"Misk Gods" Saga
Part I: Deserting The Desert

To be honest, I was never quite sure why I hadn't left Iron Plateau just yet. I guess I was in hopes that all of the others would come back and that the fighting between Tiger and Freedom would cease. They had been fighting for years on end until finally, the beautiful plateau we land animals loved to reside in, turned into nothing but a hot, desolate piece of land with not one blade of grass in sight. It had the appearance of a desert without the sand. As the grass disappeared and the water stopped running, the plateau itself finally gained a name: "Iron Plateau". The sun would beat down on it continually, dehydrating the animals. A lot of them died, but many were able to escape Iron Plateau and find a new place where the Gods wouldn't fight so that they could live in peace.

I guess part of the reason I didn't leave was because Iron Plateau was my home, and I didn't need water or grass or even meat to live. I'm a Furbie, just your average Furbie, and I could survive by nibbling at the dying roots and dirt on the walls of my cave. Sure, I would get lonely most of the time, but I was fairly used to that. My parents and siblings had been killed a few years ago by Freedom, the Sky God. Well, not exactly by Freedom, but more or less his henchmen of fellow bald eagles. I could never tell if the eagles were pure evil, or just hungry, but I paid them no mind. So far, no one had ever found my cave, and that's all that mattered.

On this particular day, however, I was feeling extraordinarily full of energy and the sun wasn't beating down as hard as it usually did on Iron Plateau. I decided to exit my cave and catch some fresh air before the weather changed. Looking around, everything was extremely silent to the point where I thought I'd go insane of boredom. Then again, I thought that a lot of times. This time, though, I could have sworn I'd spotted tumbleweed.

After nearly an hour of sitting outside my cave and observing what little clouds hovered above me, my ears were picking something up. My whole body began to twitch; the sound was building up, getting louder and louder, though it was still very distance. I tried to find where the moving noise was coming from, but the sun was blocking my vision and I had no arms to shield my eyes like other animals had. I could tell the noise was coming from the left, and I could tell it had to be something very large and very powerful. Not a lot of animals that used to live at Iron Plateau were either of these things: just innocently small, humble animals such as myself. Surely this was something from another end of Misk, or maybe… Hopefully it couldn't be one of the Misk Gods, could it? I shivered at the thought and slowly began to back into my cave, assuming this was a predator of some sort.

I wasn't completely well hidden inside my cave because I still wanted to be able to get a good look at whatever had come my way; that's what you did when you were bored. Even if you were risking your life, you wanted to be able to see who else was around. It gets so lonely living by oneself.

The creature's shadow emerged, and I shivered inside my cave with both fear and excitement. It was most definitely a tiger, and the only known tiger in all of Misk was Tiger the Land God… I wasn't sure if he was evil, either, because he frequently would eat land creatures if he were hungry enough as well. Being a land creature myself, however, I was sure that if he decided to eat me, I could talk to him first and convince him not to. I guess you could say I was rather brave for a Furbie; my parents and siblings had all been cowards, and that's what led to their death. I knew I wasn't quite like them; I knew I was unique from them in some way.

Tiger (at least, that's who I assumed it was) crept his gigantic, striped legs across the entrance to my cave as if he were going to pass it smoothly without a second thought. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks. He was extremely large, so his legs were all I could make out. I'm sure if he were to hop onto my cave, he'd crush it and I would die. I wasn't even that small for a Furbie; I was about a foot tall.

His head lowered and his green eyes glowed like rare crystals into my cave. Yes, this was most definitely Tiger. To my surprise, his mouth started to open, revealing huge teeth that looked like long, white-bladed knives. His tongue started to loll out of his mouth like a red carpet and his whiskers twitched like branches on a tree. He sort of shook his head as though he were having a cold chill of some sort. Was he trying to take refuge in my cave? He couldn't fit in if he tried!

"Excuse me," his voice was extremely powerful and loud, even though I knew he was speaking softly. I'd never been so close to Tiger in my entire life; the closest I'd ever been to him was when I was watching a fight between him and Freedom the Sky God, but that was many months ago. I remember being amazed at their sizes, but I wasn't even that close to them. I had been watching them from above, on a ledge near Freedom's Lair. Now that I was witnessing Tiger so up close, my entire body seemed to freeze, and my heart was stuttering in my rib cage.

"Excuse me," he repeated, no louder than he had before. "I know there is somebody in here, and you don't have to be afraid. I'm not going to eat you. I'm not even hungry… I'd just like to know where the nearest watering hole is, that's all. I've been thirsty for days now. I think if I don't have something to drink soon, my body will wither away."

I knew what Tiger was saying just wasn't true. Everybody knew that Misk Gods were immortal until their one million years were up. I wasn't sure how old the three Misk Gods were, definitely thousands of years old, but nowhere near their time just yet. I myself was only about ten years old, which is considered an early adult in Furbie years. It would have been like an old man speaking to a child, but Tiger looked like he hadn't aged a day since birth. Well, okay, he didn't have any baby features on him, that was for sure, but for a creature that had to fight the eagles day after day, he didn't look like he'd ever been in a fight before… That is, if it weren't for that one large scar across his side. Freedom had done that with one of his talons. I knew because that was the one fight I had witnessed fairly close up; the one from many months ago.

"Come on, little guy, I'm not going to hurt you, honest," Tiger continued to speak. "I just need to know where some water is. I'm thirsty! Surely if you're living out here you know where one is, right? Come on, I promise I'm not going to harm you in any way… Please!"
Tiger was sounding unpredictably friendly. Part of me thought it was awfully suspicious, but the other part of me knew that Tiger was harmless, at least for now, and that answering back or even leaving the cave wouldn't cause him to suddenly get hungry. Would it? On the brighter side, he could never get to me from inside my cave; he was much, much too big. His head could just barely poke through the entrance and thanks to my months of boredom, this cave stretched pretty far in case I needed to run to the other end to avoid a swiping paw.

"I'm begging you, please answer me…" Tiger sounded tired and almost sad. It would be a crime not to answer him at this point.

"I deeply apologize, Sir," I responded in a shaky, yet fearless tone. "I only eat dirt inside here, no water for me! I'm sure if you migrate a bit further from here, you'll run across a lake or something sooner or later."

"Are you sure, or are you just making that up?" Tiger didn't sound tired anymore, but slightly angry. I tried not to pay attention to the way he was talking, but more on how to answer his question.

"When the land creatures migrated from here because of the fighting and the lack of life, almost all of them traveled north instead of south," I gave him the best answer I had on me. "A lost of this animals had very keen senses, and I think they knew what they were doing. If they are alive, if those thousands of animals are still alive, they surely have found a body of water somewhere."

"Yes, of course," Tiger sounded pleased and grateful. "Thank you, Sir. You may call me Tiger, by the way. Whom am I talking to?"

Now I was feeling a bit nervous. I hadn't expected Tiger to get into personal conversation; I assumed this was strictly business talk. I felt my feet shaking under my round, feathery body. "Er… My name is Boo Boh-Bay, Tiger. But you can just call me Boo. That's what my family called me before they were killed by Freedom."

I had stopped facing the entrance of my cave all together because I didn't want to see Tiger's face. I had turned around and was facing the darker, slightly damp area of my cave where the dying roots hung softly. I could sense Tiger bowing in understanding, though I could not see it. Now I was starting to feel sick. The nervousness of talking with one of the three Gods of my planet and the rancid taste from the roots I had eaten that morning were finally starting to get to me. Before Tiger could even respond to what I said, I found myself lurching forward, opening my beak up as wide as it would go, and vomiting some disgusting, brownish green ooze. I felt the warm, slightly chunky liquid seep down my once baby pink colored chest and onto the dirty ground. Even then, it wouldn't stop. I continued vomiting and vomiting until it felt like I was vomiting out my insides. More of the liquid ooze sprayed down from my beak to my feet until my eyes grew dreary and I suddenly felt tired. I fell backward onto my back, my feet frantically wiggling in the air.

"Uh oh," Tiger moaned. "Are you alright in there, Boo? That smells awful… Do you need help or anything?"

"Bluhhelp me out of here!" I cried more urgently than I needed to. The first word came out "bluhhelp" because as I started to say "help", the leftover vomit inside my beak left me in a large bubble of ooze that sprayed into my face as I spoke. My face felt warm and moist with chunky brown liquid.

Before I had time to do or say anything else, I felt a huge paw the size of my entire body cover me up and drag me out of my cave. I could feel my feathers being slightly damaged by being dragged across the hard dirt floor. Tiger's paw didn't smell too great, but it was a lot better than the smell of my own vomit, which sort of smelled like a garbage dump mixed with poop and perhaps dust.

As soon as the sun hit my eyelids, which were closed over my eyes, Tiger spoke. "Looks like you'll need a trip to the nearest watering hole too, huh? How above you come with me and we can clean up and get some water in our systems? I don't think dirt agrees with your body too well."

It was almost like some sort of disgustingly ironic honor for Tiger to be speaking with me like this, but I was too concerned with the thick sheet of vomit that had overtaken my feathery body to be excited with honor. I simply stood up, opened my eyes (my eyelids fighting the vomit caking over them, of course) and started to walk closer to Tiger's legs.

"I haven't thrown up since I was little," I spoke very shakily. It was like having thrown up everything inside your body, so your insides were left cold and dry. "I feel absolutely grime-ridden."

Tiger laughed. I had no idea Tiger could have a sense of humor, really. I know that sounds like a very cold thing to say, but I'd only really seen Tiger while he was fighting or killing. I assumed that's all he really cared about. And maybe, before he met me, it was.

"You look grime-ridden, there's no doubt about that," he replied, still laughing as he spoke. "You made me forget I was even thirsty… But now the thirst is back. I hope it isn't too far of a walk to get there."

As he started walking, I realized that if he seriously expected me to go with him, I'd have to be jogging the entire way there. He may not have been going very fast for his size, but his strides were huge! I had no legs, only feet, being a Furbie and all, and that meant I hardly had strides at all. I walked like some sort of electronic toy that could only move one millimeter in length at a time, and not very quickly. Thankfully, I didn't even need to mention this; Tiger noticed right away.

"You can sit on the back of my neck, okay?" he suggested. I didn't need to respond, I'm sure he knew I agreed. Without warning, though, he reached his head down, grabbed my back lightly with his teeth, and lifted me up. It felt like I was soaring on an outdoor elevator with no platform. I wasn't all that afraid of heights, but when you're covered in vomit and shooting into the air very quickly, you're not exactly in an excited state of mind. He placed me directly on the back of his neck, and I scooted up a little bit, surprised at the immense amount of space I had available to me. Tiger was a lot better than he looked!

"Thanks, Tiger," I smiled for the first time that day. "I hope it's not that far out, either. It would be a pain having to get all the way there and then back here… I'm really not into traveling much. That's one of the reasons I stayed when the others left, I guess. I hate walking."

"I know how you feel," he started to walk and it felt sort of scary, but I trusted a Misk God enough not to worry about sliding off one's back. "I'm so envious of Freedom… And any other eagles, I guess. They can fly wherever they want and get a nice view of everything that's below them. I wish I had wings. Maybe then I wouldn't have to ask so many other land creatures where things are."

"But if you had wings, you wouldn't have met me," I pointed out. "And I would have been left alone in that cave covered in my own vomit for a long time."

"True," Tiger replied. "Fate has a strange way of working things out, don't you agree?"

"Indeed," I smiled. All this time I had thought Tiger was some sort of mean-spirited creature, but he was just as affable as the next one. I turned around where I was sitting and realized I couldn't even see my cave anymore, even though Iron Plateau was as flat as, well… an iron!

As if Tiger could read my mind, he said, "You do know why they call this place Iron Plateau, don't you, Boo? It's not because it's hot and flat like one… Well, I guess that's part of the reason they call it that, of course. A lot of land creatures don't know this because they can't get a good enough view of the entire thing, but it's really in the shape of an giant iron. I'm not kidding."

"Whoa!" I spoke in complete surprise. "I had no idea! That's amazing. How do you know that? Did Freedom or some other eagles tell you? They would know, wouldn't they?"

"Yes, they would," Tiger started to speed up a little more. "But I didn't hear it from them, exactly… I was fighting with Freedom not too long ago, and at one point I was airborne… I mean, really airborne! You have no idea how weird and thrilling it is to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of feet up into the air. Freedom sort of picked me up and just flew with me, straight up into the air like some sort of feather-covered bullet and I was this little attachment. I looked down, of course; land creatures always look down, such a strange habit… And that's when I saw the plateau… I mean, the entire plateau, and it was in the exact shape of an iron."

"Wow…" I loved the way Tiger spoke. He was very easy to talk to, very down to earth. "I'd like to see that sometime. So are you telling me that there's no life at all on this entire plateau? All of it's just dead earth?"

"Exactly," Tiger responded, picking up the pace some more. "But I have a feeling there's life not far from it. The tip of the iron shape is in the direction that we're going. I think it's sort of a cliff that drops off onto another section of land. I'm hope that that particular section of land contains grass."

"Huh?" I was immediately confused when he said "grass". "But you're a meat-eater! Why would you want to find grass?"

"Don't be silly, Boo," Tiger had that laughing tone in him once again. "Grass means water. You know that, don't you? Grass cannot grow without water. That's why Iron Plateau. Misk God fighting attracts the sun's rays, causing the drought, causing everything around that was supported by water to wither away and die."

"Oh, right," I realized. My vomit was started to slip into Tiger's fur, but I didn't say anything about it. I was starting to feel nervous as Tiger seemed to be speeding up a little bit, more and more. "Why are we moving so hastily? You know the faster you walk, the quicker you'll dehydrate."

"I'm afraid Freedom will spot me soon, and this would be the worst time to start another battle," Tiger spoke in a worn out voice that made me feel really sorry for him. I for one, would hate to have to live each day knowing that there was somebody out to get you.

"Doesn't Freedom have a life of his own?" I asked. "He can't want to fight all the time…"

"You'd be surprised," Tiger replied, speeding up even more, almost to a trot. "He usually just lives up in his lair, but when he's not in there doing whatever, he's out here looking for a fight… Oh, no! No! Speaking of the devil! Do you hear that, Boo?"