When we reach the Mossflower shores, my first instinct is to walk across the nearby woodland. It's the first land I've walked in a long time- the air, no longer reeking with the scent of the sea, and the toll taken on my sinuses are considerably lessened. But we have work to do, and not fulfilling your duties for Dantalion is betraying Dantalion- in extension betraying the crew as well.

So I suppress my instincts for now and help build a camp. Lumber. Tents. Fire. Security.

The labor is strenuous but everyone's high morale seems to raise the tempo. In little more than two hours, Dantalion is satisfied, and leaves us to do our relative business. He trusts us with gathering food because no one wants to fail him, nor live on an empty stomach.

This rejection of poverty brings me to crawling through the moss bed near the camp with two fellow members. Rask is a young ferret with a quick temper and a distaste for status quo. A very dangerous beast with a blade, but his discontent hasn't harmed me yet. The elder of this trip, and more or less the entire group, is a pine marten with as many battlescars as seasons and an aura like that of the grog I see sailors downing. He goes by the name Saw, as in the tool. Not his real name, but as he puts it, he's learned enough to know that names are trivial. Only roles.

Rask and Saw, they're having a back and forth pretty nicely here under the noon sun obscured by trees. A wind blows, yet the rustling of bushes are quieted over the conversation.

"It's why we're not just accepting the cesspool life, y'know," Rask is in the middle of a tangent about deserving things and other topics I didn't listen to fully. He steps over a stone and stops, craning his neck for anything edible in the distance. The ground beneath our paws is unnaturally soft and seems to crumble as we walk. Maybe I'm overstocking things.

"I d'n't who ever made you 'n me, but I know f'sure he didn't plop us down in the world thinking, 'well, these beasts here are forever crooks and brutes and despicable," Rask continues, now leaning up against a tree trunk, arms crossed. "We're more than that. Destined for more. We're better than that, bett'r than livin' our lives out by cheating, stealing, fighting and dying just to make a living. That's no life."

"Ain't no life I'd rather have, 'is all."

Saw plucks a leaf out from above, sighing as if he's explaining himself for the thousandth time. "If it's been this long livin' like this, what's g'nna be any different the next day?"

Rask opens his mouth to protest, but Saw raises his paw for silence, and not even Rask is ornery enough to speak out of turn against his elder.

"Me, I've lived a long life, mate. I've seen things that'll make anybeast shiver." Then, a brief pause, remembering. "I've done some of 'em too, and regret 'em."

"Rask, me boy, what I'm trying t'say is that- I've lived my entire life just like that. Ye'know it was rough, but I wouldn't have it any other way."

Rask shrugs, dismissively tilting his head. "...'S 'yer old school."

The statement elicits a chuckle, from the aging pine marten. "I ain't ever touched a school book in my life, but ye' just about right on that one. I'm set in stone, I can't change. Don't want to." Then Saw cocks his head in my direction. "Better off convincin' a young beast. Lander'll listen."

For a second, I think of how old Saw is to the point of not being able to say my name correctly (but then again, a nickname had picked up on the ship thanks to him) and that how this voyage, a strange journey to this place called Mossflower, could be his last.

"What about you, Lander? Just 'ere for the ride?"

Rask turns his head to me, fixing me with that stare. It's both inviting and repelling at the same time- his eyes alienate like sharp metal but welcome like an ethereal realm. They're hypnotizing and expecting, and they seem to belong on the tall and lanky mustelid.

"Well?"

I shrug. "You're putting me on the spot with that one. I do think you're right about how there's a better life deserved."

But then I raise my arms out akimbo, as an universal "I don't know" expression. "I don't know how to get to it. It's life, man. Things are in the way. Some beasts get past it to that life, some of them don't." Another shrug. "It's in our nature."

"So it's our nature to fail?"

"...Who knows? I don't, Saw doesn't, you don't." A voice in the back of my head exclaims Dantalion does! But I ignore it. "Some of us... Will fail, and that's why it is what it is. Some of us get though."

There's a pause and a silence. Rask snorts and starts canvassing the area around us again, and Saw just closes his eyes and nods.

In the silence in these woods, with the ground beneath my paws and the skies above me, I think- why do we fail?

I don't know. My stake is decided from conception.

There is a point where this needs to end I've clearly passed it.

"I'm going on ahead," I say to no one in particular. The woods don't listen, just rustle and shake from gusts of wind.

"Alright, whatever." Rask is more concerned with cleaning his knife of any specks of dirt to care.

"Let us know if you find anything," Saw adds, then coughs, hacking up mucus. He does not age well.

So then I'm stepping forward, crunching fallen leaves below my paws. Insects hiss and chirp at each other beneath the azure skies and fungus-covered oak trees. The horizon shows what looks like a creek flowing through an indent between two hills.

It's a serene image and one I'm not used to.

I wonder how long it'd take for all of it to burn and decay, like most locations I knew.

Sometimes I wonder if life would be easier if I were a mouse.

Or a squirrel or otter or another desirable beast.

But then I think, I'd become what I'd hate.

Envy is a bitter little creature.

I arrive at this brook realizing I'm not alone. I see on the other side of this body of water is a mole. A little mole with squinty eyes and a nose that sticks out like a red eye.

I stare at it.

The mole grunts something unintelligible.

I stare at further. It huskily says something that my mind can't fully pick apart.

"I don't understand," I say.

It rears back.

"What do you want?"

Another series of garbled, heavily accented statements.

Then- "This beast bothering you?"

My head whips to my left, where an otter is making his way through a clearing. Tall with beige fur and in worker's garments, the bandana'd otter carries himself with a swagger not unlike that of a leader, not a follower. A trailblazer's aura.

The beast saunters up to my side, eyeing me with a mixture of interest, amusement and contempt.

"Not the usual stompin' ground for you types," he spits in a gruff manner. He doesn't sound old but his voice still carries the tone of someone who not only thinks they're good, but knows it.

I give a shrug, doing my best to keep my ground. "This isn't my usual home to begin with."

The mole says something but slurs his speech and still sounds incompressible.

It's here when I realize, I hate moles.

The otter, meanwhile, is not helping his own case. He circles around me, still thinking of what to make of this intruder.

"If you're not a local, then," he says, and he's close to me now, muzzle to muzzle. Close enough to smell the alcohol on his breath and hear his ragged, off-time breathing. "There's no real reason for you to be here, is there?"

"I don't want trouble," I say, raising my arms in protest.

"Sure you don't." A heavy push to my chest almost makes me fall to the ground. A sneer spreads across the otter's face, and he begins to stalk around me with a swaggering step. "I know your kind."

"Do you?"

"Yeah," he hisses. "Bunch'a felons. Murderers, liars, rapists, thieves, the scum of the earth. Seems like every time I see one of you vermin you're scheming something."

He looks me dead in the eye. I stare right back, but I'm also starting to wonder if anyone is around to back me up if things go south. I glance backwards, hoping to catch a glance of Rask or any wanderer.

No one's there.

I turn my head back and the otter puts a cutlass in my face.

"If I had my way, there wouldn't be any of you beasts. 'N this place would be a lot better, right, bruv?"

He turns around to his mole companion that barks something in agreement.

The mole snickers.

Then screams.

The otter whips around right in time for me to tackle him. Caught offguard, he trips backwards and I launch forward into his abdomen shoulder-first. A clattering noise informs me he's dropped his weapon; the cutlass lies not far from me.

The otter scrambles onto his back but I mount him and throw punches. One, two, three connect- then he tries to roll me off. I lean into a tree trunk and use it as leverage. He struggles a little more underneath my knees, then snarls, and starts to grab at my face.

I get poked in the eye first, and sure enough he tries to reach for them again in an effort to gouge them. I tilt my head back as far as possible as a result, but that simply causes him to claw at my neck. This is where, among the trees and the sky and a mole screaming bloody murder, this is where I grab his wrists, kneel on his chest, lean back and pull. Pull, pull, pull, like I did laboring for invisible crops as a child. I hear a second yell, then a third howl, which I realize comes from me. I give a final yank to the otter, who yelps, and then get back to my footpaws. The otter writhes and moans of his shoulders as I stand over him. He looks up at me, gasping for breath and trying to recover the wind that was so brutally canceled in his longs.

"Nothing personal, I'm afraid. Sorry about your arms."

Wide-eyed and fearing, he hiccups: "How?"

I cock my head.

"Don't you know my kind?"