Two nights had passed. Well, more like the rest of the one where I’d found Keick under the tree and then one more night after that. Since we’d partnered up I’d been able to sleep soundly through shifts during the day. We opted to stay up in the trees while we rested. One of us would be watching the other, and our surroundings while the other used the sheet we’d recovered from a raided cabin to cover themselves and their eyes to get some sleep.

Keick and I had learned a bit about each other. She was an accountant for one of the parts factories downtown. Apparently it synthesized some key component for manufacturing space ship alloys. I had to admit, as far as war industry jobs went it sounded pretty lame, but she had been well paid. When the bombing had started she’d been in the suburb I’d passed through to get to the woods. She... she’d left people behind too, from the sounds of it. I didn’t pry.

It’d been a long journey, and foraging for food had been a necessity. Going down to the forest floor to scrounge berry bushes, finding wild nuts, or refill water from flowing creeks and streams. We’d always considered these woodlands a safe place, but now... the introduction of the extra-terrestrial predators and their hunt for us, plus the presumed collapse of our ranger institutions had left these wildlands open to dangerous fauna native to our planet that would have been kept from here otherwise. I had no doubt the further we’d go in, the more likely we’d finally spot one.

I’d let Keick fiddle with the communicator a bit. She’d been able to figure out that the active frequencies were the city defense network, and intermittently others would pop up for ‘munitions drop missions’ like the one I’d used, presumably after having been assigned it on one of the few still active main channels. It’d almost been heartening to hear some of the voices on it while we travelled, it meant we weren’t alone. That we were still fighting. Even if the news had become increasingly dreary...

There had been no word over if the Bala’ur were setting up any facilities on the planet. So our mutual theory of the place becoming a hunting colony wasn’t confirmed, or denied. I tried not to linger on that particular topic though. The idea of my kind, or me, stuck on our own world in the reaches of the wilderness waiting to die by teeth, claws, knives, and all other manner of hunting- it was painful beyond words to even consider. And... we didn’t know much about what they did to the captives they kept alive.

When I’d awoken from my sleep shift this dusk Keick had been shaking me lightly. “Yiv, Yiv! The signals. I haven’t heard anything for hours.”

That hadn’t been good news, and upon my own useless investigation it was true. The communicator certainly still had power enough to last for weeks, but I couldn’t find one active channel. We’d either passed out of range, which was unlikely, or the network truly had fallen silent. The only signs we had left were the dwindling explosions that only showed in the night sky, and even then only once in a while. They’d become less and less since the night of the attack, and judging by the fact our fleet hadn’t swooped in to rescue us I could only surmise the kindling in the sky signalled that our resistance was over.

_________________________

I glanced down at the firearm in my paw, it still felt like something hot and dangerous as my digits held it. My index digit manipulated what I now knew was the safety for the trigger, I’d not been able to fire during that chase because it was tabbed over the sigil with a sign ‘no’. I’d also learned how to unload, and then load it up again. I could tell there was more to it, like the ammunition in the rectangular boxes- one particular set of bullets was lined near the top with a blue loop, though I didn’t know what that meant. I wasn’t going to waste one of them by shooting to see what it did. All things considered it seemed pretty rudimentary, not that I had any frame of reference for fighting equipment.

“Keick, are you almost done?” My foot paws awkwardly shifted on the grass under them, my eyes in the dark gloom looking this way and that to see if anything was coming. So far so good...

“Sorry Yiv! Just a minute, I think I found some things we can use-” A loud thump sounded, and then I heard her walking back out of the abandoned ranger station. The simple one room blockhouse had a tower built into it with a ladder upwards to the observers platform. The power to it had been out when we arrived, and it’d looked like whoever had been manning it had left in a hurry.

She came out with a backpack on, the wearable harnessed around her waist and shoulders. “See? I even found a couple spare energy packs and a sleeping hammock. They’re all packed up and ready to go.”

“How about the medical kits? A dataslate at least? Aaaah...-” I stopped the questions when her ears wilted and she signalled no with her tail. No dataslate meant no local maps. I’d neglected to download any on my own before the network went down. Now, our chances of getting any files like that were reliant on scavenging ranger outposts like this one.

Her voice cleared. “Whoever had been manned this place took everything they thought they’d need to go it alone too. Or maybe took it to the actual lodge, wherever that is.” I sighed out, disappointed. We were basically set back to hunter-gatherer camping until we reached my little hidey hole, and if I’m honest.. It still seemed like that was a couple nights out at best.

“Good work. At least now we can carry more if we need to.” I pressed a paw to her shoulder reassuringly, more than aware that for the sake of both of us we needed to at least show support at a time like this. I saw the appreciative look on her face, one of her ears signalling to the same effect. “Lets get back up, we’re far away enough but... you never know.” I intoned warily, stepping over to a nearby trunk and starting up it after her, the gun tucked away in its holster as I put my legs into the climb.

Keick just sighed. “I know. I’d rather not end up some footnote in your autobiographical report on ‘The Destruction of Barr City!’ anyway. We play it safe, we both survive. Right?” Came the quip from her.

“Ahuh. Get your tail up the tree or I’ll only put you in as an honourable mention in the credits.” The terrain had changed over time. Thicker and thicker trees, taller too. To the point that if you climbed some of the higher kinds the forest’s bottom looked four floors down. It made going down and up more work, but made the feeling of safety once you were up all the better.

We reached the top, and I took a glance around, pulling up my tablet and accessing the built in compass. “Mmm...” a quick alignment later and I cross referenced where the dirt path we’d been following was winding. I still didn’t know the route by heart, but following the familiar path had kept us on course so far. “Yeah. We keep following the path that way.”

And so it was, more boring travel. The worst kind really, because it left me alone with my thoughts.

Thoughts about how I’d taken my first life. It wasn’t like I could ignore that, even if it had been one of them. My mind had been constantly tiptoeing around it for a while now, and the few times I’d tried to confront it while falling asleep, the wicked shapes of imaginary feathernecks would mock my weakness and frailty. It wasn’t a good time, so... I’d ignored it! Up until now. If I was going to protect Keick and myself I’d need to get over the way the gun in the holster tried to sear my paw off every time I took it out.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

One paw in front of the other, I let my mind wander into the metaphorical chasm where the repressed feelings were laid. My mind’s eye was replaying the screaming, the falling, and then the scrambled shots right into the pack that’d been chasing me. On reflection, I’d realized that there was probably only like... two or three of them. My panic had got the better of me in the moment. Every time the painful minute replayed in my head everything seemed blurrier, more surreal. In turn every time I tried to reflect on the fact I’d been made a killer by those Bala’ur I felt a weight in my chest.

...

“Am I killer?” I heard my voice say out-loud. My head tilting so I could see Keick behind me.

“Huh?” Came the return from her own voice, sounding surprised I’d just opened the conversation like that.

I took a breath. “The Bala’ur I killed. They’d chased me up a tree and then kicked it down. When I fell I-I shot it in the face I think. It wasn’t moving and- I must have killed it. I saw red, that’s the colour of their blood right? I’m a uh... a killer. I guess.” I explained, it wasn’t like I’d told her the story before.

My companion had been silent for a dozen or so strides. Our progress from branch to branch causing quiet rustling every time our weight distributed to a new paw placement. My ears could pick up the quiet noises of a forest, little hoots and calls from smaller creatures communing in their instinctive ways. I glanced back and I could see it in her eyes, she wasn’t sure how to approach the topic. “Yivreen, do you feel bad for killing one of them of all things?”

That hadn’t been what I’d expected, and I felt defensive almost immediately. “N-no! I mean- Well...” Did I? “It’s the principle of the thing. I’m not a killer! Or... wasn’t.”

She was following behind me still, but I felt like she was judging me even if rationally I knew that wasn’t likely. “It was a monster trying to eat you Yiv. I don’t think anyone is going to blame you for killing it but yourself.”

I whined at that one, my voice pitching with the noise as I paused at the strong point of a branch, right next to the trunk attached to it, turning to her and standing up on my hinds. “That’s not the point! I feel- I feel-” The words weren’t coming.

“Guilty?” She finished for me, and I flicked my tail yes, of course! I felt guilty! One of her arms outstretched toward me, and she took one of my paws into her own. She squeezed it lightly, clasping her other paw over-top the backside of it. “Listen to me. You did nothing wrong, you defended yourself. You are a good person, and the fact that you were forced to defend yourself from those ferals is their fault. Not yours. Do you think our fighters are killers? The fleet?”

I sucked a breath in through my nose, the miasma of scents from the woodlands around us was mostly incomprehensible beyond some of the familiar smells, like my species kindred in front of me. It helped to calm me. “But...” I rolled over the last part. Can I really beat myself up over this when we as a people were forced to do this? All of us? “I j-just auh- I didn’t want to. It-ss-its horrible.” The voice speaking the words was cracking at the end, and there was a choking feeling in the throat attached to it. My eyes watered. I could feel the gentle tears beginning to pool, and then drop from my eyes and into the brown and blacks of my fur. The tears were held hostage by my coat as the moisture spread until it’d lightly dampened streaking lines from my eyes down into the silver of my chest fur. My blinks only making the followups more obvious.

By now my chest was pulling in strained and unsteady breaths. The paws holding my own had left, and instead I could feel my shorter friend leaning in, her fores wrapping around my body and holding me close in a hug. The physical warmth, the closeness, the reassuring way she rubbed the nape of my neck. “It’s alright Yiv. You’re alright. You’ve been through a lot.” I’d shared most of my time in the city, save the.. exact moment of the killing. “You can cut down the tree, but..” My arms wrapped around her in turn, her words gentling my mind.

I’d heard the saying a hundred times. So I finished it, little sobs forced to sit backseat. “...the roots never die.” It was a common saying on Atalor. Although it never translated well to other species, apparently some species of tree didn’t grow back after being cut down. Not that our planet harboured any such kind.

I hesitantly let my fores drop, and my paw reached up to rub my face while she stepped back. “Stupid pile of moss-heap that does. I’m not a tree.” I said, feeling the subtle upturn in my mood. I could feel my humour slipping in. It was shockingly easy to open up to a stranger when you were experiencing the apocalypse together.

“Yeah well, you’re built like one. So maybe just take the comparison and stop whining.” She moved both her ears to perk at me, giving one a mirthful flick.

I found myself pushing my paw into her forehead to usher her out of my way as I kept moving. “Whining?! You’re talking rude as a Benaian now! And I am not thick as a tree.” I chimed back at her. I found my paws moving again, my heart beginning to rest. At least for now I could be alright with what I’d had to do. For some reason... talking it out, being understood, just- having a moment of closeness had made me feel better. I felt a pang as the thought reminded me of how I’d always denied myself those three luxuries with Geal. Obelisk- I deeply hoped he was alright.

Keick, still catching up from my playful head push was speaking again. “Yeah? Well you’re getting physical like one!” I snorted back at them.

“I wouldn’t mind having a couple with us now, they’re scrappy from what I hear.” I answered back. Something we, the Trikua, and the Benaian had in common was we were seen as ‘uppity’. A reputation I could get behind, even if the latter species were like children compared to our storied history. “You know I tried to get cleared for going to the Benaian homeworld? To document the aftermath of the uplift process for my final. They said the expense and time to travel wasn’t practical though.”

“Yeah? Why would you wanna go to a planet filled with a bunch of hoppy primitives?” Came her reply.

I turned my head to give her a raised eyebrow. “Probably because we’re just as hoppy as they are? Metaphorically, that is. And documenting their journey from when they were contacted to now would have been a great opportunity! I’m sure they’d have had some great stories to tell.” Besides, the adventure would have been fun on its own. So many of them from before the uplift times were still alive to remember them.

With the distracting conversation to occupy my mind. I found the remainder of the journey that night pleasant. The planet was going to our worst enemies, but I still had something to hold onto. The Coalition would have probably noticed our silence had prolonged by now, and would send a relief force soon. Just had to stick it out, and with Keick around I wasn’t alone.