Boreal watched as Zalia stood, staring into the empty space where the Astar had been.

“They just vanished on us, not a single word,” Ember said, looking a little pissed off.

Boreal stood, wondering if the Astar were tasty.

“Maybe they weren’t here to talk?” Zalia wondered out loud.

Boreal started walking over, Aylie following suit, no longer seeing any need for secrecy.

“I think they have terrible eyesight,” Zalia said.

“What makes you say that?” Ember asked, finally looking away from that empty space.

“Did you catch how long it took them to notice us?”

“Well yeah, but that could have just been them not caring until it was obvious we were approaching them,” Ember pointed out.

“Could have been,” Zalia admitted.

“Always asking questions you can’t answer,” Boreal thought, shaking her head at Zalia.

Her dear friend was very powerful, that was true, but she wasn’t very good at thinking the right things. Like how the Astar would taste. That was the real question.

The first thing Zalia had said was “hello” not “what do you taste like”. What kind of thing to say was that? Hello?

Well, she couldn’t blame Zalia, she was limited by the form she inhabited.

She watched as Aylie pottered up to the two warm ones. Boreal wasn’t entirely sure how most warm ones created new children but she didn’t think that saving one from a not very tasty demon was the normal way. What did she know of the subject though? It wasn’t the right question to be asking anyways.

As Ember and Zalia continued talking about what had just happened, Boreal padded off to scout out the road further ahead. She had definitely felt the power of those creatures yet she thought she could take one on in a fair fight. Even higher chance if she ambushed one, which would be easy enough considering how long it had taken those things to see Ember. Ember wasn’t even sneaky at all.

Boreal scented the air, breathing in the varied forest smells of earth, greenery, trees and sun. She loved those smells, much better than the acrid and sulphurous smell of Cormaine. She didn’t know why Zalia had taken so long to get them out of there but was very happy when she had. It was unfortunate that their little mind friend Delphi had fallen along the way. She would honour the small cold one each and every time her hunt took her in the direction of the foul tasting creatures that had killed them.

Padding into the forest edge ahead, she smoothly navigated her way through the undergrowth. It wasn’t her natural environment, that being the snowy mountains where the warm one Zalia had saved her. She still remembered that day, her first mother laying dead from the attack of the flying creature. That creature had seemed so big back then but she knew that the world had shrunk since. She looked forward to paying them a visit soon.

For now though, she had to make sure that Aylie stayed safe. She knew Zalia got very easily distracted, knew it intimately from when the world was bigger and she had slipped away many times for adventures. Aylie wasn’t as prone to that but knowing her warm one, Boreal knew she would misplace her somehow.

She discovered no animals or Astar hidden in the trees, much to her displeasure. She was hoping they had just teleported a short way to hide but that wasn’t the case. She just knew that those strange glowing runes would make the floating ones taste way better.

She walked up to where Ember and Zalia were and found them still talking about the Astar. Silly warm ones, what did they think they could achieve by talking about it so much? They could have walked far enough to find some more by now if they tried.

She moved up and sat right in front of them and meowed.

“Boreal?” Zalia asked.

Boreal stared into her eyes, focusing as intently as she could.

“What?” Zalia said.

She waited.

“Is something wrong?”

Then, Boreal stood up and walked off.

Aylie was still with those two, so she would be safe. Boreal just wanted them to stop talking finally.

“Yeah alright, we’ll keep going,” Zalia called from behind.

Finally.

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They travelled for a time, Boreal didn’t really know how long. She didn’t pay attention to those things such as the passing of the warmest one far above. Zalia usually took care of those kinds of things. She had needed to keep count when Zalia had accidentally slept for two days and that had taken all of Boreal’s attention to make sure she got the number right. She knew Zalia would want to know the right number when she woke up.

Time passed and along their travel, they found another town where both Ember and Zalia said their words to the people and the people said their words to them. Boreal didn’t find much meaning in those words, much of it was conveying things that could already be seen. Of course they were lacking for food, you could see it in how skinny they had grown. Of course you could see that their homes were damaged, some of the people wounded and their clothes worn down. Couldn’t Ember already see those things? Why did she have to ask what troubled them?

Well, eventually they moved on again and Zalia asked Boreal to hunt something for the others to eat that day. Finally, something fun to do. She was feeling a little hungry herself, though she felt like she didn’t get as hungry now as she used to, when the world was bigger.

She slinked off into the woods, scenting the air and watching the tracks just as Zalia had taught her to do.

Zalia had told her only to catch something small, so she ignored the very obvious tracks of a big four-legged creature and found the tracks of something big enough that it would feed them all but small enough not to break Zalia’s directions.

She hunted it for a time, following its winding path through the undergrowth until finally she saw it. It was round and Boreal knew that meant it would be good eating. Round things often were.

She was downwind from it where she sat, an obvious advantage for the hunt. She wanted to try something a little funner today though.

Where she was, she used the passive given to her by the bond she shared with her warm one to create an icy replica of herself that shifted and crouched into the undergrowth, remaining perfectly still. Then, Boreal stepped through the shadows so that she was upwind of the round creature. She purposefully made a little noise as she charged pounce.

The sound along with the sudden scent she allowed to drift downwind alerted the round one and its tiny head popped up. Boreal sprinted forwards and it immediately took off away from her. It was pretty fast for something so edible, managing to outpace Boreal herself in the short term.

Unfortunately for it, the little creature ran straight to where Boreal had left the trap and it got caught by the icy replica, her own pounce following shortly behind to finish it off.

She picked up her slightly mauled round snack in triumph, making her way proudly through the forest back towards Zalia.

Her warm one could be pretty stealthy when she wanted, perhaps even stealthier than Boreal herself. That was something she definitely appreciated about her. A warm one like Ember was great and all but she just couldn’t sneak as well as Zalia could. She couldn’t hunt as well either. Those were two very, very important skills, or so Boreal thought.

She came out of the trees, blood dripping down her maw and kill held tightly, dropping it on the floor in front of Zalia.

“Nice catch Boreal, what is it?” Zalia said, whistling in appreciation.

What is it?

“Round snack,” Boreal informed her.

Zalia looked at her through the corner of her eyes

“You could be a little more specific. What did it look like before it got completely mauled?” Zalia asked, looking at the mess of flesh.

Boreal looked down at it too, then looked back up. What did it look like?

“Snack, but round?” Boreal suggested.

Zalia rolled her eyes at her but Boreal wasn’t really sure what else she wanted to know. It was food, that was all.

While Zalia went through the process of cooking the meal, Boreal went off into the trees to find a puddle. There, she cleaned herself thoroughly. Blood was all well and good but being presentable was important. Plus, she didn’t want to make Aylie uncomfortable at all.

When she came back, Zalia was still cooking so Boreal walked over to Aylie and sat down. The little warm one seemed to take comfort from her presence, much as Boreal took comfort in Zalia’s presence.

Zalia said they were going to see her friend, Glemp. Boreal just vaguely remembered the thin one that the name belonged to but it was so soon after the death of her first mother. A lot of her memories surrounding that time were quite vague.

Well, if the thin one was able to help them fight the foul tasting ones, Boreal wouldn’t object.

Once food was cooked, Boreal waited patiently as some was given to the little warm one first, then Ember.

“Hungry,” she informed Zalia.

Zalia handed over a bit for her as well and Boreal gladly chomped it down. It was good, not the best that Zalia had ever cooked but she seemed to have a very small number of things to make it taste better with. Still much better than eating it raw, though that had its appeal as well.

It was approaching night time now and Zalia opened her vault for the other two to sleep in and pulled out a chunk of wood. Boreal had noticed that she had been fiddling around with it recently but made no comment on the pastime. Boreal herself liked making little scenes out of ice every now and then as well. How different from wood was it really?

Well, she didn’t want to sit around while that happened and so decided to climb a tree. She easily clambered up the surface, her sharp claws digging further into the wood than might have been normal. She managed to get far up enough into the branches of the tree that she was able to see out over the top of the forest. There wasn’t much to see up there but she did notice a little dot flying far off in the distance. It looked like… one of those that had killed their friend Delphi. A foul tasting one.

It was flying away, a shame really. She was looking forward to paying those creatures back for what they had done. Another day perhaps.

She sat there for a time but got bored pretty quickly. There wasn’t really anything to see up here other than trees and more trees. The odd break in forest as a small hill rose out of it or a less heavily overgrown area stretched but nothing of real interest.

She yawned and climbed back down. Zalia was still there fiddling with the chunk of wood, bits falling off and other parts growing back. Maybe fiddling was the wrong word as Zalia wasn’t even holding the thing, the chunk floating in front of her as she focused intently on it.

She loved her warm one, for all the oddities about her, the strange questions she asked or the odd manners in which she acted sometimes. Despite it all, she was caring and compassionate, a great friend and an even better teacher. A second mother to her, one who had taken her in after her first mother had died.

If it wasn’t for her warm one, she probably would have been a snack to one of those flying creatures long ago.