Beryn looked at the bristling raccoon in the trap, one of its eyes was missing based on the volume of clotted blood, and one paw hung uselessly at the wrong angle.
It would not have passed as a normal raccoon. It was too big, closer to the size of a large dog. The tail was long, long enough to wrap around itself several times, which it was currently. The fur was not the traditional gray and black, but green and white.
“Why have you done this?” a feminine voice asked. “I have not done anything to any of you.” The voice was thick, she was missing teeth from trying to chomp down on an armored arm to free herself.
But she was not like the badger, not big enough or strong enough to overcome the metal cage, so she huddled in the middle. “We are enemies, you and I. Spies cannot be let to live.” Beryn said, feeling only a little sympathy for the creature, despite her obvious pain.
“Please, just let me go. I do not wish to be enemies. Please, I will never come here again,” the poor, hardly a forest god pleaded.
Beryn, aware of the audience she was gathering, crouched down, getting on the same level as the mangled eye. “I have summoned our master, and she will decide your fate. She will decide if you are a prisoner, food, or a lucky, freed, forest scavenger.”
“Please,” whispered the visibly frightened animal. “Please, do not.”
But Beryn was a being of order, not a being of mercy. She said nothing and stood, “Keep a watch on it.”
She put her fingers to her face, focusing on the mark, calling out to Carnelian to come. As she walked through the gathered crowd, she heard a lot of murmurs of approval… and excitement. You starved the people here too long, she thought to the mystic, no to the forest in general. They have no empathy for you now. They just want to see you fall.
She headed inside the walls that were nearly complete. Things had been quiet the last several days, even as her hunters grew in number and how bold they felt. She had expected retaliation for the badger god, but no one had acted yet. I suppose when you live for thousands of years, a few days does not seem like too much.
That sort of thinking would only bring the creatures of Dyran’s forest misfortune.
***
Rosalea breathed out and slowly got up, picking her way around Amalia and pushing aside the heavy oiled cloth, probably from the merchant’s wagon, to exit her home. She did not know why, but she could not sleep. There was a restlessness in her that made it impossible to be near the excessively warm and fluffy wolf. Rosalea pulled her mitten off and walked to the perpetual water fountain and chilled her fingers until they hurt.
The spot still was intensely sensitive and tender as she rested her cold fingers against her side to soothe the wound. I guess for only having a couple of days to heal. It is doing pretty good, she said, carefully holding her side. She moved to the hill side and sat down, her back to a rock, and her legs resting on an outcropping from the rock. She looked out at the sun, which was just now starting to rise.
Mere ambled over and sat next to her. “So, little one, why is it that you always seem so calm? Do you fake it?”
Rosalea looked over, confused.
Mere shifted a bit, trying to satisfy creaky arthritic joints. She took a deep breath and released it with a huff. “Well, once a long time ago, we had a changer staying with us. Nekana wasn’t very old then… the family was a lot bigger then too… Ah well. Anyway, she lost her liana… and she promptly went quite mad.” Rosalea was silent. She didn’t know what the wolf was trying to explain or get at. Nekana had spoken about this before. Since she did not respond, Mere continued. “My brother took her life… because he couldn’t stand to watch her attempt to bash her brains out with a rock anymore.”
Rosalea shivered, and suddenly could picture a girl desperate enough to try and end her own life to do anything… and Rosalea knew she was not that girl. She knew… she was not that person. She looked away from Mere, toward the gray dawn casting shadows over the valley that made it darker even as the horizon became brighter. So what does it mean? That… I…
“How old are you?” Mere interrupted.
“I think about twenty-two.” She could not remember, and she was pretty sure no one who was alive knew when she was born.
The wolf nodded, resting her head on her paws. “Miri is about ten. Raisa is close to three hundred, I think. I can’t remember, she might be a bit older.”
“How old are you?” Rosalea asked. Mere had never really talked to her; this was interesting, even if it was not new information. Besides, I might be restless, but that does not really mean that I want to be on my own.
“Hmm… about forty-five hundred,” the wolf said, “Give or take a few decades. It stops mattering after a while.”
Over four thousand years old!? She was a little stunned by that realization, and it was something that was hard to grasp. She is older than Kaylar by over a millennia. It was definitely odd to think about.
The wolf was silent, and she looked like she might doze soon. Rosalea fumbled with ideas to try and keep the old one talking to her. “I… know that you are right. I am very sad that I lost Fe…” her throat tightened and her eyes burned. She stumbled through her next words, “I lost my liana. She was more precious to me than anyone. But the days before…”Rosalea felt tears and swallowed several times to try and stop them. “I was angry at her. My teacher had some vision, or I guess, someone had a vision about him dying for me, and then he did, and I was mad she had not told me. And I was angry that she did not know where we were going, so I was… you know, sulky.” Tears began again, and she scrubbed at the with her mittens. “Now she is gone.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Life is like that. It is precious. Even when you have a long one, you have to remember that those you love are not guaranteed to be in it forever. Your case is unique, but… unique runs in this little family of mine.”
Rosalea smiled, scrubbing at her eyes until they were dry. “Yes? Do more unusual things than take in a random human like me?”
“My nephew taught a dragon named Kaylar about Gods and helped him to find Fincyra.”
Rosalea looked up, “What is that?”
“The home of the Gods, beyond the sea, between two islands where the ocean falls into the center of the world. Kaylar had to go there to bring back magic and wisdom for all dragons. It lies directly east of a city of elves called Karasvale.”
“A month ago, a year ago, I would have given anything for that piece of information, but… it all seems so useless now.”
Mere yawned and stretched in a way that popped her joints. “You do not know, my little one, you might find you still need to know it. A prophecy is not easily dropped, you know.”
Rosalea raised a brow at that. Then, she turned to the valley, raising her voice just slightly, “All right, Gods… Make you a deal: unless you tell me what I am supposed to be doing here… I am going to do whatever I want… and you can worry about whether or not it gets me killed.” Rosalea did not know if saying things like this aloud made the slightest bit of difference. She noticed that Mere held her breath with her, watching, listening.
There was nothing – only the sound of the breeze in the nearly leafless trees… only the sounds of the water.
“Given the situation, I think you should not test that agreement too hard, but I think you could take the situation as an agreement.”
“Is that what silence means?” Rosalea asked with a raised brow.
Mere grumbled, “Well, it is how this old lady has always read it. I’ve lived a long time. Others would not agree with me.”
Rosalea was silent, closing her eyes as the cold breeze dried her cheeks in a way that would have been soothing if it had not been so nippy. “It is something I find interesting, that mystics and liana could be so close to Gods and yet see everything so differently.”
Mere made a derisive noise. “Well, the Gods do not micromanage us, hardly any of us. I am sure they have more prayers and voices directed to them than could ever hope to be answered.”
Rosalea had never thought of it that way. There was a silence between them for a moment, and the sun came up more. “So, I have sensed that Nekana seems to hold a lot of power? Even though she has a smaller pack? Is that more of the special you were referring to?”
“Yes… but Nekana has a special connection with the Moryshin. That holds a lot of weight.”
Rosalea waited, but the wolf did not expand her answer, and she seemed like she was avoiding doing so purposefully. Silence expanded between them, I guess she is done talking, she thought.
“The dragon,” Rosalea said, standing up, moving back from the cliff face. She could see the red outline of it in the distance. “Is it leaving the town?”
Mere squinted, but clearly could not see. “Nekana!” she called immediately.
Rosalea moved back close to the tree, not wanting to be spotted, even by accident.
Bazil and Amalia came up behind Rosalea as Miri woke up and stared nudging her mother awake. “The dragon?” Bazil said with surprise.
Rosalea narrowed her eyes. The way it is flying does not seem very even - is it carrying something? A heavy wind kicked up, tipping the flying dragon a bit in the air, and the rising sun’s light outlined and glinted off of roughly pyramid shaped outline. “That is a cage,” Rosalea said, climbing up to her roof and staring more intensely.
“A cage?” Amalia repeated back with disbelief.
“Are you certain?” Nekana asked. The blue on her swirled a little, and Rosalea realized the wolf was using some sort of spell. “It is a cage - it has Belza the Racoon in it - in bad shape.”
“Where is it going?” Bazil asked.
“There’s some caves outside our domain in the north,” Amalia said.
“We should run to catch it,” Raisa said.
“No,” Nekana said. “It would take us through Connall’s territory, and I forbid it.”
Raisa danced, “We may not be in the same pack, but we are on the same side against the dragon.”
“Connall or the other mystic tribes closer should try to handle it,” Nekana reiterated. Raisa stared at her mother. The wolf continued, “I think… we should try to call a general assembly. At least, we can try to coordinate something to help Belza… and have a united decision about how to deal with the dragon.”
Raisa seemed generally mollified. Then, she looked at Rosalea, and switching to the language of Gods, said, “What about the human? If we go to war, are we not at risk for harboring her? Have we even established whether she’s actually loyal to mystics?”
Amalia sighed, “Raisa, leave it alone. Rosalea is not the problem. She protected Miri.”
Raisa bristled, “But what if it is an act?”
Rosalea just looked out at the disappearing dragon, and she said nothing for now. It would only embarrass Raisa at this point to know everything she had said had been clearly understood.
From somewhere in the valley below them, elk began to bugle in a way that sounded a little off to Rosalea.
“I guess that mother did not need to do anything; they are trying to call a meeting now,” Nakai said.
It is interesting that she thought it would be her job to make such a meeting happen, Rosalea thought. She wondered what a “special relationship” to the elusive Moryshin would even look like.
Wind picked up, snow clouds rolled in that had not been there before, and Rosalea had to retreat back from the cliffs as the upset mystics seemed to collectively summon a blizzard.
“Rosalea and Miri, I want you to stay here. I do not know how to expect everyone to behave,” Nekana said.
“I will stay with them,” Mere said. “I am too old to listen to talk about war and dragons.”
“Auntie Mere, please do not talk that way,” Nakai said.
Amalia nudged Rosalea, “Go into your home, at least you and Miri. We’ll be back soon.”
Rosalea noticed that all of Amalia and Raisa’s hackles were standing. Rosalea nodded. “Miri, shall we bake some bread for when everyone comes back? Maybe it can be a treat?”
Miri looked up at her with big eyes and nodded. Rosalea felt anxiety gripping onto her heart as Mere climbed back onto her roof. Please let everyone be safe, she thought.