Two days into her journey, Shallin decided Frain wasn’t following her after all. Three days along, she admitted to herself she didn’t exactly know where Pellago was. On the fifth day, she realized she’d gotten herself hopelessly lost.

It should have been east. It had to be. Wild storms raged up and down the horizon, obscuring sunrise daily. For good or ill, she’d gotten herself into this. Now to make the best of it.

She led her horse by his reins, content to let him carry her dwindling pouches of supplies. They crested the top of a hill, looking down into lowlands dimpled with rolling hills less high than their own. A winding stream - not quite a river - made its way lazily around them. To their northeast, she saw smoke rising and could just make out the closest buildings.

Town at last.

“Come on, Dell. Rest is close at hand,” she said to her horse. “I can get some direction at least.” Dell knickered and followed reluctantly, keeping an eye to the storms. “Yeah, I don’t like the look of them either.”

An hour or so later, their path met a well-tended road two horses wide, paved with large stones and bordered by a trimmed hedge. She mounted and followed it slowly, noting the unmanned arch that bridged the road before becoming a man-high wall that followed the terrain, demarking the town boundary.

Unafraid of incursions, or blissfully unaware? How stupid can these people be to leave their territory unguarded?

Shallin tugged her sleeves down and her gloves up, covering the marks that would reveal her affiliation. Her other insignia remained packed away. Alone, a Sentinel could pass reasonably unobtrusively, just another visitor among many. In numbers, they drew more attention. She only had to look to her actions in the last town to recall regret.

Most of the houses she passed at first looked homely enough, but appeared abandoned. Her original assessment changed. Perhaps I was wrong. Here a goat ranged, there some chickens roosted on a roof. Many doors hung ajar, and the lawns needed trimming.

Some sort of farming community, judging by the animals. I wonder if they’ve gathered closer to the town proper? Whatever smoke she’d seen from a distance still rose down the road, nearer the town. She continued on.

Shallin listened intently but heard nothing more than wildlife and the rustling of trees and grass. Curious, she hopped down and unsheathed her short sword. Picking a house at random, she nudged open the door and went inside.

No furnishings remained, though small amounts of rotting food littered the ground where it had fallen. “They planned to leave. This wasn’t done in haste.” Nothing else accounted for the lack of anything substantial.

The door wasn’t damaged. No one had broken in. The previous occupants took everything they owned and left, never returning. She couldn’t discern the age of the remaining detritus. Shallin couldn’t imagine a raid being so neat, either.

She went from house to house, finding similarly clean vacancies in each home. Venturing down different lanes from the main road yielded the same result. Shallin let Dell wander while she explored. Her urgency to reach Pellago shrank as she puzzled through the mysterious desertion.

In the fourth house, she noticed a spiral had been crudely cut into one of the walls. Nothing else seemed out of place. From there, she noticed every house she searched had one.

“I’ve never seen this before,” she wondered aloud. “Maybe it was raided after all. It’s not decorative. Like someone claiming property.” Dell whinnied outside. She peeked through a window and saw a small child holding up a hand of oats to him.

Shallin sheathed her short sword and approached the child, a girl with short brown hair and a dirtied dress..

“Hey,” she said, putting on her kindest voice. “I see you’ve met Dell.”

The girl crouched, attempting to duck behind a hedge, then reconsidering. She knew she’d been caught.

“It’s okay. Thank you for feeding him. He needed a snack, I think,” Shallin continued.

“His feet are tired and his back itches,” the girl said. “You should rest him.”

Shallin chuckled. “We’ve traveled far, but I try not to wear him out. What’s your name? I’m Shallin.” She decided the girl looked no older than ten cycles. Young enough to be skittish, but old enough to be wary. “Was this your home?”

The girl shook her head. “No.” She stroked Dell’s muzzle. “I told him my name. He wants to tell you but you do not listen.”

“You can talk to him?” Shallin didn’t believe it for a moment. She shrugged. “You can tell me your name.”

“He said you left the other one. Dell misses her. He is sad.”

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“We’ve traveled together, just the two of us. Several days now,” she replied. Does she mean Frain’s horse?

The girl scrunched her eyes shut, both hands on Dell’s muzzle. “She is brown and tall. The suns have risen and set many times. She follows but remains far away.” The description matched.

“That was my friend’s horse. He called her Nell.” She stepped closer. “Can you show me where you live? Where your parents are?”

“She is his sister. He calls to her. I hear her too. She says Frain is mad at you.”

Shallin looked askance at the girl, surprised. The girl had no way of knowing the horse’s relation to each other, and certainly not Frain’s name.

“Frustrated, more likely,” she admitted. “You got that from Dell?”

“Nell and Dell. Both,” the girl’s eyes darted up above Dell’s head, looking without seeing, but not sightless. Skytouched? Shallin didn’t know what to think. “Dell wants to meet Antsy.”

“Who is Antsy?”

“She’s with the others. She’s with the others,” the girl said, swaying side to side. “She likes his voice. They are of the Kindred. Antsy consents to the meeting.”

“Who else is there? Are your parents there?” She’d never met anyone who could talk with horses. It seemed like a shamanic ability, but she couldn’t be sure. Shallin hated the idea of stumbling into a nest of them without a Cadre to back her up.

“Antsy says you are welcome too. You can come,” the girl said. She grabbed Dell’s reins and began to lead him.

Shallin followed with bemused curiosity. The girl had a gift she couldn’t comprehend and didn’t know how it fit beneath the Light. Communicating with animals seemed benign, but so had controlling the elements. The Vigil existed because of the choices of undisciplined shamans.

“How many people live in your town?” Shallin asked, trying to get any valid answer at all. “I saw smoke rising that way.”

“Even among the Kindred, we have to cook,” the girl answered matter-of-factly.

“I’m afraid I don’t know who the Kindred are,” Shallin said. “Can you help me understand?”

The child looked at her as if their roles were reversed. “We are the Kindred,” she said, gesturing between herself and Shallin. “But you are deaf.” She bobbed her head side to side. “I will speak for you. Or one of the others.”

“I can speak for myself,” Shallin said. “Thank you.”

The girl shrugged. “You will see. You will see,” she said as she continued walking. “Antsy will let us know what she thinks when she sees you in person. She understands the Kindred.”

They walked in silence for a while until the larger fortification of the town appeared amid the hills. Stout logs stacked twice as high as a man served as a buffer to an even higher stone wall behind it. This was the true defense. The earlier wall simply marked the beginning of their outlying territory.

A massive iron gate crossed between the stone walls with a small door for normal, routine passage of people or livestock. Shallin could see that it could be pulled open to let in larger traffic such as carts or wagons. Men and women patrolled the walls above, watchful but not threatening.

No one directly manned the door, which stood open. Shallin had no doubt someone nearby could shut it quickly if needed. She assessed the patrolling guards and noted their weapons looked meager but well-kept. The population did not suffer from poverty, but remained just a step above it.

Animals roamed the streets unwatched and free to go where they pleased. Ducks and chickens, pigs and goats, even a bundy or two scurried about. The girl ignored most, but waved at one of the goats like an old friend. She dropped Dell’s reins and he wandered off to explore. Shallin trusted there wouldn’t be any harm from that.

“This way. This way,” the girl beckoned. “Antsy needs us.” The girl’s urging seemed all the more strange as she followed Dell’s path through town. The horse seemed to know where he was going, while Shallin began losing her patience.

It took a lot for her to steady her temper while being led by a girl and a horse through the well-tended streets. Her journey had branched into absurdity, and the lack of coherent normalcy alarmed her and put her on edge. Shallin’s hand slipped to the pommel of her short sword.

She saw no danger, and few townsfolk to threaten them. Most went about their business, ignoring if not outright avoiding them. The girl seemed well known, and walked with familiar surety towards their destination. She didn’t need the horse to lead them. They just happened to be going to the same place.

Dell reached it first, a small shack or stall, open on three sides with just a back wall and a thatched roof. Ants swarmed around a large anthill protruding from the ground like a spire. Two similar smaller ones grew nearby. The horse lowered his head and nickered softly, bobbing it up and down.

“Antsy approves of Dell. He presents himself well and knows the courtesies. You have trained him well.”

“Thank you?” Shallin said, confused and unsure how else to reply.. “This is…Antsy?”

The girl did not answer, just looked at her expectantly.

I need to do something, Shallin realized. She unbuckled her sword belt and laid it on the ground. Kneeling, she bobbed her head the way Dell had. Her hands itched. Shallin felt humiliated and embarrassed that she was bowing to an anthill. Ants paraded around her, marching past on their way into town.

Do I think at them? I don’t know how to talk to ants. This is ridiculous. My horse can do it. Maybe…

Shallin pulled off her gloves and set them aside. White lightning-like scars rimmed with red crawled from her hands up her forearms. Touching the loose soil, she felt the grains of the earth. Nothing elemental lurked nearby. Whatever form of communication the girl and the horse shared, she wasn’t part of it, and it wasn’t shamanic. The new gesture didn’t solve her problem.

“Alright, Antsy, I’m giving it a shot. If you’re listening, let me know. I don’t know how this is supposed to work.” She focused her sight on the largest anthill, and a massive winged ant lumbered its way to the top. The queen?

It hadn’t come alone. To her shock, hundreds of worker drones followed her out, then began devouring her. They chewed off her antenna, then her wings. Shallin watched her struggle to walk away before they swarmed on top and consumed her legs before crunching into her carapace.

Beside her, the girl dropped to her knees and lowered her head to the ground. “Antsy has spoken,” the girl said. “Change is coming to Pellago. You should never have come.”