rebuffed the idea.  ‘I don’t want to shake the mattress.  It could hurt for you.’

“How sweet.”

Torren grinned, ‘I try!’

“Oh, shut it.  You can at least try to act humble, you know.”

‘You’re the only one I have to talk to!  Normally my ego is divided among everyone equally!’

“So what’s happening now?”

‘What do you mean?’

“You know, with T-Talip… with Aris.  Those things.”  She sighed.  It was like by saying his name she was giving in somehow to the mole.  Giving him some ground to stand on where he had none.

‘Aris is very sharp.  He figured out a lot of what went on right when everything happened.  When you ran out to the forest, I went to find him.’

“Not me?” Reya teased.

‘I couldn’t keep up with you even with your burned paws!’

“Fair enough.”

‘Anyway, Aris sent out a memo to his superiors listing what was happening at that point.  It was very vague; your pictographical writing system is a lot less clear than the writing I taught you.’

“And Talip?”

‘He was no problem.  We found him less than five minutes into the forest.  You were a lot more difficult to track down.  We sent out for support from the avian association to help find you.’

“That must have been expensive… you really didn’t need to.”

‘Well, a.n.a...’ He spelled the name out.

“Ana, the duck?”

‘Yeah, her.  She wasn’t going to charge us anything, but Weisk insisted that they take at least a quarter of their standard price for search and rescue because, I quote, “Freeload off any other bird, not a fuckin’ eagle.  You payin’ for quality right here.”’

Reya laughed.  “I can imagine him saying that.”

‘I think he ended up charging less than a quarter though, must’ve felt bad for you.’

The small otter stiffened a bit as he said that.  From the look on Torren’s face, Reya knew that he could tell that he had just messed up.  After a moment, though, he just sighed and went on.

‘Anyway, we didn’t know what kind of shape you were in when Aris sent out the letter.  He’s kicking himself right now for not waiting on it until he found out what kind of shape you were in.’

“Why’s that?”

‘We’re listed in the thing as witnesses.’

“Crap.”

 

9: Bedridden

“I can’t go!”  Reya protested, “I can’t leave!”

“I’m so sorry Reya!  You have to!  I already said you were the first to see… her.  I’d change it if I could!”

“Send some other otter!  You can’t be that freaking good at drawing!”

“I – I wrote in the bandages,” Aris muttered, “the burns too…”

“Well that’s just great!  I guess we have to find another otter and shove her into a fire!”

‘Reya, please calm down…’

“Don’t even try that!”

“What?  I didn’t try anything!”  Aris objected.

“Shut up!  I wasn’t talking to you!”

“Oh…”

“I can’t believe you didn’t think before you sent the thing!  Do I look ready to go cross country to talk about something that I don’t even have any idea what’s really going on because none of you jerks will tell me!”

Reya paused.  The beagle looked genuinely hurt.  Torren just seemed taken aback.

‘I… I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it…  I thought you had enough to deal with without having to think about any of that,’ Torren signed slowly.  He was obviously thinking carefully about what he said.  Reya was very obviously not in the best of moods.  It had its intended effect, however and Reya felt herself calming down.

“I’m sorry Aris.  It’s not even my paws… I would have been fine taking the trip if I hadn’t been so stupid.  And even now, I’d be fine, but… You know.”

She glanced at Torren who looked shocked at her apology.

“Oh come on, not everyone has an ego to match Weisk’s.” 

The concern on the spotted otter’s face quickly broke into one of his silent laughs.

‘Can’t help it.’  The serious expression came back almost as soon as it faded.  ‘Reya?’

“What?”

“Huh?” asked Aris.

“Not you.”

“Oh.  Um, could you try to maybe say who you’re talking to?”

“Fine Aris! Hey Torren!  The big ottery guy over there that I’m looking at!  What is it that you want?”

‘Maybe now’s not a good time for it…’

“Hey, now’s as good as any time!  It’s not like you could manage to make this week worse!”

Torren cringed.  ‘I was just going to ask…  Do you not want to leave because of Gither?’

Reya was the surprised one this time.  She didn’t realize that Torren had read her that well.  She’d barely even mentioned her older brother at all in the 5 months that her spotted friend had been living with her.  She was kind of surprised that he even remembered Gither’s name.  Then again, she could recall mentioning him the night before.

“How about a trade then?  You tell me what’s going on with Talip and all that stupid drama and I’ll tell you why I don’t want to go.”

“Ok.”

“Torren.”

“Oh.”

‘Ok.  So why are you so against leaving?’

“Gither.  My turn.”

‘That’s not fair!’

“I gave you the answer.”

‘Well I could be just as cheeky and tell you that Talip… uh… Did bad things!  Ok?  C’mon Reya, tell me what’s going on!’  Torren glanced over to Aris.  ‘Are – Are you not comfortable talking about it around him?’

Reya actually wasn’t quite sure.  She thought that she just might not be very comfortable talking about it in general.  Even so, she wanted to tell Torren.  He’d been there for her the whole time while she dealt with Gither’s abandonment – although with how little she actually mentioned her brother, she wondered if Torren had even realized how much she was struggling to deal with it.

He probably had.  Well, she didn’t know how much he thought about that stuff.  He tended not to dwell on uncomfortable issues around Reya.  In fact, the small otter realized that she really didn’t know much about her spotted friend.  He was a great guy, but he was definitely not the type to be open about his feelings and problems. 

Reya honestly didn’t mind his silence on personal issues.  She talked a lot herself, and had long ago pushed herself to the understanding that other people just weren’t as communicative.  Maybe Torren talked less than most people, but Reya found herself on the other end of the spectrum.  Who was she to judge him?

She sighed.  She guessed that it would be a bit easier to talk about her brother if it was just her and Torren.  Aris seemed like a really good person, but she’d barely known him for two days.  Even so, she didn’t really know if she was in the mood to explain all of the backstory behind her and Gither.  Even if she were up to it, and not exhausted with her body’s efforts to heal her tattered form, she didn’t know if she wanted to share her life’s story with a funny looking ranger.

Well.  He was a ranger; that did give him a lot of clout in her mind.  She had made up her mind though.

“I’m sorry Aris… could I get a bit of privacy to talk to Torren?  I want to talk about some personal stuff.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” the beagle said, trying to hide the dejected look that dropped over his face.

“Thanks.”  Aris made his exit.

‘Do you want to talk about it then?  We’re going to be on the road for a long time and I want to know what’s up.  I’d rather not spend several months on the road in a confined space with a sulking otter.’

Reya tried her best to look pouty.  “I don’t sulk!  I mean, sulking people are really quiet, right?  Can you imagine me going a full day without telling you about the trout scale stuck in your teeth?”

Torren looked like he having a fierce argument with himself over whether to check his teeth for the scale.  He obviously couldn’t rub his tongue along the inside of his mouth.  Half of the necessary body parts for that plan were missing.  Reya nearly gave the whole thing up by laughing as she saw the gears turning in his head.  She was just leading him on, after all.

Reya watched as the spotted otter slowly ran his lips against his teeth while trying to look inconspicuous.

  His paw was twitching. 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’  He signed.  Reya didn’t take the bait.  He was definitely just trying to get her to admit that there was nothing there.

“Well you can’t see your teeth, now can you?”

A frustrated grimace crossed his face.  He hesitantly opened his mouth and began to run a claw between his teeth.  Reya finally couldn’t hold it in anymore and began laughing at the larger otter.  He immediately dropped his paw from his teeth and gave her an accusing look.

“Don’t even deny it,” Reya chortled, “that was really funny.”  Torren snorted in response, but, in accordance with what Reya said, didn’t deny it.  He was clearly holding back a smile.

There was silence for a few seconds.  “You know, I really want to move.”  Her paws were aching.  Her broken paw was numb except for a continual throbbing.  Her whole body hurt.  Luckily, it didn’t seem to be hurting quite as much as she expected.  It was a dull sort of pain.  It was the kind that you could just forget about, not a sharp urgent pain that demanded attention.

“Did you give me something to kill the pain?”

‘Yeah,’ Torren replied.  He twirled his paw around the covers of the bed he was laying on.  ‘Aris went through the medical cupboards here and found some pain relieving poultices.  We also found something for the swelling on your arm before we put the cast on.’

“What was in the poultices?”

‘You’d have to ask Aris.  I’m not good at this stuff.’

“You guys did a good job.”

‘Thanks.’  Torren looked a bit embarrassed.  ‘That’s nice to hear coming from someone as good at medicine as you.’

“I’m not that good.  Gither was the real talent.”

‘I’ve known quite a few other healers, and I think you’re better than any of them.’

Reya blushed crimson.  “You’re just saying that.”

‘I mean it.’

Reya didn’t respond.  She never really knew what to say to compliments like that.  She continued to lie there on her back – she couldn’t move much anyway – and tried to play off what he said like it didn’t faze her.  Torren must have been able to tell that she wasn’t going to break the silence this time, so he spoke again.

‘Would you like to talk more about Gither?’

“Yeah, I would.

Torren waited patiently.

“It’s just hard, you know?  Starting, I mean.  I like starting talks with people, but this is different.  I do want to tell you.  It just feels kind of… final.  It’s something that matters to me and it’s something that’s personal to me. 

“Last time I talked about this stuff must have been… Wow, it was that time 5 months ago, wasn’t it?

  I guess then it was a lot easier because you had just seen that fight between us.  I felt like I had to explain myself.  That way it wouldn’t seem as much like I had just kicked my brother who had watched over me my whole life out for some stranger who seemed like they had just been in some vicious fight.  No offense, but you didn’t seem quite as charming then.”

‘Charming?’ Torren teased.

  The blush that had just faded came rushing straight back to the little otter’s cheeks.

“Friendly!  I meant friendly,” Reya said exasperatedly, “I guess that is a sort of good place to start.  With when Gither left.  I wasn’t really that worried, you know?  We had been fighting a lot.  We looked a lot happier than we were – I was taught from a young age not to misbehave or fight around strangers.  Anyway, I never mentioned this, but I actually ran away from the den about a year before you showed up.

“I went to the west.  I didn’t want to go back.  Gither was just too overbearing and I was out of my mind.  I was restless from being stuck around him so much and I was absolutely fed up with how overbearing he was being.

“He didn’t even try to find me.  I was gone almost half a week – it turns out that surviving on your own is a lot more difficult than I expected – and when I came back he was beyond furious.  I think he almost kicked me out of the den, he was so angry.”

‘Why didn’t he try to find you since he was so protective?’

“Well, I say that he didn’t try to find me.  That’s probably wrong.  If I know Gither, he got some creature to follow me.  It’s a small town though, and I never got a confession from anyone so I can’t really be sure.  Whether he did or didn’t follow me, I realized then just how much I hated… No, I didn’t hate him.  You know what I mean though.  I was just bursting with anger and frustration.  If I were younger and more immature I probably would have knocked down and torn apart everything I could see. You know, maturity is just the restraint to not do those things you really want to do, and you have no idea how much I wanted to blow up in Gither’s face and tear the place apart.

“Anyway, the fact that Gither wasn’t showing any emotion other than anger at my disobedience was really setting me off.  I mean, it may have just been half a week.  And he may have known exactly where I was anyway, but it was really upsetting me anyway.  You know, the point to this whole thing – other than setting up a bit of backstory on why I’ve been so upset with him – is that when I finally confronted him and demanded to know why he wasn’t even the slightest bit happy that I’d chosen to come back and continue to live miserably under his iron paw, he said that he knew I’d come back.  That’s it.  He knew I’d come back.

“That also made me really angry, but you don’t need to hear more about that.  I just shrugged it off and started being as cold as I possibly could towards him.  I’d answer him with one word answers when he talked to me.  I wouldn’t start conversations with him!  You know how much I talk to people!  Well, he barely heard ten words out of me over the course of a month. 

“I gradually started talking to him more again after that.  I didn’t like it though.  Most of the times we talked, at least in private, were fights.  Who left the lid off of the flour so that moths could get inside?  Who used twice the amount of some stupid expensive herb than she needed to?  Who couldn’t give a rat’s rear end about what that stupid otter thought?  Me.

“I really said that well, didn’t I?” Reya giggled a bit despite the subject matter, “like some bard from the misty isle come in to tell a story.  Well, I think those last few lines at least were pretty great.”

‘And you say I have an ego,’ Torren taunted.

Reya snorted.  “If it was you telling the story, you’d have already conquered half the kingdom.”

‘Since when have I ever told stories?’ Torren protested.  He was right, really.  The spotted otter didn’t talk that much.  Reya’s jabs about his egotism were honestly more teasing him about the fact that he rarely talked about himself at all.  In fact, Reya thought he might have been one of the least self-centered creatures she knew.  However, the competition wasn’t all that fierce, strictly speaking.  He was up against the likes of Artaaga and Weisk.

She had asked Torren about his life before, but he always dodged the question and Reya was never good at pursuing it.  She was usually too eager to jump on whatever topic he brought up and let it turn into a conversation.  She didn’t mind, anyway.  If he didn’t want to talk about things, that was his business.  She did however wonder if she couldn’t get him to talk a bit.

“Well, why don’t you tell one right now?” Reya asked with a smile on her face.

‘Because you still haven’t said why you’re so hung up on staying here.’

“Haven’t I?”  Reya looked confused for a moment.  “Oh, I guess that’s right.  I didn’t explain it very well, I think.  What he said sort of resonated with me.  I mean about knowing I’d come back.  Its kind of stupid, but I feel the same way.  I want him to come back.  I think he will because my mind tells me that he couldn’t have hated me that much, you know? 

“I’m being dumb.  I don’t think he hated me.  I just… It was awful.  We couldn’t get along and we were always so angry with each other.  Anyway, I think that I just thought that even with all that bad air between us, he would still be there for me.  I guess he really did abandon me.  I guess its ok if I leave.  It helps to talk these things out, though.  You know, last time I did this I ended up crying, didn’t I?  I guess that shows how little I’ve grown to care for him.  Or maybe I’m just an awful person.”

Torren looked like he was about to say something, but Reya cut him off.  She didn’t need him to correct her on that.

“Now, about that story of yours.”

‘Not happening.’

“Couldn’t hurt to try.”

‘I can talk about Talip, though.  That was the agreement.’

“I don’t know if I want to make myself more upset right now.”

‘That’s fine.  I’ll have Aris explain it later.’

“Ok.  I think I’m going to pass out now.  Healing makes your body tired, and I need to heal a lot right now.”

‘Sure thing.  Aris and I need to investigate the basement a bit more anyway.’

“Well, let me know what you find, ok?”

‘Of course.’

Reya fell asleep without an issue when she let herself relax into the bed.  She quickly forgot all of her aches and pains and she left all of her worries and concerns behind her.

She dreamt that she was a ranger.  She was in the forest, green cloak covering her small body as she wove stealthily through the tree.  Reya called out for someone.  Torren!  She was calling out for Torren. 

“Where are you!” She cried, “Come back!”

The forest was quiet.  She scrambled through the brush and the trees, faster and faster.  She had to find him.  She had to.  But she could smell the smoke.  Smoke filling the air and her lungs.  Smoke was everywhere.  She turned, about to run for her life.

When she turned around, the spotted otter was on the ground in front of her.  Blood ran from his fur.  Gither stood over him. 

“I told you that you shouldn’t have gotten involved with him.  Now look at what happened.”

Reya couldn’t look away from his face.  She couldn’t look away from the blood dripping from Gither’s maw.  Torren’s blood.  Tears were dripping down her cheeks.  Gither stepped forward.  His sharp teeth clenched around her neck.

Reya woke up screaming.  She hadn’t had a nightmare like that in years.  She looked around just in time to see Torren jump up onto her bed.

‘What’s wrong?  Did your arm move?’

“N-no, I’m fine,” she said that, but she didn’t mean it.  Reya felt like her dreams knew exactly how to make her feel as awful as she could possibly feel.  “It was just a nightmare.”

‘Oh.’  Torren lay down next to her, unable to talk with his head resting on his front paws.  Somehow Reya appreciated that gesture more than anything he could have said.  Gither would have been probing her for what was wrong and trying to figure out what bits of her were messed up and causing her nightmares.

“You wouldn’t run off like Gither did, would you?”

Torren shook his head no.

 

10: Secrets and Sociology

Aris said that they could put off the trip for as long as a week.  The council would understand that they had encountered some ‘complications’ on the road.  This was definitely a relief for Reya.  The extra time and bed-rest would make the trip far less painful for her.  Depending on the injury, a light fracture could take as little as 3 weeks to heal.  However, a more complicated break like her's – which she had learned from Aris was an oblique fracture – would take longer.  Even so, a week of recoupment would dull the pain significantly.

Reya was almost rolling off her bed in boredom.  She was never this still!  She wasn’t used to it at all.  Everyone else was busy, too.  Torren was off helping with the farms off in the clearing to the east.  Fall had come and with Fall came harvest time, so the townsfolk were happy to have as many extra hands as they could get. 

There were two huts in town for guests.  They were rarely used, but clean and modestly furnished.  One was across from the medical lodge, in between Artaaga’s cabin and a beaver couple’s.  The other was across town in a more secluded location.  Aris chose to take the one next to the lodge for convenience. 

Torren was offered the other hut, but he elected to stay in the medical lodge on a bed next to Reya’s.  She was happy about that.  It was comforting having the larger otter nearby.  It wasn’t that she felt threatened by anything, but she did feel especially vulnerable with all of her injuries.

Aris was around a lot too.  With Talip locked up in the dusty and seldom used cell in Savul’s house, Aris had no apparent official duties to attend to.  As the head of the council, Savul oversaw all prisoners that passed through the village.  However, he’d never actually had to exercise this power until just recently.

Aris, apparently having gotten what he came for, was helping out with the medical lodge in Talip’s place.  However, Aris usually just acted as the eyes and ears of Reya.  This was one of the few ways she could find to pass the time.   Even when Aris obviously knew what the matter was with a patient and how to treat them, he would explain the symptoms to the bored otter and let her dictate how to go about healing them.  Reya appreciated the beagle’s gesture, it gave her some time to do something other than stare at the ceiling and think.

After four days Reya was running out of things to talk to Aris about.  Well, she was running out of medical things to talk about.  When Torren wasn’t around she hadn’t been very talkative on other matters. 

“Where are we going to take Talip?”

“Fenbury, its about 23 days downriver.”

“Ah, makes sense,” Reya responded, “I’ve never actually been there before, believe it or not.”

 “I don’t think it’s quite as impressive as Southbank.  That’s probably just because I’m from there, though!  I don’t mean any offense.  It’s the biggest and coolest city in the northeast!”

Reya chuckled.  “You don’t have to defend it to me!  I’ve never been much of a traveler, anyway.  It’ll be fun to see it, I think.  My brother told me all sorts of stories about that place.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I guess there wasn’t anything too interesting.  He did tell me all about the wharf!  How the animals are all impatiently bustling in and out.  He said that the hardest thing is to avoid getting stepped on by some equine who thinks that his hooves makes him the meanest thing on the streets!  And well, I guess they kind of do!  Gither said that, while the small alleyways and twisting roads were crammed shoulder to shoulder, the horses and other hooved creatures, both people and feral, would always have a big path cleared in front of them.”

Aris laughed.  “Its not quite that bad.  Not that your brother would lie or anything, but usually hooved creatures will have their own paths to the docks.  Now, it’s not like we separate them from everyone else, of course!  They’re free to take the regular streets when they’re just wandering about, but its best for everyone’s safety if they keep to the separate trails when they work.  It’s harder to keep steady when you’re carrying a lot of weight!  A horse could seriously hurt someone if they tripped when carrying a big load.  Imagine if it stepped on some smaller creature, the poor guy may not even make it!  Especially with all the extra weight from what the guy’d be carrying.  It’s safety!”

“It’s alright Aris, I’m not accusing you of anything!”

“I know… It’s hard to talk about these subjects, though.  Too many people who’ll condemn you for having a different opinion.  There’s been a lot of unrest about that sort of activism and stuff and you can never tell which side people are on.  How about you?  What’s your opinion?”

“I’ve never heard about these things!  We don’t get much news up here.  The most I hear is the occasional bit about the tensions with Selend.  Even then it’s not much and I mostly ignore it.  What do I care?  If what Gither said is right, we’re literally as far away from Selend as we could possibly be.”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“So what do you think?  I get your I don't want to offend anyone 'cause I'm a ranger and I work for the government stance.  You're a smart guy though.  I'm interested.”

“Well, I think that the equines sort of have a case, but not in the right way, if you know what I mean.  A lot of the horses feel like they’re being treated like second class citizens.  There are definitely some things wrong with the picture, but I feel like they’re focusing on the wrong issue.  Equines are often pushed into either working transportation, farming, or herding because their hooves make it pretty difficult to do a lot of skilled professions.  They’re creating an issue over their treatment in a single job, a treatment which I don’t think is entirely unreasonable – the lanes they’re forced to use are actually the faster routes!  ... When the real issue is how they’re being pushed into a limited set of lower class jobs.”

Reya thought for a moment.  “That's interesting.  I guess we never had those sorts of issues really come up around here.  Well, we don't really have anybody with hooves up here either, but I guess that's the point.”

“I can get kind of carried away on these sorts of things.  Not many people want to talk about this stuff,”  He smiled happily at her, "thanks for listening."

“For what its worth, I can’t think of anything to disagree with what you said.  Maybe that's why people won't argue with you about it!” Reya teased.  She could instantly tell that the playful nature of her words had gone straight over the beagle's head.

“Oh…”

“It was a compliment, doofus!  You were convincing!  You even sounded educated!”

Aris sheepishly looked down at his paws.  “Um, I actually was educated.”

“No way!  That’s awesome!  Why didn’t you become a mayor or councilperson or something then?  There are so many really good things you could have done!”

“Well, I –”

Reya interrupted him.  “I guess it’s ok.  Who’d pass up the opportunity to be a ranger anyway!  I mean, it’s so cool when you walk through the forest with that cloak on!  Criminals will only see the rustling of what they think is a bush before BAM!”  Reya threw her free paw out to the side.  “You pounce on them with your claws slashing and dicing away at –”

“Reya!”

This time it was Reya’s turn to look sheepish.  “I’m sorry, I think it’s a good choice.  That’s all.”

Aris looked pretty embarrassed himself.  Reya could see the red through the fur on his cheeks. 

“You sound educated yourself, you know,” he mumbled.

“Really?  I don’t think so.  I’ve grown up out here my whole life.  Half of what I know about is medicine and the other half is how to annoy otter siblings.”  That drew a nervous laugh from the beagle.

“I don’t have any siblings myself.  I was an only pup.”

“I can tell!  If you did, you wouldn’t freak out so much when you think people are upset at you!”

Aris jumped a bit as she said that.  “Um, Freak out?  Am I – uh – that bad?”

“No!  I’m sorry Aris!  I didn’t mean that!"  she backpedaled, "You’re great to talk to.  I was just joking there!  Its humility, not freaking out!”

Aris was blushing again.  “Oh.  Well, thanks, I guess.”

Reya quickly tried to change the topic of conversation.  Aris seemed pretty self-conscious about his nervousness, so she thought it would be best to get as far away from any mention of that as she could.

“So, um, do many people go on two legs in Lenwick?”

“Uh… not really.  Even though it’s one of the bigger cities in the kingdom, only the nobility really follow through with the standing.  I think it’s a pretty stupid custom anyway.  Lots of species can’t stand well or get problems with their legs –”

“Like stretching the tendons.  Gither says it can lead to arthritis too.  It can also really wear on your spine.”

“Yeah, I guess so.  Anyway, the vast majority of townsfolk just go around the natural way.  There won’t be a problem for you.”

“Oh, right.  I guess these burns would make two legs pretty painful.  That’d be a lot of pressure on just two paws.”

“Yeah, even for most folk, I think that it can get pretty painful over time.”

“You know, I bet my paws’ll be a lot better by then.  I just hope we’ve got some way of getting there that isn’t too jolty.”

Aris cringed.  “We’ll be taking a wagon down the road.”

“Oh.”  She tried not to look too upset.  Aris was looking more and more miserable by the second.  “Who’s pulling it?”

"A horse is being sent from Lenwick.”

“Feral?”

“Not sure.  Probably not.  If it was feral, they’d need to send someone else to handle it.  Its cheaper to hire thinking people for places way out of the way like here.  You only have to feed one mouth, you know.  However much you argue the intelligence of ferals, I haven’t seen a feral horse go on a month’s trip to pick up a traveler on its own.”

 “That’s true!”  Reya paused for a moment as Torren staggered into the lodge.  He was panting like he’d gone for a jog in the desert.  “Hey, Torren!  Looks like you’ve been making yourself useful.”

The larger otter didn’t answer.  He wobbled his way over to the bed next to Reya’s and, after steadying himself for a good 10 seconds, jumped up.  He proceeded to collapse on the bedsheets.

“Getting more dramatic every day, huh?” Reya asked.

‘It’s hard!’  Torren rolled on his back to sign more easily.

“I’m sure it was hard the first day too, and you didn’t look like you got broadsided by a bull then!”

“I’m bet it gets harder every day!” Aris interjected.  He paused for a moment before adding, “that’s how it was when I was training!”

Reya laughed.  “I know!  I was just teasing him.”  The spotted otter just groaned. 

“Well I just didn’t think it was fair,” Aris said, “he’s making some money to help us on this trip!”

“Oh,” Reya said timidly, “I – uh – sort of thought that you, I mean the rangers, would be funding this.”

This time it was Aris’s turn to laugh.  “Don’t worry.  We’re taking care of room and board and transportation.  I just happened to mention to Torren after that whole fiasco was over that –” Torren was giving Aris a glare that very clearly said ‘shut up.’  Aris took the hint. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, looking flustered, “I didn’t realize it was that big of a deal!”

‘Well it’s not!  But now it seems like one!’  Torren’s paws snapped back at the beagle.  Reya quickly translated for him.

“Well, then, what’s not such a big deal?” Reya badgered.

‘I just thought that… you know.  It’d be nice to treat you to some nicer meals or something since you’ve been having such a rough time.’  Torren said after a few moments of hesitation.

Reya blushed.  “You don’t need to overwork yourself for me!  I don’t need anything fancy, Torren…”  Both Torren and Aris looked a bit crestfallen at her response.  She guessed that Aris had also been excited about the idea.  Torren had probably wanted to surprise her.  It would have worked – she didn’t even know he was being paid for his work! 

‘It doesn’t need to be fancy!  I just thought that I might be able to cheer you up a bit…’  The spotted otter said, he smiled a very forced smile.

“You’re cheering me up already!”  Reya smiled at the disheartened otter.  She appreciated his gesture, but she had seen how much effort Torren was putting into working with the villagers every day.  It was harvest season, so there was no dearth of physical labor for Torren to do.  Reya assumed that he’d been taking on as much as he could by the exhausted state he was in when he came back to the lodge every afternoon.  She felt apprehensive that Torren wanted to use the small amount of money he was going to get in return on her instead of himself. 

“You’re working really hard for however much money you’re getting,” Reya said, “If you want to get me some meal in Fenbury, or even when we stop in Lenwick, I don’t mind, but you need to get it for yourself too!  You deserve it!”

Aris seemed even happier than Torren did.  The beagle’s grin stretched ear to ear as he yipped in excitement.

“That’s great!  Now you’ve got something to look forward to!” Aris exclaimed.  Reya wondered if Aris had meant to say that.  Did he and Torren think that she was depressed about leaving?  That she was looking ahead with just trepidation and fear?  She didn’t think that she was. 

“I can’t wait,” Reya grinned back at her two friends.  She wasn’t incredibly excited about it.  She had never had much of a variety of food and therefore didn’t know how much she’d like whatever strange things they ate in cities.  She’d give it a try though.  What really made her happy were the expressions on the faces of her two friends.

Torren also had a large smile plastered on his face, but he looked more relieved than anything.  It was a bit surprising, she figured that Aris would have been the one worrying about her willingness to accept money from the two of them, but Torren seemed to have been a lot more apprehensive about it.

“Just one condition!”  Reya said after a second of thought.

“What’s that?” Aris asked.

“It can’t be something that makes you stand.  I think standing is silly and unnatural and I’d never be able to enjoy eating if I was standing!”

“No food places would make you stand!” Aris said, laughing, “Even for the nobles who wobble around on their hind paws, they just sit down to eat!”

“Well I don’t know these things!”  Torren laughed along with Reya and Aris.  She was feeling good, a lot better than the she was for the rest of the week – even if she considered the days after she broke her arm.

“I um – hope you guys don’t mind,” Aris started, “but Weisk’s going to be coming along with us.  We need an avian to get word to the Fenbury council if we get held up any more than we already have.”

Reya snorted.  “Way to ruin the mood, Aris!”

“What’s wrong with that?  We need an avian around,” the beagle said defensively.

“If you can keep him busy, I’m all for it.  I just don’t know if Torren and I want to spend the entire trip hearing about how inferior otters are to eagles.”

“I’ll ask him to tone it down,” Aris muttered.

“Good luck!  He’s been visiting this village for almost 8 years now and I haven’t talked to him yet without getting a reminder that I don’t have wings.”

‘I don’t mind,’ Torren signed.

“Really Torren?  Not gonna back me up here?  You know, I should have just acted like you were agreeing with me.  Aris wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Probably not,” Aris mumbled.

“Whatever,” Reya sighed, “Its fine.”  She signed ‘whatever’ using her one free paw to further emphasize her displeasure.  It wasn’t actually difficult, the word whatever didn’t use any finger movements, so her bound paws didn’t stop her, and she could make the gesture effectively with just her single good forepaw.

“So what’s the deal with Talip?” She asked, wanting a change of subject.

“Really,” Aris balked, “You’re – uh – just going to ask about that right now?”

“Yeah, I want to know.”

“So, I don’t really – um – know where to start… What do you want to know?”

“How did Sylvia die?”

‘Didn’t I already –’ Torren dropped his paws.  Aris was speaking over him.

“He broke her neck.”

“No he didn’t,” Reya said matter-of-factly, “and you know that.  What happened?”

Aris was looking very nervous.  “I – uh – her neck snapped.  You must have been really stressed and didn’t notice!”

“Of course I noticed!” Reya nearly shouted at the beagle, “she was my friend and I made sure to see for myself exactly how she died!”

“Then... uh… how did she die?”

“Her heart just stopped.”

“Oh.”

“There were no signs of struggle.  No broken bones or any kind of lacerations.  I didn’t see any signs at all of internal bleeding.  The only thing that changed about her was that there was a paw – that wasn’t hers – melded into her arm like it had always been there.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t her paw?” Aris squeaked.

“Yes!  I’m sure!  I got a long look at it and examined it before I ran off!” Reya lied, “since you don’t seem to be too curious about what happened back there, I assume that you know.”

He nodded.

“So what is it? What happened?”

“Sorcery…” The beagle’s voice was barely a whisper.

Reya had seen that answer coming.  Torren had confirmed to her that there was something unnatural about everything that had happened.  He’d also confirmed to her that magic existed.  She hadn’t paid that thought enough heed until now. 

Magic was real.  Gither had told her stories in her childhood of evil sorcerers that had been vanquished by brave rangers and strong knights.  But they were just that, stories.  Reya had always taken the supernatural elements of his stories with a grain of salt.  Now she was wondering if the ancient myths and legends had some basis to them.

When Torren showed her his fire back when she was wounded the forest, she hadn’t been in the right mindset to comprehend what was happening.  Even afterwards, she was too tired to allow the thought to crop up.

Talip was a sorcerer.  How the hell did Aris think that the box by the mayor’s place would hold him?

Reya hesitantly repeated her last thought to Aris.  Her heart was bursting a bit faster, as if the mole would show up at any moment and steal the life from one of her friends.

“He’s not in any state to break out.  Besides, we have him securely bound and guarded.”

“W-what if burns through the ropes or something?”  She couldn’t help but steal a glance at Torren.  The spotted otter had seemed terrified when he talked about his powers back in the forest.  Did he know just as little about this as she did?

“I don’t think he can.”

Reya wanted to object, but she also didn’t want to imply that she knew more   Instead, she opted for a more neutral question.

“But can’t he magic up some fire?”

Aris sighed.  “Please… please don’t repeat any of this.  Very few people anywhere in the kingdom – or probably anywhere else for that matter – know anything about this.”  Reya nodded in agreement.  “I haven’t known you long, but I think that you’re trustworthy.  If anyone else finds out that I told you, I could lose my head as well as you.  The government doesn’t take this sort of talk lightly.  Of course, you… um, know too much to be able to stay away from the truth.  And if you ask questions about what happened to the wrong people I’d hate to see what would happen.”

Reya recoiled slightly.  For a bit, she had been wondering if it was maybe just a noble thing.  Aris was educated like a noble, so she figured that maybe he had been taught about it unlike all of the uneducated people.  This was disturbing though, and not just when she thought about what it meant for Talip.  And it meant bad things for Talip.  If the government was this harsh on the mere education and talk about magic, what would it do to a sorcerer whose powers had murdered an innocent creature?

Even more disturbing to Reya was what might happen if Torren’s magical power was exposed.  He said that he didn’t mean for the fire to happen every time he’d done it before he purposefully showed her.  What if it happened in the town?  What if hundreds of creatures were killed like she could have been?

“I won’t mention any of this to anyone.” Reya promised.  She nodded at Torren.  She hoped that Aris thought that she was agreeing to his terms.  However, the knowing glance that Torren returned said that he understood the real message.  She’d never let anyone know about what Torren did and she would do whatever she could to keep anyone from finding out.

 

11: Hostage!

‘Okay, Reya.  You ready?’  Torren signed.  The spotted otter had helped Aris carry in a small end table and set it down next to Reya’s bed.  It wasn’t much, but it would be a lot easier on the girl’s paws as she carefully made her way down to the ground.

Reya carefully rolled to her side – the side without her broken arm – and started to pull herself up onto her feet. She was very careful about it.  She hadn’t used her leg muscles in quite some time, and if they didn’t hold her she could fall against the sling and subsequently her damaged arm.  It probably wouldn’t hurt her recovery, but she didn’t care much for the pain that would come with an accident like that.

She pushed herself unsteadily onto three legs.  The otter was even more unstable than she normally would have been thanks to the soft downy mattress, but she was able to hold herself steady after a few moments.

“Everything feeling fine?” asked Aris who was looking on from across the room as he finished dressing a bad scrape one of Mayel’s children had gotten when playing in a particularly rocky are near the river.

“Yeah, I just haven’t used these legs in a long time.  I’ve gotta ease them back into use pretty slowly.”  She cautiously placed her working front paw onto the end table before following it up with her rear legs. 

“So far so good,” she muttered under her breath.  She’d seen a number of animals recover from broken limbs while she was living with Gither.  Legs could easily give way if used too much before their muscles were built back up.  Reya’s weren’t completely atrophied after only a week of disuse, especially with a diet of good fish meat and local produce, but this time Reya was electing to be cautious with her recovery.  She’d race around all she wanted when she was fully healed and she wished for that healing to happen as soon as possible.

The step down from the end table to the floor was a bit higher, but ultimately easier without the unstable mattress to worry about.  She leaned over the edge, carefully keeping her sling from bumping against the edge of the table, and pushed her paw down onto the solid wooden ground. 

There wasn’t much pain from her burns.  It hurt, but it was a dull pain and not a sharp stinging one.  It hurt like a deep bruise.  It was far from pleasant, but Reya could live with it.  The gauze helped as well.  It added a soft layer of padding between the charred flesh and whatever might come in contact with it.

Torren was next to her as soon as she was on the ground.  He pushed against her on her bad side and helped to keep her moving where her broken paw couldn’t.  Reya could learn to walk on three legs – she’d seen other animals do it just fine – but she didn’t mind putting that off until her three good legs were a bit stronger.

“Thanks,” She said, pressing into the larger otter.  He nodded in reply, unable to stand up to sign with his front paws and support her at the same time.  He led her out of the lodge.  Reya blinked several times.  It was very bright and she hadn’t seen much direct sunlight recently.  There were two windows in the lodge, but she didn’t have a great vantage point to see out of them from the bed she had been stuck in.

The town hadn’t changed.  It never did.  She stopped moving and Torren obediently followed suit.  She hadn’t actually looked around much since she’d come here with Torren, which wasn’t too surprising considering the condition she’d been in the last few times she’d actually been on the streets.

The cobblestone path wove in and out of the trees, trying to remain as straight as it could.  There were huts alongside the road clustering mainly around the medical lodge.  Off to one side she could see the path split into a circle where it wrapped around the town’s other important public building, the town hall.  On the other end, the path grew more windy and less defined as it branched off and into smaller trails and eventually vanished into lightly trod paths.  The only true road, also a sturdy cobblestone, branched off from the main street on the side opposite of the town hall.  It remained a steady cobblestone, if poorly maintained, for the full trail down to Fenbury.

The horse, however, was probably waiting for them at the town hall.  They made their way over slowly.  Aris, having finished working with the injured badger child, respected the slow pace of the two otters and followed behind them. 

The horse was waiting outside the town hall.  He was already hooked up to a sizeable cart behind it.  The cart was loaded up with foods, some small trading supplies, and a blanket that Reya assumed was for her.  Everyone else would probably be walking beside of the cart for the majority of the trip. 

“Where’s Weisk?” Reya asked.

“He’s flying down to Lenwick with word of our departure.  He should be back in five or six days.  He’ll probably reach us while we’re staying in Fenbury.

“Well at least we don’t have to put up with him for the whole trip,” Reya muttered.

“Hey!  Are you the otters I’m supposed to be picking up?” the horse called out to the two of them.

“You were right Aris, they did send a person!”  She said to the beagle.  She then looked back over to the horse and shouted back a response.  “That’s us!  What’s your name, sir?”

“You can call me Walaski!   I assume that one of you is Aris.”

“That’s me,” said the ranger.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you.  What should I call you two?” He asked the otters.

“I’m Reya and this is Torren.”

“It’s a pleasure.  Are you fellows ready to get moving today, or do you have more to attend to before you leave?”

“We’re transporting a prisoner.  As soon as we load both him and the injured otter here into the cart we’ll be ready to go.”

Walaski frowned for a moment.  “I don’t mean to question your judgment ‘bout criminals, but if your guy did that to Mrs. Reya here… I don’t know if it’s a good idea to stick them on the same cart.”

“Oh – uh,” Aris stuttered for a moment.  Reya noted that the perpetually nervous beagle had sounded uncharacteristically confident for the first half of the conversation.  “Her injuries aren’t related to the criminal.”

“I see,” The horse paused for a moment, obviously wondering whether it would be rude to ask what had happened.  Reya didn’t doubt that he had questions.  She’d gotten rid of the gauze on her head the day before and, even though it was healing as well as could be expected, the half of her face that had suffered the worst of the burns was quite an off-putting sight.

“Forest fire,” Reya said before he could decide. 

“Well, I don’t envy you, miss.  I’ll try to keep the trip as smooth as I can manage.”

“Thanks.” She tried to sound cheerful.  She didn’t like people talking about her like she was a cripple, however.  She wasn’t.  At least, not permanently.

She certainly felt like a cripple, however, as Torren slowly helped her up the makeshift stepladder that had been set up in front of the cart.  It was perfectly stable, made up of some leftover wooden crates and logs. 

It was much harder for her to climb up to the cart than it had been for her to get down from her bed in the lodge.  She actually had to push her body upwards with her paws, pressing her tender burns down into the ground with enough force to lift her up.

A squeak escaped her, as much as she tried not to let the pain show, as she pushed herself up onto the first box.  Torren, still next to her for support – both physically and mentally – looked at her with concern.

“I’m fine…” Reya said, “it just hurts a little.  It’s not bad.”  Torren obviously didn’t believe her, but there wasn’t much more that he could do either way. 

Reya climbed the rest of the short way up without a peep, but the pain clearly showed on her face.  She realized that the bed rest hadn’t done quite as much for her paws as she thought it did.  She would have stopped after the first step and asked Aris to fetch some pain-killing tinctures – which she sorely wished she had taken before she left the lodge – but she didn’t want to worry them.  They’d be going on a long and rough ride and Reya didn’t want her friends worrying about her for the whole way.

Torren stayed with her as she lay down on the soft woolen blanket in the small corner that wasn’t packed with trade goods or supplies.  There wasn’t much space, but Torren tried to curl up with her.  It was tight, but Reya liked that.

Reya had a hard time sleeping on beds.  They were too open and loose.  She liked to curl up close to something comfy, and Torren fit that description very well at the moment.  She sighed as she closed her eyes.  It wasn’t night, but she needed the rest.  She may not have been tired enough to fall asleep, but the otter was happy just resting with her eyes shut.

Torren didn’t move either.  She didn’t know how long the two were curled up together.  She heard voices talking wispily in the background of her mind.  She heard the shuffling of boxes and goods stacked inside the card.  And she heard Aris scolding someone for being too loud because they might wake her up.  She didn’t mind though; she was never fully asleep.

She did get pulled back into consciousness as Torren nudged her with his dry nose.  She smiled.  A dry nose meant that it had been as restful for him as it had been for her. 

“Mmmh?” She mumbled. She opened her eyes, and turned her head to see Torren’s response.  He definitely had some trouble talking.  He was on his side, curled around her, completely hiding one of his paws underneath him.  The other paw managed to get his message through though.

‘Moving soon.’  Reya nodded.

“That’s fine.  I’ll be OK, I think.”

‘Just not want surprise,’ Torren struggled to find words that could be adequately said with only one paw.

“Thanks!” She said cheerfully.

“So… uh… you guys are ready, right?”  Aris asked.

“Yeah, I think we’re all set to go.  I’m keeping poor Torren company here.  He’d never make it on foot.”  She could hear both Aris and the horse laughing from the opposite end of the cart.  Torren playfully batted her ear. 

“Oh stop it, you might hurt your poor little paws,” she mocked.  She winced slightly as she rolled over.  There was barely enough space on the small blanket to fit the two of them, but she was able to free up a few inches between them for Torren to be able to talk back to her.

“You’re a great pillow, but you know how much I like to talk.”

‘You won’t let me forget!’

The cart started with a lurch.  Reya and Torren bounced slightly against the blanket as the cart’s wheels began to roll across the unsteady cobblestone.  The blanket was thick enough to cushion the bounces of the cart significantly, but not entirely.  Luckily, it didn’t bother her broken bone.  Aris had made sure to tightly wrap her injured arm to her chest so that it wouldn’t wave around on its own as the cart moved.

‘No problems?’ Torren asked after a few seconds. 

“Everything’s fine,” Reya reassured. “My arm’s bound well and the blanket’s nice on my paws.”

‘Just say something if it starts to hurt, I’m sure we can stop and readjust the blanket for you.  Ok?’

“I’m sure you’ll have no trouble stopping the cart for me,” Reya teased, “what with your strong manly voice and all.”

‘Oh shut up!  I’ll hop out and tap Aris or something.’

Reya giggled, “or I could just ask them to stop.”

‘Well that’s no fun, is it?’

“So if I hurt my broken arm, you think its fun?”

‘That’s not what I meant!’ 

Reya laughed.  “So what?  You just enjoy it a little bit?’

‘No!”

“Oh, I see how it is!”

‘What do you mean?’

“You’re just using my injuries as an excuse for a free ride in the cart.”

Torren feigned a look of indignation.  ‘How dare you!’

“That’s right Torren!”  She stuck her tongue out at him.  “I’ve caught you red-pawed!  This cart you’re stealing a ride on…  Its going straight to a cell for you!”

Torren gasped in shock.  ‘I’ve been found out!  My disguise was no match for the great Reya!  She saw right through me!’

“That’s right, you fiend.  And now I’ve got you exactly where I want you!”

‘Ah… but maybe you’re not as good as you think!’ The larger otter signed slyly.

“Whaddya mean?”

‘I’ve got a hostage!’  He wrapped one of his large paws around Reya’s side, careful to avoid any of her tender exposed skin.  ‘Now all you rangers over there better drop those weapons to the ground.  Make one move and this little otter here gets claws stuck right in ‘er back!’  He said with his free paw.  Contrary to his grandiose speech, he gently rubbed back and forth through her fur.

“I don’t know if I need rescuing just now,” Reya giggled, “that dangerous paw of yours feels pretty good.”

Night came before Reya knew it, and Walaski pulled the cart to a stop.

“This looks good as anywhere to set up for the night.” He snorted as he spoke, Reya guessed that he’d rather have stopped somewhere else.  The ground was pretty ragged.  The forest that they’d started in had never abated; in fact, it had grown denser.  The ground was rough and void of grass.  Small sticks and rocks littered the ground, making a good resting spot hard to come by easily.

“I guess we’re gonna have to dig something out for us to sleep in,” Aris replied, “I – uh – think the two otters are fine up on the cart, so we only really need to work on making spots for us.  I brought blankets for us, but they aren’t very big.  Well, relatively.  Yours is – um – kind of huge.”

Walaski laughed.  “I think you’ll have to do most of the work.  These hooves ain’t much good at clearing sticks.”

“Torren’ll help!” Reya volunteered.

“Ok!”  Aris sounded relieved.  He’d just walked the whole day alongside the cart.  Even with whatever kind of physical training he’d had when becoming a ranger, she figured that he was pretty tired.

‘Thanks Reya!’  Torren signed, rolling his eyes sarcastically.

“What, you want me to help?” She replied innocently, waving a bandaged paw in front of his face.

‘No, no… I get it…’ Torren waved her paw away.  He stood up, groaning, and hopped down to the ground.

It took around an hour for Aris and Torren to clear twigs and rocks out from a large enough space for both the horse and the beagle to sleep in. Walaski spent the time grazing the small bits of grass that grew where light filtered through the canopy.  When he’d exhausted the grass close to the cart, he started to pull from a bundle of hay stuck in the cart.

“You’re making me hungry,” Reya said.

“Well, sorry to say but I’m not in charge of your food.  You should probably be pokin’ the two over there – not physically, I don’t mean.”  That brought a laugh out of the small otter.

“Yeah, I was just saying, you know.  So where’re you from?”

“Lenwick.  Should be back there in three days at this pace, I’d say.”

“I’m technically from Lenwick too!”

“Whaddya mean?”  The horse asked.

“Well, the town I’m from isn’t really big enough to be recognized as a real government.  I think its because they don’t want to have to give us any real government positions or anything.  Everything from the actual city up to our town is technically considered part of Lenwick.  Its just in name only, though.  We don’t pay taxes; too expensive to travel four days to reach us to collect a pittance.  Although, we don’t really get any of the benefits either.  Unless something seriously causes an incident, we’re left to ourselves.”

“Well, lived in Lenwick my whole life and I never knew that!  Learn something every day I guess.”

“Well, we don’t really get talked about much, we do kind of live out on the edge of nowhere.”

“That’s the truth.  I’m surprised you got the money for this here path.  Looks like it’s almost never used from what I see.”

Aris butted in to answer for Walaski.  “This was actually built almost a hundred years ago!  Some official somewhere wanted to expand the kingdom’s territory and figured that if he built the road, people would follow.  It worked for a bit, but it didn’t last.”

“Yeah,” Reya agreed, “there’s not much farmland or anything up there that can’t be settled cheaper than other places.  The fields up there aren’t very big, and can only support about five or six farmers working there.  There’s just not much opportunity up here.” 

“Why’d you and your mate choose to live up here then?”

Reya blushed furiously.  She tried to say something, but a big lump in her throat kept words from coming out.  Aris answered for her.

“Uh – Torren’s not her mate.”

“Oh, sorry ‘bout that.  Honest mistake!  You two seem pretty close.”  Reya could definitely see how the horse could think that she and Torren were together.  She thought of her cuddling with Torren...  He was just being supportive!  She had trouble sleeping alone, and he knew that!  At least she thought he did.  She was sure that she’d told him at one point. 

The small otter instinctively curled herself against the wall of the cart, away from where Torren had been.  Silence dropped across the group for a minute.

“Well, I’m thinking that it’d be nice to get some sleep,” Walaski spoke.

“Yeah,” Reya said quietly.

Torren hopped back up to the cart with Reya, he and Aris had only cleared out enough space for the beagle and horse to sleep somewhat comfortably on.  Torren wouldn’t fit, as much as he might have wanted to avoid the awkwardness of sleeping next to Reya after Walaski’s mistake.

He meekly pushed himself against the opposite end of the small space from her, but there was barely enough room to separate the two.  Reya’s tail was curled around and behind the bigger otter.  She could feel every breath he took; his soft warm fur pushing gently against her tail.  Her face only grew hotter with embarrassment.  After a moment, he broke the embarrassed air of silence between the two.

'Don’t let it bother you… It was just a… a misunderstanding.  Ok?’  Torren smiled nervously.  He was right of course, Reya thought.

“It… um,” Reya whispered, trying not to let Aris or Walaski hear, “it’s OK.  I’m not… bothered by it.  It’s just – you know – pretty embarrassing.  You’re a good friend, I don’t mind having to correct them if I get to keep you as a pillow.”

Torren grinned.  ‘I think that’s a fair deal.’

Reya fell asleep before long, her head pushed up against the warm body of the spotted otter next to her.

 

12: Lenwick

As the cart drew closer to the town, everything seemed more and more civilized.  Log cabins and wooden huts of all different shapes and sizes dotted the road with greater and greater frequency.  The forest grew less dense, with un-removed tree stumps scattered about.  Paths splintered off from the main road and wound off into the forest.

Reya had heard about stone buildings, but she didn’t see any yet.  She could never imagine how those things were constructed.  According to Gither, people would use all kinds of strange tools and techniques to move the large blocks of stone around.  Artaaga could maybe lift things like that, but Reya doubted that bears were the only ones who were hired to build buildings.

As the structures grew denser, Reya began to see the first people, other than Torren, Aris, and Walaski, that she’d seen in three days.  A family of geese played outside one house.  Two antelopes raced past the cart at breakneck speed.  Reya grinned.  She’d love to race Torren like that. 

With a sudden bounce of the cart and a change from the constant vibration to periodic bumps, the gravel path transitioned into a sturdy cobblestone one.  Reya peered over the edge.  The stones were placed close together and had a distinct pattern, unlike the gravel path where stones of every imaginable size scattered the road with no sense of order.

‘Hey!’  Torren waved his paws to catch Reya’s attention.  ‘Look up ahead!’  He scampered up onto one of the boxes to get a better view.  Reya, after a second of struggling, joined him.  They couldn’t see past the wall of buildings on either side of them, but the path continued off into the distance with the buildings shoved together side-by-side.  Everything had its place.  There were small three foot high structures built for rodents and huge fifteen foot tall structures built for equines, primates, or other large people.

She also started to see stone buildings.  Many rodent houses were carved out of stone with wooden supplements and supports.  Reya guessed that stone was easier to maintain on a small scale than wood was.

By that point there were people everywhere.  Walaski cut a swath through a growing crowd of people.  They weren’t stuffed shoulder to shoulder in the streets like Reya had guessed that they’d be, but there were still a number of different animals of every shape and size going in any given direction.

Walaski and Aris were talking the whole way.  Reya couldn’t hear them through the commotion.

“This is incredible!” she whispered to Torren like it was some great secret.

‘I guess it is,’ Torren signed absentmindedly.

“You guess?  What do you mean?”

He smiled.  ‘I’ll have to show you a big city sometime.  There are great towers and keeps of stone…  They’re an incredible sight.’

“I can imagine.  Maybe when all this stuff is over with, you know?   I guess there’s nothing holding me here with Gither gone.”

Walaski pulled the cart off of the main road and twisted and turned through several winding roads before he eventually came to a stop in front of a particularly large stone building.

“What is this place?”  Reya asked quietly.

‘It looks like a prison to me.  Guess this is Talip’s stop.’

 Reya gingerly dropped herself down onto the cobbled pathway.  The stones felt cool and sturdy even through the wrappings over her paws.  Torren looked nervous at first.  He reached out a paw halfway to stop her, but he pulled it back after a moment and she managed to make it down without any complaint.

Aris was walking towards her.  “Oh!  I was going to set something out for you to step on.”

 “I’m fine, don’t worry!”  Reya tried to look thankful.  “So what is this place?”

“This is the Lenwick Rangers’ Headquarters!”  the beagle yipped.  He shifted his eyes around before leaning in to whisper, “I’m not sure why they chose this place.  It’s an ugly monstrosity if you ask me.”

Reya giggled.  It was pretty ugly.  The dark stone building looked derelict and foreboding.  It was at least as tall again as some of the structures next to it.  It gave off the impression that it was plucked from some other place, and not actually meant to be there.  It was disproportionately tall and seemed very thin to be such an important structure.  Reya wondered if the rangers were really unable to find someplace that had more space. 

“You guys’ll have sleeping room in there.  It won’t be much, but it should do,” he continued, “Walaski has his own accommodations with his guild.  Umm…  Anything else I’m forgetting?”

“What about food?”

“Well, you’re free to pick something up in town or come back here.  If Melly’s still here, she’ll probably be able to feed us all.  You can eat meat, right?  Not just fish?” 

“Yup!  Are you staying too?”

“Mhm,” Aris responded, nodding, “They won’t pay for any lodging unless the place gets full.  I don’t think that happens a lot in out-of-the-way towns like this.  Anyway, she’s a badger.  She’ll have some good meat ready; I’ll tell her to avoid worms and stuff for tonight.”

Reya wrinkled her nose.  “I’ll never know how they do it!  Worms are just so… wriggly!”

“And I don’t get how you people can stomach a living thing!”  Walaski interjected.

She chuckled, “I’m just joking.  I get it.  People have different diets.”

“Anyway, to be honest, there’s… eh… not exactly that much to do here.  This’s a lot smaller than Fenbury,” Aris said.

“Really?  But there are so many houses!  You literally couldn’t see a tree from the main road either way you looked!”
“Well, we were pretty close to the center of town.  It’s only about a five to ten minute walk to get back to the forest from the dead center of Lenwick.  It could take half an hour to find your way out of Fenbury!”

“So, um, before we leave, what exactly is there to do around here?  You sound like you know this place pretty well, Aris.”  She glanced at Walaski, “Oh!  Well you’re probably the expert on this!”

The horse gave a deep throaty laugh.  “I’m off traveling more often than I’m actually here, but yeah, me ‘n Lenwick are pretty close. There’s not much to do, really.  There’re some stalls in the town square with food and trinkets.  Some gallows and a pretty lookin’ fountain in the same area.  Can’t say there’s really much else though.”

“Oh,” Reya sighed, “how long are we going to be here?”

Aris laughed, “just two days!  I’ve got to ship some of this stuff off at the port and then get the cart ready for some actual travel.”

“Why don’t we just go by boat?”

“Well, um, it’s a bit expensive,” the beagle said sheepishly, “I don’t think the Rangers would fund us.  I’m mostly sending off farmed goods from your home town.”

Reya nodded.  “You ready to carry me around, Torren?”

Torren jumped down next to her, a small satchel hanging from his neck.  He rolled his eyes. ‘Of course.  Anything for you, your grace.’

“Good!  Let’s ditch these suckers!”

Reya leaned against her friend and started to slowly walk away, only pausing to turn her head and stick her tongue out at the two snickering animals behind her.

“So… um… do you know where we’re going?”

‘Aris said that this is a really small town… It can’t be too hard to get to the center, right?’

It took a while to get to the town square, but the two otters made it there without much confusion.  The streets of the city wrapped around the circular town square in larger and larger arcs until they petered out into the forest.  Reya learned this from a rather cordial barn owl who she asked how to get to the town square. 

She then had him explain exactly how everything looked from the sky.  Torren didn’t seem very interested and tried to pull her away.  Reya, however, didn’t give up easily.  She was soon drawn into a long conversation bouncing from what the world looked like in the winter from the sky to the many different medical supplies that she normally ordered from cities.  She could tell that the second point of conversation quickly started to wear on the owl.  He eventually flew away, citing some job at the Avian Association that he was late for. 

People were staring at Reya.  There were a few glances when she was on the cart, but her bandages weren’t as visible then.  Now she was out in the open, and everyone was looking at her.  It was the best she could do to keep conversation with the owl going and not pay attention to anyone else.

Torren growled softly at two rodents who were talking about her as she was explaining precisely what fireweed was and how the stems could be used to calm a fever.  She tried not to look like she noticed, but she did.

It took the two otters about twenty minutes to make it to the town square; Reya had to stop to rest twice.  When she made it, however, she felt like she could never get tired again.  It was incredible!  Seven terraced marble ledges spread out underneath the spout, a detailed sculpture of two dancing foxes locked in a kiss.  Many townsfolk were collected around its edges, filling their buckets with the clear flowing water.

Street peddlers wove a ring around the outside edge of the circular town square.  Most had just a small wheeled platform to sell their wares on.  Some had full wheeled wooden shop-faces and some had nothing but a ragged cloth.

“How do they keep the water coming out?  Is this built over a spring?”

‘No idea.”

“Oh!  Do you smell that?”  Something nearby smelled absolutely delicious.  It was fragrant and inviting, warm and aromatic.  Reya immediately spotted the source.  One peddler, a large burly cat, was cooking a large shank of meat over smoking charcoals.  He had a luxurious golden mane around his neck and a long thin tail that ended in a tassel.  She’d never seen one of his kind before, but from what Gither had told her of the different intelligent species of the world, she was sure he was a lion.

Salivating, she watched him slice of a long strip of it with one of his sharp claws and set it over flatbread covered with herbs.  He drizzled some sauce over the top.  It sizzled and released a hearty aroma into the air.

‘You want one?’  Torren asked.

The smaller otter’s eyes lit up in excitement.  “Yeah!  They smell so good!”

‘How much?’  Reya trotted over to the lion and repeated Torren’s question.

“Ah!  You’re interested in one of my delicious Etresian flatbreads!  Nothing in all of Lenwick will leave you more satisfied!  Now, my normal price is five coin, but for a pretty little otter like yourself I’ll knock it down one.  How does four sound?”

 Torren elbowed her before she could say anything.

‘Six for two.’

“What?”  She whispered.

‘Offer five coin for two.’

“Um… How about five for two of them?”

The lion laughed a hearty laugh that, coming from a lion, was rather frightening.  “I’m already trying to give you a deal, sweetie!  I can’t just give these things away!  I’ll tell you what though.  Since your friend there wants some for himself, I’ll give you them both for seven.”

‘I’m sorry, but we just don’t have that much coin.  I can give you six, but that’s all we can afford.’

“Spotty there has a funny way of talking.  What’s ‘e trying to say?”

“I – uh – we don’t really have that much money.  We can pay six for the two of them, but that’s it…  Sorry…”

“I don’t know, running this stand isn’t cheap and that price is awfully close to what it takes to make these things!  Selling ‘m for 3 each could run me out of business!” 

Torren nudged Reya and started to pull away.  She was about to ask him why they were leaving when he signed for her to be quiet.  She nodded and began to walk away with him, her ears flat against her head and her face drooping with disappointment.

“Hey!  Fine!  I’ll do it, just get back here!” 

Torren grinned and gently nudged the smaller otter.  Reya whirled around, beaming with excitement.  In her eagerness, the gauze wrapped tip of her tail whacked against a groundhog who grunted a few choice words that she certainly didn’t approve of.  She winced slightly; her tail was still sore. 

In a few seconds Torren was back at her side helping to ease the pressure on her limbs.  She saw the glint of metal clutched in his big paw.  He dropped the 5 coins, stamped out of a silvery metal, in front of the peddler.

“Now this is a one-time deal, you hear?  I figure you look like you could use a bit of a break.  Next time you come back, it’ll be 5 coins each like it is for everyone else!”

Reya smiled a big toothy smile at the lion.  “Thanks, sir!  They smell delicious.”

The two otters took their meals next to the fountain; splashed water made the stone cleaner than anywhere else on the well-trodden road.  Torren didn’t say anything, but his expression told Reya that he was very happy with himself.  The spotted otter was already walking with three legs, using one of his forepaws to precariously balance the flatbread, so he didn’t have any paws to spare for chitchat, anyway.  Reya was holding hers similarly, but she had the advantage of not needing her limbs to talk.

“So I guess that was it, huh?  You made six coins from your work?  Well thanks so much for this!  It smells absolutely amazing!  I’ve had meat before several times – I normally just eat fish, you know.  I lived right near the river so it’s really easy for me to just catch some whenever I’m hungry.  But this smells so much better than anything Gither every cooked up for us! 

“My brother was such a terrible cook, you wouldn’t believe it!  You’d think that after like fifteen years of cooking the same fish from the same river he’d have gotten a bit better.  Nope!  I have this running theory that he lost his sense of taste in some tragic accident as a pup.  Either that or he just likes his fish black, completely dry, and so covered in salt or whatever spices we had with us that you couldn’t even taste the fish through it!”

She set her flatbread carefully down on one of the stones lining the rim of the fountain.  “This looks like a good spot.”

Torren nodded and sat himself down next to her.  With his paws free, he started to talk.

‘That wasn’t it!  Don’t worry, I still have some money left.’

Reya gave him an odd look.  “Why’d you lie to that lion guy?  He seemed nice.”

‘He’s Etresian!  I don’t know how much you people haggle up here, but Etresians are famous for it.’

“Oh!  I wouldn’t know anyway…”  Reya said with a slight blush, “I’ve never really dealt with money before.  I don’t think my brother ever really saw the need.  I mean, he did all the work and he paid for everything we needed himself.  Besides, people shared most things anyway.”

She took a bite of the bread and was not at all disappointed.  The spices all blended with the hearty taste of the meat and the surprisingly light flatbread.  She sighed in satisfaction.

‘Good?’

“Excellent!  I’ve never had anything that’s tasted like this before.  I bet he used all kinds of exotic Etresian spices on this thing.  Mmph…” She tore another bite from the rapidly disappearing morsel.  “If all food in the Etresian desert tastes like this, I might just go there and never come back!” 

‘You’ll have to take me with you!’  Torren agreed as he chewed on his own mouthful.

They finished their meals and spent the rest of the afternoon slowly wandering around the town.  By the time they made it back to the Ranger headquarters the sun was beginning to set.

Torren used the low handle and pushed the door open with a loud and slow creaking.  From deep inside Reya heard a thump, a loud clattering, and then the distinct sound of a frenzied scuttle of claws against wood.  A frazzled badger stumbled down the spiral staircase on the other side of the room.

“Ah!  You must be the otters Aris was talking about!  Come in, come in!  I didn’t expect you so early – oh!  It’s already getting dark outside!  Well time sure flies, doesn’t it?”

“You’re Melly?”  Reya asked as she cautiously entered the room.  Her nose tilted up to catch a soft scent of pine wood and moss.

“That’s right!  You must be Reya, and the big guy next to you must be Torren!  No need to respond to me, spots!  Doggie boy said that you’re not much of a talker.  I haven’t quite started on dinner yet, but please make yourselves at home!  You’ll be staying upstairs, so I set out some mats for you guys.  They’re not the best, but they’ll do, right?  I always find that when I get back from a trip I can sleep on just about anything, those mats will seem like fluffy downy beds fitted for royalty, I’m sure! 

“But that’s enough of that!  I’m here talking, and you guys must be starving, it’s so late already.  I’ll get to work right away on the stew.  Aris said that you otters like meat as well as fish.  That’s right, right?  Well I’m sure we have some fish to toss into the pot.  There’s meat in there already, but I know you otters like your fish!  I’ll call you when its ready!”  Without waiting for a response, the badger turned tail and scuttled down the steps and underground.

“Well then,” said Reya.

‘I didn’t even think you could talk that fast!’

“Oh shut up!  Let’s check out the beds.  Melly was right, I feel I could sleep just about anywhere after being stuck up in that cart for all those days.”

Torren helped her up the steps.  The upper room had boxes piled all around the wall and shelves filled with all sorts of odds and ends wherever there weren’t boxes.  In the center of the room, a circular space was cleared out with four wool mats spread out on the ground.  Underneath each mat was a strip of leather to soften the firmness of the wood floor underneath.  A candle burned on a wide thin metal tray in the middle of the room.  One box was knocked over, several sheets of chainmail spilling onto the ground.

Reya wandered over to the window.  She couldn’t see far past the row of buildings on the opposite side, but she could see the mountains towering far off to the north.  The same mountains that she could see from her own home.  She found that to be somewhat comforting.

 

13: The Crystal River

Reya’s stomach growled.  She hadn’t eaten for the entire day yesterday.  Aris and Torren had probably eaten some kind of meal while she had still been asleep in the lodge, but – at her request – they only brought food for her if she asked.

And then, when she had been ready for dinner as Walaski was chomping away at his grains, she’d been completely distracted by his mistake.  Reya cursed herself silently.  She let herself get distracted too easily… but it was so very comfy snuggled up on the blanket with her friend.

Shaking the thought out of her head, Reya poked at the still sleeping otter’s face with her good paw.  He groaned and half-opened his eyes.

‘Are we going already…?’ He signed sloppily.

“I’m hungry,” Reya whispered.

‘Reya…  It’s the middle of the night.  Can’t you wait?’

“I can’t sleep.  My stomach won’t let me.”

‘Ok… I’ll see if I can root something out for us.’

“Us?  I’m the hungry one here!”

‘Hey!  I didn’t have dinner either,’ Torren protested.

“Well you can take care of that yourself.”  Reya smirked.

‘I’m also taking care of you myself.”

“Well hurry up and get on it, then!”

Torren pulled himself away from Reya and stood up.  He yawned and stretched himself out as much as he could in the limited space that the otters shared.  He climbed up over a piece of tanned hide that protected trade goods from the elements and began to nose his way through the supplies.

He shuffled through the different goods, but suddenly stopped cold.  Reya watched his fur suddenly stand on end.  He quickly readjusted himself, however, and continued to search.

“W-what was that?” Reya asked.

Torren quickly dropped back down with Reya and nosed a salted trout at her.  ‘Here you go.’

“What did you see back there?”

‘Talip.’

“Oh.”

‘He’s bound and gagged in a small cage.  Don’t worry, there’s no way he’d get out.’  Torren must have seen the concern on her face.

“But you could do it!  You could burn it all away!  How do we know he can’t?”

‘Um… Aris said that power like that is really rare.  I don’t think that I can really do anything else, and I bet he can’t either.’

“How could you know that?” Reya demanded.

‘I’ve only really done… it… four times, but the first time was a long time ago.  I think that I’d know if I could do more.  I don’t think Talip can either.”

“So… What happened that first time?" she asked curiously, “If magic is connected to emotion, it must have been something big.  Am I right?”  This was a rare opportunity for Reya since the larger otter talked so little about himself.  However, as soon as the last words came out of her maw, she knew that she’d made a mistake. 

'I’m sorry, I really don’t want to talk about it.' If Torren’s paws could mumble, that’s what they would’ve been doing.  His eyes dropped to the blanket they were on, looking straight through it as if it weren’t even there. 

“I’m sorry, Torren!  I just thought it would have been something cool, you know?  Like fighting off that cat in the forest!  I mean, you said it was caused by anger, right?  Well, you know…”

Reya shut herself up.  Torren wasn’t even paying attention to her.  Or if he was, he was trying his best to pretend not to.  His head was between his paws, now stationary and non-verbal.  Reya took the hint.  Her friend was done talking.

“I’m sorry again…  I guess I keep bringing whatever it was up.   Oh!  Sorry!  I- I’ll be quiet, I promise!”  With no further response from the bigger otter, she began to nibble at the trout.  It wasn’t very good.  Food needed a lot of salt to keep from going bad over trips, especially meat.  If this was for three to four days, she shuddered to think of what they’d be eating on the half-month trip to Fenbury.

Torren was still motionless when she’d eaten halfway through her meal of preserved fish.  He was still completely still when she picked the bones clean and tossed them out onto the road.

“This is getting ridiculous.  Just tell me if you don’t want to talk to me, ok?  It looks like you’re going into a coma right there.”

Torren lifted up his right paw and sloppily signed, ‘I don’t want to talk to you right now.’

“Oh.”  His response sent what felt like an ice cold knife into her gut.  He’d playfully told her to shut up before, but he’d never meant it like this.  He’d never meant it like Gither always did.  And this time she could hear Gither coldly telling her that no one cared what she was saying right now as Torren’s paws outlined the words.

“Okay…”  She lay her head down next to his.  She wouldn’t talk since she knew she’d only make him more upset, but she wanted to show her support if she could.  Even if what he’d said had hurt, she trusted that he had his reasons.  The little otter had known him for quite some time now and she didn’t feel like he’d brush her off like that without a reason.

The cart jerked up suddenly and Reya bounced along with it.  She looked around, her eyes quickly adjusting to the bright sunlight.  The sun was near the middle of the sky.  It was almost noon.  She had absolutely no clue how she’d managed to sleep through that much of the day with the cart moving over such a bumpy path.

“Sorry about that!”  Walaski called, “wheel went in a bit of a hole there.”

Torren wasn’t next to her.  It was for the better, though.  If he spent as long in the cart as she did, he’d lose his muscles even faster than she’d wear out his ears.

“Its fine!”  Reya called back, “are we close to a watering hole, by any chance?”

“There should be enough in the flasks in the cart to last you to Lenwick.”

“They should be near the top right?  Which side?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” Aris interjected.

“I’m fine!  Where are they?”

“They should be in the crate to your right.” 

Reya stifled a groan as she pushed herself to her feet.  She pulled back the treated hide covering the crate without too much trouble.  The gauze made it difficult to grip with her paws, but her teeth were perfectly fine.  Inside the crate were several pouches that looked like they were made out of the same material as the hide she had just pulled aside. 

She reached in and pulled one out with her teeth.  There was a small wooden stopper in the top which she popped out, trying to balance the spout upright.  If she spilled the water, it would set back the bit of physical independence that she had been desperately trying to uphold.

She drank the water in big gulps; she was very thirsty.  The sky was cloudy with no sun and the fall air was cool and crisp, but she had still gone a fairly long time without drinking anything.  Now that she had food and water in her stomach, she was feeling a lot better.  A lot less irritable too.

After slipping the empty pouch back into the box, she tried to put the covering back on top of the crate.  Covering it back over was a lot harder with wrapped paws than uncovering it had been.  After a moment of fumbling, she gave up.  Torren would take care of it for her later.  As much as she tried not to let her crippling burns hinder her completely, she begrudgingly accepted that she wouldn’t be able to do some simple tasks.

An hour later rain began to fall.  Reya normally liked rain, but this was different.  It was usually comforting and now it felt caging.  It was normally calming, but now she couldn’t think past the pounding on her head. 

Her paws and tail felt as heavy as rocks with the wet gauze absorbing the water and weighing her down.  She wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t.  The small otter had slept enough in the last day that she wasn’t remotely tired.  Instead, she rested on the soaked blanket with her eyes open, watching as the same landscape passed her by again and again.  The gravel path was lined with tall deciduous trees.  The saturated hues of the leaves, the brilliant oranges, reds, and golds, were diluted with the heavy rainstorm.  Thunder crackled off in the distance.  She definitely wasn’t getting any sleep. 

Aris and Walaski were being just as quiet as she was.  The mood was somber all around.  It didn’t get much better either.  The rain continued into the night and they stopped to rest without a word.  Torren signed with Reya for a few minutes before they went to sleep, but even her drive for conversation was suppressed. 

The next day was just as miserable.  It stayed cloudy, and even at the end of the day both Reya’s wrappings and fur were still damp.  It wouldn’t normally bother her, but she hadn’t groomed herself in a while.  Without grooming, otter fur quickly lost its waterproof quality.  She wondered how Torren was doing.

“How’s your fur holding up?” She asked as they stopped for lunch.

‘Pretty wet,’ he signed back tersely as he chomped down a mouthful of fish.  Reya translated, laughing as she did so.

“What’s so funny with that?”  Walaski asked, “We’re all pretty soaked, honestly.”

“At least I have an excuse to not be grooming!  This guy has every single one of his paws!”  The beagle and the horse were confused until she quickly explained that grooming kept an otter’s fur relatively waterproof.

Aris looked at his feet, not laughing.

“Oh my gosh!  You aren’t grooming either?  Walaski?  Jeez!  We’re gonna smell worse than sheep in a desert.”

‘Should I tell them how often you groomed before you got hurt?’  Torren teased.

“Sure!  I just hope they don’t have too much trouble understanding you,” Reya said sweetly.

Torren rolled his eyes, but he went on anyway.  ‘The last time you groomed yourself was… what?  Half a moon before the fire?  A full moon?  And that was just because you were annoyed having to dry out after swimming!”

Reya translated for him out of courtesy, although she didn’t use the same cheerful tones that big otter’s paws emulated.  Walaski guffawed and Aris tried to hide his laughter.  Reya just stood red in the face.

‘You didn’t have to say that, you know,’ Torren said, obviously laughing himself.

“It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t,” she snapped back tartly.

Torren went back to the cart with her.  He rested alongside the little otter for the rest of the afternoon while they continued their journey.  The path had finally come down and bits of the crystal river were visible through the trees and down the harsh slope to the side of the path.

The road angled downwards, however, and every hour drew them closer to the flowing water.  Reya really wanted to refresh herself in the river.  She’d never even been this far from her home as long as she could remember.  She’d heard stories, though.  The water of the crystal river was supposed to be so clear and clean that it shone like crystal.  She could see from up on the path that that had been a severe exaggeration.

Maybe if it was in the right light it would look more like what she envisioned, but the water still looked very clean and refreshing, even from a distance.  Reya couldn’t wait to get down there.

She wondered how many other otters were down there fervently trying to get their last hauls of fish before the winter hit.  Reya always imagined that it had to be the most fun job ever.  If she weren’t so invested in her job as a healer, she would love to go into fishing.  Every day she’d get to swim all through her territory checking her nets and putting up new ones. 

Of course, she loved healing people too.  There was nothing like the expression on a mother’s face when she tended to their child’s wounds and eased its pain.  Reya smiled.  She wondered if Aris had felt her appreciation for everything he’d done for her.  She’d have to thank him again sometime soon.

It barely seemed like any time at all before the crystal river was level with the road.  More signs of life also started to become visible.  She could spot the carved symbols warning intelligent animals of traps set in the woods.  Small huts and dens were set up by the river where some people would stay on their trip out or back from Fenwick as they commuted back and forth.  Some of the huts were probably inhabited right now.  It was time for the last harvests of the season and people would be carting goods to and from the city.

Reya didn’t spot anyone, though.  It was becoming dark and people were probably getting ready for a night of sleep or finishing their evening meal.

It felt so different.

She lived right near a river herself, but she and Gither were really the closest to the river of any civilized people in her town.  The riverside was natural and nearly untouched.  It wasn’t quite as clear – there was a lot of mud and plenty of aquatic life to stir the mud up.

“We’re five hours away,” Walaski stated, “do we want to stay the night or keep going?”

“Let’s stay the night,” Reya said.  She looked longingly at the river.  She wanted to get to the town, but the prospect of swimming was too enticing.  Torren must have seen the look on her face as she stared out at the flowing water.

‘Will you be okay with your broken arm?’

Reya nodded.  “I think it’s strapped in good enough!”

“What?” asked Aris.

“I’m going swimming!” Reya called back, “wanna join me?”

The beagle just groaned.  “I think I’m wet enough.”

“Yeah, on second thought, you dogs tend to stink when you’re wet.”

“Hey!”

“Its true, isn’t it!”

“No!  Not true!”

“Well, prove me wrong!”

Aris was silent for a moment.  “Fine.  You win.”

Reya’s face brightened in happiness.  “Walaski!  Can we stop here?”

“Yeah, guess this’s as good a place as any.  Go ahead.”

“You’re invited too, ya know!”

The horse chortled.  “I ain’t quite as stable in the water.  Think I’ll sit this one out.”

“You sure?  It’s not all that deep.”

“Yeah.  I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Reya agreed.  “But if Torren doesn’t get his butt in the water I’m throwing a fit.”

Torren laughed a silent laugh and began to pull himself up from her side.  He pulled the box with the water flasks down from the cart and let it land on the ground with a thump.

‘I thought you’d need something to help you get down.’

“I was fine!” Reya offered a token of protest, but she let him know that she appreciated his gesture with a quick brush of her fur against his.

She stepped down onto the box, wobbling on at the unstable hide-covered top, and then quickly stepped down onto the ground.

It was actually a lot easier than two days prior.  Even though she hadn’t used her legs at all on the trip, the light bouncing of the cart must have given her muscles some stimulation.  Her broken arm wasn’t any better for the bouncing, however.  It had been aching more than usual for the past day. 

She didn’t tell anyone, she didn’t want to worry her friends, but the pain in her broken limb had been getting worse as they kept moving.  It definitely wasn’t good for her to keep her arm bouncing as it tried to set itself.  She knew, however, that most of the major bone healing was done in the first week of a break and she was confident that she was past that.  The movement may delay its full recovery, but it wouldn’t cause any real issues as far as she was aware.

She walked next to Torren again.  He supported her as much as she would let him.  She was walking better now.  It hurt.  It would hurt for a long time.  But it was definitely bearable.  She could go for decent walks like this; she just needed to be careful about agitating her wounds.

However, her shoulder’s pushed against his more often than not.  Even if her feet were able to take the pain, her legs were weary and weak.  In the short walk over to the river what slowed her the most were her atrophied muscles.

 “So this is why they call it the crystal river,” Reya commented, more to herself than anyone else.  Torren agreed with a nod.

It was wide and clear.  The sun was setting to the west and the surface shone with brilliant red and purple hues splayed across the clear surface.  The colors seemed to shimmer off the surface, sparkling as if it were hiding thousands of tiny crystals. 

Reya nearly couldn’t believe her eyes.  It was perhaps the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  Something as brilliant like this existed so close to her home, her dull unremarkable home, and she had never even taken the three days it took to see it.

As the sun slowly descended into its slumber, the colors danced across the surface, playing with each other and shifting the sparkling illusory gems.  Reya didn’t want to miss it.  Ignoring Torren, who looked as fascinated as she was, she waded ahead into the moving river.

In a split second she was underwater and speeding around like a feral boar was on her tail.  Her mobility didn’t come so much from her paws as it did from her long lithe body and rudder tail.  She launched herself through a small school of fish and back to the surface.

Color exploded around her.  She had thought that everything would seem less dazzling when she was in its midst, as if the brilliant reflections were just a trick of her eyes visible just from shore.  Yet when she surfaced, everything shone around her.  Everything was sparkling in the twilight. 

She felt vibrations in the water behind her and braced herself as the big spotted otter burst out and playfully let himself fall down on top of her.  She wiggled around and then popped back up into the air. 

“Can’t even keep down a cripple!”  Reya taunted.

‘Like anyone could ever call you a cripple!’  She splashed him with her good forepaw.  The bandaging made it hard to scoop the water, but she managed a small splash.  They both stood still in the water, as still as they could be in the gentle current.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

‘Yeah.  It’s pretty amazing.’

14: Sente

Reya could hear the expletives coming up the stairway before she could see the cat, its ghostly pale face, or the shoulder dripping blood from a long gash.

“Siv!” Aris nearly turned head over heels as he ran to the feline.  “What h-happened?”

“What do you think happened?  What’s the only fucking thing that could ever possibly happen in this boring shithole of a town?  Just give me a fucking guess.”

“No…” gasped Melly.

“Yup, we’ve got a weasel carcass out there with a big ass indentation that looks an awful lot like a horseshoe.  Townsfolk’re on the edge of a riot.”  Reya looked at Torren.  He still had a large scoop of stew churning slowly in his mouth.  He met her eyes and then turned back to look at Aris.

The beagle was busy inspecting the wound on the cats shoulder.  Siv shrugged him off, turning until the dog was on his good side.  Aris didn’t push the issue, and backed up.

“Whether whatever horse did it intended to kill that weasel or not, we need to get it out of the town as soon as possible.  What’s it look like right now?” Melly chimed in.

“That Etresian guy… the fuck’s his name again?  Whatever.  He’s holding people off until you can get there to talk some sense.”

“Aris, suit up and find me as soon as possible,” the badger bounded down the steps without another word.  Aris scampered after her.  He paused for a moment at the top of the steps, turning his attention back on the smaller otter.

“Reya, take a look at his shoulder, please!  Don’t let him go if it’s anything worse than a scrape.”

Siv groaned.  “Thanks, mom.”  He turned to follow Aris, but only took a single step before the firm grip of Torren’s teeth clenched around the scruff of his neck.

“Torren!  Stop!”  Reya cried out, startled, “he got bit in the shoulder, you could really hurt him if you carry him like that!”  Torren immediately dropped the cat, who, having already shown his displeasure, seemed to have given up. 

Reya tried to push the fur around the wound to the side, but she still had trouble identifying the severity of the cut.  Siv’s constant twitching and cursing didn’t help.  From what she was able to see, it didn’t seem like a bad injury, but the blood made it difficult to get a good look. 

“I need cold water and some clean cloth,” she mumbled to herself.  “Torren, please keep him here for me.”  He nodded after a moment of hesitation, and a not-so-subtle glance at her bandaged paws.  “Don’t move!” She commanded the cat who was still wincing at the pain of his wound being touched.

Reya limped quickly down towards the basement.  She nearly tripped as she was turning past the ground floor and caught a short glimpse of Aris fumbling to fit his small crossbow to the side of his outfit; however, she caught herself and moved on. 

The basement was a cold stone room.  Candles in various stages of melting were scattered haphazardly over the floor and counter-tops.  It also had several stacks of boxes near its edges, but was mostly filled with a disorganized mess of preservable foods and drinks.  She didn’t see any water, but there was plenty of beer.

She grabbed a bottle of whiskey from a nearby counter-top.  Alcohol wasn’t as good as simple salt water for cleaning out open wounds.  It’s not that alcohol wasn’t effective, it was slightly too effective.  Whereas salt water rinsed a wound out and cleaned any dirt or grime, alcohol burned away the rot alongside the blood and flesh around it, which led to a much slower healing process.  However, with a bite wound, she didn’t just have to deal with dirt and grime, the real danger was in the other animal’s saliva.  The otter grimaced as she thought about how much less Siv was about to like her.  She’d just met him too!  She didn’t like leaving poor first impressions.  Nevertheless, she knew that she had to do what she had to do.

Reya snagged a cleaning rag from the counter-top next to what was frankly the biggest pot of stew she had ever seen.  The clean beige rag was easy to spot in contrast to the absolutely filthy countertop.  The little otter’s stomach flipped and she quickly backed away from the rancid stench.  After whispering a word of thanks that she hadn’t seen any of Melly’s handiwork before she ate the stew, Reya slung one of the many small knapsacks hung on pegs in the wall around her neck, careful not to let it bump into her broken paw, fitted the flask inside and cloth inside, and turned tail out of the basement. 

When she reemerged into the attic Siv was sporting a scowling face, a tail twitching with agitation, and a back turned to the hapless looking Torren.  Reya didn’t even have to ask what was wrong, a single roll of the big otter’s eyes told her everything.

“Your fucking bodyguard here-”

“Won’t say anything.  Yeah, I know,” Reya finished for the cat, “he’s mute.”

“Shit.”

“Yup.”  She tried to look as serious as possible. His swearing did annoy her and helped to keep her indignation from sounding completely fake.  Torren obviously wasn’t falling for it, but he didn’t, and couldn’t, say anything to give her away. 

“So-”

“Mhm, you’re being a huge jerk,” the otter paused, trying to drag out the silence for as long as she could without him interjecting.  After half of a second, she realized that she’d have more fun talking than she would trying to toy with the cat’s awkward situation.  “Make it up for him by staying still while I do this, okay?”

The cat grunted and turned his head away from the two otters.  “Whatever.  Just get it over with.”

Reya limped over to Siv and dropped the knapsack onto the ground.  He looked startled for a moment, but the surprise quickly dropped from his face.  The otter suspected that he hadn’t noticed her injury until now.  She briefly considered teasing him about it, but she already felt guilty herself for guilting him into good behavior.  However, with the tense silence that had descended upon the room, she found herself itching to talk.

“So you’re a Ranger, right?”

“Obviously,” he venomously retorted.

She winced.  His type was never fun to talk to.  The cat was acting like one of the annoying tax collectors that periodically came around to town; pompous and uncaring, with a better-than-you attitude.  She preferred the company of self-indulgent stuck-ups like Weisk to the uncaring jerks that Siv was acting like.  She couldn’t imagine how Melly put up with him.

However, Reya did not like to give up.

“That’s so cool!  Why’d you come work so far up here?  Did you grow up around here?”  She used her teeth to pop the cork off of the alcohol as she spoke; the pungent stench of strong whiskey wafting out.  Reya folded the rag around the neck of the flask and carefully poured the alcohol against it.  Some of the pungent liquid splashed out, but she didn’t think that she could avoid that with only a single working forepaw.  Siv seemed to be ignoring her.

“You want some?”  Reya asked.  It wasn’t her whiskey, so she was a bit uneasy about liberally handing it out, but she was sure that Melly wouldn’t mind, especially since it was for medicinal purposes.  If it would happen to loosen Siv’s lips a bit, she wouldn’t complain.  Either he saw straight through her or was just a sucker for pain, because he didn’t say a word.

“Okay, it looks like you’ve bled as much as you’re going to bleed.  It can’t be older than ten minutes right?  Geez, you really should have gotten here faster!  Anyway, I’m just going to go straight to cleaning it out.  Hold still for me, ok?”

The small otter winced for him as she dabbed the cloth into his wound, gently pulling away any dirt that clung to the surface.  He cringed, but stayed quiet, with a look on his face that reminded Reya of a rebellious child unwilling to acknowledge its parents.  She nearly broke a smile as the image popped into her mind, but she didn’t think that it would be appropriate at the moment, so she held it back.  She’d have to remember to mention it to Torren later.

“All right, good job!  The next bit’s going to hurt a bit more, but you should be fine with how you handled that!”  Reya tried to hold a smile, but the cat’s attitude was making it very hard.  “Torren, grab some…”  She nearly dropped the cloth back onto Siv’s shoulder as she turned to the larger otter in shock, her eyes wide as saucers. 

“My herbs!  The stuff you got from the fire!  What happened to it?!”  She demanded in a panic.

‘Don’t worry!  They’re downstairs!  Want me to get them?’  Torren signed earnestly.  Reya’s breathing fell back to a normal pace quickly, but her heart kept on beating like a drum.

“And the… the…” She signed the word for book with her one paw.  She couldn’t have signed with both paws together anyway, but the sign for book was very obviously a book and she didn’t want the cat to get any ideas.  He seemed less like a noble true-hearted Ranger like she saw Aris as, and more like a hound of the law.  And the law wouldn’t like to find words written in the old script.

‘It’s here as well, don’t worry.’  Torren signed back as he scurried down the staircase. 

She breathed a sigh of relief.  Until now, the book had been in a back corner of her mind; she hadn’t studied with Torren since before the fire.  She was never particularly nationalistic, so learning how the old script worked hadn’t really bothered her.  In her small corner of the world, the only presence of the government was the small yearly tax and the help of the Rangers if particularly heinous criminals found themselves in the region.  National law was often taken with a grain of salt.  Local law and group ethics usually trumped everything else.

Lenwick was on the edges of the kingdom, but the government made a much greater effort to keep the small port city under control than it did Lenwick’s subsidiaries and offshoots.  Even despite her location, Reya didn’t think that sharing her blatant treason around a branch of the military, even a relatively independent one, was a good idea.

The cat was twitching his ear in irritation.  She could tell that he was curious, his body movements were completely betraying his resolve to be an irreconcilable dick.  Reya, wasn’t as happy about this break in his mental fortitude as she would have been in other circumstances.

“So – uh – just give me a moment, Torren’s fetching the bandages!  He shouldn’t be more than a moment!”

Siv nodded and let the two of them fall back into silence.  Reya wiped the visible grime off of the rag in the meantime, lost for anything to do.  She was about to tell him how to treat his wound, but he surprisingly spoke first.

“A fire…  That’s what happened to you?”  He turned his harsh yellow eyes to Reya’s. 

She hadn’t expected this.  She didn’t even realize that she’d mentioned the fire until just then.  Reya was at least happy that he hadn’t asked about whatever it was that she had asked Torren about.  However, the question had caught her off guard and it took her a moment to get her composure back.

“Y-Yeah, the broken one was actually my fault though!”  She tried to force a small laugh.  The cat didn’t seem to think it was that funny.  “I couldn’t sit still after, you know?  Anyway, I may have gone a bit too hard on it!”  As she thought about it, the ever-present throb of pain resurfaced to the forefront of her brain.

And the reason for it.  Reya clearly saw Sylvia’s still-warm corpse flat on the cold stone table where she had lived her last few moments; a harsh impersonal tomb unbefitting of such a loving friend.  Her stomach was hopping around as she thought of the rabbit.  A lump grew in her throat and her breathing became ragged.  She held it back as best she could.

She could see through blurred vision that the cat was waiting for a response of some kind.  She hadn’t heard a question.

“What-was-that?”  Reya asked in a single breath.

“…  Nothing.”

“Oh.”

She didn’t feel like talking after that; she just felt sore and exhausted.  After Torren returned, she finished dressing the cat’s wound.  The straw bedding on the ground looked incredibly inviting.  She hadn’t slept in anything resembling a real bed for almost six days at that point.  With a nod of good night from Torren, she quickly fell asleep.

A shrill scream of pain from off in the distance woke her up.  A glance at the window told her that it was still the middle of the night.  Torren was sitting, alert, next to the staircase.  Siv was nowhere to be seen.

“You shouldn’t have let him go,” she mumbled. 

‘Maybe not,’ Torren agreed, ‘but whatever’s going on, Aris and Melly might need him.’

“How long’s it been?”

‘Since they left?  I’d say two hours, but you can’t trust your sense of time under pressure like this.’

“Do you think it’s that bad?”  The look in Torren’s eyes – anxious and fierce – told her the answer before she even asked the question.

‘Yes.’

“That scream…”

‘They’ve been going on for a while now.’

“I should –”

‘No, you can’t!’  Torren cut her off with a furious wave of his paws, ‘You’re in no shape to do anything.’

The thought of asking Torren to go help crossed Reya’s mind, but she selfishly decided against it.  Based on Melly’s reaction earlier, whatever was going on right now was serious, and she didn’t want the larger otter away from her side. 

Still.

“I think we need to get out of here.”

‘Why?’

“We’re cornered here.  If people try to storm this place, we’ll be trapped… and who knows what they’d do.”

‘But why here?’

“Aris said that the horses are a big political thing.  If they escalate the rioting against the government, they’ll be here as soon as they break into the city hall.”

Torren thought for a minute and then nodded.  ‘You’re right, we should leave.’

“Let’s leave a note for Aris.  Didn’t I see a chalkstone somewhere in those boxes?  Oh, right!”  Reya limped over, and pulled a piece of chalkstone from a small stack she had noticed earlier in all of the clutter.  “I can’t really write with my paw wrapped like this.  Draw a quick map to the river from here, ok?  You remember how to get there?”

‘Yeah,’ the male signed back.  He jotted a crude map into the floor underneath Reya’s bedding.  ‘We’ll have to hope that they notice this.  I don’t want anyone else to follow us.’

Reya grabbed a fabric strip from the medical supplies leftover from treating Siv and set it down on top of her bedding.  “Hopefully Aris or Melly’ll take this as a hint.”

‘You ready?’

“Yeah, let’s go,” after a moment, she added, “don’t forget the book.  I’ll take the medical supplies.”

She tried carefully to stuff all of her herbs and poultices into the bag she had carried the whiskey up in, carefully trying to keep the herbs from being crushed or torn.  She topped the bag off with some of the Ranger-owned medical supplies that Torren had carried up along with her own medicines.  She was sure that neither Aris nor Melly would mind.

Torren propped her up again as she made her way down the stairs.  She’d done it herself only hours ago, but she wanted to conserve her strength and keep her paws in as little pain as possible for as long as she could. 

As they made their way to the bottom of the staircase, another scream rang through the dark building like a banshee’s howl.  Reya shivered reflexively.  It was a cold fall night, and the chill made her fear a physical reality as the haunting sound ran down her spine. 

She pressed forward with Torren, pushing him to move a bit faster.  He followed her cue and helped her to limp at a speed close to a regular walking pace.  She couldn’t keep it up for very long, but they needed to at least get away from the Ranger building. 

“Which way do we go…?” She wondered aloud as they broke outside into the crisp fall air. 

Torren nudged her to the right and she followed his lead. 

The shouting grew louder with every step she took, but she moved on without hesitation.  As long as they were away from the Lenwick Ranger Headquarters they’d be safe.  They’d be safe.

Her mind wasn’t focused on anything around her.  She moved automatically.  The pain was getting worse the more she walked.  She felt her paws burst into a fiery pain with every step, but she couldn’t stop them if she tried.  They were moving with a will of their own. 

Reya couldn’t see anything except for the otter beside her, holding her up and pushing her forward.  It was as if she was back in the forest the night that Sylvia died.  Her body moving and acting of its own accord – completely disconnected from her consciousness. 

She barely felt the ground under her paws change from sharp gravel to soft grass and then from soft grass to rough forest dirt.  She only stopped when she felt Torren’s head duck in front of her body, blocking her movement.

With a huff of exhaustion and pain, Reya let herself relax completely into the bigger otter’s side.  He slowly lay her down onto the forest floor and then circled around in front of her to sit down.

“I’m sorry if I worried you… I zoned out for most of that.”

‘Are your paws OK?’

“Yeah, they’re fine,” she lied.  They hurt like hell, but she wasn’t about to say that.  “How long did we walk?”

‘Over an hour, I think.  We’re near the river, but I wanted to stay a bit concealed in case any of the rangers make it here.  I don’t want to force them to move you.’  Reya only caught half of the words he signed, but she understood what he meant. 

Reya relaxed her head against the dirt.  It wasn’t a real bed, but she was exhausted enough that she didn’t care.

“Get over here, you big oaf,” she mumbled.

She shut her eyes.  A moment later she felt a warm furry body wrap around her.  She sighed and drifted off to sleep

 

15: Oh Deer

A piercing noise woke Reya up from her sleep.  It was a hiss.  A sharp, aggressive hiss.  Her eyes snapped open as soon as she realized what she was hearing.  She looked up through the light of early dawn to see Torren’s back arched, ready to pounce at any second.  His muscles were taut and his fur bristled.  She couldn’t clearly see what he was looking at; the large otter was shielding her from whatever it was.

“What’s happening?” She whispered.

“W-who else’s there?” The voice was high pitched, but clearly male.

Reya reached out her good paw and gently pressed it underneath Torren’s chest.  He relaxed his muscles and lifted himself up slightly to let her look underneath him.  Two young skunks stood shoulder to shoulder, both looking just as tense as Torren.  The one on the left, a female, was bigger and had an intensity to match her size.  The male next to her didn’t seem to have his heart in it.  He was obviously the one who had just spoken.

“Torren, calm down.  I don’t think they want to fight,” she spoke a bit louder, making sure that both of the skunks could hear her.  They both seemed to let out a breath of tension when she said that.  Torren’s muscles were still coiled tight.

Reya pulled herself to her feet with a wince.  She steadied herself and then hobbled out from behind Torren.  The male skunk completely dropped his guard when he saw her.

“Ok…”  Reya said slowly, “everyone relax.  Just sit down and relax.  Torren!  Stop being so scary and stuff!  Geez, they’re half your size!”

Torren nodded and sat down.  The two skunks nervously followed suit.

“Alright, now what’s going on?  What did you two do?”

“Nothing!” The female protested, “We were walking through here and that big friend of yours just jumped up and looked like he’d kill us if we move!  What were we supposed to do?”

‘They weren’t just walking through!’  Torren signed, ‘They were trying to sneak up on us.’

“He says you were trying to sneak up on us.”

“Of course we were being quiet!” The female snapped.  The skunk looked down at the ground.  “You wouldn’t believe the shit going down in Lenwick right now,” she added with a hiss.  Reya sighed in relief.  That definitely didn’t sound like something one of the rioters would say.

“You’re not one of those people attacking the ungulates?”  She asked.  Even Torren looked at her funny when she said that.  “Hooved people!  Ungulates!  Whatever, you know what I mean!”

“Ye-” The male skunk tried to answer, but the female stuck her paw in his mouth.

“What about you?  Whose side are you on?”

“The ungulates – I mean horses and stuff – I’m on their side.”  Reya said with confidence.  They male had already given her their answer anyway.  “Why would we be out here if we weren’t?”

“They’re… They’re not just murdering the – um – ungulates?  The ungulates in the town.  They’re hunting them down.  We barely got out ourselves.”

“We?”  Reya interjected, eyeing the female skunk suspiciously, “Why would you two be worried?”

“I – um – me and my brother and – we… you wouldn’t hurt an innocent animal, right?”

“Huh?  No.  Of course not!”

“Uh… Jack?  I think you can come out.”  A tall buck deer strode out into the clearing.  The buck seemed strong and sturdy from the front, but Reya noticed that he wasn’t putting any weight on his right hind leg.  His back was bloodied in several places. 

The surprised look on Torren’s face told Reya that he hadn’t seen the antlered animal either. 

“I trust Mydya’s judge of character.  I’m Jack.”

“I’m Reya and this is my friend Torren.  Nice to meet you!”  Reya said cheerfully.  Torren nodded his head in greeting.  “He can’t speak, so don’t be upset if he doesn’t respond to you.”

“Oh!”  The male skunk gasped.  “That’s why he was so quiet!”

The female next to him just nodded in acknowledgement.  “Like Jack said, I’m Mydra.  This is my brother, Mephit.”

“Nice to meet you two!”  Mephit added.

“Alright, I’d love to chat a bunch more, but – no offense! – your friend Jack doesn’t look too good right now.”  She paused and sheepishly looked to Torren.  “How far from Lenwick did we make it?  I – I couldn’t really keep track of the time.”

‘I took us deeper into the forest; I figured that it would be safer than the river.  We aren’t far enough, I think.  Not if you’re gonna spend a while fixing up his leg.’

“Torren thinks that we need to keep moving.  We aren’t safe this close to the city.”

“Wait?  Since when were you traveling with us?”  Mydya asked incredulously.

“I know a cave nearby.  It’s well hidden.  We should be able to hide out there for some time,” Jack suggested, “we were on our way there before we ran into you two.”

“What?  We just met these two, you can’t be serious!” The skunk protested.

“Perfect!  Lets go!”  Reya wasted no more time and turned tail and started walking in the opposite direction.

“Otter girl!”  Mephit called, “we were going this way!”  Reya turned back around, her cheeks burning.

“Really, Mephit?  You too?”  He whispered something to Mydya and she reluctantly nodded.  “Fine, whatever.”

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Jack started walking in the proper direction.  Reya leaned back against Torren and let him support her as she moved to follow the deer.  He sympathetically brushed his muzzle against her.

“So, don’t mean to be rude, but what happened to you?”  Mydya asked.

Reya’s mind started racing.  She’d answered this plenty of times already, but it still made her nervous.  “Don’t worry, I don’t mind!  I mean, I’ve been getting asked that a lot, but I totally get it!  If I saw someone else looking like this, I’d ask too!  Um, they’re burns, what these bandages are covering.  I guess you haven’t really seen me in a good light yet.  I’ve got more than the bandages can really cover, but the worst of them are wrapped up.  I – uh – broke my paw too.  I tried to run after something after I got the burns and I sort of ended up tripping on a root!  My paw got snapped to the side, and I got an acute oblique fracture in my left ulna!  Uh… I mean, I broke my front left paw!”

“Damn!” The skunk laughed as she replied.  “That’s gotta suck.  What’s with those weird words though?  You a doctor?”

“Well, kind of,” Reya said, blushing.  “I learned everything that I know from my brother and… and another guy who did something terrible and was sent to Fenbury for trial.  But… my brother knew a lot though, so I can handle a lot of what comes my way.  That’s why I wanted to come along with you guys, you know?  Your friend Jack really needs those gashes cleaned out so they don’t get worse.  I’d like to take a look at that leg too.  But we can’t really do that out here with people hunting ungulates down.

“Oh!”  The otter continued, “We should really move through a patch of water or something.  I never even thought of us being tracked by our scent!  Wow, that’s so stupid!  I guess I’m not used to running away from people.”  She chuckled nervously.  “I mean, you don’t – ow!”

She stopped talking when Torren knocked his head against her’s.

“Sorry, I can get a bit carried away sometimes!”

‘Understatement!’  Torren signed.

“It’s fine,” the skunk said, “this is pretty damn stressful, isn’t it?  I’m still can’t even think about what’s going on in Fenbury.”  Her gaze dropped down to the ground.  “But you’re right; we should really do something to hide our scent.”

“There’s nowhere around here where we can do that.  We need to hope that either they won’t find our trail, or the otter girl has time to fix up my leg before they do,” Jack said.

“Well, I probably won’t be able to just fix it, you know!  Everything takes time!  I’ll take a look, though.  I can tell you what to do to make it heal fastest.  I can help with the cuts though!  I can actually fix those.  I mean, I’m pretty sure.  I’ll need to have a look, but you should be fine!”

“That’s good to hear,” Jack laughed.

“So what about you guys?  What happened to Jack?”

“We were pretty lucky, to be honest,” Mydya replied, “We live on the edges of the town and Jack doesn’t stay in the housing with most of the other hooved animals.  Also, we didn’t wake up until late, so a lot of the… massacre… had already happened.  Jack knew something was up, everyone’s been super tense for the last week or two, so he sent me out to see what was up.  Anyway, I came back and my bro and I helped get him out safely, but not without a few rocks thrown at him...  It was probably pretty good timing.  If we’d woken up earlier, there probably would have been more people out looking for blood.  Wouldn’t have been as easy to get out.”

“So, um… what was it like?  In the town center I mean.  What did you see?”

“God, I don’t think you want to know.  You’re a doctor though, so I bet you’ve seen some gruesome things too.  I mean, I won’t get all gory; you don’t look like a sick fuck like some of them.  It was really bloody, there were some corpses in the square there, but the poor creatures looked like they’d been tortured.  They were tied up and… well I don’t really want to go into it.”

“That’s fine, you don’t need to,” Reya said, shuddering, “D… Do you remember the species’ that you saw?  I’m worried about a friend.”

“I didn’t look for long, so I don’t remember very clearly.  I – I didn’t tell Jack or Mephit this yet…”  Jack worriedly glanced back at Mydya, Mephit kept walking with his head low.  “There was this great guy, he was a foreigner, a food peddler.”

Mephit gasped.  He looked up at his sister, eyes shimmering.  “Ch… Chagi?”

“God, Mephit, I’m sorry.  Yeah, he – he’s gone.”

Reya’s stomach flipped.  She felt like she was about to throw up.  She was sure that it was the Etresian lion who sold her the flatbread.  Melly said herself that he was holding the mob back, that he was trying to keep them off the animal that started the riot.  She shook her head.

“You knew him?”  Mephit sniffled.

“I – I didn’t really.  I bought something from him yesterday.  He, I don’t know, he seemed like a great person.  Torren and I haggled with him a bit and now I kind of feel bad about it.”  Torren had his eyes on the ground as well.

Mydya laughed half-heartedly.  “I’m sure he had a great time with it.  He told me that the satisfaction of out-haggling a customer is one of the few things that he missed from Etresia.”

“I… I thought that we haggled him too low.  I feel guilty now,” Reya admitted.

“Don’t be!  He loved it!  Having someone bargaining with him was probably the best fun he’s had in a while.”

“Ah,” Reya muttered.

The five animals continued traveling in somber silence.  Reya’s paws were sore, but Torren made sure to keep their pace slow and steady.  Mephit, Mydya, and Jack were careful not to outpace the two otters, although Jack himself was slowed down by his hurt leg.

“Did any of you notice any of the rangers?” Reya asked.

“No, why?”  Mydya looked curiously at Reya.

“I was traveling with a beagle, his name’s Aris, but he went off to try to stop all that stuff from happening.”

“Beagle ranger?  Oh yeah, I think he came in with another guy a few weeks ago.  It’s not that big of a town, you kind of notice when a new ranger shows up.  Didn’t see him, though.  None of the other rangers either.”

“Another guy?”

“A cat – seemed like kind of a jerk, honestly.  He stayed here when the beagle left.  Before that it was just Melly.  Don’t worry about her though, I guarantee that no one from Lenwick would ever lay a single paw on Melly!”  Jack and Mephit both chuckled along with Mydya.

“Yeah, I can’t believe that Melly couldn’t just stop the whole thing!”  the male skunk yipped.

“What do you mean?”

Mydya answered for her brother.  “Melly’s like the town icon.  Everyone loves her!  She pretty much has more power over the town than the government itself!  Not like she’d ever use it though.  She’s really sweet, almost like a mother to all of us.  She kept us from sleeping on the streets when we were kids.  Can’t ever repay everything she did.”

“Wow, that’s really great.  She did seem like a great person when I talked to her!  We didn’t get to talk to her long, though.  Really unfortunate isn’t it?  I would have loved to be able to spend longer staying with her.  I’m glad I met her though!”

“You stayed with her?” Mephit asked.

“Not really!  I don’t think I ‘stayed’ stayed with her, really.  She really just let Torren and I stay in the attic of the ranger building!  And, um, we didn’t really even get a night there.  This whole fiasco happened overnight the night we arrived.  She was super sweet though!  She made us stew and everything!”  Reya tried to keep a straight face as she remembered the stew.  It wasn’t terrible when she was eating it, but… Melly didn’t seem to care what went in to it.  She didn’t know if she’d be able to stomach it again if she had the chance.

Jack’s cave was fairly well hidden.  It was tucked away in a rocky outcropping halfway down the side of a foothill of the great mountain range to the north.  Jack limped inside and nosed around the cave.

“It doesn’t smell like anyone’s been in here in a while, we should be OK to rest inside.”  The otters and skunks followed him in.  Torren set down the knapsack slung around his neck and began to dig through it.

“That’s all right, Torren!  I won’t need anything until I get a look at the leg.”  Reya hobbled over to the deer.  “This’ll probably hurt a bit.  You stable and in a non-kicking mood?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine!” he reassured.

“Actually, never mind.  Get some horsetail for me please!  It looks kind of like asparagus with ferny leaves.  You got it?”

‘OK,’ Torren signed.

“Alright!  Jack!  I’m gonna start now if you don’t mind.”  She didn’t wait for his confirmation.  One thing that she picked up from working with her brother was that actually giving a patient the choice of when to start only made them more nervous.  And the more nervous a patient got, the worse they dealt with the pain.  It was better to jump right in.

After propping herself up on a smooth rock, Reya gently pressed her good front paw near his ankle.  “Ah!  I’m sorry!  I don’t want to work you up like this and get you all nervous, but I can’t feel anything through the bandages!  I’m sorry!  Give me a moment, I’ll have them off in just a second!”

The small otter rolled onto her side, careful not to press against her broken bone.  She slipped her teeth into the strand of fabric that was tucked into the wrapping and pulled it loose.  She nearly spat it out – it tasted disgusting.  She wound her paw around the loose wrapping, unwrapping the rest of the coiled fabric and letting it fall to the ground. 

Her paw looked terrible.  There were only a few chunks of fur left below her elbow joint.  Most of her burned skin had settled down to a mild discoloration, but there were several, very visible and very large patches of nasty looking blisters and ugly brown dead skin.

Reya could almost physically feel both the deer and the pair of skunks staring at it.  She wanted to say something.  She wanted to tell them not to look, that there wasn’t even anything to look at.  Her whole body trembled.

The small otter was trying to look at her paw, but she couldn’t.  She couldn’t focus, she couldn’t breathe.  Her body felt so hot and clammy, why was it so hot out?  Everything was so unsteady and uneven.  She wanted to get back up.  She wanted to roll off of her side and stand up, but she couldn’t.  Why couldn’t she move? 

People were talking.  The skunk girl, Mydya, she was talking.  She was nosing at Reya’s face.  Reya said she was OK.  She thought she did, at least. 

Torren was curled around her.  He was nuzzling her head, trying to get her to move.  Why wasn’t he uncomfortable?  She was so hot and sweaty.  Didn’t that bother him?  She couldn’t move away, though.  Why couldn’t she?  Was she going crazy?  Was this what it was like to go insane?  She couldn’t do anything; she felt so helpless.

“Breathe,” Mydya said.  She said it slowly.  “Breathe.”  She could hear Mydya, why couldn’t she hear her own words?

She took a breath.  It was hard, her chest hurt and she felt like she couldn’t, but she took a breath.  There.  She did it.  She tried to tell them that she did it and it was ok, but she didn’t think that her voice came out.

She breathed again.  Mydya was repeating herself.  She felt Torren’s chest rising and falling against her back, each strand of his fur weaving into her own or sliding away off of the contours of her bandages.  She turned her head to look at her friend.

“Torren,” she tried to say, “I feel so dizzy.”

“Can you hear me?” It was Mydya again. 

“Yeah,” the otter gasped.  Everything was so unsteady.  “What’s happening to me?”

“It’s OK.  You’re going to be perfectly fine soon.  We got you some water.  Can you drink?”

She said that she could.  Or, she thought she did, but she couldn’t hear anything with her ears buzzing.  There was a saucer in front of her.  She stuck her tongue out and drank.

“What’s happening to me?” Reya repeated.  She tried to roll over, she wanted to stand up.

“Just stay still, it’ll be over soon.” This time Mephit was talking.  Reya almost didn’t believe him.  It was terrifying.  She had no control over her body, she didn’t know what was happening to her.  But she stayed still and tried to breathe.  That’s what Mydya told her to do.  She just breathed slowly, in and out.

“I – I think it’s going away,” Reya’s voice was a whisper, spoken as much for her own benefit as anyone else’s. 

“That’s good.  Just wait it out.  It’ll just be another minute.”

“OK…”

When had things gotten clearer?  She didn’t notice when she started to see things again, when she was able to focus enough to recognize what was happening around her.  She lifted her head from the ground.  When did she lower it?  Was it before or after she drank from the bowl in front of her?

“This is so confusing,” she said.  She could feel the cool cave breeze against her skin, her clammy sweaty skin. The two skunks were in front of her, worried expressions on their faces.  Jack was laying on the ground, but keeping off his bad leg as he watched her.  Watching her.  There was a lump in her throat as if she was having trouble swallowing something. 

She turned her head away from him.  Torren. 

“Hey you,” she muttered.

He nuzzled her in response.  He couldn’t speak anyway with his paws out of sight.

“I… I think I’m feeling a bit better.”

“You should drink more,” Mydya said worriedly.  Reya obliged her, dipping into the water bowl again.

“What happened to me?”

“It… It was a dizzy spell,” Mephit answered for his sister, “It happens to me sometimes too when I – when I remember something bad happening...”

“I… yeah… I remember my brother talking about those,” Reya said, “I can’t believe I couldn’t remember.  I – I never thought it would be that… intense.  You know?”

“Yeah.  I know what you mean,” he said somberly.

“How long did it last?”

“It was a long time.  You were muttering ‘I’m OK’ for almost a minute at one point.  I’m just glad you’re feeling better,” Mydya said.

“Someone’s out there,” Jack whispered harshly, interrupting the skunk.

Reya felt Torren pull away from her side and tense up.  He moved closer to the entrance, muscles taut and ready to leap. 

“H – hey!  Reya?  Torren?  Are you there?”

“Aris!”

16: The Beginning

“W-what happened to you?"  Aris stuttered.    For a moment Reya wondered why he thought to ask.  But then she realized that she was flat on the ground with everyone else standing around her looking very worried. 

“Noth-" she started to say, but she was interrupted by Mephit.

“She had a panic attack!"  The skunk immediately looked horrified when he realized that Reya hadn't been about to tell the beagle.  Mydya glared daggers at her brother. 

“Oh… um…" Aris stammered for a response, “you… you're ok now?"

“Yeah," Reya said her face flush with embarrassment.  In truth, she still couldn't think perfectly straight.  The dizziness was almost gone, but not entirely.  She didn't want to everyone dwelling on her, however, so she tried to shift the topic.  “Aris, I need you to feel around this deer's leg.  It got hit by something while he was trying to get out.  I think it's bruised, not broken, but I want to be sure."

“Some townsfolk threw stones at me from their windows," Jack added somberly, “Missed me for the most part, but one got lucky."

“Since I don't think salt water's gonna be too easy to get out here, I'll see what I can do about keeping those in check.  Mydya, can you and your brother get a fire going?"

“Bad idea," Jack interjected, “the smoke will tell everyone around exactly where we are."

“Oh…" Reya muttered.  She had hoped to make a tea from sallow bark to help clot Jack's wounds after she cleaned them.  She didn't have much cloth in her supplies to use as bandages and she had been hoping to change her own.  The bandages on her paws were the same ones that had been put on a week ago, before she left for Lenwick.

“Is there anything else I can do?" Mephit asked.

“Yeah."  She stood up hesitantly.  At first the small otter was worried that she hadn't recovered her balance, but she quickly realized that the dizziness had completely abated.  “You can chew some herbs for Jack's cuts.  Mydya… could you keep watch for us?  Gods above, I don't want anything jumping us while we're in here, and I need Aris to help with Jack's leg."

“Don't worry!"  Aris yipped, “Siv's already out there!"

Reya groaned.

“W-what's wrong with that?"  The beagle sounded upset.

“Nothing, really.  He's just… you know… not the most talkative cat around."

“I- I guess not," Aris muttered awkwardly.  “I just thought – um – I hoped that, you know, you guys would get along okay..."

Reya had a lump in her throat.  She didn't realize that he would be so unhappy with Siv and her not getting along.  “Please don't get upset!  I – I don't have a problem with him or anything!  We didn't have a great night last night, but it was really stressful, you know?  I'm sure I can get along with him if I give it another chance!  Just – "

“Ok!" Aris interrupted, “T-That's fine!"

Reya sighed in relief, but then smile crept across her face.  “You know, this hunk isn't much of a talker either," she giggled.

'Hey!'  Torren was grinning too.  Reya wasn't sure if it was because of her joke or because Aris had cracked a smile.

Aris had to help Reya diagnose and treat Jack's leg, but the entire process went off without a hitch. It was only bruised, not broken, so she had Aris rub a poultice of pine bark on it to ease the pain.

“Where's Melly?"  Mydya demanded as soon as Aris finished treating Jack's leg.  The skunk looked like she had been about to burst with her question ever since the ranger made to the cave.

“Don't worry, she's okay!"  Aris said, not sounding too convinced himself, “She's tracking down a bunch of horses and deer trying to get away to the south of the city.  She'll be taking them around to the capital, I think."

“Not the meadowlands?"

“She would, but, um, it'd probably be too dangerous to cross the river anywhere before Binescreek.  If they're going that far around, Maplefort is a better place to collect themselves anyway.  They'll be able to stay in touch with the news there too."

“So… where are we going to go…?"  Mephit asked the question that had been hanging around everyone's head.

“I still want to go to Fenbury, I think." Aris said contemplatively, “besides, it'd be dangerous to go back the way we came."

“What about coming back to my home?"  Reya asked.  She paused after she made her suggestion and looked down at her forepaws, one scarred and burned, the other wrapped in a garish bandage.  Did she want to go back home?  Her childhood den was ruined, burned to the ground.  She was sure that they'd be allowed to stay in one of the townhouses, but…

Which vacancy would they fill?   Would she sleep at night on Sylvia's bedding?  Would she even be able to sleep as she thought of the rabbit, holding back tears of pain as she clutched her stump of a leg inside of a bloody cloth?  Or would she sleep where Talip had?  She couldn't even consider it without a shudder running down her spine.

Reya didn't want to go home.

She quickly tried to think of a reason for them not to go back to her town.  Was it too far?  Not as far as Fenbury.  Too dangerous?  Who'd come to her middle-of-nowhere town in the first place?  They had less than five visitors each year and two of those were tax collectors!

'Isn't there a stable in your town?'  Torren must have seen the despair on her face. It wasn't a great excuse; her home town's stable was rarely ever used.  She could only recall one time, other than the twice yearly resource runs, when anyone had actually used it.  However, it gave her a reason to shoot down her own suggestion.

She repeated Torren's criticism and then added her own comment.  “On second thought, I agree with Torren.  If these rioters are serious about this revolt, they may start by going to the nearest towns.  I normally wouldn't include my town in this, but since there's a stable they may go just to make sure no one is being hidden there."

 Aris nodded.  “I know a path through the mountains that should keep us out of the way and as safe as we can be."

“The mountains!?"  Mydya demanded.  “Are you insane?  We'll be fucking cat lunch!"

“Its ok!" Aris stammered, clearly taken back by her hostility, “Th… The cats aren't really active near the border there, you know.  Its, um, r-rangers have used it before.  We'll be… We'll be fine!"

“And what're we going to eat?  We have no food and it's almost 15 days to get to Fenbury on the actual road, let alone some gods forsaken path through the mountains."

“Th… There are, um, supposed to be caches of food along the trail."

“Supposed to be," Mydya repeated, her voice growing louder, “are you serious?  Two of us are wounded to the point where they can't keep up with everyone else and you want us to climb mountains filled with angry cats ready to kill us on sight while hoping that whatever food was left centuries ago hasn't completely rotted away!"  

“I- I… um, I didn't…  But we…" Aris stammered.

“Mydii… Whatever your name is!  Skunk girl!  Shut up!"  Reya growled.  “Aris is a ranger.  He knows what he's doing!  We need to get to Fenbury to get away from the countless animals probably roaming the woods right now ready to tear the throat out of your deer friend.   We can either try to go through them or around the mountains.  I agree with Aris, we're less likely to run into cats than we are hordes of angry rioters.  Besides, Torren's dealt with a lynx that tried to jump me once before, I'm sure he can do it again!"  She nuzzled the big otter next to her for added effect.

Everyone went silent.  Aris's eyes were wider than she'd ever seen them before.

“When did this happen?"  A wave of icy cold calmness had fallen over the beagle.

“Um…" Reya nervously glanced between the beagle and the two skunks.  “Maybe… I don't know, three?  four months ago?  And then… um…" She paused for a second, unsure of how to bring up the cats that had attacked Torren and caused him to burn down her home.  “A few more tried to attack, but were run off by the fire two weeks ago…"

Reya suddenly felt like an idiot.  With everything that was going on around her, she hadn't ever thought about the obviously strange circumstances surrounding these attacks.  In eighteen years of her life, she'd never even heard of an incident with the mountain cats, but now there had been two attacks in less than half a year. 

Didn't Gither realize that something was wrong?  Did he think that the lynx that had attacked the two of them was just a feral?  No, Reya knew that it couldn't have been a feral.  Even after all these months, she could clearly remember the intelligence in its eyes. 

And Gither just left her?  He left her with a strange bloody mute of an otter who showed up moments before they were viciously attacked by a mountain cat.  She had to keep herself from shaking with anger.  Had her brother been that eager to get rid of her?

“This was inside of the kingdom's borders, correct?"

“Um… I think so.  The river is the border right?  The northern one that feeds into the crystal river?"

“Yes."

“Yeah, it was inside the border."

“Fuck."

“Why's this such a big deal?"

“When this kingdom was established, most colonies of different species were slowly assimilated into its borders.  We negotiated treaties with everyone else.  This is why the Avian Guild's home island is actually a completely autonomous region.  Avians are, by birthright, members of the guild and subject to the benefits of their treaty with the kingdom. 

“It took over ten years of negotiation to get the then leader of the largest clan of mountain cats in the north to agree to a treaty between the nations.  This one was a lot different from the Avian treaty.  Any member of either nation to be caught on the other side of the border is, by law, to be executed.  This excludes only a few small regions such as the Lenwick quarry and a select few paths designated by for rangers or diplomats.  

“So the best case scenario is that this is a small clan disobeying the head chieftain, which isn't likely at all.  It's more likely that a new chieftain has risen to power and is disregarding the treaty."

“So your ranger paths aren't actually safe?" Mydya asked.

“N… no, but I still think that they're the best option we have."

“I say we do what the beagle says," Jack butted in.  Mydya sighed and gave her approval as well.

'How far is the walk up to where we cross the border?'  Torren asked.  Reya translated for him.

“I'd say around six to seven hours given your and Jack's injuries.  Why?"

Reya knew what Torren wanted to say.  “We should cross the border at sunrise if possible," she said, not waiting for him to continue signing, “We can rest the day and leave around midnight.  None of us have gotten much sleep.  I don't know about any of you, but I'm incredibly tired… Oh!  Oh my gosh!  Why is Siv out keeping watch!?  I need to treat his shoulder and make sure he didn't make it any worse!"

Aris drew in a sharp breath.  “I thought he was fine!  You treated it yesterday!"

“Huge bites in the shoulder don't go away after I clean them once!  Gosh!  I can't believe he's been out keeping watch this whole time!  Why didn't I even think of that?!  Go get him right now!"

The beagle quickly scuttled outside.  Reya stood straight, breathing heavily. 

'Are you okay?'  Torren signed.  Reya realized that she was shaking.  She wasn't really angry at Aris for something that inconsequential.  It wasn't fear or sadness either. 

“Yeah," Reya muttered, “I just need to sleep."  When she noticed that Mephit's ears were perked and trying to hear what she was saying, she sat down, careful of her broken arm, and switched to sign language with her still-unwrapped paw.  'I haven't been getting enough rest with my burns still healing.  I mean, this isn't going to make it worse or make it take longer to heal, but I'm kind of exhausted.'

Torren nodded knowingly.  'It would be best for everyone to get some sleep before we leave.  None of us slept well.'  He paused for a moment.  'Is… Is it okay to keep your paw unwrapped like that?'

'It's fine.  I need to change my bandages anyway.  I… um… I don't think we have enough though.  Washing them would be good too, but didn't Jack say that there was no fresh water near here?"

Torren nodded towards the deer.  Reya understood what he meant.

“Jack, there's no spring or river or anything near here, is there?"

“Not that I know of," he answered, “none but the river at the border.  That and a few small ponds in the wrong directions."

'I guess we can stop on the way to wash them.'  She looked down at her paw as she signed.  It really did look terrible.  'I should really get this wrapped up again before we go, even if I have to use the dirty bandages.'

Aris and Siv had come back while she was talking. Siv seemed to be walking without much of a limp, so his shoulder injury didn't seem to be bothering him.

“Hey Siv!  How's your shoulder?"  She asked.

“It's fine."  He sounded guarded, but Reya was happy that he was answering her at all.  He lowered his shoulder before her before she asked.  Reya didn't give it too hard of a look.  If it wasn't all that painful for him at this point, it likely wouldn't turn into something worse. 

“So what happened with you guys during the riot?" Reya questioned as she poked through the fur around the bite wound.

After several seconds, when it became apparent that Siv wasn't keen on answering the question, Aris answered for him.  “Honestly there's not much to tell.  Even with our weapons and armor, we couldn't  have held off the rioters in the town square."  Aris looked down at his forepaws, “Chagi's life had already been taken by the time we left, so instead of going back into that bloodbath we tracked down –"

“Aris is an amazing tracker," Siv interrupted.

Aris blushed and kept talking.  “Um… We – uh – tracked down a group that had gotten away from the stables and spend the rest of the night leading them away to hide their scents and confuse anyone else on their trail.  Melly stayed with them so that she could guide them through the wetlands down to Maplefort."

“Well thank the gods you didn't get into any fights.  If you let Siv screw up his shoulder after I explicitly told him to rest, you'd have had worse to worry about than a couple of rioters!"  Reya playfully bared her teeth.  “These make me look tough, right?" Reya loudly whispered to Torren, gesturing to her bandages.

'I think they look kind of cute on you,' Torren teased while silently laughing.

“Shut up, you're not helping!"  Reya said after translating for him.  Even Siv cracked a smile.  “Anyway, your shoulder seems fine, Siv.  It should be all better in a week!"

He nodded in appreciation.  They continued to talk for a bit, but Reya slowly dropped out of the conversation.  Eventually she suggested that they try to sleep until midnight when they planned to leave.  Everyone agreed and went about gathering whatever scraps they could find for bedding.

Reya slept soundly.  Despite the bright sun bleeding light in through the cave's mouth and the rough stone floor she laid on, she went out like a rock.

Torren wasn't at her side when she woke up.  She looked around to see Mephit and Mydya still curled up fast asleep.  Jack was still lying down, but his eyes were open.  Neither Aris nor Siv were there either. 

She nodded at Jack, who stretched and stood up.  He nodded towards the cave entrance and awkwardly tried to walk out as quietly as possible – a difficult feat for a hooved animal on a stone floor.  Reya followed him out. 

“The rangers and your otter friend went hunting," the deer said quietly.

“Isn't that illegal?" She asked.

“Yes, but we don't have much of a choice.  I'm sure they'll be careful enough to make sure all of their catch is feral.  I myself've already eaten."

They sat in silence for a while.  Reya was brimming with questions to ask Jack, but the twilight that had set over the forest left her with an uneasy feeling in her gut.  Sunlight was still barely visible through the trees, but Reya could see it slowly disappear until nothing but darkness showed through the boughs.

She didn't know how long she sat there waiting for them to return.  It couldn't have been more than an hour, but the darkness made every minute feel like an eternity.

Siv was the first to come back.  He dropped a limp groundhog from his bloody maw onto the stone at the cave entrance and wandered back off into the forest.  This time he returned in under a minute with two voles hanging from his teeth.  He set them next to the groundhog.

The cat, without a word to Reya or Jack, started to dig a hole in the dirt away from the cave.

“What's that for?" Reya broke the silence with a whisper.  She didn't feel comfortable hearing her own voice in the eerie darkness.  She normally liked the nighttime.  She used to lie on the bank of her river, watching the stars in the sky.  There was a serene peacefulness to the night sky. 

However, she couldn't escape the feeling that something bad could happen at any moment.  That an angry boar would crash suddenly through the foliage and demand Jack's life.  That a lynx would pounce at her from behind. 

“I'm making a fire," Siv said.  He didn't seem to share her unease.  Reya could understand; cats had much better vision at night than she did.  He didn't have to share the paranoia of being barely able to see.

“Won't that attract attention?"

“Not if you make it right."

She watched him curiously.  He had already dug out a pit sometime while she was asleep.  She hadn't noticed it, since it had been hidden with dead leaves from the forest floor.  It was as wide as the cat's leg was long and slightly deeper than that.   Another, slightly smaller hole had been dug to its side. 

The cat started collecting small sticks from the ground into a pile next to the pit. 

“Your claws sharp?"  The cat asked.

“I… I don't really have claws."  Siv gave her a funny look.  “I mean… my species.  We don't have claws…  Well, we sort of do!  But they don't go past our toes."

“Whatever.  Can you use a knife?"

“I could, but… you know… it'd be hard with my burns."

“Oh, right."

“No worries!  What'd you need me for?"

“Stripping the bark off this wood."

“That makes it smoke less?"

“Yeah."

“Huh.  So we're gonna cook the meat then?"

“Yeah."

“That's good!  I love fresh fish, but meat just makes me feel weird when I eat it raw…  What're we gonna cook it in, though?  We don't have a pot or anything."

“Skewer."

“But the hole doesn't really seem big enough for a skewer."

“It is."

Reya was saved from the painful conversation as Torren strode into the clearing with a groundhog of his own.  He dropped it by the pit and flashed a grin at Reya.  Aris showed up almost immediately after with more meat.

 Before long, they had a small, but hot, fire burning in the pit.  The second hole turned out to be an extra hole for air.  Reya didn't quite understand how it worked, but it somehow kept the fire from letting out much smoke.  It didn't shine brightly either, most of the light stayed confined within the pit.

Mydya and Mephit joined the rest of the group just in time for their meal.  Reya tried to keep up a conversation through the meal, but everyone was uneasy.  They weren't far enough away from Lenwick to feel comfortable and the upcoming journey seemed just as unpleasant.

After eating, Reya finally took the time to rewrap her paw. After having taken it off and smelled its terrible smell, putting it on again seemed worse than having just left it on.  Torren helped her so that she wouldn't have to bite into the fabric.  She did not want to taste the dirty fabric again.

As the moon neared its zenith, Aris led everyone north, away from the cave and towards the mountains.  Reya found herself walking much better than she had the previous day.  There was still a lot of pain from her burns and blisters, but her muscles were responding much better than the day before when she had barely used them for over a week. 

They walked in silence.  Torren would glance at her worriedly every once in a while when she would stumble after stepping on her paw at the wrong angle and irritating a particularly sore area of her skin.

The river came into view before sunrise.  Reya guessed that Aris had based his seven hour estimate on her walking much slower.  Despite their speed, Reya felt like she was ready to drop dead when they finally stopped moving.  Her paws were numb and her joints were sore.  She didn't want to hold anyone back, so she didn't say anything, but Jack noticed.

“You want a ride for the next bit?"  He asked, “I could carry you no problem."

“Don't worry about me!  I'll be fine after I get a drink and change these wrappings!"  Jack didn't seem convinced.  Neither did Torren.

Torren helped to unwrap Reya's bandages.  She'd seen her front right paw already, but the back two looked just as bad, if not worse.  She had Aris help with her splint.  He knew enough first aid to help her safely clean her fractured arm, clean the wrappings, and reapply everything she had taken off. 

She could see Siv watching her curiously.  Reya didn't blame him, but it set her on edge to see his piercing yellow eyes staring at her whenever she looked his way. 

Finally, they waded across the river; Aris found a shallow crossing, so Jack was able to make it across with no difficulty.

“You know," Reya said sheepishly.  “It wouldn't be a good idea to walk around with these still wet.  I guess I should take you up on your offer, Jack."

Jack smiled a toothy smile and lowered his back for her to climb.

“Now I'm not too used to this, so if it gets too rocky let me know and I'll try to steady myself up."

Reya was just happy for an excuse to rest her legs.  She wasn't used to walking this much, even without her injuries.  The farthest she'd ever had a reason to go was from her house to the village, and that only took a few hours.

Riding on the deer's back was an interesting experience.  Despite his limp, Jack was careful enough that she didn't need to worry about falling off.  Even so, she was constantly conscious of her grip.  It was difficult to hold on with her paws wrapped in wet cloth.  She ended up wrapping her front paws as far around Jack's neck as she could reach.

They rounded the foothills until they had no way to go except for up.  The climb started off slow, but as it grew steeper, they began to walk less and less vertically and more and more westward.  Although it didn't seem like it at first, Aris was clearly following along an established path.

As the day grew brighter, Reya felt that a weight was slowly lifted from everyone's shoulders.  They all began to talk more, and the minutes started to blend together.

Reya was almost shocked when she saw that they were rounding over the mountain's ridge.  She hadn't ever climbed a mountain before, but she had thought that it would have taken them much longer to make it up to the top.  Of course, with the trees surrounding them, she could only rarely get an idea of how much progress they were making. 

The views were incredible.  They were like nothing she had ever seen before.  The hilly forest stretched out below her as far as she could see.  She could make out Lenwick off in the distance, but her home was much too far away. 

They walked out onto a rocky outcropping that overlooked the other side of the mountain range.  Aris stopped cold as he looked down at the valley in front of him.

“Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck." He repeated his curse over and over.  He stared straight ahead with unbelieving eyes.

“What is it?" Mydya asked as she ran over beside him.  The skunk, however, saw for herself.  As Jack walked out onto the stone overhang, everything came into view for Reya.  She saw the campfires burning below.  She saw the circling birds of prey.  She saw the rectangular formations of the animals, moving in unison with hordes of others.

“An army," Aris needlessly replied.

17: Of a Story

“Get back!” Reya whispered harshly.  Jack backed up with her into the tree cover and everyone else quickly followed.

“That’s what I was about to say,” Aris muttered.

“Well, say it faster next time!  If one of those birds spots us, whoever that is out there will probably try to hunt us down.”

“They’re pretty far to the west, we’d probably make it to town before they caught up with us,” Mephit pointed out.

“With Jack around?” Mydya retorted.

“Oh, right.”

“I think we should go back down and walk along the river,” Reya suggested, “It’ll probably be better for me too.  I’ll be able to swim instead of having to demean Jack like this.”

“I don’t mind the slightest,” Jack reassured her.

“I mean, it’s kind of hard to hold on with my broken arm too…”

Aris nodded in agreement.  “The river’s probably the safest way to get down to Fenbury fast if we don’t want to go back through Lenwick -”

“But damn if Spire Pass ain’t gonna be terrifying,” the deer finished for him. 

“That goes without saying,” Mydya glumly commented.  She took the lead and began to walk back down the long winding path they had just climbed.  Jack followed behind the skunk.  Reya struggled for a moment to find a comfortable grip without hurting her broken arm, but she soon found a good position.  She sighed and relaxed against the deer’s smooth coat. 

“You know, when my brother told me stories as a kid at least half of them would end with some heroic fight at Spire Pass.”  Reya nervously laughed.   “If one of you guys has been getting prophetic dreams, we might want to take the long way around!”  Laughter broke the tension that hung in the air around the group.

 “Did you ever hear the story where the monkey hero climbed to the peak to kill the great bird?” Mephit asked.  “Melly used to tell it to us all the time when we were kids.”

“Yeah!  Wasn’t the hero an otter, though?”

“How’s an otter supposed to climb a gigantic stone pillar?” Mydya incredulously butted in.

Reya blushed.  “I guess I didn’t consider that.”   She paused for a moment and then laughed.  “Most of Gither’s stories had otters as the heroes, now that I think about it.  You’d think that otters were half the mammals in the kingdom if you believed him!   How did that story go, Mephit?  I’ve heard it before, but Gither didn’t really tell it much.”

Mephit skittishly glanced around at everyone else.   Reya tried to see what he was looking for.  No one seemed to be very focused on him.  She didn’t understand why he was so nervous about telling the story.  He met her eyes after a moment and she stuck out her tongue at him.  Torren, following behind the skunk, silently laughed at the otter girl’s teasing.

“Well, um, there was a giant bird beast living at the top of spire peak hundreds of years ago.  Every day it went out into the forest and took away kits that went too far away from their den without their mothers.  All the good animals lived in fear for years and years as the misbehaving children were  eaten by the evil bird.  However, one day a really brave knight who was a monkey named Tarsi was passing through.  He heard the villagers’ troubles and went out to the huge stone spire in the center of spire pass to climb to the roost.

“He bravely climbed up the spire for two whole days, stopping only to eat the few rations he brought with him.  Finally, exhausted, he made it to the peak.   The roc’s nest was really - really big, but the bird wasn’t actually there.  He hid under the straw and waited for it to come back.

“Soon Tarsi heard a big loud crash.  Everything around him shook really hard.  He pulled away some of the straw in front of his face so that he could see out.  He didn’t see the bird or anything, so he got up and carefully crawled over to the edge of the nest.  The roc was slamming its giant body into the spire.

“He could see the cracks in the stone, so he wasted no time, drew his monkey blade, and leapt straight at the beast.  Of course, the bird had already broken the rock enough that the next hit caused the peak of the spire to break off.  Tarsi leapt off a falling boulder and managed to grab the roc’s claw with his tail.  In one motion he flipped himself onto the bird’s back and stabbed his sword straight into its head.

“The beast’s last caw was so loud it was heard all the way from the sea.  Tarsi, leaving his sword stuck in the bird’s head, jumped towards the pillar in a leap of faith.  He hit the side and fell really hard onto a ledge right below.

“The forest animals found the bird at the bottom of the spire along with Tarsi’s blade stuck in its head, but not the monkey himself.  They waited for a long time, but he never came.  The next day, they were putting together everything for the hero Tarsi’s funeral when a little skunk spotted a dot on the spire.  He pointed it out, and everyone cheered as it grew closer and closer.  Tarsi stumbled off the spire really tired and stuff, and the forest animals all celebrated and helped the monkey to get better.

“And that’s the end… I think.  Did I do good?  Was that ok?”

“That was great!” Reya exclaimed, “You should tell stories more often!  They’re a lot of fun!”  Mephit’s face lit up with a smile. 

“So um… Reya,” Aris said, “has your brother told you the story of his namesake?”

“What?!” She asked startled, “what do you mean?”

“The original Gither!  I… I think it’s a really good story!”

“There was another Gither?”

“Yeah!  He was a really famous pirate hunter from Southbank that lived a long time ago.  The seas used to be perilous and only the bravest merchants would make the trip to the west, but ever since Gither was around, there have been very few problems.  He’s the reason that Southbank is so prosperous today!”

“That’s awesome!” Reya exclaimed, “how did he do it!?  Did he have a fleet?  No!  He was on his own, right?  Yeah, he sailed his own ship and took down all the pirate bosses with just his crew!  I mean, you said you were from Southbank, right?  I bet you know all sorts of things about ships and pirates!”

“I –”

“Did he fight with a claw like you?  I bet he did!  I mean, I guess we’re good at using tools and stuff with these hands, but our arms are so short.  It’s hard to get a good swing with a blade or anything, right?”

“Actually he –”

“Gither’s gonna be so surprised next time I see him!  He never told me anything about this Gither!  You’ve got to tell me more!”

“He’s trying!” Jack laughed.

Reya slapped the deer’s neck with her good paw.  “Oh be quiet!”

“He – um – he didn’t use claws,” the beagle said sheepishly after a moment of silence, “he used a blade staff, and he –”

“Woah, he stood while he fought?  That’s crazy!  I thought that only bears and monkeys and animals like them could do that!  I mean, I guess it makes sense, doesn’t it?  You can use the staff to help keep yourself stable while you fight with it… but that’s gotta be hard!”

“Yeah… and it was just his ship too.  He didn’t have a fleet or anything.  There’s a statue of him in the center of the city, actually.”

“So can you tell –”

This time it was Aris that cut Reya off.  “I’m s-sorry!  I don’t know any stories about Gither!  I mean, I never studied him…  I wasn’t very interested in maritime history …”

“Oh…” Reya said, disappointed.   She caught Siv glaring at her out of the corner of her eye.  She opened her mouth to ask what she did, but quickly thought better of it. 

They didn’t suffer the silence for long, however.  Mephit had thought of another story from his childhood and seemed to be itching to tell it.  Reya, however, let herself slowly drift out of the conversation.  She felt uncomfortable trying to continue.  Aris quickly perked back up to his usual self and piped in every once in a while with his perpetually nervous voice, but every time she said something, she could almost feel Siv’s displeasure. 

Reya’s back was aching by the time they made it back to the river.  Even with her sore paws, she wasted absolutely no time getting off of Jack.  She stretched out her long body and all of the tension from the ride seemed to evaporate from her. 

‘Welcome back’ Torren signed with a wink.

“Miss me?” she teased.

‘My left half is all cold without you using me as a crutch!’  Torren laughed.  Reya stuck her tongue out at him.

“Can you help me get these off?”  She asked.  “Bandages will do more harm than good in the water.”

Torren helped her peel the wrappings off of her three good paws and then put the worn fabric into his knapsack with the herbs he was carrying for her.

“Um, you know,” said Mephit, “if you want to swim too I can carry that for you.”  The spotted necked otter’s eyes lit up.

‘Thank you!’ Reya translated for Torren.

“No problem,” he said with a soft smile.

Torren shuffled out of his knapsack and fitted it onto the skunk.  He nodded in appreciation and Mephit looked away with a humble smile. 

Reya, however, couldn’t wait to get herself back in the water.  She’d been itching to swim ever since they stopped at the crystal river.  It isn’t right for an otter to be out of water for so long!  She thought before diving into the slowly flowing stream.

Torren followed close behind her.  She turned around to meet him as felt the rush of water from the spotted necked otter breaking through to the surface.

‘Everything working?’  He signed. 

‘Yeah, all good!’ She signed back.  When the burns were fresh, every movement of her fingers was agony; she couldn’t even think of trying to speak with her paws.  However, the pain had almost entirely vanished.  As long as she didn’t push against anything too hard or squeeze her fingers together too tight, she could barely feel the pain that had been constantly present for the past four weeks. 

She dove back down again just to let herself float to the surface.  The small clawed otter stretched her legs out, relishing the relaxing massage of the current.  Torren’s head once again popped out of the water after her.

“Gods above, this feels amazing!”  She exclaimed.  Torren opened his mouth for a silent laugh.

“What are you waiting for?” She called out to everyone left on shore, “Let’s get going!”

Swimming wasn’t as effortless as it should have been for the otter girl without the use of her broken arm, but she still easily kept up with everyone on shore as they slowly continued their journey to Fenbury.  Everyone was able to move much faster now that she was able to match their pace.

Reya would have found herself dreadfully bored if Torren hadn’t been there to keep her company.  She bolted back and forth and around the bigger otter for a little while, but she slowed herself down to a leisurely pace at his recommendation.  It wouldn’t be good to wear herself out before nightfall.

“Do you know what I did to make Siv so mad at me?” Reya eventually whispered.  Even though the other animals were all wrapped up in their own conversation on the river’s shore, she still felt nervous gossiping about Siv.  “He seemed so agitated whenever I tried to talk!  I must have made him angry somehow, but I have no clue what I did!”

Torren shrugged.  ‘He didn’t look too happy when Aris was apologizing about not knowing more.  Maybe he was just upset that Aris was upset.’

“But that seemed normal for Aris, right?  He does it all the time!  I mean, if Siv knows Aris well at all, I don’t know how that would make him angry.” The small otter humphed.  “Jeez that cat’s a piece of work, isn’t he?  Maybe he just decided to hate me when we first met and now he’s being as obnoxious as he can.”

‘Maybe.’

Soon afterwards, the sky darkened and the two otters drifted closer to the shore to meet up with the other animals.  They all quickly dropped their conversation about Aris’s short experience as a ranger in Lenwick – stories that Reya and Torren had already heard several times as they traveled with the beagle – and deliberated about how to spend the night.

They eventually decided that they had to search out a cave in the mountainside.  None of them were able to think of anything better.  Neither the rangers nor Jack knew of any caves themselves and no one wanted to risk asking to stay at someone’s lodgings with the deer around. 

Reya dragged herself out of the water, shutting down any attempt to help her, and started to limp off towards the mountain range.  Jack offered to carry her once more, but she said that there wasn’t any need.  They were only going to walk for a short distance, and her injuries weren’t that bad. 

Although she was severely regretting her decision halfway through, she toughed it out until they finally found a small crevice broken into a rocky wall.  It was only barely wide enough to fit Jack, but it was long enough that everyone was able to lie comfortably apart. 

Reya groggily woke up halfway through the night to a paw nudging her side.  She turned her head, expecting to see Torren, but instead it was Mephit looking over her.

“I’m sorry to wake you up,” he whispered, “Can… Can I talk to you outside?”

Reya nodded curiously.

The two skunks had gone to sleep next to the otters, so Mephit didn’t have to step over anyone to get to her.  However, Reya had a large drooling male otter blocking her exit.  She thought for a moment about how to get past him, but then decided it was pointless.  She pulled herself up and over the big lump of fur and turned back for Mephit when she made it over.

Mephit followed her.  He seemed to be even more nervous about waking him up, but Torren didn’t even bat an eye.

The night breeze frazzled the otter’s fur but she didn’t mind.  Her eyes drifted up to the vast oceanic expanse of the night sky.  The star of the north shone brightly.  The feather of the old widow heron forever guided lost travelers back to civilized lands. 

The ancient spirits watched over her from the vast sea of souls.  She wondered where her mother and father were.  Gither said that they were brave and noble otters who kept evil from Laeta.  Reya never liked to use the word Laeta to name the kingdom.  She didn’t know any other kingdom so it just felt silly.  Yet, here it seemed romantic.  Laeta.  Her parents looked on in peace after dying for Laeta, their kingdom.

“So, um, Reya…” Mephit’s nervous voice snapped Reya back into focus.  She couldn’t help but think that his stutters made him sound a lot like Aris. “I… I wanted to apologize.”

“What?” Reya asked, confused.

“For the other night, you know?  When I told Aris you had a… a panic attack after you obviously weren’t going to tell him!  I mean, I – I just wanted to tell you that I understand.  I mean, I get them too.  I mean –”

“It’s ok!” Reya interrupted, “Don’t be so upset!  I didn’t mind, I was just uncomfortable telling Aris myself.  That night was really… stressful.  I just wanted it all to be over, you know?”

“Yeah.”  Mephit seemed to be calming down.  “Do you… I mean, is it all okay if I ask something personal?”

“What is it?”

“Do you know what caused your panic attack?”

Reya nodded without thinking.  “Yeah.  It… it was everyone staring at me.  Um, I normally don’t mind.  It’s just that…” She held up her still un-bandaged paw.  “Look at this.  I hadn’t changed my bandages since right after the fire, so even I didn’t know what to expect when I unwrapped this stupid thing… and I’ve been living it weeks now.  Everyone was just staring at me.  Pitying me.  I don’t… I don’t fucking want pity!”

Reya took a deep breath before continuing. “I… I guess I just couldn’t take it.  I’ve been so helpless lately and I guess everyone staring at me like I was some freak with two tails just did me in and I panicked.”  Reya blinked tears out of her eyes.  She didn’t want to cry.  The otter girl almost laughed at the irony.  Even now she was doing everything she could to seem less pathetic.  She didn’t even know why she was confiding in the little skunk.  He’d only known her for two days.  Yet she saw the clear empathy in the Mephit’s eyes.

“I… I have panic attacks about my mom,” Mephit muttered after a minute of silence. “Th- they did things to her in front of me before… before they killed her.  Mydya doesn’t know I saw it.  She’d never forgive herself for running away when mom told us to run…  I told her that I ran a different way, so that’s why she didn’t see me, but I couldn’t move!  I – I had to watch and he… when it was all over he just laughed at me.  He just laughed and walked away.”  Mephit was crying like a newborn, but Reya could only sit and listen in stunned silence. 

She suddenly realized that Mephit had stopped talking.  He didn’t stop crying. 

“W-Why are you telling me this?” Reya asked.

“I don’t know,” he sobbed, “You have panic attacks too… y-you understand, right?”

“Yeah…” Reya didn’t know what to say.  She didn’t understand him.  She didn’t understand him at all.  The sadness and fear in his eyes were so different from anything she had ever felt; so much more intense.  Her heart ached in sympathy for the small skunk.

“I understand,” she lied.  She apprehensively placed her ugly scarred paw on his back.  He turned his head and cried into her fur.

The otter girl didn’t know how long she sat still in the moonlight, slowly stroking the skunk’s back as she looked up into the stars.  Her brother had never paid much heed to the gods or the spirits, so she hadn’t either.  However, as she lay next to the quivering skunk, she prayed a heartfelt prayer to the tiger Igri, the soother of wounds. 

Reya didn’t know how long it was before Mephit had exhausted his tears.  With a whispered “thank you” he slipped out from under her paw and back into the darkness of the cave.  Reya followed him after a moment of hesitation. 

She pushed up against Torren who opened a half lidded eye.  He nudged her back, asking to talk.  She rolled over to see his paws.

‘What were you two talking about?’  She could barely make out his signs in the darkness.

Reya didn’t quite know what to say.  She knew that she was going to tell Torren, but she didn’t know how to phrase it.  And she was so tired too.  ‘He… he told me how he became an orphan,’ she sloppily signed.

‘Mydya listened from the mouth of the cave.  Whatever you two said really affected her. She was trembling when she climbed back over me.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Okay.’

Reya knew that she should have cared more about what Torren said, but she was already starting to drift back to sleep.  Everything was too much.  All the sadness and fear pouring out into the night air left her overwhelmed.  It would have to wait until morning.  The spotted otter snuggled up against her and she, in turn, wrapped her tail around his.

18: Katafront

A week after coming down from the mountain, everyone looked melancholy.  A tempest of rain poured down through the sparse canopy above the animals as they walked and, in the case of the otters, swam towards Fenbury.  Reya tried to tag along next to the shore to start a conversation, but she might as well have been talking to a group of sloths.  They didn't seem interested.

Mydya in particular looked like she was about to explode from pure intensity.  Reya was afraid that the roasted lizard she ate at breakfast was going to snap in half from how hard the skunk squeezed it.  Although Reya was dying with every second she looked at the wound-up skunk and didn't try to talk to her about what Mephit said, the otter girl figured that she'd only do more harm than good.  Besides, she didn't want Mephit to find out that his sister had overheard him.

Reya eventually slunk back off to the middle of the swiftly moving river to talk to Torren in privacy.  Torren looked off through the fog to the blurry outline of Mephit with sympathetic eyes as she told him what the skunk had gone through.

'He must have been hurting really bad,' the bigger otter hesitantly signed.

“Yeah," Reya agreed through the deafening rain, “I can't imagine what it was like growing up with that secret."

'He told you, though,' Torren absentmindedly gestured.

“Yeah, it's weird.  I've only known them for a few days now.  And that was something he didn't even tell the badger ranger lady, what was her name?  I mean, it sounded like she was a mother to him."

'You make an impression on people.  He really trusts you.'

Reya looked at the mute, floating on his back as the rain drummed down on his chest-fur.  He was still a mystery to her.  An enigma who showed up on her doorstep and disrupted her ordinary life.  She knew more about the past of Aris, the skunk twins, or even Jack than she knew about him. 

“Do you?" She muttered under her breath.

'What?'  He floated closer to her.

“Do you trust me?"

Torren looked at her, shocked.  'Of course!'

“But," she started, “but I know nothing about you.  You just said that Mephit's gotta trust me since he told me all that stuff about himself, but what about you?  You won't tell me anything!  You know everything about me!"  Her heart beat like a drum.

Torren stared somberly into the sky.  'Do I?'

“Yeah, I'm a useless limping bitch who never shuts up!"  She didn't know where her words were coming from.  Torren started to say something back, but Reya cut him off.  Her voice started to quiver.  “You're my only real friend, Torren.  You're my only real friend and all I really know about you is your name."

Neither of the otters spoke for a while.

'If I ever confided in anyone it'd be in you.'  Reya opened her mouth, but didn't say anything.  He waited for a minute before beginning to sign again.

'I just want to move on.  If you really need to know something about my past.'  He paused.  'I want you to know, you're the first good thing that's happened to me since I can remember.'

“I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to –"

'It's okay.'

They floated along silent alongside the chaotic noise of the rain.  However, Reya couldn't stay quiet.  She grew more and more agitated with her inability to think of something to say.  Why were her words failing her now?  She never had trouble finding something to say, let alone with Torren.

And then Mephit screamed.

Reya and Torren shot towards the shore like arrows.  They could make out the blurry forms of their new friends through the storm as well as the two brown blotches racing towards them.

She was on solid ground before she knew what was happening.  Mephit was backed up against a tree; Mydya and Siv were between him and a large brown wolf.  It slowly paced a half circle around the two tense animals; it's piercing blue eyes scanned back and forth for an opening.

Aris was circling around a different pair of wolves.  Reya could see the long metal claw extensions glittering in the rain.  One of the wolves paused for a split second, its muscles tensing. 

Reya was about to call out a warning when she saw Torren's teeth dig into its tail.  The wolf howled and twisted around to face the spotted necked otter, its claws swiping where he had been only a moment before. 

The other wolf glanced at its companion and Aris took advantage of the distraction.  The ranger darted forward, slashing at the wolf's face.  His opponent ducked backward, but not before blood was drawn from a grazing blow to its muzzle.  It bared its teeth and circled away, setting Aris's back to Torren's fight.

Suddenly, Reya's breath was knocked out of her.  Something had barreled into her side, knocking her off of her injured paws.  She looked up, expecting the worst, but saw the black fur and white stripe that she knew was one of the skunks.  It leapt off of her and she scrambled to her feet.  There were more enemies than she had thought.  Siv was squared off with the wolf she had seen before, and now a fourth was right where she had been standing a moment ago.

She backed up towards the river.  Jack was nowhere to be seen.  Mydya was the one who had knocked her over.  Mephit was racing towards the river behind her.  Reya's mind started to blank when a fifth brown furred beast jumped out in between the male skunk and safety.  There were too many.

She ran, limping, to Mephit's side.  He glanced at her for a moment, but didn't dare to take his attention away from the slowly approaching wolf.  Reya bared her teeth and hissed.  The wolf didn't even flinch.  She couldn't imagine that the muscled animal in front of her was even slightly intimidated by a limping small-clawed otter with swollen paws and patchy fur.

The two animals stared at each other for several seconds before the wolf backed off into the forest.  Aris stood next to her, his muzzle rippling with a snarl and his metal claws dripping drops of blood and rain.

She glanced over her shoulder.  Torren was still dancing back and forth with his opponent.  Siv had maneuvered himself next to Mydya, the pair of them slowly circling back and forth with a pair of wolves.

“Go!" She shouted at Aris.  Her voice sounded so quiet in the midst of the downpour.  She wondered if the beagle heard her at all, but he quickly rushed off towards Siv and Mydya.  Her heart skipped a beat when she thought of Torren fighting alone, but she knew that it was the right choice.  Torren seemed like he could handle himself until Aris was able to intervene.  Mydya, as mature as she acted, was still a child.

Reya shoved Mephit forward with her shoulder.  He took the hint and ran towards the water.  Reya followed him, her eyes never leaving the brush where the wolf had disappeared into the forest.  She expected the flurry of fur, teeth, and claws to fly out at her at any moment. 

The small skunk paused at the edge of the water.  Without warning, Reya bit into his scruff and dove forward, pulling both of them into the raging current.  

Everything was suddenly quiet.  The torrential rain striking into the water above her sounded like the pitter patter of claws on wood.  She could feel them moving along with the rapid current, but this was the otter's domain.  She felt comfortable here.  However, the skunk obviously didn't.

Mephit flailed underneath her.  Bubbles rose in front of the otter's face.  Did he hold his breath?  Panicked, Reya darted for the surface, swimming as fast as she could while dragging along the waterlogged skunk. 

She burst back into the air, sound once again pounding into her ears.  She held the skunk's head as far up above the surface as she could manage.  She heard him gasp for breath as he was assaulted by wave after wave of river water.  She shook him once, hoping he'd get the hint hold his breath, and then dove back into serenity.

She hadn't realized just how strong the storm's current was until she had to drag a sack of wet fur through it.  However, she swam with strength that she didn't know she had.  Her body twisted like an eel.  Her rudder tail pushed the two animals forward with powerful swipes through the surging water.

She pulled the coughing and sputtering skunk up onto the shore.

“Can you breathe?"  she demanded.  He coughed again, water dripping out of his open wheezing muzzle.  He nodded.

“Good."

“Are you –"

“I can't go back," Reya bitterly hissed.  “If I leave you here, you could die!  Everyone could be dead!  I need to be here to pull you back into the river if I have to."  Reya stopped for a moment to catch her breath, but then looked at the skunk with fierce determination.  “Let's go.  We're walking back upstream."

“But isn't that dangerous?" he stammered back.

“We're on the opposite shore."

“Oh."  Mephit looked down.

Reya didn't hesitate and started to limp back towards her friends.

“Have you heard of Arctos?"  She asked, the tension evaporating from her voice.

“The god of battle?"

“Yeah.  I've been thinking about the gods a lot more lately.  I never really used to.  I mean, my life was really normal so I never had to.  But, you know, I'm just praying right now that the great bear Arctos roars for them.  Torren's going to hear him, I'm sure of it.  Aris too."

“Yeah," Mephit agreed, “they're definitely brave enough to hear him.  I mean, Aris already got one of the wolves before we ran!  Did'ja see?"

Reya nodded.

“I," Mephit's voice trembled, “I just wish that Jack heard."

“What happened?" Reya asked, startled.

“Mephit looked up at her with pained eyes.  “You didn't see?  Jack, Jack was the first one they got.  They bit out his throat and I didn't even have time to think before they ran at us!  Jack's dead!"  The skunk began to sob. 

“We have to keep walking," Reya commanded.  She wanted to stop.  She wanted to comfort the skunk who had just seen another life torn away from him, but she didn't think she could.  She had a lump in her throat the size of a clam and her eyes were staring to water.

Reya looked up into the thick white fog as sheets of rain pelted her fur.  The nice thing about the rain was that Mephit couldn't see her crying.

She had only known Jack for several days, but she felt a connection to him.  He had carried her up and down from the mountain, listening to her talk and laughing at her jokes.  He had an aura of friendliness; she felt like he'd go to the ends of the kingdom to help even a new friend of his.

However, she'd never know for sure.

“When did you meet him?"

“A few years ago.  I was trying to hide from some kids and Jack let me into the stables.  He waited them out with me and told me about how he worked in the quarries at Fenbury and how he was moving out to Lenwick to try and find a herd outside the borders.  He didn't wanna have to carry things around anymore.  He told me all sorts of stories, I mean when I came back other times to see him again he'd tell me different legends and tales.  They were always about deer at first, but then there were a lot about horses and cows and elk.  I think he was getting them from other animals in the stables to tell to me!  I," he paused, “I can't believe he's dead."

“Wow," Reya muttered, “I'm really sorry, Mephit.  He sounds like he was really important to you."  She paused, wondering for a moment whether she should continue.  “I also lost a friend recently."

“What happened?" he sniffled.

“Some freak thing with a doctor who turned out to have something against her, or was just evil or some stupid thing.  I don't know.  She was my best friend growing up.  I played with other animals from my town and from the rabbit warren that was a bit to the east, but I always felt closest to her."

“What happened to the doctor?"

“He's being sent to Fenbury in a cage.  We're supposed to meet with the rangers there to help them decide on a punishment.  We were on our way there when everything went wrong and we had to run from Lenwick.  I don't even know what I want anymore.  I mean, I want to see that stupid mole locked up forever for taking away my friend, but after going through all of this I'm just exhausted.  I don't know if I want to show up in town at all with that filthy ground rat living there."

“Reya!"

“I know, I'm sorry," Reya said, her eyes shifting down to her paws, “I shouldn't talk that way about moles.  I just can't help but see his weird pale snout every time I try to think of Sylvia.  I hate it."

“Yeah," Mephit whimpered.

“Oh gosh, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean for you to think about, I just wanted to tell you about my friend.  I mean, I think she'd like knowing that I'm passing on her memory to other people."

Mephit nodded.

“Jack too!  You told me all those things about him that I never would have known before.  We've got to carry on their memories.  It's all we've got left of them and maybe people can learn something from how Jack treated other animals.  He was a good deer."

“Yeah, he was."

"And to think that sentient animals did it too," she growled, "it makes my blood boil."

"They were sentient?"

"They had to be!  I haven't seen a feral predator in Haarshollow in my entire life, let alone a whole pack.  And those eyes, those yellow beady eyes just looked like they could think.  I know that they were sentient."

"Why would they do something like that?"

"I don't know," Reya muttered somberly, "all the northern wolves moved south of the mountains after the treaty, so they must have been from the Lenwick riots.  And they got what they wanted, right?  Jack's dead."

Reya stopped and stared across the river.  Shapes moved on the opposite shore, but she couldn't quite make them out in the heavy fog and pouring rain. 

“Hey Mephit, I know I said you should stay with me, but –"

“You've gotta check."

“Yeah."  Reya nodded somberly.  “If anything happens, jump into the river and scream, okay?"

“All right."

Reya leapt back into the flowing river.  She nimbly darted towards the other side, compensating for the strong current like it was nothing.  Without the flailing Mephit to show her down, she moved more freely in the water than a bird in the air. 

She poked her head out on the other side and the twist of anxiety in her stomach immediately dissipated.  She saw everyone moving around and alive.

“Torren!  Aris!"  Thank the gods you're alive!" She cried out, pulling herself onto the shore.

Torren ran over to her and nuzzled her.

'You're safe!'

“Where's Mephit?"  Mydya shouted, her body shaking.

“He's on the other side.  I had to see if it was safe!"

“Go get him!  Who knows what could be out there!"

Reya sheepishly agreed and dove back into the raging river.  Torren followed her, swimming close to her side as she cut through the water towards opposite shore.

“Mephit!  Everyone's okay!"  She announced as soon as her head poked out of the water on the other side, “we're gonna bring you back now."

The skunk sighed in relief and let Reya pull him into the water by the scruff of his neck.  His eyes were squeezed tightly shut and small bubbles escaped his muzzle, but he didn't flail like he had the previous time.

Mydya was waiting on the other side.  She looked almost as if she didn't believe that Reya would bring Mephit back in a single piece.  However, her muscles relaxed as the sopping ball of skunk uncurled himself and breathed gasping sputtering breaths.  Mephit meekly protested as she roughly pulled him to his feet. 

“We need to move," the skunk girl said with conviction.

“You're right," Aris agreed, “we should cross the river when it grows narrower and travel inland.  Hopefully this storm will put whatever that was off of our scent."

“Was that the army?" Reya asked, “I thought it would all be cats!"

“I don't know what the hell is going on, but we need to get to Fenbury as soon as possible.  We aren't safe here."

“What about Jack?" Mephit demanded.  Aris shifted his eyes away.  Instead, Siv spoke up.

“We don't have time.  If we don't leave right now we'll die too."

“But he doesn't deserve this!  If one of us died, he'd do whatever he could to see them put to rest properlike!  We have to do something!"  Although the rain made it difficult to see tears in his eyes, Reya could hear the pain in the skunk's voice.

“We can't," Siv said coldly.

“Listen," Reya offered, “we don't need his body to pay him respects.  Once we're safe we can hold a vigil for him.  I hate leaving his body here too, but I think that Jack'd be happy to know that he's resting with proof that he saved us."

Mephit violently shook his head back and forth but he didn't say anything.  Aris sighed and started to walk.

“Mephit, please," Mydya said, “we need to go!"

Mephit looked for a moment like he'd refuse, but he turned around on his shaking legs and began to walk downstream behind the beagle.  Reya slipped back into the water.  Torren followed.  He tried to hide his expression as he submerged into the river, but Reya saw him wince.

“Torren, are you okay?"

'I'm fine, don't worry,' he signed, 'I just got some scratches in the fight.'

Reya ducked underwater so that she could see more clearly.  Blood dripped out of long gashes on his side.  They didn't look deep, but her heart began to throb anyway.  One of the cuts along his shoulder ran dangerously close to his neck.  Had she been that close to losing him?

She shook her head.   The small otter knew that it was futile to look at his injuries right then.  Right now it was most important to get as far away as possible.  However, she couldn't stop looking over at the crimson blood trickling out into the current as they swam on towards Fenbury.

19: Blood and Fire

.The storm persisted for the rest of the excruciatingly long afternoon.  The rain lightened up to a drizzle, but the dense fog never left.  Eventually Reya took notice of the limp in Mephit's step and called for everyone to rest.  They set up under a small canopy on the Lenwick side of the river.

Everyone was uncannily quiet.  Reya tried to spark a conversation a few times in a desperate attempt to break the overbearing gloom that hung over them like the fog.  However, no one was in a mood to talk.  When she tried to say something to Mephit, she could see the response in his pained blue eyes.  Jack was dead and didn't even get a vigil.  Nothing that she could say would change that.  Surprisingly, it was Aris who broke the silence.  Yet, his voice was a far cry from the timidly optimistic yapping that she expected.

“Who... who the hell are you?"

Mephit jumped slightly.  Mydya looked at Aris with a brief flicker of shock.

“What are you talking about?" Reya asked after a painfully long silence.  Aris's gaze pierced through the shimmering twilight rain with an intensity that she hadn't seen from him before.

“T-torren," the beagle stuttered.  The beagle quivered just as bad as when he had introduced himself to her.  However, this time it wasn't just anxiety.  Fear and suspicion lined the bold undertone to his voice.  “I have the right to pronounce you guilty under the eyes of the holy king.  I have the authority to - to enact the punishment that I see fit."  Aris's shivering stopped.  He looked the spotted necked otter dead in the eyes and repeated, “Who the hell are you?"

Reya jolted to her feet.  Her muzzle opened, but no words came out.  She looked back and forth between Torren and Aris.

Silence pierced the air.  She shivered as adrenaline pumped through her body.  Torren hadn't lit anything on fire since she broke her paw.  Reya couldn't understand how Aris had found out.

“What in the name of Elogal the badger are you talking about?  Torren's been nothing but helpful since you brought us on this damned quest to testify for something we know nothing about!  What the fuck do you want?" Her voice rose to a shout.  With every word she thought about the hole that she was digging for the two of them.  Could Aris tell that she was lying, that she knew about Torren's powers?

“He fights like a Naja."

“What the hell's a Naja?" Reya demanded.

'I am no Naja,' Torren signed almost simultaneously.  Reya translated for him.

“Then explain to me where he learned to fight like them," Aris growled.

Torren's eyes apologized to Reya.  Her heart skipped a beat and a lump blocked her throat.  Just as much as she had wanted to learn more about the spotted otter's past, she wanted Torren to choose to confide in her.  The opportunity was being torn away from her and the otter girl had just realized how much it meant to her.

'I did once live in Naja, but I was exiled and can never return.'  Torren had chosen his words very carefully; Reya could tell from his jerky, offbeat paw movements.  He was concentrating more on the wording than the flow of his sentence.

“Or you could be a spy," Aris countered.

'Why would a spy be living with Reya in Haarshollow?"

“And what business do you have in Haarshollow?  Why would you have traveled this far?"

'Nowhere is far enough from Naja,' Torren signed.  Reya could see the pain clearly through the big otter's eyes.  He had never been good at masking his emotions.  She stepped in front of him.

“Is that enough?"

“He was telling the truth," Siv muttered, slinking in front of Aris.  He whispered something and the beagle's ears fell flat.

“Yeah."  The venom had completely vanished from Aris's voice.  He almost sounded defeated.  “I'm sorry Reya, but a careless ranger is a dead one."

“Don't apologize to me, apologize to Torren."

“Not after what he just said.  I believe him, but I can't trust a Naja."

“He just said that he's not one!" Reya huffed, “What's a Naja, anyway?"

“They were a group of dissidents who tried to corrupt the kingdom to their perverted ideals using murder and intrigue.  Eventually they took control of the western leaders and provoked a recession.  That was all a hundred years ago, but we still find Naja spies and assassins in the capitol.  There hasn't been a major battle in years, but the war to quell the rebellion never officially ended.  'Naja' is now the name of their territory."  Aris looked past Reya to Torren.  “You've had military training, right?"  Torren nodded.  “Why did you leave?"

'A personal issue.'

“What was it?" Aris demanded.

Torren's eyes glistened.  'I can't talk about it.  You have to believe me, it was nothing political, nothing about the military.  I don't give a shit about the politics!  I just wanted to get away!'

Reya glared at Aris like he had just murdered a cub.  She translated for Torren in a monotone, stripping his words of the emotion in his quivering paws.

“Fine."

Reya bumped Torren's shoulder and turned away.  The spotted otter followed her as she walked towards a bush only barely in sight of Aris and Siv.  The skunks watched them pass with apologetic glances.

“You two!  Don't take another step!"  a voice thundered from the forest in front of them.  Blood drained from the little otter's face.  What now?  It had been a week since Aris's confrontation of Torren and the animosity still hung in the air between all of the animals.  Mydya and Mephit tried several times to break the tension, but they had very limited success.

The otter girl froze.  Torren stopped next to her.  A second command echoed from behind her.  She looked over her shoulder.  Both the rangers and the skunks were staring in the direction of the second voice.

“What are you doing out here?" the terrier demanded as it stepped from the bushes.  A chainmail coat covered the fur from his ears down to his tail.  The claws that he wore were much lighter than those that Aris used.  Curved needlelike blades were nestled into the dog's own natural claws.  A contraption of wire and leather straps kept them taut and almost natural looking in an odd metallic way.

Reya looked back at Aris and Siv for help.  They were the rangers, after all.  However, the two of them seemed occupied with two other armed animals.

“We're being escorted by the rangers back there to testify at a trial in Fenbury."

“What trial?"

“A mole named Talip.  He was sent by boat."  Reya surprised herself with how official she sounded.

“I trust that your friends will offer the same story."

“They will."

“Walk back to them now."  

Reya complied.  The terrier followed close behind her, his eyes constantly scanning back and forth.

“Wheston, what did these two tell you?"  asked a wolf in chainmail much like Terrier's.

“They say that they're being escorted to testify at a trial.  They also claim that these two are rangers."

“The stories match, and these two seem to be true rangers.  They carry the insignia and know the tenets."

“What of the skunks?"

“Refugees from Lenwick."

“Um, excuse me," Mephit meekly interjected, “Who are you people?"

The terrier trotted up to the young skunk with a grin on his face.  “Why, my young lad, we're members of the king's royal army!  Scouting division, thirds corps!"

“What are you doing this far from Wolfshome?  I didn't think that any military divisions were active in the north."

“We are here to quell the riots in Lenwick," answered the third soldier, a calico cat with beady eyes.  Aris thought for a moment, and then his eyes widened.  He looked at the cat in shock.  “How many troops do you have?"

“We brought all of our garrisons from Fenbury and the surrounding region as well as all of the mobile divisions in Wolfshome.  We have some twelve thousand troops!" Wheston answered proudly.

“You need to flee!  This was a trap.  I don't know how they coordinated it, but you're about to be overrun," Aris gasped.

“What in Bleyen's name are you talking about?"

“You need to take me to the general.  There's an army behind The Spire that's about to flank you."

“Behind The Spire?  That's nonsense!  No one's been able to parlay with the barbarians for centuries!"

“You're wasting time!" Siv hissed. “Take us to the general right now.  This is critical and you don't have the authority to interfere."  Siv's threat was very thinly veiled.  The scouts glanced at each other and nodded.

“Come with us."  

Everyone followed the terrier without argument.  Reya and Torren stayed in front, up next to the lively dog.  Mydya and Mephit followed in the middle and the two rangers took up the rear.  Reya still felt uneasy about Aris.  She didn't understand what had gotten into the beagle.  It was as if he had changed into a completely different dog overnight.

“Pardon me if you don't like me asking miss, but where'd you end up with all of them bandages?"

“It was a forest fire," Reya chirped, “about two months ago now.  They're still pretty sore and ugly looking, but they're getting better every day!  It's all about the aloe vera.  If you apply a little mixture of that, some snapdragon, and crushed marigold flower it really speeds up the healing.  You know, I helped out with this little kitten once.  She got a bit too curious about charcoal after a big bonfire we had every summer in Haarshollow and got this nasty burn on her paw, just like mine!  Anyway, this stuff really does the trick - and all these herbs are local too!"

A bump and a wink from Torren cut her off.  Heat rose to her face.  The otter girl's stomach fluttered and a bashful smile curled the edges of her muzzle.  She tried to look away from the spotted otter's sly grin, but she couldn't help darting her eyes back to him.

Wheston laughed.  “You know your herbs, gal.  I knew aloe did the trick, but damn if aloe ain't what we were told to use for everything.  Cuts?  Aloe.  Sores?  Aloe.  Bug bites?  Bet your fuzzy tail I'll be using aloe."

Reya beamed at the compliment.  “Well, it's good for tons of stuff!  You can actually use it for dry skin under your fur, frostbite, inflammations, certain rashes, sunburns, teeth cleaning -" Reya rattled off all of the uses that she could think of until the terrier cut her off.

“I get the idea!  Where'd you learn all this anyway?"

'Best healer in the northwest!' Torren signed, using alternating forepaws as he walked.

“Oh, shush," she chided, blushing under the creamy white fur around her muzzle.

“What'd he say?"

“Best healer in the northwest," she muttered, half hoping that the dog wouldn't hear him.

“It's true!" Mephit piped in from behind her.  Reya's felt like she could die of embarrassment.

“You know that it's not, there's so much that I don't know!  I mean, Torren had a really nasty bit of infection in his tongue when he showed up and I couldn't take it!  I had to get my brother to clean it and apply the salve!"

'What was in the salve?' Torren asked.  Reya repeated the question for the terrier's benefit

“Well, it was obviously a garlic base because we were dealing with an infection.  There was also a mixture of houseleek to soothe the skin, goldenrod for the bleeding, and snapdragon to keep down any fever or inflammation.  It was pretty standard really."

“Otter, I think your mate there just proved his point!"

Reya blanched and almost tripped over her own paws.  “He's not my mate!"

“My mistake."  Wheston twitched his ears in obvious amusement.  Reya tried to avoid looking at Torren.  A confused smile had fought its way onto her muzzle.  She very quickly worked to change the subject.

Mydya and Mephit talked among themselves, sometimes joining into the conversation with Wheston and the otters.  The rangers drifted behind the group, their voices never rising above a mutter.  The other scouts seemed far less sociable than the terrier, and moved in flanking positions.

Reya looked up in awe as they passed through a small clearing in the forest.  The huge mountain range ran alongside the animals, less than an hours march north.  The range dropped down to a low pass less than half a day's march in front of them.  A massive jagged pillar jutted into the sky from the center of the pass, half again the size of the mountains next to it.  

“That's incredible," Reya gasped.

“She's a sight, ain't she?" The terrier said.

Reya nodded.  She kept going in silence, staring at the canopy and trying to catch more glimpses of the natural wonder.  

The animals walked for a quarter of a day before they encountered the army's perimeter guards.  Shining metal adorned the soldiers, held upright on their hind paws by spears and poleaxes.  They stood at alert, bracing their weapons for a few moments before Wheston verified his rank and purpose.  The guards nodded and let them through.  

Tents covered the ground like ants around an anthill.  Animals with varying amounts of arms and armor carted supplies to wagons, cooked food, and helped other soldiers to put on or remove their complicated suits.

Reya felt more and more conspicuous as she walked through the dense tents and bustling soldiers.  It was as if in a single day she had been thrust into an entirely different world.  Sure, there had been town guards and sellswords around both her hometown and Lenwick, but none of them were adorned with the metallic sheen of full plate armor.  

Reya couldn't take her eyes off of the knights.  They stood out from the soldiers and workers like bass in a school of minnow.  Their armor was adorned with ribbons and painted sigils.  An air of nobility and strength seemed to radiate from the elite soldiers.  Battle-flags and banners of high bloodlines and sects flew over their heads.

There were certainly far more people in the massive encampment than in her own small hometown.  Thousands of animals of every breed and lineage she could imagine pushed past her, rushing to get somewhere or other.  The little otter was so distracted that she didn't even notice their destination until it loomed over her.

The general's tent was massive.  Blue and gold stripes, the color of the king, lined the fabric from bottom to pointed top.  Banners streamed down the front in honor of bloodlines she didn't know and organizations she didn't recognize.  Two guards in polished silver armor and long deadly metallic claws stood in front of the tent flap.  

“We have two rangers here to speak with General Crice."

“Present your authorization."  The scouts stepped forward, displaying their badges.  Aris and Siv followed with their engraved broaches.

“Who are these animals who accompany you?"

“They are traveling companions and witnesses to the events that we intent to relay to the general," Aris answered with an air of authority.

“You may enter."  

Reya followed the the rangers and scouts, now both in the front of the group, into the large circular tent.

Several animals huddled around a worn parchment map spread out across the floor.  A mouse and a vole scampered over the surface, moving wooden figurines half their sizes as they chittered to each other.  A wolf and a rabbit commented loomed over the two rodents, each offering occasional input.

“Hello, General Crice?"

“Yes?"  The vole dropped a figurine at her feet and looked up.  She scampered over to the scouts.  

“These rangers requested an audience.  They have some… rather disturbing theories," the feline scout remarked.

“Yes yes, go on with it," the vole said, waving her small paw impatiently, “and none of that respectful scat these idiots are always throwing around!  Get to the point."

“Um, General Crice," Aris said.  Reya noted the stutter had returned to his voice.  “We are in grave danger.  There - there is an army beyond the spire and I believe that they will try to strike as soon as possible.  We had planned to travel through the old ranger path and that brought us to see over the peak.  I have seen the massive army on the other side.   I don't know the numbers, but I don't believe that this force can defeat it in combat.  Furthermore, two weeks after spotting these troops, we were attacked by a pack of wolves.  I don't believe that this was a coincidence.  They were not armed, but doubt that they thought that they needed weapons to fight us - we do not look like a military force."

“Wolves," the rodent general repeated. “Bleyen's fucking mane, are you sure it was wolves?  When was this?  Are you absolutely sure that there was a connection?"

“Yes, they were wolves.  We killed most of them, but we lost one of our own."

“My deepest condolences," Crice muttered. “Fuck!  Fucking scat!  Bleyen's scat filled fucking furry ass!"  She turned to the wolf.  “Alces, you know I trust you.  You know I fucking trust you, sir.  You're a great warrior, an excellent tactician, and a wonderful friend.  But I need you to do something for me."

“What do you need, ma'am?" the wolf asked, his eyes wide.

“Take weapons and armor from any soldier conscripted in Fenbury.  I trust the knights.  We may lose some, but they have sworn an oath and any who do not live by it are already fucked in the eyes of our ancestors.  How do we do this?  We can't lock the bastards up.  There's not nearly enough room.  A mass execution on the grounds of a rumor would be obscene and we would kill more innocents than I wish to weigh on my conscience.  Arctos protect us."  She turned to her advisors.  “One of you lazy assholes has got to have something!  Advise me you useless fucks!"

“You should separate them all to the North," Mydya muttered.  The vole whipped back around, startled.  

“You, skunk girl, speak up!  Some of us have tiny ears!"  Mydya looked stunned that she had even been noticed.  

“I - I think that they should be set in a separate camp.  If they go bad, then we will have to fight them off anyway, right?" the skunk girl grew bolder as she talked.  Crice was listening intently, her ear twitching in concentration.  “They're gonna be a lot easier to deal with if they aren't inside the army.  And north seems like the right direction, too.  If Fenbury is really turning traitor, then they might have some army coming and we don't want them to join with the soldiers.  Instead, if they're on the side with the cats, we might get some of the cats to fight Fenbury soldiers.  At least we'll have some confusion, right?"

“Damn, girl.  You've got a good mind for this.  If I'm still alive when this is over, there'll be a job waiting for you."  Mydya's muzzle dropped open, her eyes wide.  

“Really?"

“Yes really.  Now shut up!  We need to focus!  Alces, you spread the order to the Lenwick generals.  They trust you and respect you.  If they try to fight now, then so be it.  It's better than when we've got an army bearing down on us."  The vole's eyes glimmered.  “All right, boys.  We expected to calm down some farmers, and intimidate some towns into paying taxes.  But fuck if Sirrhi the lucky lemur didn't give us the real scat to deal with.  This is your chance to have legends told about you!"

The wolf grinned and bowed to the vole.  The rabbit and mouse followed suit.  They rushed out of the tent, purpose in their pawsteps.

Crice looked up at the tent roof, tapping her hind paw on the ground.  “You should probably leave; the battlefield is no place for children and the injured.  We can have an escort for you in the morning.  They'll take you directly to Bine's Creek and then down through the meadowlands."

“Thank you," Reya said with a bow, “but I think that I would be more useful here."  Torren and the skunks looked at her, startled.  “I'm a healer and I have an extensive knowledge of this region's herbs."

The vole looked down with a smile.  “Very well.  We will still escort you to Bine's creek, but once the battle has finished I am sure that our victorious survivors will appreciate your aid."

Torren's paw brushed over Reya's.  She looked over at the spotted otter's ear to ear grin.  “Oh shush," she whispered to him.

“Hey Aris?" Mephit asked.

“What is it?"

“Why do they think that all the Fenbury soldiers are traitors?"

“There are not supposed to be any wolves north of the mountain.  I was an idiot for not realizing this sooner, honestly.  When the treaty was struck all wolves moved south of the barbarian territories to avoid conflicts."

“Oh," Mephit muttered.

"Hey, don't be hard on yourself," Aris said gently, "you're still young and you never had an education.  And hey, it seems obvious, but even I didn't see it coming.  I thought that the wolves who attacked us followed us from the Lenwick riots.  Its kind of dumb of me now that I really think about it, but I just didn't think for a moment that any members of the kingdom could possibly have sided with the barbarians."

"But why'd they do that?  I don't get it.  There's gotta be a lot of people who don't want to turn traitor, it can't be everyone, right?"

"You're right.  I'm sure that there are a lot of innocents.  But its not like there's no motive.  Did you know that Lenwick has the most wolves of anywhere in the kingdom?  There are more wolves there than in Wolfshome!  I'm sure that even now, two hundred years after the treaty, there are those who wish to return to their ancestral lands."

"But why couldn't they just leave?"
"The penalty for breaking the treaty is death.  Smaller tribes of wolves used to live alongside the great cat tribes of the north.  However, during the Great Feline War, when the barbarian tribes last unified, the kingdom's spies infiltrated these smaller wolf tribes and villages of smaller animals.  They were used to inform on troop movements and were a great factor in the King's success.  However, near the end of the conflict, the leader of the Broken Claw, the strongest northern tribe at the time, issued harsher and harsher decrees regarding possible spies until he finally ordered a genocide of all non feline races to end the spy network once and for all.  This caused an uproar, even among barbarians.  In fact, the inner conflict at this last decree was what led to the treaty being signed.  However, enough of the barbarians supported the measure that they forced the provision in the treaty that all sentient animals excepting the great cats were to be exiled from their lands. 

"I think I understand," the skunk said with widened eyes.

Wheston led the group back through the busy encampment towards the eastern flank.  A somber gloom had fallen over the troops.  The sight was almost haunting under the the shadow of The Spire.  Yet, there was a buzz of excitement among them.  They had expected to simply control the riot in Lenwick.  Instead, they had a true battle before them.

“We're sorry, but this's one of our only extras," Wheston said, nodding to a small tent.  The otters laid down on the far end, the skunks in the middle, and the rangers next to the tent flap.  They were interrupted as they were preparing to sleep.

“Aren't any of you hungry?  Come sup with us!"

Reya immediately perked up.  On the long journey from Lenwick food had come when food had come.  Meals were skipped and everyone ate what they had been able to scavenge.  The small clawed otter's stomach growled loudly.  She was on her feet and following Wheston in an instant.

The food was delicious.  The large simmering stew was surely not fit for nobility, but for a group of half-starved travelers it was ambrosia.  Reya happily scarfed down her portion and a few bites of Torren's.  After the meal, they returned to the tent and snuggled together.  Reya felt safe for the first time in over a month.

Torren's beating heart calmed her.  She pressed into his warm fur, shutting her eyes and trying to remove all of the thoughts from her mind.  However, she couldn't shake a sense of excitement and anticipation.  The general planned to send them south to Bine's Creek.  The little otter didn't know if they would let her come along as they carried the news of the invasion to Wolfshome, but she already had her heart set on visiting the capital.  And after that, she wanted to see Southbank, Aris's home which he had talked so fondly of.

And in each of her dreams of these incredible cities, Torren was right there with her.  She could feel the heat of his body, the gentle warmth of his fishy breath.  She dreamed that they were on the helm of a boat, staring down a wide beautiful river.  She dreamed of a majestic field, filled with golden stalks of wheat.  She dreamed of his muzzle, pushed against hers in a tender kiss.

She woke up to the blaring of horns. Wheston stuck his head through the tent flap.

“You folks need to leave," the Terrier called inside. “Those horns mean war.  General Crice set me in charge of gettin' you to Bine's Creek, so you'd best come with."

Reya didn't reply.  She was still in a daze.  The sky was dark, but torch flames flickered into existence all around her.  Animals rushed to fit their armor and weapons, moving with urgency and purpose into growing battle lines.

They rushed through the mobilizing soldiers.  However, with all the bustling troops pushing past them and filing into position, even an expert like Wheston had trouble moving quickly.  Once again, Reya was struck by the sheer size of the army as they wound their way towards the southern edge of the encampment.

And then the eastern flank was struck.  Metal clanged and animals screamed with wretched cries.

“Hurry!" Wheston called.  Aris rushed up to the terrier and whispered in hushed tones.  He nodded.  “According to your beagle friend there's a cliff that's got it some caves pretty straight south here."  The otter girl had to focus to listen through the shouts and orders of the officers and soldiers around her.  

Then everything went to hell.  The combat lines seemed to crumple beside her.  The screams and shouts grew louder and louder.  The cacophonous clashing of metal against metal rang in her ears.  

“Run!" Aris screamed back at them.  

A huge panther, coated in dull, unpolished rings of chainmail, pounced onto a plate armored dog with a shrill cry.  Metal crumpled under the cat's rippling and bulging muscles.  The dog screamed, futilely scraping the dirt in an attempt to pull itself away.  The cat's large black paw raked across its face, its metallic claw extensions seeking, and then finding thehelmet's eyeholes.

Reya tore her gaze away.  Her heart beat like a blacksmith's hammer.  She dodged to the right as a spear impaled into the ground next to her.  However, as she ducked around a stumbling soldier she realized that her spotted friend wasn't at her side.  “Torren!" She shrieked.  A cold nose pressed firmly against her haunch.  It had been only moments, since she saw him, but she couldn't help shiver in relief.  He was there, right behind her.  “Mephit?  Mydya? Where are you guys?"

“We're over here!" Mephit squeaked.  She ran around two soldiers, fighting on their hind legs with large bladed axes.  A mouse bolted for one, jamming a metal needle between the cracks in the barbarian's armored platelegs.  The animal howled and lost focus for the moment that it took for the other soldier to smash the axe head into its neck.  Reya heard the crunch of armor and bone as the enemy toppled to the ground.

She saw the skunks.  She darted towards them.  “I'm here!" Mydya turned for a brief moment, locking determined, purposeful eyes with Reya.

“Weave to the right!  They flanked from the east and we need to get away from the front lines!"  Mydya continued.  Reya nodded and followed the skunks as they ducked, dove and dodged through the sea of bodies and metal.  Reya whispered a prayer of thanks to Arctos that none of her friends had been attacked.

The coppery smell of blood was overpowering.  Animals fell all around her, friend and foe.  Rodents clambered around underfoot, fighting amongst themselves and looking for cracks in armor to pierce with deadly sharp needles.  A dog in front of Reya rolled on the ground, screaming and crying as it gripped its own severed tail.  A weasel screamed in terror and agony as a bear picked it up and tore the screaming creature in half with a sickening squelch.  

Reya never erased the bloody images from her mind.

Suddenly, they were out of the army lines.  She heard shouts and screams behind her.  She could see both Wheston and the rangers again.  The skunk siblings also made it out.  Her head pounded.  She ran after them as fast as she could.  Her paws hurt again; the month old burns protested against her movement.

The sounds of combat grew quieter and quieter as they scurried down the rocky forested hill.  The sudden calm seemed chilling and out of place.

“Is anyone injured?"  Reya asked.

“Quiet!" Siv whispered harshly. “We're being followed."  

Reya paled under her fur.  She suddenly found an extra spring in her step, keeping pace with Mephit and Mydya as Aris and Siv dropped back to the rear.

The bobcat pounced from the shadows without a sound.  Aris growled, swiping his metal claws at the beast.  The cat yowled as blades raked across its flank.  It turned to face its attacker.  Siv stalked around its side, flanking the large muscular animal.

“Go!" Aris commanded.  Reya didn't have time to argue.  Even if she did, she had no chance to survive in the face of one of the large cats.  She looked at Torren, his deep blue eyes gazing back at her, and bolted away from the rangers.

The gentle patter of Torren's pawpads was all she could hear from behind her.  Yet, the bobcat's silent attack had terrified her.  She didn't look back - she couldn't risk slowing down if another cat was following her.

The rockface loomed in front of her.  She stayed close behind Wheston as he curved to the left and followed the stone wall for several minutes.  He finally stopped, nodding at a crevice in the stone.  “Go in.  Quickly!" he whispered.

The otters and skunks followed his lead.  The cave was bigger than it looked from the outside, but in the darkness of night Reya could barely make out the winding tunnel before her.  Still, Wheston led them forward and the animals followed him into the pitch black.  Turning back, she felt her stomach clench.  Her paw found Torren's.  In the entrance, a hundred tail lengths away, were four pairs of furious slitted green eyes.  Mephit shrieked.  Mydya murmured reassurance to her brother.  

“Torren," Reya whispered, “you saw what they'll do to us right?"

Her heart pounded like an Etrysian drum.  The cats stalked closer.

Wheston stepped forward, but Reya snapped at him.  “Back!" she demanded.  The terrier stepped back, unsure and afraid.

“They'll slowly tear me apart, Torren.  Did you see the look on the weasel's face as the bear ripped it in half?  That's what you'll see on my face.  That's the pain I'll have to go through as they rip out my flesh."

Tears dripped from her eyes, matting the cream colored fur underneath.  She backed into a wall.  She felt the skunks huddled behind her.

“Be afraid for me, Torren.  They'll hurt the skunk cubs.  They'll eat us alive.  Imagine what they'll do to me."

The cats were fifty tail lengths away.

“They'll abuse me and ruin me.  They'll eat you alive.  I'll never get the chance to say I love you!"

A flame burst into existence in front of them.  It grew and grew, swirling around like a flurry of leaves in the wind.  The cats yowled and screamed obscenities as their fur lit and their flesh burned.  The inferno roared in front of the terrified otter girl.

20: Broken

The heat was overwhelming, but Reya didn't want to run.  She stood shoulder to shoulder with Torren, staring at the cats as they burned alive.  They yowled and shrieked into the cool night air as they tried to turn and run.  However, their efforts proved fruitless.  One by one their muscles failed them under the agony of the inferno and they dropped to the cave floor.

The otter girl moved to step back, but the fire had already begun to subside, Torren along with it.  His body slumped against hers.  She held him up with quivering, pained paws as he had done for her so many times.  As the blaze wore down to a spark, she set him gently onto the cave floor and then turned her attention to her dumbstruck companions.

She opened her mouth to speak but words didn't come out.  She looked back and forth between Wheston, Mydya, and Mephit.  She was normally so good at understanding what her friends were thinking by the expressions on their faces.  However, the sudden blackness of the nighttime cave left her unable to guess at their emotions.  She just saw three pairs of eyes staring straight at her.  Reya wished she could see the fear, anger, or hatred on their faces.  Any of these would have been a relief the small clawed otter. 

After what felt like an eternity she squeaked out a plea, “He had to.  You know he had to, right?"

“Is he –“

Reya cut Wheston off.  Her eyes watered with tears.  “You can't tell anyone.  Please!"

Again, the animals stared at each other.  The chill air, magnified by the sudden lack of heat, set her body shivering with adrenaline.  Her heart tried to lurch out of her chest as she locked eyes with the soldier.  She desperately wanted to know what he thought.  She felt that she could trust Mephit completely, and she knew that his sister wouldn't do anything that she thought would hurt him.  The terrier, however, was an enigma.

Mydya stepped forward.  The pitch darkness kept her from seeing the skunk's quivering paws, but she could hear them rattle against the stone.  “If you try hurt her you'll have to get through me first," Mydya hissed.

Reya's sobs echoed through the cave.

“I wasn't planning on hurting no one," Wheston whispered, “but that wasn't a gift of Bleyen I just saw."

“Torren can't help it!" Reya protested.  “It's something he was born with, he doesn't even know how it happens, just that it goes off when he gets afraid!"

“That's why you said all those things?" Mephit whispered.

“Yeah."

“Did you mean them?"

Reya nodded, a lump suddenly constricting her throat.  Then she realized that they couldn't see her well enough.  “Yes," she whimpered.

“You," the little skunk started, “You love him?"

This time the lump in her throat proved too much an obstacle and she just squeaked in response.

“Shush, boy.  Never ask a question you know the answer to," Wheston chided.  “We have worse problems than two lovebirds and a witch who don't mean no harm.  What we need to be thinkin' about is - is what we're doing to get out of here if this battle don't go the way of the kingdom."

“Shouldn't we wait for Aris and Siv?" Mydya asked.  She seemed to have regained her composure.

“Well, we're gonna wait, like it or not.  If these cats are fighting in the night it means they're resting in the morning.  That'll be our chance to leave.  If your friends make it back by then, they'll come with.  If they don't, then there's nothing we can do to help.  We can't go searching a battlefield if the bad guys are still kicking.

“So," the male skunk pouted, “we're gonna leave them for dead like we left Jack.  No funeral or nothing.  Just out there for the ants and flies."

“They're rangers, boy.  I'd bet two of 'em worth their emblems against a score of those big cats any day of the week."

Mephit murmured an agreement.

“Now listen, I'd love to keep chatting, but we'd better get ourselves some rest.  Can't travel quietly if we're dead tired."

Reya found herself agreeing with the Terrier.  After the sudden burst of fear and worry, she felt exhaustion settling in.  She curled up against Torren on the stone floor and closed her eyes.  The rocks were still warm from the fire.  She thought of the hearth of her home, the heat of her brother as they warmed themselves through the cold winter nights.

“Wake up," Siv hissed in her ear.  Reya stirred, leisurely stretching her legs out.

“Wake up!" The cat's claws dug into her shoulder.  She yelped, eyes opening wide.  His eyes glowed in the darkness.

 “Come with me," he demanded.  The otter didn't protest.  She followed him out of the cave.  All of the grass in a 10 tail length radius around the entrance had charred black.  Low hanging leaves on trees that grew too close to the rock-face wilted and weeped.

“I don't even want to fucking know," the cat hissed.  “But you're going to help me right now.  I swear, I'll report you and your friend to the high inquisitor.  I swear I will!"

“With what?" Reya whimpered.  Her mind was a sleepy haze.  She barely registered the cat's threats. 

Siv reached into a bush and slowly pulled Aris's limp body out into the open by the scruff of his neck.  The otter girl gasped at the sight of him.  His side had been torn open by vicious claw wounds and his ear had been punctured by sharp teeth.  However, the worst injury was his front right leg.  It had been torn almost halfway off.  Fractured splinters of bone jutted out of the bloody wound.

“You have to save him," Siv whispered.  “You have to.  If you don't I'll – I'll hurt you.  I'll tear of your fucking ear!  I will! Save him, please!"

“Scat," Reya whispered.  She was barely listening to the small cat.  “You need to go into the cave and get me the knapsack that Torren always wears.  It has all of my herbs in it.  Go!  Now!"

The cat rushed off into the darkness as Reya looked down at the beagle's ravaged body.  She scanned the foliage around her, trying to spot any useful herbs that she could find in the moonlight.  Nothing.  Teeth gnashed at the bandages on her blistered paws, tearing them off.  She needed every ounce of dexterity she had to save the beagle.

One paw pressed inside the gaping wound in his leg, searching for the torn vein.  The length of her other arm rested along one of the wide claw gashes etched into his side.  Without her medicines it was all she could do to try to slow the blood-flow.  She prayed to Igri, the tiger god, that Aris hadn't already lost too much blood.

“How long has it been since this happened?" Reya demanded as Siv ran back from the cave.  The knapsack dragged along the ground next to him, the strap clutched tightly in the cat's mouth.

“Maybe half an hour.  I don't know," his voice quivered.

“Dump it all on the grass.  I need to move as quickly as possible."  Siv followed her command and flipped the bag over, dumping the herbs and poultices onto the ground alongside the old tome.  Siv glanced at the book in shock, but quickly composed himself.

“Hold his wounds like I'm doing.  We need to stop the blood-flow," Reya commanded.  She let go and began to frantically sort through the toppled contents of her medical kit.  The darkness of night made her search much more difficult.  She the glint of starlight on a bottle.  “Yes!  Torren packed some of Melly's alcohol!"  She gripped the small bottle between her paws and yanked the stopper rag out of the top, tearing off the twine that kept it in place.

“Bite off the rest of his leg and push this against the stump."

“What?  You just want me to bite off his leg?  He'll never be able to fight again!"

“The leg is gone!  It can't be saved.  If you don't rip it all the way off, I won't be able to clean it properly!  Now in Bleyen's fucking name, do what I say!"

Trembling, Siv did as she asked. His short maw stained with blood as his teeth sunk into the beagle's leg.  He bit down, piercing through the flesh, and tore the dangling limb from Aris's elbow.

“Good," Reya surprised herself with the coldness in her voice.  “Now -" She cut herself off.  Siv wasn't listening.  He stumbled away from the unconscious beagle and spat a mouthful of blood onto the wilted grass.  It was chased out by the contents of his stomach.

She was alone.  A moment of terrible hesitation stunned the shivering otter.  Did she go to apply pressure to the wound, or find yarrow to clot the blood?  If the beagle was close to death right then, taking the time to find a poultice of yarrow from the knapsack would kill him.  If she didn't apply the yarrow, then he might die with or without pressure and bandages.

Then the small otter spotted the woven bag that she recognized from so many times before.  It was Gither's emergency poultice, a mix of ground yarrow flowers, goldenrod, garlic chives, and charcoal.

“Reya?  Aris?" Mephit whined from the cave entrance.

“Go back inside," Reya whispered harshly.  “You don't need to see this."

The skunk stepped towards her.  “You gotta let me help.  Please!  He can't die too."

Reya wanted to say no to the young skunk.  But she needed any extra paws that she could get.  After a moment's hesitation she began to rattle out commands.  “Get that spool of twine and cut off an otter tail's worth of it.  I need those fabrics too.  There's a bottle of liquor next to the knapsack, pour some on the fabrics and bring the rest to me.  Hurry!"  She grabbed the poultice and turned around.  A silent prayer thanked Igri that the beagle was out cold.  She remembered the pain of the first day after the fire.

She heard Mephit scurrying behind her, but all of the otter's attention was focused on the bleeding stump of Aris's elbow.  Her paw poked and prodded at the center of the wound in a search for shards of broken bone.  His radius had cleanly broken out of the elbow joint and jutted from the severed limb on the ground, but his ulna had fractured.  Of course, without the radius holding it firmly in place, Reya hoped that the ulna would slide out without any complications.

The sharp edge of a shard of bone nearly cut into Reya's paw.  The little otter cursed, she was trying to work too quickly and acting carelessly.  She carefully slid her dexterous fingers around the fracture and squeezed.  It pulled out smoothly, but it stuck to several still-attached ligaments.  Reya, trying not to think about what she was doing, severed them with her teeth.

However, removing the lowest of the bone fragments was enough for her purposes.  She didn't want any bone jutting out as the skin healed.  If there were more shards they would pain the beagle for years to come, but the tradeoff of searching for them was more than the loss of blood was worth.  Aris couldn't afford that deal.

The alcohol soaked rag, a hearty helping of Gither's poultice scattered on top of it, quickly stained crimson.

“Mephit!  Do you have rags ready for me?"  she gagged on the coppery taste of Aris's blood as she spoke.

“Yeah."

“Press the dry rags against the leg wound over the one that's already there and hold them still.  Toss the wet rags on his chest.  Siv!  If you can't help me here, you can help me out there.  Aris needs water." 

The cat was still shaking, staring at his own vomit.  Reya didn't think that he had even heard her, but he turned away and disappeared into the forest with trembling steps.  She turned back and the skunk was standing next to her, carefully holding the alcohol soaked rags between his teeth.  Reya snatched them from his muzzle.

Siv had obviously been careful dragging the body of his friend away from danger, but the injuries were far from clean.  She tediously removed bits of dirt and grime piece by piece, swabbing the cuts with the alcohol soaked rags in between.  She cleaned the open wounds as well as she could, but she wasn't satisfied with the result.  The darkness made it hard to see and the blood oozing into his fur set her mind panicking.  How much time did she have to clean the wound before the constant steady loss of blood took its toll?

Reya decided that her best option was to bandage him as soon as possible.  The dry poultice scattered over the long gashes.  Wet rags stretched across the beagle's bloody chest, soon followed by the few dry pieces of cloth that she had left.  She pulled two rags from under Mephit's paw.  He had used far more layers of the fabric than necessary.  They quickly stained red under the pressure of her paws

“Where's the twine?"

“Next to my tail."

Reya turned around, grabbed the weave, and turned back to return pressure to the beagle's side.  “Okay, I'm going to need to cut off the blood-flow in his leg.  I need to you replace me over here.  Keep pressure on his chest, it'll help to slow down the bleeding.  Now I'm going to switch positions with you on the count of three, okay?  Three, two, one, go."  She stepped back and the skunk boy rushed to take her place.  His black furred paws were already stained red as he pushed down Aris's chest.

Skillful otter paws wrapped the twine around the bound stump of the ranger's elbow twice before tying it off with a half knot.  Reya scanned the forest floor for a stick sturdy enough for her intentions, a simple task in the lush deciduous forest.  The stick was placed on top of the half knot and bound in place by a second, stronger knot.

“Okay, Mephit," she panted, “grab that end of the stick and pull.  I'll take this end and push.  Don't stop until I do.  This is going to be tiring, but we need to sit it out until Siv makes it back."

The skunk nodded.

Reya grabbed one end of the stick and pushed it towards the beagle's tail while Mephit pulled the other end towards himself.  The twine constricted what was left of the beagle's leg.  The two animals looked at each other along the length of the branch.

“Good job," Reya said through the rough wood. “If this works."  She paused.  “If this works you've just saved his life."  The skunk glowed at her words. 

Silence fell between the two animals.  Everything was suddenly very calm and still.  Aris's chest rose and fell underneath the bandages, the only indication of life in the injured beagle.  Reya realized that she could no longer hear the sounds of battle in the distance.  There were no more screams of pain or clangs of metal.  The normally comforting silence of the forest turned haunting.

“Reya?"

“What is it?"

“Isn't it dangerous out here?  Shouldn't we bring him back into the cave?"

“I don't want to move him until I know whether he has other injuries."

“Whaddya mean?"

“If he has a broken spine moving him too much could leave him paralyzed for life.  If he just has a broken rib, we could dislodge it or even puncture an organ."

“Oh, okay."

“No, that was a good question."  Reya tried to smile at him.  “I used to bug my brother about this stuff all the time when I was young.  I learned everything I know from pestering him and the mole.  Anyway, if someone comes, we'll just say he's a soldier from Fenbury."

“Oh, right, that's a good idea." 

The two of them sat in nervous silence.  Reya anxiously wondered whether each fall of Aris's chest would be his last.  Every time his chest rose a wave of relief washed over her.

“I have the water," Siv said from the shadows.  Reya, startled, nearly jumped out of her skin.  The cat rushed from the bushes to Aris's side.

“What do I do?" He demanded, “How do I make him drink while he's out like this?  Gods, what the fuck do I do?"  The cat's entire body shivered in fear and anticipation, audibly rattling the water in the simple wooden flask that hung from his neck.

“Be patient," Reya muttered, “That water's going to make a difference, but only when he wakes up.  Until then we can only wait.  Actually, do you remember that fire hole that Aris dug that night after the Lenwick riots?  It would be wonderful if you could dig one for us.  A heated yarrow tea would do wonders for his health once he wakes up."  And the difficult work of digging with the short claws of a cat would hold Siv's attention while they waited.

His eyes were locked on to Aris's limp body whenever he had the chance.  Reya saw fear, compassion, and pain in his haunted expression.  It was hauntingly familiar, but she couldn't quite remember where she had seen the look before.

She tilted her head away.  Her heart sunk when she caught the forlorn cat's eyes.  She tried to focus on Mephit instead.  He too seemed lost in thought.

“Reya?"

“What is it?"

“What're we going to do?  We can't stay here, right?  There's all those big cats and lynxes and barbarians and things who'll want to hurt us if they find us here.  But we can't go, since Aris is so hurt," the young skunk trailed off, looking at her expectantly.

“I don't know," she whispered.