The tail end of her dream kept playing on repeat in Sue’s head as she came to, the vision equally unnerving and aggravating. Not only did neither Night Father nor that ‘Justice’ entity convey anything of importance to her, but now she was tangled up in even more divine meddling, the sort she knew even less about than the lunar deities’ spat.
It left her with an infuriated grimace by the time the Sun had finally risen. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for Willow to show up and perform a checkup on her leg, by the means of giving it a feel with their ear extension curl, finding the result satisfactory.
And with that done, it was time to move on to her plans for the day, under-specified as they might have been. Once she’d managed to reassure Willow that she’d be able to get breakfast on her own, they left for their own duties, letting Sue start her search. Try as she might, though, she could find neither the tall vixen nor the equally tall Forest Guardian, arriving nowhere.
Duckdammit, I’m too late, aren’t I?
The realization forced her to take a seat at a nearby bench and reevaluate. She warmed her right arm up as she considered what to do next—there would be a lot of crutch wrangling today. Ultimately, she couldn’t think of any other plan but to ask someone, the realization not helping her anxiety any.
Moonview’s headcount might’ve paled to even her local neighborhood in absolute terms, but it was also much denser, complicating the matters further. Just had to find someone she recognized and preferably had already spoken to, someone who wouldn’t be surprised at her antics—
…
Sigh, not my first choice, but he’ll have to do.
A couple of eye-catching gestures later, up to and including waving her crutch around, Sue had finally caught the villager’s attention. The cream and purple badger was taken aback by her nonsense, but took the bait regardless, slowly approaching before giving her a bow, following it with soft growls and whines. Not unlike Willow’s speech, but with much more of a keening aspect to it, unnerving her plenty.
Left hand off to the side, focus on her psychics, maneuver it with her right hand, aaand—“Good morning, Root. Do you know where Sundance and Solstice went?”
The Elder replied with a few confused blinks as he paused, thoughts catching up to what had just happened. His brow furrowed, mouth opened as if to speak, a few more moments of thought—before finally, he responded. “South and east, believe. Is ‘Mister’ Root. Name, Moon-chosen? Apology... farmhand intrusion.”
Mister Root, sure, whatever. “Thank you. Could you point me there?” Sue asked, and finally realized what the badger meant by ‘farmhand intrusion’. “And no, Lilly didn’t intrude at all.”
His eyes narrowed again, as if she’d misspoken in some critical way. In most other circumstances, she’d be at least a bit unnerved by that, but at the moment, her ‘unnerved’ queue was already so full that she had to pass away reservation numbers for different thoughts—and ‘Mister Flamey Badger was annoyed at her’ was firmly into three digits.
Guess he gave her a direction, at least.
“Grhhmmmm. Name, Moon-chosen?” he asked, even more unamused than earlier, if still trying to maintain a polite facade. “Can use true name. I Her guidance.”
...true name?
No matter what it was, it didn’t matter—it was time to get a move on and hopefully catch the other two before they were done in there. “Sue,” she answered offhandedly as she got up. “Thanks again, but I gotta go.”
Sue wasted no time before heading off, not paying the Elder that threatened to erupt in purple flames behind her any mind. His guidance was understandably vague, but it led her somewhere, even if it was just to Moonview’s edge. The buildings thinned out with every step until she was left only with an increasingly thickening canopy—and a faint, but still present path.
The sight provided a well-needed surge of motivation as she carefully followed it, hoping she wasn’t incidentally being led astray. Weird as that possibility was, it was possible with her not knowing where the night kin village was and being liable to confuse the path for a different one. She supposed she was still close enough to circle back and ask someone for more details—though, if even the brief mention of the night kin left Willow visibly nervous, being so open with it wouldn’t be a good idea.
After all, if the push came to shove, they’d find her out there anyway, right?
Right?
Keeping the despair-inducing thoughts at bay, Sue focused on keeping her pace up. Contrary to the last time she’d tried walking for so long on her own, she no longer felt like her crutch was guiding it wherever it wanted to with her every step—now she was the one in control. The realization only motivated her further, adding a few more pounds of kindling to the flames inside her. She was on a roll with personal mobility—now to see if she could maintain it for however far away Newmoon was.
She’d manage or collapse trying.
With each step, a bit of focus veered away from the uncertain path before her and into her thoughts as she rehearsed her lines. Which was made much more challenging by the exact history between the two peoples remaining largely unknown, aside from the few scant pieces she’d either been told or deduced. Distrust, slow acceptance, plague, and treachery on Moonview’s side, including Solstice.
On that thought, going into any detailed polemics and pleas probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Even if she would find the most beautiful words to swaddle her desires towards Newmoon in, it’d ultimately just be a cartoonish question of ‘Why don’t we all just get along?’, spoken by the species most responsible for their ongoing oppression.
What she could bring up and double down on, however, was what had happened to Pollux and how he and Spark had almost died. Really hammer in how the two villages’ separation hurts the little ones, and leave all the actually intelligent words to Solstice and Sundance.
And who knew—maybe her shambling over unprompted would emphasize her determination and dedication towards improving things? Either way, her presence there was certain to turn heads, less so for crashing the party and more so for showing up for what was objectively a sketchy reason considering her state.
Alas, she had to. It was the only thing she could do, the only thing that would tangibly help her progress toward her goal of returning home. If this really had all been some sort of divinely preordained plan, then she was fulfilling it with annoying effectiveness.
Wait, where’s the... oh right, it’s there. Probably.
The faint path got fainter with each step, making determining where to go harder by the moment. It was still there; she saw it—she thought she saw it, at least. Or maybe it’s just a natural formation of worse dirt that resulted in less grass? She couldn’t see any signs of anyone having recently crossed through that area either, not helping one b—
*caw!*
Sue jumped at the sudden noise, head flailing around as she tried to determine its source. There were no blips on her mental radar—but the suspect was there in the flesh all the same, the realization cheering her up. They weren’t too different from the corvids she’d seen back in her world, but still enough to look quite strange. Strange and familiar, though Sue didn’t remember where she could’ve seen them before.
Their black body almost looked segmented between their torso and a large, bushy tail, with the feathers immediately above their eye line spreading outwards from their head, forming what was objectively a disk, but what Sue’s imagination couldn’t help but see as a rim of a hat. And their eyes—those eyes were thinky, they were most definitely thinky and staring right at her.
The least she could do was return the greetings in whatever way she could. “Hello!” Sue called, putting on her least tired smile. “I know you can’t understand me, but I’m glad to see you.”
Predictably, her words had no immediate effect beyond sparking further confusion. Still, she’d caught the crow’s interest, the night kin bird jumping from branch to branch until they sat on the lowest one around, coming close to her eye level. They seemed to respond to her greeting with quieter caws, interspersed with different clicky noises, all escaping understanding.
Sue was under no delusions that communicating with them wouldn’t be difficult, but she had to try—and miming was just the thing that might work. “Can you guide me over to Newmoon?” she slowly repeated as she gestured. Point at the bird, point at herself, point at the ground, make a walking gesture with two fingers, point at the bird again, point off in the direction she’d been heading towards—
Darkness.
A wall of ink-black nothing stood a few meters ahead, cutting off the rest of the forest as it sucked the surrounding light in, the previous quiet turning into a deafening, oppressive silence. A quick look at the bird determined them to be just as surprised as Sue was, eyes wider as they stared and cawed.
And then, pinprick eyes emerged from the blackness. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes on their own, saturating the void with their presence and Sue’s heart with fear. Moments after, growls and ferocious hisses joined them, freezing Sue’s blood as she inched back, pushing through the ever-growing terror. “H-h-hey, I-I mean no trouble,” she muttered, whole body shaking. “I-I was just walking t-towards—”
The darkness leaped at her.
Claws, paws, bodies, rushing, dashing, lunging, all at her, without mercy, without hesitation. She didn’t even have the breath to shriek as her body took control on its own, forcibly overriding her freeze reaction into flight as fast and far away as she could—but it was no use.
The inky beasts followed in her wake, their roars and growls forcing screams out of Sue as she hobbled on, constantly on the verge of tripping, her pathetic pace slowing down further with each near fall. For a brief moment, she thought she could outrace them, keep ahead for long enough to make it out of this hell and back to safety. She put her whole frail body into each step and each turn—
A roar, a flash of motion in her peripheral vision, a swipe of a shadowy paw—burning pain in her side, melting her innards.
She wasn’t even graced with being able to shriek as her body impacted the dry forest floor moments later, the crutch rattling beside her. Her breath was stolen from her as a massive jaw crunched her hand, rending flesh and shattering bone.
I’m gonna die I’m gonna die I should’ve listened I shouldn’t have gone alone I’M SORRY SUNDANCE!
The fiends encircled her, their growls and roars turning ever more vicious by the moment. She could only curl up, scream, and cry while awaiting the end, awaiting a meaningless death of being little more than a morsel for these nightmares. They were already gnawing at her flesh; she could feel them, the misery making it impossible to think—
Suddenly, a different bark in the distance, stopping the torment for but a moment. It cried out again and again as it approached fast, rushing right towards her. She had no brainpower left to figure out what it was, only able to pry one eye open—and see Pollux leap in through the nightmares surrounding her, turn around, and start barking at the top of his lungs to drive them away. They briefly stopped, but dove in again moments later, on her, on him.
No, don’t touch him, LEAVE HIM ALONE!
Sue’s pained body cried out in sync with her innermost soul. The latter wanted to do anything to protect the little fox again, but this time she couldn’t, laying mangled on the forest floor. She would die, they would both die, there was nothing either of them could do, they were dead they were dead they were dead.
In desperation, she reached with what remained of her arms and pulled Pollux in, holding him close to her neck and chest above the spike, wanting to offer her body for defense even if nothing else was within her ability. He didn’t fight; he didn’t thrash—instead, Pollux howled at the top of his lungs, the warbling sound conveying something incomprehensible to someone unknown.
And then; it all stopped.
The cries, the growls, the uncountable attacks, all vanished as if a light switch had been flicked. Once Sue had pried her eyes open, the formless blackness was gone too, together with the shadowy beasts. It was for naught; she was bleeding, she would...
Sue looked down at the arm embracing Pollux, expecting to see it be reduced to mince meat after that beast’s savage bite—nothing. No blood, no injuries, and the pain she still felt grew weaker by the moment, fading from incapacitating to merely aching. The lil’ night kin noticed her shock too, calming himself down before facing her again, his expression distraught and apologetic. His woofs were quiet and whimpering as he cuddled up to her front and peppered her cheeks with licks.
It made no more sense for Sue than the suddenly disappearing hell, but it was much, much more appreciated. She held him tight, much tighter than ever before. Her anguish at all the pain and fear she’d just witnessed waned as she clung to the fox, especially since he seemed to know what had happened. Did something attack her? Why did it stop so suddenly? Why are her wounds gone now? Why—
Something else was here with them, so much more than a mere shadow.
The shaded grove she’d crashed in let barely any light in, only enough to make out the outline of the being that hovered over her. Outline, long claws, and its eyes, good Duck its eyes, their piercing blue glow chilling her soul. It made her curl up even tighter and hold the kit even closer. The clawed being responded with a growl that froze her body, paralyzing it in fear of death once more.
And then; Pollux snapped back at them. He squirmed in her embrace, barking firmly and loudly at the monster. Each time the larger one spoke, or even tried to, Pollux immediately cut them off, gradually shutting them up. Every time that happened, he turned back towards her afterwards and pressed his small body against hers, continuing his apologetic mumbles.
Soon after, the cawing from earlier returned. Sue could just barely make the black bird out on a nearby branch. Their vocalizations followed Pollux’s each time the larger being spoke, similarly hostile towards them. After a few more rounds of that, the stranger had stopped talking, letting the terrifying situation relax into uneasy silence.
The larger one backed off until they stood beside a nearby tree, staring her down from a distance. Now that they weren’t blocking the sunlight anymore, Sue could make out more than just their outline—and their appearance clicked more facts into place. Gray fur, black mane, elongated fox snout, all of them just like Pollux’s. The only noticeable differences, size aside, were the stranger’s bipedal shape and the massive plume of blood-red hair—and If Sundance was any sign, the former didn’t matter at all.
Was this... Pollux’s relative?
Why were the lil’ fox and that crow hostile to them? Did they have something to do with all that nightmarish blackness that had just attacked her? Did they attack her? What did she do? Nobody around was capable of answering these questions, but what some of them could do was comfort her. Pollux whined quietly as he comforted her, his words just as incomprehensible as they were effective. The crow-alike had much the same idea, landing beside her and joining in on the affection in the limited way they could.
Did she accidentally go somewhere or do something taboo? The mere thought hurt almost as much as her earlier torment—disrespecting the night kin was the very last thing she wanted to do. But, even then, that made no sense! She was just talking to that bird, and then… hell, without warning or reason.
Before Sue’s thoughts could bring her more despair, Pollux caught her attention with a couple of pats on the cheek. The woofs that followed were much more upbeat, soothing her mind. After grabbing her focus, he dragged the crutch back to her before backing off to give her space. The larger fox had stopped even trying to talk, only quietly grumbling as they observed the entire exchange.
Once Pollux had given her space, the small clearing turned to silence. Sue was too confused and shell-shocked to realize what was expected of her, not to mention unnerved at the lil’ night kin scooting off. Her gaze leaped between the two foxes in front of her, her body still locked up. Was she supposed to get up? That’s what it felt like, but... what if she’d do something wrong again? What if having inky nightmares sicced upon her was just a warning shot? What if one more mess-up would make that ferocious beast leap in to tear her to pieces personally, without Pollux being able to do much more than idly bark at them? She had no idea, and it terrified her.
And so, the deadlock continued without an end in sight; Sue left too focused on what the massive fox was doing to notice Pollux’s attempted reassurances. As minutes passed, their gaze continued to narrow on her, only making her shrink more and more. She wanted to plead, hide, to be anywhere but here—but these azure eyes saw it all. She was at their mercy, a mercy they didn’t seem capable of.
Eventually, the larger fox growled, sending Sue’s face to the most childish of hiding spots—behind her hands. Anything to shield her from the terror of it all, to make the finishing blow that was sure to come hurt just a bit less. Her silence gave way to hyperventilating, the entire aching body curling up further—
Suddenly, a wave of tingly static went through her. Like an aftershock of an explosion, but perceived only with her sixth sense. And then; came the voice—
“^What the hell is going on here.^”
It was cold, sharper than a razor blade, feminine if only just. Simultaneously booming and a whisper, rattling Sue’s body as she dared to look outside her pretend cocoon towards its source. A source that, if her tingling sense was any sign, wasn’t one of the night kin—the opposite, if anything.
They towered over her. The grove’s shade left only a few details visible despite their light coloration. They were curved in spots, elongated in others, and very, very tall. Their eyes were but white pinpricks, drilling into her soul the moment they locked with hers.
And with that metaphorical sensation came a very literal one, one of her mind being touched and probed, more than just her current fears being read like a book to her displeasure. Soon after came more growls from the larger fox, drawing the towering psychic’s attention as they muttered, palpably annoyed, “^Of course this isn’t Solstice, you fool.^”
Wait... it couldn’t be. Did they try to attack Solstice and just mistook her for—
More woofs, responded to first by Pollux, then the bird, and finally by the living tower. “^I will not deign that with a response, Alastor,^” the psychic seethed, earlier coldness turning into thinly veiled anger. “^Either you swallow your cowardice and tell Ginger about this, or I will.^”
The larger fox stared daggers into the living tower, eyes narrowing, before they suddenly turned back to Sue. She yelped, withdrawing further into her curled-up pose—and watched as they turned around and took off into the distance. Pollux barked something pleading in their wake, but to no avail. The pinprick-eyed being stood in place as their posture deflated. No audible groan accompanied the moment, but the change in emotion was clear to sense. More annoyance, more exasperation, both trying to be pushed aside even briefly, largely unsuccessfully.
“^Idiot...^” they sighed silently, before their piercing gaze returned to Sue. “^Now, you. Who are you, and what is a Forest Guardian doing here?^” they asked, anger giving way to exasperation.
Seeing their pinprick eyes drill into her again made Sue jump a bit, but she managed to retain her grip on herself this time. “I-I’m Sue,” she whispered, heart hammering in her chest. “I... w-wanted to get t-to Newmoon...”
A long, uncomfortable pause fell over the grove, the shift in mood leaving Sue feeling too grilled to even dare looking up at the other psychic. Out of view, Pollux woofed something again, scrambling over as something writhed inside her mind. “—ur village?”
Sue stared, dumbstruck, as the kit resumed his affection from earlier. As sensation gradually returned to her hands, she eventually dared to return Pollux’s gestures in kind, much to the living tower’s tired annoyance. “^Repeat, Pollux,^” they asked, sounding like they were dealing with a headache.
“Oh, okay!” the fox woofed as he scooted up to Sue’s face. “Why were you walking to our village, Sue?”
Why, indeed. “I-it’s...” she trailed off, pushing through the anxiety binding her mind to find the right words, “…it’s s-something important, very important.”
More than enough justification as far as Pollux was concerned. “Oooooh, I see! Why didn’t you follow the path? Did you wanna hide?” he asked curiously, tilting his head.
Walking all the way over to Newmoon was one accomplishment—sneaking there with a crutch would’ve been an incomparably more impressive one. Probably not possible, but where there’s a will, there’s a way, neither of which Sue had. “I... tried to f-follow the path,” she explained, the realization finally hitting her. “I got lost, didn’t I...”
“^Extremely so,^” the tall tower answered with the world’s most subdued chuckle. Their earlier anger faded away by the moment, leaving just annoyance and disinterested flatness.
Before she could focus on the psychic’s tone, though, Pollux huddled up closer, the hurt and apology palpable in his woofs. “I’m sorry my dad attacked you...” he whined as he resumed the affection, a tear or two welling in the corner of his eye.
So it was his family...
“Wh-why did he d-do that...” Sue whimpered, even more taken aback by it all.
“I don’t know!” Pollux pleaded, ears lying flat. “I-I’m sorry, Sue!”
The gray fox looked like he was about to break down into sobs. Sue reached in and pulled him into a tight hug, trying to console him as they both processed what had just happened. He greatly appreciated the pets that followed; those and the well-needed reprieve from his worries about her getting hurt. All the while, his very presence brought Sue relief, too. “D-don’t worry, Pollux,” she reassured, finally steadying her breath. “It’s not your fault.”
He squirmed in her embrace, whimpering, “I know, a-and I tried to make him stop, but I was too late and, and—”
“Shhhhhhh...” Sue exhaled as she held the lil’ night kin even closer, the calmness finally letting her unclench her body from the panic attack moments prior.
And the other psychic noticed. They took one look at her before stating the obvious—“^You’re in no shape for walking the remainder of the way there.^” That would’ve likely been true even without Sue’s recent crash, but the ache that went through the left side of her body each time she even thought about moving sure didn’t help either. “^I’ll Teleport us there. Someone needs to tell Ginger what happened anyway...^” they sighed, exhaustion overtaking the high-strung flatness.
“That was so mean of him...” Pollux whined.
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The psychic’s expression cracked into the faintest of frowns. “^Correct, unfortunately.^”
The lil’ night kin was still so confused. “Why did he do that, Mrs. Heather?” he asked, hoping another adult would know.
“^I don’t know, Pollux.^” the freshly named Heather answered wistfully, before looking back at the Forest Guardian. “^Now, you... Sue. Are you capable of standing up on your own?^”
“I-I’m not s-sure—AH!” Sue shrieked as the other psychic took the matters into their own mind, moving her into the air without even waiting for her to finish.
Heather’s psychics were much more forceful than how either Solstice or Sundance did it, the sheer acceleration sending a roll of nausea through Sue. What followed was less abrupt, though still very rough compared to what she was used to. Her legs were lowered, her hands were moved into position, the crutch was slid under her shoulder—and, at last, she was up again.
If much more roughly than she would’ve preferred.
Sue sensed the slightest bit of hesitation in the other psychic’s emotions, though it faded once she finally got enough of a grip on herself to speak again. “Th-thanks...”
“What is that thing you’re holding?” an unfamiliar voice asked. It caught her off guard, but the cawing that overlapped the sound clued her off to its source. The voice was slightly croaky, but otherwise young, like a girl in her teens with a very sore throat.
Sue wasn’t sure how to answer the ambiguous question that even once her eyes connected with the crow’s. Did they—did she mean the crutch? “I-it’s just a crutch,” she responded, inspecting the tool for damages. “It lets me walk with an injured leg...”
“Oooooh, so that’s what that fabric on your leg meant!” the crow leaned in, fascinated. “Who made—”
“^Your questions can wait, Rainfall,^” Heather cut her off with the world’s most subdued sigh. The black bird didn’t argue with her, letting her focus. Sue briefly noticed the other psychic’s eyes shifting over to stare into her again, probing in the same way as before—and then; refocusing on something else.
Something much, much flashier.
Before she knew it, Sue and everyone around her were surrounded by an intense, white sheen. Unlike the immobilizing one from earlier, here it didn’t leave her bound with an ironclad mental grip, even if the light was just as intense as before. It only grew stronger by the moment, blinding in its intensity and forcing Sue to clench her eyes shut—
An instant of nonexistence, an epicenter of a tingly shockwave, a couple moments of finding her balance again—they were somewhere else altogether.
This stretch of the woods was... brighter, nowhere near as murky as the one they were just in. Any and all questions in the vein of ‘how’ and ‘why’ were stashed deep inside her mind as Sue grabbed her bearings and looked around. Everyone was still around, wherever ‘here’ was—including the imposing psychic, now much more visible.
Sue didn’t expect a creature this intimidating to have such a gentle coloration. Heather was shaped like a chess piece—legless white bottom, pink middle, blue top capped off with a hat-like growth that trailed off into a long arm. And inside that external shell, a white face with a blank expression, its eyes all black aside from the pinpricks she’d seen pierce the darkness. Now that she got a better look at her, Heather looked very similar to—
“^Yes, I’m Thistle’s mother,^” she confirmed, exasperated. “^Are you ready to walk the remainder of the way over?^”
Heather’s tone was thankfully far from anything panic-inducing, while still providing a firm rhetorical shove in one specific direction. One that the two little ones immediately started scrambling towards, Sue left playing catch-up.
“Who made this... ‘crutch’?” Rainfall continued her questioning, flying as close as she could to Sue and her crutch without bumping into her.
“Uhh, I-I don’t know,” Sue admitted. “Willow gave it to me, but I don’t know who made it. M-Maybe Kantaro?” she suggested, offhandedly.
“Nooo, he doesn’t do tools like that!” the crow shook her head. “It would have to be—”
“How do you know that?” Sue asked, confused.
Her question was enough to smash Rainfall’s train of thought completely, drawing the group’s attention to her. Sue heard the drawn-out caws that followed as undignified ‘uhhhhh’s before the crow abruptly took off way ahead, gone before anyone could intervene—much to Pollux’s audible amusement.
“^Do you know something I don’t, Pollux?^” Heather asked flatly, shutting the lil’ fox up as well.
Sue giggled quietly at the unexpected turn of the conversation. Truthfully, she had no idea about anything that was just implied and teased, but... something told her that Pollux wasn’t the only one venturing over to the other village—
“^Of course he isn’t,^” Heather cut in, her mental voice from earlier reduced to a still-imposing whisper. Sue recognized the application of telepathy, trying to respond in kind using the other psychic’s mental link without speaking up loud, lest Pollux heard—only to be cut off again. “^What is wrong with you?^”
Oh.
There was genuine confusion in Heather’s flat voice as she stared at the Forest Guardian in the middle of her… method of locomotion. Sue couldn’t imagine many answers to the question of ‘how does a being shaped more like a tower than an animal move’, but levitation sure wasn’t even on that short list. It made sense, though, and the faint, white glow surrounding Heather’s lower half even explained how she was doing it. Or, at least, it provided as much of an explanation as it got with mind powers.
Somehow I’d gone from ‘Why is that butterfly half my size? What is going on?’ to ‘Ah, I see, that pastel-colored being uses this specific magical ability for basic locomotion. With enough practice I could get there too, no doubt’ in a span of... six days.
“^I mean it,^” Heather continued, concern dripping into her voice. “^I can feel it; what is wrong with you, Sue?^”
The genuine worry Sue sensed in the other psychic was unlike what she’d seen of her so far, even her pinprick eyes softening a bit.
It didn’t make finding an answer to her question any easier, though. “It’s... complicated,” Sue sidestepped the topic. Her untranslated response made Pollux look over his shoulder at her, his confused ‘awoo?’ melting her heart.
Heather kept eyeing her exhausted body. “^I had scarcely imagined it was possible for someone your apparent age to be so inexperienced,^” she admitted.
“I’ve heard that one before,” Sue grumbled, a drop of annoyance mixing with an entire bucket of worry.
No psychics were buying her current state or Solstice’s excuse for it; all of them immediately seeing through her despite her best efforts, the little they ever amounted to. Each time, she was left just playing dumb, hoping she wouldn’t inadvertently blurt the truth out—
“^...transformation,^” the other psychic whispered.
—or worse yet, have someone breach her privacy and take that knowledge without asking.
Sue’s eyes went wide, cold dread shooting through her at her secret being so effortlessly revealed. What would Heather do with that information? What would others do if they learned—
“^Outside of Solstice’s tribe, nothing,^” Heather answered with a hint of exasperated intrigue. “^You overestimate how much most care.^”
Alright, I’ve had enough.
“C-could you stay out of my thoughts!?” Sue shouted, narrowing her eyes at the other psychic for violating her privacy.
*awoo?*
Heather sighed. “^If I could, I would.^”
Her response was as straight-faced as it got, her tone perfectly flat. And yet, it answered nothing, annoying Sue further. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Sue scoffed, indignant, “it must be so hard not being able to respect people’s privacy—”
“^It is.^”
Heather’s voice was the most emotional Sue’d seen yet; a thundering grumble paired with narrowed eyes.
Beyond being intimidating enough to knock Sue’s paleness up a notch, her response appeared genuine. The once-human didn’t know how to interpret it, steering her shambled path away from the other psychic, to the latter’s exasperation. “^Transformation indeed, you really know nothing.^”
It was a correct assessment, but one Sue didn’t like one bit. The other psychic could tell, sighing as deeply as her small body would allow before trying to explain it. “^You can sense emotions, and so can I, incomparably stronger.^” Heather began, steering Sue’s attention from further anger. “^My senses are strong enough to extend to thoughts too, and not even just the most surface ones.^”
Sue had no idea how to react to the impromptu explanation, but she appreciated it all the same. Still, he had a hard time imagining just how a sense this strong would feel—
“^Like people screaming directly into my ears,^” Heather admitted, returning to her earlier flatness.
The Forest Guardian stayed quiet at that, left somewhere between intimidated by the tall psychic’s mannerisms, sorry about how she must feel, and annoyed at her privacy getting breached, even if involuntarily. Thankfully, she wouldn’t have to linger on that heavy topic for much longer.
With one more step, Sue stepped into a modest clearing, scarcely larger than the one from her dream. Fittingly, it even had an extinguished fire pit right at the center. Instead of just feeble little benches, though, it was surrounded by several buildings, most of them wooden huts, forming a semicircle around it. Its other side opened into a larger open area, with several comforts installed all over.
A swing attached to the massive tree towering over the clearing was the most immediately eye-catching one. Its radius easily cleared fifty or even sixty feet, making it simultaneously a dream come true for Sue, Human, age 5, and more than a bit terrifying for Sue, Forest Guardian, age 22-ish.
Falling out of one of those things is how you turn from biology to physics as you splat on the ground.
Fortunately for Sue’s continued structural integrity, Heather did not guide her towards said swing. Instead, the other psychic’s attention shifted to the handful of hammocks strewn along the clearing’s edge. They were rather barebones, but looked plenty comfortable—assuming one didn’t have a pair of painfully sensitive spikes impaling one’s spine, that is.
They were so comfortable, in fact, that one of them was even occupied. Heather reached in with her arm… tentacle… extremity, trying to shake the creature inside awake and drawing the rest of the group’s focus towards them.
Their appearance was much more stark than most other beings in this world, in a ‘technicolor multicolored’ way. Yellow scales covered their arms, torso, and head, their stomach and eyelids were black, and their… baggy, loose folds of skin around their lower half and neck were green. To top it off, they had an orange mohawk-shaped crest of scales on top of their head.
The four very distinct shades clashed together with a force Sue hadn’t seen since she’d stopped frequenting DeviantArt back in the day.
Besides encompassing half a rainbow and then some, they turned out to be rather difficult to wake up, eyes remaining closed even as Heather shook their hammock. The forcefulness escalated until the tower-shaped psychic had to resort to the nuclear option with a defeated telepathic grumble, grasping the entire hammock with her psychics and flipping it one eighty degrees with enough force to launch the technicolor lizard out of it and onto the grassy forest floor below.
And even then, it took them a while to start coming to.
They let out a drawn-out trill as they stretched in place, shifting just enough to turn onto their back and slide their hands under their head. Sue could palpably feel Heather’s exasperation grow in response, her arm slowly lifting into the air as if about to slam down—
“I’m here, I’m here,” the lizard grumbled. Their voice was calm, masculine, and sounded like the speaker was axiomatically incapable of perceiving urgency. “What’s the haps—” he continued as he pried their eyes open, focusing on Heather before jumping over to Sue. Her appearance single-handedly finished the rest of his waking process, his eyes briefly fully opening as he took her in. “Oh.”
“^Correct,^” Heather grumbled.
Sue’s presence provided enough jolt to the lizard’s system to finally make him scramble onto his legs. He waddled over until stopping a couple meters away from her, some of the loose green skin dragging behind him. His orange crest ended up at around the same height as her chest-mounted letter opener as he eyed her out, mumbling, “Hmmm... Solanum?”
The tall psychic scoffed, “^Of course not.^” Her tone and the unfamiliar name caught Sue off guard, but before she could think through it any further, the other psychic continued—“^Go on, introduce yourself.^”
“Uh—hi,” Sue waved, chuckling nervously. “My name is Sue.”
“Mighty pleasure to have you here, Sue,” the night kin lizard greeted, shooting her a genuine smile. “Name’s Ginger—yeah, I know, I know, I’ve already heard all the jokes.”
Sue blinked, confused at his follow-up before Heather continued, “^Alastor attacked her while she was walking through the woods.^”
Ginger reeled. “What?” His gaze jumped, first up at the towering psychic, then down at the hurt-looking Pollux nuzzling Sue’s leg, and finally back at the Forest Guardian herself. It took him a moment to piece the ‘what’ and ‘why’ together, but once he did, he let out a trilling grumble, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “What a child. Oh well, I’ll chew him out once he shows up here,” he sighed, shaking the annoyance off as he turned towards their guest. “Well, mighty apologies from me, Sue. Hardly a pleasant introduction to our little nook in the forest. So—what brings you here? Hailing over from Moonview...?” he asked, his words accompanied by an outstretched hand in Sue’s direction, its claws so stubby she barely noticed them.
Despite having her mental radar for only a few days, Sue had realized that her subconscious decision making had grown to rely on it a lot—enough for its sudden absence to leave her unsure how to proceed here, even with Ginger’s voice being as laid back as it got. Hopefully, nothing terrible would happen if she just shook his hand and told the truth...
“Yeah, I c-came from there,” Sue explained, uneasy. “I wanted to—”
Hold on.
Sue paused, eyes sweeping the clearing as they searched for two specific figures—but found neither. Add to that someone with apparent importance being asleep when she got here, and…
She’d arrived ahead of the other two.
“^Ahead of who—what do you mean Solstice is on her way here?^” Heather asked, more surprised than Sue had thought her to be capable of.
The psychic’s words plunged the already quiet clearing into a stone-cold silence as Pollux and Ginger stared at her in disbelief, before refocusing on Sue. The Forest Guardian stepped backward at being suddenly put on this dire of a spot, words catching in her throat. She supposed she should just stick to her resolve and tell the truth, but Duckdammit, the initial reaction being this sudden didn’t help one bit. “Y-yes,” she continued, barely able to force the words out. “H-her and Sundance are making their way over here. I-I wanted to follow them at first, but then... things happened.”
Sue tried to gauge how big of a mess she was in now, paying close attention to how Ginger reacted to her news. The technicolor lizard took his time responding, blinking at her flatly a couple times before... shrugging his shoulders. “Uh-huh. Well, nothing stops them from visiting,” he shrugged. “Can’t say I’m not... curious as to the reason for their—and seemingly also your—presence here, though.”
No hostility, merely confusion—a good sign. She still had to play the cards right, which… she doubted she’d be able to, but there was no way through but to try. “They... they wanted to discuss mending the rift between you all and Moonview.”
You could hear a pin drop from a mile away.
Despite his unbothered response earlier, it was hard to not notice the disbelief on Ginger’s expression, though it didn’t last long before easing out. “Well,” he trailed off, composing himself, “suppose that’s as good of a discussion topic with Solstice as it gets. Been a while.”
Heather looked at him nervously. “^I doubt everyone will share your enthusiasm, Ginger.^”
“Probably not! Worth taking a moment to talk it all through, then,” the lizard responded, turning towards the rest of Newmoon. “Juniper’s off somewhere, but I think everyone else should be in earshot—*whiIIIIISTLE!*” Sue shuddered at the piercing sound, shifting behind Ginger’s shorter stature as they awaited the arrival of the other night kin.
They didn’t have to wait long.
“What’s happening, what’s happening?” Rainfall cawed, drawing Sue’s attention to a nearby branch, the black bird eyeing her crutch closely. If her opening and closing her beak a couple times without making any sound was any sign, though, she was only barely keeping herself from asking more questions.
“Big things, Rainfall,” Ginger clapped. “Aight, where’s the—here we go.”
The next creature to make their way over made Sue think of an overly stretched scorpion the size of a motorcycle. Their lavender and purple segments came together into a broadly arthropod body shape, except for a long, flexible neck. Oddly enough, their tail looked no different from their pincers, which meant that either none of them were poisonous, or worse—they all were.
Them also being strong enough to carry half a tree in each pincer sure didn’t help in putting Sue at any more ease.
“Eyyy Thorns, how’s clear-cutting going?” Ginger asked, eyeing out the spoils in the scorpion’s arms.
“Fine enough,” a harsh, low, yet still noticeably feminine voice answered. “With whom do we have the... pleasure?” the scorpion asked, clearly suspicious—but seemingly not malicious.
Before Sue could answer, Ginger spoke up. “I’ll get to it once everyone’s here. Where’s Jasper?”
“I was talking with him just now!” Rainfall chirped. Her interjection confounded the lizard, hand stroking his chin as he thought through something.
As he did, Sue kept scanning the clearing, and spotted… something peeking their way from behind one of the buildings. It—or they—was nearly all black aside from green feet and spots on what had to be their head. She tried to lean in closer to get a better look at them—all that accomplished, though, was causing them to slink behind the building, catching her off guard. Why’d they—
“Hi!” a small, happy voice barked, just different enough from Pollux’s to be discernible.
Their appearance was feral, intimidating, but also… familiar. They looked like a wolf pup of sorts, coloration split between silvery gray and near-black. If not for their oversized canines and piercing red eyes, Sue wouldn’t have spared them a second look back in her own world. They tried catching her attention again, “Hiiii!”, making her realize that—if Heather’s translation was any sign—they were mentally five years old, at most.
Sue waved back, trying to be as cheerful as possible. “Um, hello!”
The wolf pup responded with a few untranslated woofs and a prodigious amount of tail wagging. Scary as their snouts’ contents might have been, it was hard to deny they were quite cute at the moment.
Pollux wasted no time introducing his impromptu guest. “Howl, this is Sue! She’s... a friend!”
The other night kin quadruped acknowledged that fact in the most direct way—namely, by first nuzzling his friend, and then Sue’s good leg, before woofing, “That’s cool! Polluuuux, can we play tag?”
“Sure, Howl, but not now. Something important is gonna be happening!” the fox reminded.
“Oooooo,” the pup nodded. “What important?”
“Don’t worry about it, Howl,” Ginger reassured, walking over to the lil’ wolf and scritching him behind the ears, only adding to his tail wags. “Now, who else is missing... Jasper, Alastor—”
“^Last I’ve seen of him, he stormed off in a huff,^” Heather sighed. “^I doubt he’ll be showing up for this.^”
Jasper nodded. “Fair, fair. Daystar—”
“Present~,” a keening voice answered from a nearby branch, making everyone but Heather jump.
As unnerved as the segmented scorpion’s spikes made Sue, the newcomer was somehow even more intimidating. Their bipedal body was elongated, almost human-shaped, and covered in silver fur. The golden... crystals on their forehead and chest occasionally gleamed as stray rays of sunshine struck them. Their harrowing weaponry was what caught Sue’s attention the most, though. Similarly to her own, their arms’ proportions were off, thin upper arms giving way to much thicker forearms. Their left paw was capped off with three massive claws, each the size of a cleaver and curved at the end, shining red despite their dark purple coloration.
The sight on their right arm was noticeably different, looking almost... artificial. A good chunk of that forearm was replaced with a bulky contraption of wood and rope, secured to what had to be their actual arm and tipped off with a single metal hook. Was this... a prosthesis?
“Alrighty, that just leaves Jasper,” Ginger summed up.
An omission raised Daystar’s eyebrow. “And not Juniper~?”
Hearing some more of their voice made the silver biped more firmly female, though with a fairly low pitch. It also made clear another fact, one Sue would’ve thought to be more self-evident—Daystar wasn’t a night kin. Guess it was hard to notice any weaker blips around her with Heather in her vicinity, huh.
The lizard shook his head. “Nah, not Juniper, she’s away, and we’d be waiting for ages.”
Daystar chuckled, attention honing in closer to the Forest Guardian. “Perhaps for the best~.”
Sue had no idea how to interpret that message, unable to do much but shake in place and feel increasingly uncomfortable.
“Seems Jasper isn’t gracing us with his presence, then,” Ginger shrugged. “Let’s get everything else underway, at least. SO!” he raised his voice, interrupting any murmured chitchatting and catching everyone’s attention. “From what I’ve been told, Solstice and Sundance are on their way over. They want to begin talks about moving forward after what had happened between us and Moonview. Is that accurate... Sue?”
Her firm nod immediately set off tense discussion all around her. Before the gathered older voices could get anywhere, though, they were interrupted by a louder growl, its abruptness and unknown origin making Sue jump—and everyone else, groan.
“*Sigh*, if you’re gonna contribute, Alastor, then it’d be mature of you to at least show yourself,” Ginger spoke towards thin air, exasperated. “Though you do raise a good point. Sue, how do we know their excursion is in goodwill? Not that I’d expect either of them to use that opportunity to backstab us, but we can’t ever be quite certain, can we?”
Sue’s gaze jumped around as she was suddenly put on the spot, only having a very limited idea about how to respond to Ginger’s question. All she had was the Cliff’s Notes version of this place’s tragedy and the few wits that hadn’t been shaken off by her anxiety. The pressure of even a single wrong answer making the job of the other two much harder didn’t help one bit...
Persuasion isn’t my strong suit, but... maybe honesty could work.
“I-I don’t know what to say, really,” she admitted. “It’s just them two, a-and as far as I know, n-nobody else around even knows of them being here—”
“It’s not even a unified effort?” Thorns raised her voice, the grumbling that followed growing lower still.
Heather followed with her own interjection. “^Are they serious, or is it just Solstice trying to wash her conscience?^” she asked, similarly accusatory, Sue’s shallow breath coming closer to hyperventilating by the moment.
“Coming all the way over to beg for forgiveness and only then deign to bring it up with the rest of their council~?” Daystar mocked the idea.
Her addition pushed the Forest Guardian over the edge, creeping panic finally forcing her to blurt out, “I DON’T KNOW!”
As desperate as her response was, it made everyone gathered pause, if briefly. Sue knew she didn’t have much of a rhetorical leg to stand on—the most she could accomplish now was to leave all the mess she’d built up with the two responsible adults en route. “I-I wasn’t supposed to be here,” she explained, “th-they asked me not to come with them, and I-I wasn’t expecting to be the first one here...”
Thorns cut in, getting to the point, “Then why are you here?”
Her question was one Sue’d been asking herself on a loop for the past hour or so.
Just why the hell was she here? Sundance was right; this wasn’t her conflict to settle, she’d done nothing except be caught in the crossfire. And yet... Fate left her no other way. It was this or idleness, merely waiting for the inevitable to be decided for her with her hands tied—and after being forced through that hell again and again with her dad, one chemotherapy session and surgery at a time, Sue knew she never wanted to experience it ever again, no matter what it took.
Sue looked up and around the beings surrounding her, Heather’s eyes briefly going wide as they connected with her. It was time to finally get something worthwhile out having hauling her ass over through all the strain and assault.
“B-because the rift b-between h-here and there almost killed me,” she answered, trying to maintain as intense an expression as possible as she shook her crutch, drawing attention to it and the bandages around her leg alike. It made her presence here even more confusing—but before anyone could ask for clarification, several pairs of keen eyes noticed Howl trying to inch away unnoticed.
A second Howl just a few feet away made that disguise much less effective.
“Hold on just now, Pollux,” Ginger chided, making the ‘Howl’ trying to scamper away freeze in place.
His expression was clearly terrified, leaving Sue sorry as she picked up the slack and continued. “H-him and Spark were playing together when... I believe they’re called a ‘deathweaver’, attacked them. I-if not for my presence there, they would’ve both died.”
The resulting silence was cut through with a distraught growl and a piece of nearby shrubbery suddenly transforming into the massive black and red fox she’d seen earlier. Alastor still made her heart rate spike, even if his focus was not on her for once. In one leap, the plume of scarlet hair closed the distance between himself and disguised Pollux; the lil’ fox reverting to his true appearance as he stared at the forest floor. “I-I d-didn’t w-want to make you worry, d-dad...” he explained, shaking. “A-and you’d be mad at me for playing with Spark! I didn’t want you to be mad at me...”
Another growl from the older fox, wavering in its delivery, deflating the expressions of everyone nearby.
“But you would!” Pollux insisted, looking up at his dad with a cross expression. “Y-you said it so many times h-how I shouldn’t trust them, a-a-and how Solstice is evil. And you even attacked Sue earlier because you thought it was Solstice! How can you tell me th-that you wouldn’t be mad at me! Why—WHY ARE YOU LYING TO ME, DAD?!”
“We both know where that kind of grudge leads, Alastor,” Daystar added, much more seriously than before. Her comment made Sue glance up at her before looking back at the father fox being chewed out.
Instead of him, however, she saw... something else. For just an instant, the dark and red beast that had assaulted her became death manifest, pale and bloodstained, golden eyes seething with hatred of all life. And then, one blink later, it was gone, replaced with Alastor struggling to even look at her despite what he’d done earlier today. For a few tense moments, Sue’s eyes were locked with Pollux’s father, the latter’s actions catching up to him fast—and he could not bear it.
Alastor was gone before Sue could even consciously process what she was seeing. It was as if the environment had swallowed him whole, leaving nothing where he stood moments prior.
“Dad...” Pollux whimpered, distraught.
“Goddammit, Alastor...” Ginger buried his face in his paws, letting out a frustrated trill. “Oh well.”
The resulting mess of a conversation had accomplished little beyond muddying the waters further. If anything was clear, though, it was that trying to discuss this further before Solstice arrived would serve no purpose—especially with how little this ‘Sue’ person clearly knew.
Rushing headlong into all this would help nobody. “Aight,” the lizard took a deep breath, resetting himself. “How about this—we end this exchange here, it’s clearly not doing us any good. We all take our time to think it through before Solstice and Sundance show up, consider where we all individually stand on it all, so that we’re ready to have that talk as soon as they get here. How’s that sound?”
The responses took their time to start rolling in, but they turned out affirmative—mostly. Only the purple scorpion had as much as a mumbled objection before she relented all the same. “Fine, then,” she clicked her pincers together. “What about our ‘guest’?”
“What about Sue, indeed,” Ginger wondered, turning to face the Forest Guardian. “It’d be a good idea for someone to look after her for a while considering what had happened between her and Alastor... any takers?” The moment he finished, Sue felt a tingly shockwave go through her body, only to look up and realize Heather was gone from the scene. Thorns wasn’t particularly eager either, already busy carrying timber towards where she’d come from. Which left either Ginger or...
The lizard’s words were somewhere between a warble and a quiet growl as his yellow hand pointed at the trees behind her; the vocalization responded to with a drawn-out hissy grumble. As hesitant as everyone else was, much to Sue’s building sorrow, it seemed that Daystar was willing to pick up the slack.
Before Sue could even glance over her shoulder, she heard a light thump of something landing on the grass, followed by feeling cold metal tap against her arm. As straightforward as Daystar’s gesture of pointing with her clawed arm was, the sudden absence of coherent communication threw even more anxiety into Sue’s mind. She felt completely alone, most of those around giving her the cold shoulder—if even that.
Understandable after what they’ve all been through, and not even her panicked mind was seriously accusing anyone present of wishing any physical harm on her—Alastor aside—but she was still deeply unnerved. Especially without any certainty about whether she’d actually accomplished anything in the end.
Meowed, hissy sounds nearby, Daystar’s emotions much clearer to sense with Heather gone—a mix of exasperation and uncertainty as she stared at her. All the young uns but Pollux were already further along into the clearing. Sue wanted to say something, anything, push through the anxiety clouding her mind enough to establish a connection between herself and what felt like the only being here she even could communicate with—
Thankfully, Pollux intervened, the lil’ fox’s woofs explaining her lack of understanding. The news was... more surprising for Daystar than Sue would’ve expected. Her expression narrowed, gaze jumping back and forth between Pollux and the Forest Guardian beside him, before more utterances followed, short and baffled. The exchange between her temporary host and a portably sized friend didn’t last long before the former once more looked up to address her directly.
Daystar knew her words wouldn’t be understood and instead went for the second-best option. She first pointed at Sue with her clawed arm, and then at her mouth while pretending to talk in a very exaggerated way, before firmly shaking her head.
She seemed to have gotten it—Sue couldn’t speak. The Forest Guardian acknowledged Daystar’s message with a few rapid nods, filling her mind with understanding and deep thought. And then, a few moments later, a lightbulb went off—or this world’s closest equivalent. Someone suddenly spewing flames out of their mouth, maybe?
Either way, Daystar just came up with something, immediately turning from hesitant to eager. Sue wasn’t opposed to that change one bit, finally pushing herself from her spot—much to her crutch arm’s complaints. With the borderline interrogation over, she had a moment to appreciate the small settlement further. It got cozier the more she looked at it—almost reminded her of a summer camp.
Summer camp with even more shared trauma than usual.
Let’s see what idea Daystar just got.