"Once upon a time, sweeps and sweeps ago, there was a peaceful Empress. She was beautiful and gentle and kind. And she loved lowbloods. She wanted to take care of them and help them. So that's what she did. All the highbloods did. Trolls were more peaceful then, I think. They helped each other more. Well, one night, a messenger came to the Empress and told her a fuchsia blood had been born. The Empress was very happy, because she wanted to raise the heiress herself so that she would be a kind and loving queen too. Then a second messenger came in and said that a mutantblood had been born in the same brood as the heiress-"

"A mutantblood?" Meulin interrupted him suddenly, raising her eyebrows. "What do you mean a mutantblood?"

He sighed in exasperation and ducked under a tree branch. "Do you want to hear the story or not?"

"Ok, ok!" Meulin said, ducking under the same branch.

"Since the grub was a mutantblood, there wouldn't be a lusus that would take him. So the Empress ordered that both him and the heiress were to be taken to a big palace on an island. She decided that when the heiress turned three sweeps old, she'd go to the palace and live there so she could train the princess how to be queen," Kankri continued. The path turned upwards, and they began to head up a slope. He recognized the area from the last time they had made the journey. Kankri had only been two sweeps old at the time, but he remembered how his mother struggled to get them both over this hill. She was carrying him on her back, and his arms were wrapped around her neck.

"Did she?" Meulin asked.

"You have to wait till the end of the story!" he answered.

His friend huffed, but didn't say anything else.

"The heiress and the mutant were best friends. They were the only wrigglers on the island. Everyone else was grown, and was a servant," Kankri went on.

"Like you and me!" Meulin interjected.

He glanced back at her and raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"You said there aren't any other wrigglers in the Tribe. We're going to be the only two. Everyone else is a grown-up troll. And we're best friends. Aren't we?" Meulin smiled brightly at him, and he couldn't help but smile back.

"Of course we're best friends," he said. "Except we're going to have a happy ending."

Meulin froze. "They're not going to have a happy ending?"

"Just listen!" Kankri said, sighing in exasperation. His friend now fell completely silent. He could feel her eyes burrowing into his back as they walked. She didn't want there to be a sad ending, he realized. "When the heiress got to be three sweeps old, the Empress came just like she said. But training to be a queen is a lot of hard work. And the mutant didn't get to see her much anymore. They didn't get to play very much. They both started to become unhappy."

He paused, waiting for her to interrupt. But Meulin was silent.

So, he continued. "The mutant was unhappy because no one would listen to him. He was just someone everyone felt sorry for. They didn't think he could actually do anything. He started to become bitter. Everything and anything made him mad. And the heiress was unhappy because she had no time to herself. It was always work, work, work. She had all these responsibilities that the Empress was giving her, and she didn't feel like she could do it. She just wanted to have fun and do what she wanted to do. So she ran away."

To be honest, Kankri actually wasn't completely sure what happened after that. But he knew from his dreams that it wasn't anything good. For a moment he thought back to his first vision and shuddered. Maybe the story didn't have to have a sad ending. Meulin liked happy endings better anyway.

"...and he went after her," Kankri said. "And he told her that it was ok to be afraid. That being a good and kind Empress of an entire planet is a lot of responsibility. But he knew that she could do it."

"And what did she say?" Meulin asked quietly.

"She said he mattered," Kankri answered. "And they went home."

"Did she become a bad queen?" His friend was suspicious. She was still expecting the sad ending.

"No. She was a great queen. She was greatest empress Befor- Alternia ever had," Kankri said, ending the story. He paused momentarily. What was he going to say? Befor-? He shook his head, forgetting about it. It was just a slip of the tongue.

He could hear the smile in Meulin's voice. "You said the ending was sad!"

"I lied." Kankri glanced back at her, grinning mischievously. "I just wanted you to stop interrupting! It made you listen, didn't it?"

Meulin giggled. "I guess so."

They reached the top of the hill. From there they could see for miles. Kankri looked out, trying to see if he could remember which direction the camp lay in. The land offered him no hints. All he could see was trees and huge hills and empty glades. He racked his brain for some sort of memory, some sort of hint. But he couldn't remember the rest of the way.

Suddenly, Meulin hopped up into the nearest tree and began to climb. She was at the top in a matter of seconds, carefully perched on the highest branch. Kankri stared up at her in awe. He'd been climbing in trees to get fruit for half a sweep now, and he'd never been able to make it up one that fast. He grinned slightly. Meulin was hatched to live in the wild. He was certain of it. A hive just didn't seem to suit her as well as the rugged, untamed wilderness. "Do you see anything?"

She squinted her eyes and scanned the landscape. "I think I see smoke. But I'm not sure. Come up here and look!"

What took Meulin about fifteen seconds took Kankri a good minute and a half. When he finally joined her at the top of the tree, she pointed towards the northeast. "See? Just over that giant hill."

He frowned, craning his neck. "I don't see it."

"Right there!" Meulin said, pointing again.

Finally, he saw it. There was just a bit of black smoke rising up from behind one large hill. Whoever had lit the fire was trying to keep it low. That could definitely be the Tribe, or whatever was left of it. He and Meulin climbed down (Or rather, he did; she went halfway down and then jumped, landing nimbly on all fours.) and began to head in the direction of the fire. The climb down the hill was just as steep as the one going up, and they had to struggle not to lose their footing and go rolling down.

"How far away did that fire look?" Kankri asked once they reached more level ground.

"I think it'd take us three nights to get there," Meulin estimated. "Is that where the camp was?"

He thought back, then shook his head. "No. The camp is at the base of some mountains. There's a river that comes down from there, and the water is always nice and cold. We usually only go there when the weather's warm. But we didn't have a choice this time."

"So we're three nights behind them...and we've been walking for four nights...and it takes ten nights to get there..." Meulin put her finger to her nose. Apparently it was a habit of hers to do that whenever she was attempting to think of something. "So they'll reach it in...three nights. And we'll reach it in six? Is that right?"

Kankri nodded. "It sounds right to me. I just hope we're going the right away."

With that decided, they continued on.


The longer he traveled with Meulin, the more obvious it was that she had been on her own for quite some time. She was completely self-sufficient. Especially when it came to hunting. At the start of their journey she managed to catch small nut creatures with her bare hands. She was used to eating them raw, but Kankri insisted on making a fire to cook the meat. And while she knew little about covering her tracks or foraging, she was a true creature of the wild. All of her movements were quick and practically silent. Her eyes were sharp, her hearing was keen. She was always on alert. Kankri knew the Tribe was going to love her. She was the perfect feral.

"How do you manage to do that?" he asked as she dropped two nut creatures down beside the fire.

"Do what?" Meulin tilted her head to the side.

"Catch these." Kankri picked up the first beast and began to skin it with his sickle. He'd never been allowed to butcher anything back at the Tribe. They were always afraid he'd have a fainting spell and cut himself on accident. But he had seen it done before, and had a basic idea of what to do.

Meulin sat down next to him and put her feet next to the fire. She wiggled her dirty toes. "My lusus taught me how to do it. Didn't you learn from the other ferals?"

"No," Kankri answered. The business with the nut creature was getting dirty. His hands were covered in light brown blood. It was difficult to separate the meat from such tiny little bones, especially with a tool like a sickle. "They never taught me."

"Why not?" Meulin asked.

The blood was smeared across his palms. It was hot against his skin. And then suddenly he knew that a vision was coming. He tried to look away, tried to fight it off. Of course it was a fruitless effort. In a few seconds his world changed. He was on another strange planet, and he was kneeling beside Rufioh. Brown blood covered the ground. The young troll was horribly injured. He was bleeding from every place imaginable. His body looked twisted and broken in a thousand different places. It hurt to look at the state he was in. Horuss was kneeling beside their injured friend, clutching his hand. Porrim and Aranea stood beside Kankri.

"What happened?" Aranea asked, concerned.

"Damara," Horuss answered gravely.

The vision ended there, thankfully. But Kankri awoke with a migraine and a strong urge to throw up. Meulin was staring down at him with concern and terror.

"Kankri! What's wrong? Are you ok?" She set her hand on his shoulder and helped him sit up. "What happened?"

"Nothing, nothing," he said. "I just...do that, sometimes."

"Fall over like you're dead?!" Meulin frowned at him. "That isn't normal, Kankri! That means...that means you're sick, or something!"

"I'm not sick. It's been happening for a while now," he assured her. "I see certain things and I just...faint. I can't figure out how to stop it. It just keeps happening. But I'm fine. So long as it doesn't happen at a really bad time, I'm fine."

Meulin crossed her arms over her chest, frowning. "What if it does? What if it happened when you were in that fire? You would have burned up!"

He hadn't even thought about that. Sometimes the visions made him go down for several minutes. If he had gone out during the fire, those minutes could have been the difference between living and dying. Suddenly Kankri felt the bile rising up in his throat. He turned his face away from Meulin and vomited. When he was done, he coughed once and shook his head. "I don't want to think about that. I can't control them Meulin, I've tried. Every time I feel it coming on I try to fight it, but it never works."

"I'll help you find a way. Promise," Meulin said.

Kankri wasn't so sure that it was possible. Everyone in the Tribe presumed that his fainting problem stemmed from issues with his blood color, and he agreed with that theory. Unless Meulin found a way to change his genetics, the visions weren't going to be leaving anytime soon.


"We're still going in the right direction," Kankri said. He was at the top of a tree, glancing towards the northeast. In the distance he could see the hazy outline of the mountain. Getting there would be easy now. They'd just have to head towards that, and they would find the Tribe. At least, he hoped they would. Every night one of them would scale a tree and look for signs of a fire. But they hadn't seen anything since that first night. "We should be there in another four nights."

He climbed back down and went back over to Meulin, who was sitting beside a small stream. She had a stick in her hand and was drawing something in the soft, moist soil. Kankri stood next to her and watched in silence. She drew a large meowbeast with two mouths and a little wriggler curled up at her side. Kankri realized with a pang of sadness that it was her and her lusus.

"Do you miss her?" he asked, sitting beside her.

Meulin nodded slowly. "I miss her a lot."

He frowned slightly, staring at the drawing. "I'm sorry. I bet she really loved you."

"She did. She was the best lusus ever," Meulin agreed. She sighed and ran her hand over the drawing, erasing it. "But being sad won't bring her back."

"So? You can't help but feel sad. I was sad when I thought I lost my custodian. I cried and cried and I wouldn't eat. You're supposed to be upset when you lose someone you love," Kankri told her.

His friend looked at him, tilting her head to the side in her usual way. "But death is apart of life. We're just supposed to deal with it."

"Says who?" Kankri raised an eyebrow. "If you want to be sad, that's ok."

Meulin smiled a little bit. "I don't think I want to be sad anymore, though. I still miss her. But I'm not alone anymore. I think that's what I hated the most. I hated being alone. It was always so quiet and so cold. I didn't have anyone to talk to or play with. It was just me in that empty cave. I never want to go back to that."

"So long as I'm around, you won't be alone," Kankri said. He grinned and bumped his shoulder against hers. "You're not going to be able to get rid of me."

She laughed and bumped her shoulder back against his. "You're like a parasite."

"Exactly like a parasite," he agreed. "One of the blood-sucking ones."

"You're gross," Meulin said. She crinkled her nose in disgust, but she was still smiling.

"At least my hair doesn't look like a nut creature's nest!" he teased. Before Meulin could react, he hopped to his feet and ran through the stream. That sort of remark was enough to initiate a playfight. But she would have to catch him first.

Meulin ran after him, laughing. "Get back here! I'll show you whose hair is a mess!"

"Come and get me!" he shouted over his shoulder.

Eventually, she did. Kankri paid for his teasing remark by having dirt and mud rubbed into his hair. Then she proceeded to braid in leaves and blades of grass, until Kankri looked just as dirty and wild as her.