**This is actually a little sub-story from a bigger (much bigger) story that a friend of mine wrote. It's really good and she has it posted as Crosseyedbutterfly so, if you like this one, go check out the big one! Make sure you have plenty of time though… ^_^;; Thanks Amanda!**
Vixen shielded her eyes. The bright sun bounced off of the white snow, blinding the onlookers. And it was cold. So very cold. 'What else did you expect?' she thought. 'It's just like Antarctica. All we need are a few penguins and it'd be just right.' She glanced around at the other members of her scouting party. They were all partially frozen and bone tired. The raiding party they had been following had chased them for hours and now they were all completely lost. They needed to find a way back to the fief and soon before they all froze to death.
She thought back to the day she and her friends had first been pulled into the magical book. It had been warm where they had landed, the town of Corus. Soon after they had been swept into the thieving guild known as the Rogue. Before long Vixen had been named "Queen." And now they were hunting down Scanran raiding parties, trying to prevent the war from entering the fief of her friend Amanda from their world. Her life sure wasn't what it used to be.
Joe tapped her on her shoulder, brining her from her thoughts. With him was a member of their group named Charlotte, who went by the alias Whisper. She was riding a gelding with a watermelon-red coat. The horse looked much too big for her, but she appeared to be handling it quite well.
"Highness, I was searching through my saddle bags a few minutes ago and found this." Joe handed Vixen the map as she gestured toward him. "I can't read or anything, but I thought maybe you could make some sense of it." She bowed to the Queen of the Rogue as she backed away.
"Is that what I think it is?" Vixen's eyes lit up as Joe nodded his head, unfurling the map.
"Looks like that's the ocean to the west." Joe pointed in the direction of the setting sun.
"Well, we can't have gone that far. As long as we keep the ocean on our left, we should be able to make it home by morning at the latest." Vixen looked at Joe, who leaning in and kissed her on the cheek, warming her face with a nice red flush.
"I knew you'd get us out of this somehow," he said as he rolled up the map. He rode away to tell the rest of the group the plan. Just then her second-in-command, a friend from her world named Mouse, rode up beside her.
"So, you know where we're going?" Mouse asked. Vixen nodded, her face still a healthy shade of red. "Well good." Mouse said. "I was beginning to wonder if we were going to freeze to death out here. But I knew you wouldn't let that happen. You wouldn't let a little bit of ice kill you." Mouse smiled as Vixen lightly punched her in the arm. She was glad that she had been pulled into the book with Vixen. She couldn't let her friend have all the fun, now could she? "Hey," Mouse said, "I've got a question. How long do you think it's going to take us to get back to Amanda's?"
"I don't know," Vixen said. "Probably the rest of the night. We should be there by morning. Unless of course you have a magic carpet big enough for the entire group in your saddle bag. Then we could probably get there by night fall."
Mouse chuckled. "Do they even have magic carpets here?" She had never seen any for sale in the odd shops in the town of Mirshen, but that didn't mean they didn't exist.
"Come to think of it, I don't really know. I've never read about them thought. You should look in Amanda's library at the fief when we get back. If they do, it would probably have a book on them." The two girls rode along in silence for a while, Mouse thinking about other ways of getting home, and Vixen thinking about other things.
"Do you think about home a lot?" Vixen asked Mouse as they rode across the frozen wasteland. "I mean, do you miss it?"
Mouse thought about the question. Of course she missed certain things. She missed reading a book on her bed before going to sleep. She missed walking down the halls of the school with all of her friends. She missed watching her boyfriend do tricks on his skateboard. She missed her mom and brother. "I do. I think about it all the time. Sometimes I think about it so much I make myself upset. But then I think about all the fun we've had here and the wonderful people we've met. I remember the birthday parties the thieves have thrown for us." Vixen looked down at the ring Joe had given her for her birthday and the blush fought it's way back onto her cheeks. "I also think about the fun yet to have. The country will be celebrating it's centennial soon, and I heard King Jonathan is going to make it the biggest party ever to celebrate. And then I start thinking about how much I'm going to miss this place when we have to go back home. So I guess in a way it's kind of a trade off. There are things I love here and things I love back home and I don't really want to be without either one."
Vixen looked around at the people around her, the people she had vowed to protect no matter what. What would happen to them when it came time for her and Mouse to leave? What would happen to Joe? He would be appointed King and rule over the Rogue, but how would her leaving affect him? She loved him so much, and he loved her. She wasn't sure how she would be able to deal with their separation. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She didn't want to dwell on that right now. Now she had a job to do. She had to save her group.
Vixen signaled to Joe. He trotted over to her and she asked him to bring her the fastest scout they had. Joe rode off and quickly returned with a Rogue member aptly named Flash. She told him that she wanted him to ride ahead until either he found people or reached the tree line that they had come through. Then he was to report straight back to her. They needed to know if they were going in the right direction. He took off at a gallop and Vixen quickly lost sight of him in the blinding whiteness.
They rode for several more hours, eyes always peeled for signs of the returning Flash bringing news of the conditions ahead. Mouse and Vixen kept talking among themselves, their topics ranging from fighting techniques to choice weaponry to the hottest guys in the Rogue (Vixen of course being very biased) to the hottest guys back home. They were just starting to talk about the cutest movie stars when someone's shout drew their attention. They glanced out and saw a man, Flash, coming up toward them with a group of riders behind him bearing the symbol of Amanda's fief. Vixen sighed as she turned to Mouse, smiling over the fact that they would all live to see another day.