Shaski glanced up briefly at a pleased cry from overhead, somewhere high in the tree, then returned his attention to the watch. The area was generally safe, that's why it was a popular family foraging spot but you could never be entirely sure. There were low-animals in the jungle, big cats, non-sapient but smart enough hunters nonetheless. Predators. The wind shifted and the smoke which had been drifting up into the branches to subdue the discovered beehive caught in his throat. The wind was cooler too with the edge of day.
"Now or never!" he called up. "Time to head back!"
The would-be honey gatherer in the tree was his eldest daughter and the next he heard she was already down and laughing, sticky and triumphant even through the few stings she hadn't managed to avoid.
"Good job," he allowed as one by one the others finished picking the last of the fruit, secured it in bundles and prepared to head back to the village. The other hunters on the perimeter of the clearing joined them and Shaski led the way back. He was looking forward to the honey after the meal tonight. The fruit and other common forage would be shared with the village, but risky treats like honey were for the climber's family.
The group arrived back as the sun was setting and most dispersed underground almost immediately. A few remained at the outdoor workshelters to prepare anything that needed a fire, or to enjoy the last of the daylight.
Curaca, the village leader was among those watching the sunset. At her side was the grizzled seer, Olec, his fur now grey and turning slowly to white. Neither looked round as Shaski approached but Olec spoke nonetheless.
"Shaski. You have been outside the village. Did you feel it there too?"
Shaski frowned, shook his head. "I don't.."
"Something coming, only a whisper yet, but coming. You can see it in the sunset."
Shaski looked but saw nothing that could be called ominous. The sky was clear, though he knew the seer often sought meaning in the shape and movement of the clouds there were none tonight. The sky shaded smoothly from blue overhead to golden where the sun touched the horizon and seemed to pass through every shade on the spectrum between the two, even...
"Green," said Olec and it was true Shaski realised.
"Unlucky shade," Curaca commented. Shaski nodded. Not green itself of course - practically the whole world around them was green, natural leaf and plant shades. But this shade, near luminous blue-green was a bad omen. The colour of monsters from scary stories and of a danger from history so ancient it was almost a story itself.
"On the edge of light and dark,"Olec continued, but paused as the sun slipped lower and turned, slowly from gold to red. "Green. Red. Darkness." He turned to the eastern sky where the daylight lingered.
"Blue to follow?" he said uncertainly.
Curaca looked to Shaski and shrugged, her patience with portents apparently exhausted. She touched Olec's shoulder.
"Is there anything to be done?"
A slow head shake. "Not by us."
To Knuckles' disgust, but not surprise, the lift ran out a mile or so short of the swampy grassland. He landed ankle deep in dark, tepid, peaty water and knee deep in some plant halfway between reed and grass. He glanced at the sun on the horizon, noting with relief that he had sufficient time before true sunset to be out of this and into the shelter of the jungle edge. This would be no place to be stuck overnight.
He pulled one thoroughly waterlogged boot out of the mire and set off on the shortest course to drier 'd only gone a few steps when it became obvious that the shortest course was not necessarily the wisest. This was brought home mainly by the moment when his leading foot sank nearly to the thigh upon putting his weight on it. After lurching forward and narrowly avoiding going face first into the bog, he pulled back and reconsidered.
He detoured cautiously around the deeper patch and found a solid tuffet of springy grass where he sat down and pulled his boots off, tying them to his pack to dangle behind him. He was about to get up and try again when some sound made him look round, instinctively jumping to his feet. He couldn't immediately place it - splashing perhaps, though the air and water were still.
Most beasts would have called out at this point. A 'Hello' or an 'Anyone there?' Knuckles did not. He stood watchfully, scanning the landscape until he identifed the approaching ripple. He waited in silence until he could identify two frogs, one larger than the other. The smaller still bore a residual tail. Parent and child? Almost certainly no threat then. He would have ignored them and returned his attention to getting over the marsh but the adult frog called out to him before he could move.
"Alright there?"
The frog stood up from the water and smiled as broadly as only his species could. The infant trod water beside him.
"Not lost are you?"
Knuckles hesitated but didn't get a chance to decide how to answer.
"Come over the dryway did you? It's easy to stray off it. Loads do. Always putting 'em right we are. Not been this way before have you? D'you need a steer back?"
"No. Yes" Knuckles blinked at this volley then caught up, belatedly answered the second question first, corrected himself, realised how confused his answer now sounded and started again.
"No, I don't know the area. Yes, I would very much appreciate a direction back onto the path."
The small frog was grinning, almost giggling, earning himself an admonishing look.
"No problem. We can point you right." The frog climbed further up on the drier patch and hoisted the smaller one out of the water. They both paddled on ahead, the older one beckoning. "So where you going then? I'm Broga by the way. This's my lad Benba."
Knuckles adjusted his pack, trying to stop his dangling boots from swinging quite so much. "Only to the edge of the jungle today I think. Where the river comes out. I'll camp there overnight."
Broga nodded, apparently unsurprised by this and insufficiently interested in his end destination or name to ask. "Climbs steep there the ground, you'll have dry footing in no time."
"Good."
Broga smiled at his vehemence.
"Yuk! Dry feet!" Benba put in.
Knuckles had nothing to add to this, his supply of small talk being extremely small and his experience with children even smaller. Fortunately Broga himself seemed perfectly happy to chatter on, filling the silence with observations about the area which might or might not come in useful down the line.
Knuckles, whose previous experience with surface dwellers was almost entirely limited to Sonic and Tails, was starting to wonder if they all talked this much, when they reached the edge of the swamp and the promised, short but steep slope up to the undergrowth.
"River's still a bit to the north, but I reckon you've got the light," Broga said.
Knuckles nodded. "Yes, I think so. Thank you."
"Safe trip then!" Broga waved cheerfully and Benba gave a wild flappy hand sort of wave too before they initially paddled, then struck off and swam, back the way they'd come. Knuckles wonder how far they'd detoured for him and what they'd been doing beforehand. They hadn't mentioned dropping anything to guide him. Had he owed more than a verbal thank you? He frowned but turned on his way and head north on the narrow strip of reedy ground between the swamp and the jungle. The undergrowth was far too thick to get through here. He hoped it would be clearer at the river but was disappointed. Tangled vines, thick woody undergrowth, mossy fallen logs and leafy new growth completed blocked all but the river itself. He could tear his way through eventually but the sun was setting with equatorial speed and he was more tired than he'd expected. Too long spreadeagled to glide then too long in an unnatural high-stepping, mud-dragging gait across the bog.
Instead of pressing on, he ate lightly from his supplies and tore only enough of the undergrowth to burrow in out of the wind and give at least casual cover from any onlooker, before curling up and falling asleep.
He woke with his heart pounding,awake and on his feet in an instant, scrambling clear of the cover. The morning was very newly dawned, the sky still silvering from grey to blue but already filled with birdsong. Knuckles stood staring around, unable to say what had woken him and in such hammering alarm. He listened carefully to the birdsong, but it was all low-birds, no words in it, no territorial shouts of warning or calls from lookouts.
A nightmare then? He didn't remember it if so. Perhaps it was only the dislocation of waking up on the wrong ground. Ground missing the constant almost below-awareness thrum of the chaos energies, the thicker, warmer air.
The initial birdsong was fading as the dawn passed and Knuckles realised quite how long he'd been lost in thought. He took one last long careful look around him then, satisfied there was no threat, he reached back into the undergrowth to pull out his pack. He'd travelled relatively lightly as far as food was concerned, aware that beyond a certain point, carrying more would slow him down which would mean he'd need more again and so on. He'd need to find his own, or locate and deal with the various settlements marked on his map en route. His preference was for the former but he was aware of the risk of finding neither. He'd thought about it a long time before leaving, whether there was any way of making certain his supplies lasted but as there was no scale on his map he'd concluded that there wasn't. He could take the risk or he could not go.
Breakfast was not the time to skimp though. He'd reached his first waypoint, the only one he was certain of, in good time and wanted the energy for the day's travel. He ate well on the dried fruit and seeds he'd brought, refilled his water container although he expected to spend the rest of the day or longer near the river and secured his pack.
Before him the river disappeared off into the undergrowth. Wide and placid and green with weed, he couldn't see the bottom and there wasn't much of a bank to speak of either - if there ever had been the river was full to brimming over it. The impassable undergrowth extended to the water's edge on both sides. It was a problem.
After a moment's thought, Knuckles allowed himself a short spell of time to scout up and down the jungle edge for a break in the ground cover - perhaps he'd be able to make his way back to the river- he knew from his experience in the forests of the Floating Island that if a wood was deep and dark enough the ground would be clearer further in - no light meant no plants. This thick tangled growth probably didn't extend far
The were no obvious routes in and he headed back to the river. He could cut, or tear through of course but it'd cost time and energy. He pulled down one branch and looked at it thoughtfully. Would it cost more or less time and energy than making a raft to travel on the river itself? He concluded after a moment that he didn't absolutely have to decide - if he was ripping into the brush anyway he might as well keep aside any suitable branches and see how he progressed. Pleased with this realization he threw himself into the work and had barely worked up a sweat when he pulled away a swathe of a clinging, ivy-like plant to reveal the remains of what looked like a wooden jetty.
He paused, considering it before testing his weight on it. It swayed, the posts beneath rotten, thought the deck itself seemed sound. It was the work of moments to rip the boards from the supporting posts and set them on the water where they floated benignly, the perfect basis for a raft. He kept one of the longer branches back and after testing the depth of the water concluded that he could easily punt his away along without a set of oars.
After a quick check on the sun he climbed cautiously aboard and started upriver. He was poling against the current, which although not fast was surprisingly powerful. The movement of the water, and the unchanging greenery around him made it hard to keep track of time or distance and in spite of a few stops where he'd thrown out a rope to stay his drift back down stream while he rested, the day seemed used up in no time at all. There was still no break in the undergrowth to either side, so he tethered the raft once more and curled up where he was to sleep, once again dipping into his supplies for supper. He looked out at the taller trees he could see over the tangle of lower plants. Some of those were bound to be fruit and ripe too at this time of year. If hadn't found a break in the undergrowth by the end of the next day he decided he'd have to push his way through to look for fresh supplies, even if he came back to the raft afterwards.
He slept badly, always dimly aware of the risk of rolling over and off the small raft and woke cramped and stiff in the middle of the night. He had enough trouble getting back to sleep that he considered leaving the raft and clearing himself a spot on the bank in spite of his tiredness, but before he'd fully decided had fallen back to sleep after all. He slept restlessly on and off until dawn, never quite sure at what point he'd actually woken and decided that there'd be no more nights on the water. He hurried breakfast, determined to get as far up the river as possible, and hopefully off it altogether that day.
The terrain and and plantlife continued unchanged and he pushed on well past midday until forced to stop with the sun three quarters to the horizon because his arms wouldn't take any more. He tied up the raft and ate, too tired to pursue the idea of tunneling through the undergrowth to look for fresher food.
Progress was slower when he moved again and he was beginning to resign himself to another night on, or beside the river when a movement in the water caught his attention. At first he thought it was a shallow patch, the water disturbed over stones or a mudbank but it was moving and purposefully. An arrow shaped ripple progressing quickly towards him. No frog this time, too fast and sleek.
Knuckles shifted his grip on the pole he'd been driving the raft forward with, ready to strike out if need be. For a few moments he drifted down river, watching the approaching shape. Then, almost leisurely, a long, toothy jaw almost as long as Knuckles himself, emerged from the water.
Alligator.
Suddenly the raft felt a lot more fragile.