One weekend, when the hottest days of summer were coming to an end and it was beginning to rain all too often, Solveis spent a morning sitting in one of her trees looking out at the beach.

It was drizzling rain. It was the nice kind of rain that made the air cool without getting you drenched. Tree covering was enough to keep her dry.

This morning, the Eigeroy and B clans had arrived all together. The parents had treated the kids to a fun restaurant on the mainland where the children could get colored beverages and free balloons. From there, they all went to Molil together on the B family’s boat. By the time they had arrived, Solveis was already feeling strained and self censored. She even considered going with the father when he asked her to accompany him on a boat ride to one of the larger, farther away islands. She didn’t though because he was traveling on the B family’s boat with the B father himself. Besides, when fathers went on errands, which lasted far too long, they tended to be technical, adult, and boring.

Solveis therefore stayed behind. Since Girselle had taken over the group activity and rid Solveis of both Livia and Arlendr as potential play companions, she had gone out to a tree to work on braids and watch the rainy tide come in and out. The monotonous comfort of her situation allowed the little yellow bird out of Solveis’s chest. It hopped about the branches of the tree. It’s hopping inattention was snatched toward a bird sound a short distance away.

Solveis drew her attention back to look over. Her brother was sitting in a tree a short way away. He had whistled for her to look over. He gave an evil grin and then shot across a hand signal for ‘hide’. He meant that he was hiding from the other children. He imagined that she was hiding too. Solveis and her brother had a brief conversation in hand signals before they ran out of things to say and grew bored of the novelty of the fake language. Then they returned to their own tasks.

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Solveis finished her braided strand. This was good. She leaned back in her cozy tree spot. She decided to take a nap, but for security, she first tied some thin plastic rope around herself and the tree trunk.

Solveis was awakened from her nap, not by natural stirring after a nice rest, but by another whistle. She glanced over to see her brother waving frantically and pointing toward the beach. His view of the beach was better than hers, and she couldn’t see whatever he was pointing at.

‘Bang’. Something dropped to the ground, probably from Arlendr’s tree. He climbed down after his dropped weapon. Solveis moved to follow him and was yanked back by a rope. She untied herself and ran down. By the time she got down and nearly caught up with him, he was running out of the trees and down, around the rock face, toward the beach. She looked over the cliff between her and the beach, out to the water. She saw it, what had made him so frantic. This time his lunatic thrashing was for good reason. Was it real though? It was like the crazy things that she had imagined, not like reality.

A man who looked like a horse-hu – but also not like a horse-hu – was running past her beach into the water. Arlendr was far behind, apparently chasing the man, but at too far a distance to do anything. The horse-hu man pulled a little vessel, a rowboat by the looks of it, out from behind a rock. Another man was sitting in the vessel waiting.

It took the man a moment to untie the boat, enough time for Arlendr to make it down to the beach, but not quite to the water.

The boat freed itself and began to row away. Arlendr ran after it. He ran into the water, screamed at them, and threw the first thing he could find, which happened to be a large shell.

“Why you are!? No! Get you off! Off my mountain!” Arlendr shouted at the two rowing away.

The horse-hu laughed at him, and shouted back, “Relax little man. You’ll get your fight some time. – Spirit, that one’s got.”