AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's been a rough couple of months, but the hiatus is finally over.

I have also been writing adult fiction for the World of Warcraft fandom, available on adultfanfictiondotnet. It's not Predator, but it is something I am enjoying writing between spates of QoR. Check it out under authorname "Sealink" at AFF if you're interested.

Also, the Predaphiles Network is my main hangout these days, and if you feel the need, come register. We're (usually) a bastion of hope and intelligence in the Predator fandom.

See additional Author's Notes at the end.

xXx

The Matriarch's death was followed by Tjat'le's declaration of an official period of mourning, and the Elegy began even as Hir'cyn rode back to his quarters. Sung for three days from the tops of the City's four spires by the most accomplished voices in the yautja world, it haunted every moment of life in the city. The vocalists sang the lament until they collapsed from exhaustion, and even then, they rested only for a few scant hours before returning their voice to the other three.

It was only now, three days afterward, that the melismatic dirge faded away. It had mixed messages for Rathde, who had never seen the end of a Matriarch, but Hir'cyn had known what it meant, what the unison of voices slipping away into the aether told. She was ready for her rest, and he must perform his final act as her Consort and oversee her entombment.

The catacombs smelled foreign to Rathde; his mouth was dry with dust and the faint smell of decay. Hir'cyn walked in front of him in full formal dress, his rank rings shining in the flickering torchlight, greyed head slightly inclined. It was a posture Rathde was unused to seeing the proud Elder in, but these were, Rathde reminded himself, solemn days. The Hunting ships from all over the galaxy had been recalled, summoned back to mourn their goddess' death, and ships were still arriving hourly.

The mausoleum's ornately carved gates were the first of several measures taken to separate the Matriarchs from the people they lead. Here in the catacombs, near the northern Quarter, Honored yautja of all kinds were entombed as their stations in life befit them. Hir'cyn entered the crypt and Rathde followed him, his steps weak and shuffling compared to the measured, sure gait of his mentor. Precious metals gilt the bars and whorls and Hir'cyn lifted his hand to them, seeing twisted images of himself and his surroundings reflected in the beaten gold. The gates were unlocked already, and he pushed them with both palms. Once moving, they fell apart easily and locked against the walls of the cavernous mausoleum. He turned and waited for the funeral procession.

Rathde waited outside the gates, unable to shake the feeling of being watched and judged. The bones of lesser yautja glared at him accusingly from their humble notches in the walls, and he focused on the structure of the Matriarchs' mausoleum rather than meet their hollow stares. The ceiling was vaulted, receding into the darkness torchlight could not banish. Rounded columns of blue-green stone flecked with metallic minerals glittered in the firelight. The bronze braziers seemed to glow, both from their bolted sconces on the wall behind the columns and the three-legged freestanding torches that lined the long corridor from the outside world. The floor was swept smooth and was heavily polished, a deep and endless black stone that evoked the nothingness of space. It was the click of claws on this polished stone that brought Rathde out of his reverie; the procession was approaching. Rathde cast a quick glance at Hir'cyn but found his mentor staring blankly ahead.

Hir'cyn heard the procession and directed his attention toward it, seeing Rathde do the same out of the corner of his eye. They stepped into view, the first two a pair of eunuchs carrying hanging censers, blue-white smoke drifting lazily out of them. In them burned the dried leaves and berries of native plants instead of incense; these plants were known to cause visions in the susceptible, and it was employed here to reveal the new Matriarch. Hir'cyn had heard no screams, no cries as the goddess descended on a disciple, and it was good to him; he did not feel he could know her again yet. The ache of loss still throbbed in his chest. He turned to lead them into the mausoleum.

The procession crept deliberately down the black stone corridor, seeming to move through time and space. They stepped and paused, stepped and paused, each movement a simple advance with the swaying back of retreat, an unconscious resistance against death. Hir'cyn's rank rings clinked and jingled against the jewelry that dangled from his collar. The newest piece of this most formal attire was a small fang half-dipped in gold, incorporated into his freshly-braided dreadlocks; the glint flashed in the corner of his eyes and he felt proud and sad at the same time. It marked him as a Consort, a yautja worthy of a shard of divinity. The holy relic would protect him, as countless Consorts before him had been protected after the death of their Matriarchs.

He heard the creaking swing of the censers behind him, and behind that, the matched footsteps of the Matriarch's pall. Down, down they crept, and at last, they reached the mausoleum's antechamber, where the first Matriarch rested in a casket of platinum under a great white statue.

The statue was marble, taken from the ancient metamorphosed terrain far to the north. Though the figure was undeniably yautja, with dreadlocks and mandibles, there were no facial features. The anonymous female watched over the first Matriarch's tomb with a simple collar and crown, her hands clasped together in prayer. It was from a time far enough back that the lines between mythology and reality blurred, when regular yautja accomplished godlike feats and heroes walked among mortals. The funeral procession stopped here at the altar of the first Matriarch, offering a respectful moment of silence, and in some ways, a request for penitence for their intrusion. The smoke from the censers coiled up around the statue, and something happened in the sense that nothing happened, but there was the release of an unseen tension, and Hir'cyn felt it was appropriate to continue.

The tomb was down the rightmost of three wings that radiated out from this central antechamber. The stone changed back to blue-green schist, faintly lustrous in the firelight. Past three crypts, the somber parade continued, and on they went, down to the ninth crypt, dark doors held shut with a ward and bars. Hir'cyn removed the ward, placed there by the attendants that had prepared the tomb and sealed it to preserve its sanctity. One of the eunuchs handed his censer to the other and helped Hir'cyn lift the bars out of place, setting the heavy wooden beams aside. They pulled the doors wide, but only after the eunuch had retrieved his censer did Hir'cyn lead them into the holy space.

Oil lamps were lit with the torches, and by them, he saw how her attendants had prepared the tomb for their mistress. A raised altar in the middle of the far wall of the small triangular room lay prepared with fresh branches and herbs, scenting the room with a heady, evocative aroma. Below it, the tomb was opened, stone lid slid off to the back. Inside were more of the same, a plush bed of greenery that would cradle her stiff body. The walls adjacent to the entrance were laid in with shelves, and on them were the skulls of creatures she had killed in a life before divine servitude. Their sockets all seemed directed at the stone sarcophagus, a multitude of watchers to bear witness to their hunter's death.

Hir'cyn would not be able to recall the eulogy he delivered for her. He looked at her pall from his position on the altar's dais, seeing the precious death mask that wove her mandibles closed, a netting of gold studded with gems that held her mouth shut, perhaps sparing her the indignities of decay. The females bore their mother goddess with pride and sorrow; there was a fierceness in their faces that simultaneously frightened and fascinated him. He admired their ferocity and their devotion. Each of them was hoping to be chosen by Paya to become the next Matriarch, but they were very mortal even now, the strain of sorrow lining their faces, darkening their tired eyes.

A quartet of musicians began to play as she was lowered into the crypt, and Hir'cyn looked at them, their bone flutes plaintive and wan. The sth'ki were customary for funerals, but four players at once was rare, and he sighed inwardly, turning his mind to reflection. The pallbearers stood upright again after nestling their mistress among her leaves. There was a strain in their shoulders, though the Matriarch's pall was now empty; they had borne not just the weight of a corpse, but the weight of a god.

xXx

They needed to find a shelter from the biting cold. Escthta's heating mesh no longer kept the elements at bay, and H'chak-di had stopped speaking a while ago. He felt her mind simplify, the activity level falling until there was a singular purpose. One foot in front of the other, inhale, one foot in front of the other, exhale. The higher altitudes were making it difficult on both of them, and he found himself sucking in air at a shallow, quick rate, his muscles desperate for oxygen. The lowlands of the mountain chain in front of them passed away under his feet, and they pushed ahead, making for a pass between peaks in front of them. A deep crevasse in the rock had already forced them to turn back and correct their path once, and he chafed inwardly that the time lost might have snowed in the pass. On cue, the heavens opened, and small flakes began to drift down, clumping together wetly as they passed through the atmosphere.

It was a tough decision for him to make; he felt the urge to push forward with an intensity he could not put into words. He yearned to know what lay ahead in the east, and more importantly, he wanted to know if the seed of doubt H'chak-di had planted in his mind would germinate. Was he, in fact, on his own planet?

The evidence he had found seemed to point to it; the sr'keth was not necessarily a 'smoking gun', as H'chak-di had so quaintly phrased it. It had been used to seed Hunting worlds long before current conservational thinking became the norm, and it had proven a challenging adversary for generations of young yautja eager to earn their honor. Since those times, the kainde amedha had gained vogue as the animal hunted in the Blooding trial. It was an easier animal to kill; the Hard Meat was much smaller in stature than the sr'keth. The danger the Hard Meat posed was not in its size, but in its speed and stealth. The shift had occurred only a millennium or so ago, a relatively short time in the yautja timeline, when the trend toward power declined, and quickness was emphasized. There were still those who preferred power, Escthta thought, his clawed toes scraping against a rock as they moved higher up the mountain's shoulders.

No, there had been other signs, too, although he had not told H'chak-di of them. The most worrisome was the strange and unbridled fear that had gripped him not a few days ago, as they began their climb into the mountain roots, pressing on into the east. Their path had taken them across a small glen in the trees, and it was in this glen that his mouth found a random scent molecule. The organ in his mouth took it in, parsed its meaning, and pressed Escthta's consciousness into a full-on panic attack. The smell keyed up a profound fear in him, though he could not explain why. He was overcome with the incredible desire to run and hide, though as mightily as his brain commanded him to, he could not. He was simply locked into a fear he could not escape.

H'chak-di's hand had jarred him out of it, bringing him back to reality. They were alone in the glen, and she looked at him with concern. He had brushed it off, pressing forward into the mountains. But the memory of the numbing fear stuck with him, and he had begun to adopt an attitude of 'wait-and-see'. If this was in fact his homeworld, somewhere on it was the City, and he was going to get there.

They reached the treeline, where vegetation gave way to stone; here, trees could only cling tenaciously to life, to say nothing of growing to great heights. The snow deepened suddenly, rising up to his calves, but they had not even left the forest yet. Raising his head, Escthta looked up at the snow-carved mountains, narrowing his eyes against the flakes that were thickening in the air. The dark volcanic rock surrendered no clues, and he looked down the mountain, blinking off the glare.

A long ribbon of white snaked down the mountain for several hundred feet, several tens of meters across. A boulder rested at the edge of the treeless area, grey but for the black spots created by landing snowflakes. This was a relatively fresh rockfall scar, not more than three or four winters old. As his eyes traced down the scar, he found the remnants of the destructive force: a single basalt boulder, several times his height.

Wrenched from the crown of the mountain by the small but persistent forces of freeze-thaw weathering, the jagged boulder had tumbled down the mountainside, crushing the woody trees in its way, coming to rest against an outcrop of similarly black rock. He looked closer, and then flicked a mandible out to change his scanning visor, narrowing his eyes at a darker spot underneath the boulder that looked suspiciously like a gap. The optics magnified the area, and he saw that there was in fact a small crevice. He looked at H'chak-di, shivering in the snow, Hir'cyn's cloak gathered around her and held closed in her tight little fist. For her sake, it might be worth it to check it out.

Escthta touched her shoulder and pointed her over to the boulders, and she nodded woodenly. They kept to the edge of the scar; Escthta didn't feel comfortable out in the open. The boulder loomed over them, and it was even larger than Escthta had originally estimated. The crevice beckoned, and it, too, was larger than he'd realized, appearing more like a small cave than any tight crawlspace. "Stay here," he said hoarsely, and he slowly crept forward into the darkness.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but as they did, he found that the cave inside was more than large enough for him to stand in. Formed by a gash in the boulder and a crook in the outcrop, the small hollow offered a welcome respite from the cold. Though it was by no means fully protected from the elements—he felt holes above him, rather than saw them—it would provide them with shelter. Out of the chill, he was already beginning to feel more alive. A poke around the corners cave revealed no spoor or any other signs of occupation, although the farther crevices felt a bit cold, and if they were going to stay, would need to be blocked.

"H'chak-di," he called, and she stumbled into the cave, looking up at him hopefully. He managed a small smile. "We'll stay here."

The gratitude that spread over her face was enough to make him chuckle in spite of their bleak surroundings. He gestured to a flat spot in the cave, where the outcrop began and the dead rushes underneath the boulder ended. "Rest here. I'll get some wood."

He cranked his heating mesh up as high as he thought would be safe; he would need to block off most of the cave entrance to keep as much heat as possible inside if they were to stay here.

Escthta sighed, finally admitting what he hadn't wanted to before; that they were going to have to winter over on this side of the mountains. If they had to, he supposed that this was as good a place as any.

xXx

The mixture of black and green coated Da-kvar'di's fingers; the contractions had finally stopped, but there was no denying what had happened. She rubbed her blood in circles on the insides of her thighs, trying to find something to take comfort in, but there is no comfort for such loss. The medic had left her several minutes ago, once it was determined the child was already dead, and the body was simply expelling that which was no longer alive.

It had happened sooner in this pregnancy than in the last one, and this time, she didn't even have a small form to hold in the palm of her hands; this time, it was unrecognizable clumps of flesh that her body produced, and she made out small bones that might have been a spine and skull if only she'd been able to carry the baby to term.

Da-kvar'di felt numb, watching the medic return and take the small aggregate of blood and material; once had been heart-rending, a shattering of her confidence as a female. She had sought out ways to conceive again, subjecting herself to destructive and foolish sciences, ignoring what her body had already told her with the death of one child. Twice was too much. She was a failure, not only as a researcher for the cure to her race's ailment. No, her failure went down to the root of her, to the essence of what she was; a female, and worthless now that she had failed again to bear fruit.

The medic dismissed the midwife, who had been summoned only as a courtesy to Da-kvar'di, a respectful acknowledgement of what she might have been. The midwife lingered after her dismissal, and walked over to Da-kvar'di's side. Da-kvar'di looked out the window near the table where she lay, her fingers still absently stroking her dead child's blood on her thighs.

"I am a failure."

She said it, and it was small and soft in the room. The midwife placed her large hand on Da-kvar'di's upper arm, squeezing it gently.

"All things happen for a reason," the midwife countered, her aged voice cracking.

"How can I believe that? How can I believe that?" The second time she said it, the dam broke, and suddenly the midwife was holding her as she screamed her grief, sobbing until her air was spent, and then sucking in lungfuls to weep aloud again. The midwife was stoic, but not stone-faced; there was a gentleness in her touch that quieted Da-kvar'di. Her grief was raw, pain-filled, but as the midwife stroked the damp strands of loose hair away from her temple, a new sense of peace filled her, and she looked up at the midwife. There was something there, an ancient power that pulsed golden behind the midwife's eyes, shining through her pupils and touching Da-kvar'di's cheek with light. It tingled and warmed where the light fell, and Da-kvar'di raised a bloody hand to her face, touching it in wonder. "Who are you?"

"Ask not what you already know, child." The words were triple-spoken, three voices as one that thrummed with divine energy; the air trembled around them as Paya's mask dissolved. Shards of pottery fell away, shattering on the stone floor, but Da-kvar'di hardly noticed, connected with the being of light emerging from Her clay shell on a level that mortal minds cannot understand.

"I am sorry that this was necessary," the goddess said in her mind, and Da-kvar'di knew, and that part of her that was yet mortal wondered at the irony of being denied motherhood to become the vessel of a mother goddess. But the goddess was there again, and Da-kvar'di saw and knew with the breadth of an eternity of knowledge that no body could support both a fetus and a god.

"You are ready," Paya said, maiden, mother, crone all speaking at once. It was not a question, but a statement seeking confirmation. Da-kvar'di allowed herself a moment of weakness in the face of godhood. What if she didn't want to be the Matriarch? What if she was not strong enough? What if she could not—

And she stopped, for there in her mind's eye were all those that had come before her, the females of her race that were Matriarchs in ages past, and they all at once welcomed her in a torrent of joy and acceptance so strong that the yautja at last yielded to her fate and gave herself up to Paya. In an instant, the knowledge of millennia was shared with her, and her mind became only the most recent addition to a great Congress of females. Their experiences and knowledge became her own, and she became one with them, her mortality suspended at once.

And she saw, as the goddess took her body, that her womb was healed. She saw the medic appear at the door and get knocked away, blasted by the unfettered divinity in the room. She felt her body stretch and fill, like her skin was too tight, and she wondered if she might live through her possession. The light filled her, emerging from her fingertips in beams, seeping from her skin and mouth, pushing out of her skull with all the force of a volcanic eruption. A cry escaped her, and she collapsed, sure that she could not bear it another moment.

And as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Paya stood, curling Her fingers into fists, rubbing Her shoulders as She got to Her feet. The body was strong, despite its recent trauma, and it suited Her.

xXx

"And there is still no sign of a Matriarch?" Ren'da rumbled.

"It is not for lack of looking," Kvar'ye snapped back. "I am as eager to find her as you are."

"Which is to say, not at all," Ren'da scowled.

"Silence!" Tjat'le roared. "I will not tolerate this kind of bickering!"

The two Councilmen leaned back in their chairs, glaring daggers at each other, but Ren'da was the first to look away to the incensed Tjat'le, and Kvar'ye followed suit soon after.

"We are all tired and it has been a long week. But it is becoming more and more clear that Paya has yet to take a new avatar. Given that it has been a week since the Matriarch's death, we must look at this situation with an objective eye." Tjat'le turned to look at Noskor. "What is the longest time that we have gone without a Matriarch?"

Noskor blinked slowly, stroking one cheekbone with a forefinger. "If I recall correctly, three days after the funeral, Liege."

"Three days."

"Yes. The late Matriarch herself was that extreme occurrence." Noskor briefly related the previous Matriarch's ascendance, where Paya rooted herself in the attendant of the dead Matriarch in the very Council chambers they now occupied.

"And it is now the night of the third day. We must begin to consider the alternatives, unpleasant as they are." Tjat'le put both his hands on the triangular table and stood, leaning on them and piercing every member of the Council with his pale blue-green eyes.

"What kind of alternatives?" Bruyaun looked worried, as the fat yautja always did whenever there might be change involved.

"Well, we are now at the point where we must begin to consider that there may be no Matriarch."

Noskor raised the eyebrow over his blind eye. "That's going rather far, isn't it, Tjat'le?"

"We have reached the limits of our experience, Noskor. Many times, the new Matriarch was chosen long before the previous Matriarch died." The strain showed in Tjat'le's voice; the thought of continuing without Paya's avatar was startling, not because they could not make their own decisions, but because it would mean that their goddess had deserted them.

"What if she simply has not been found yet?" Ghanede spoke up. "There have been cases where a trigger was needed to awaken her fully."

"Right, like a question or something that would call up the Matriarch." Bruyaun's voice increased in volume as he seized on the idea. "We could go 'round and ask the females questions about Paya that only Paya would know."

"And how would we know what only Paya would know?" Kvar'ye retorted.

"The question alone might be enough to rouse her," Ren'da responded.

"What if there is no response?" Bruyaun quaked, playing devil's advocate to his own idea. "What if there is no awakening?" He looked to Tjat'le for an answer.

Tjat'le looked directly at the nervous glutton, and the gravitas in his voice made his words resonate in the Council chamber. "Then we are on our own."

The doors of the Matriarch's chamber flew open, flapping on their hinges. Bruyaun was startled out of his chair, and it tumbled to the floor with a crash. A gust of air rolled into the Council chambers- it smelled like lightning. Noskor slowly stood, his fingertips dusting the edge of the table. Ren'da and Ghanede likewise stood, and the rest of the Council rose to their feet. A tall figure stood on the threshold, shadowed by the late hour.

"What's the meaning of this?" Bruyaun shouted. "This is a closed—"

He was abruptly cut off as his head vanished in an explosion of gore. Chunks of what had been Bruyaun's brain slid across the table, the sides of his skull clattering on the floor like empty shells. The gruesome corpse slumped as its balance was upset, and it landed in a heap on the ground, bent at odd angles, his heart continuing to pump blood out of his neck. Ren'da closed his eyes briefly, and then looked up.

Da-kvar'di stepped down into the room, naked save for a single diaphanous length of blue; a curtain from the Matriarch's parlor, torn down and wrapped around herself. Even through this, the black blood that was drying on her thighs and belly could be seen, the hands that held her raiment in place similarly coated with drying blood. She walked down among them, almost floating, for the air around her seemed to crackle and the trailing edge of her curtain hung in midair. Thtarok and Kvar'ye exchanged glances as she passed them.

Tjat'le bowed to her, bent at the waist. "My Lady," he said. "We have been waiting for your return." His voice was soft, humbled by the sudden and violent death of one of his Councilmen.

"I'm sure," she replied coolly. She turned her head, leveling a brutal gaze on Kvar'ye, and then Thtarok. Each of them blanched visibly, and Noskor watched the newly minted Matriarch narrow her eyes at them. Just when he began to expect that their brains would also turn to vapor, she turned back to the doors to her parlor, walking steadily back to the stairs.

"Call for my attendants," she commanded, stopping briefly by the ruined corpse of Bruyaun. Her mandibles flared in disgust. "And clean this worthless shit up."

xXx

They were through most of the winter now, and food was becoming still scarcer. Escthta ranged far afield almost every day to track and kill animals. He had not hunted for sustenance in several years, and doing so with snow thick on the ground was trying for him. But H'chak-di depended on it, so he did what he had to do. Large kills had made up the bulk of their meat during their first weeks in the boulder cave. Wood for fires was not a problem; the scar was littered with dead trees that had been drying out for a few years; they burned bright and hot once the snow's moisture had been evaporated.

The days ticked by with him having barely counted their passing. His first week there had been spent making their cave fit to live in. He had lashed together a screen for the cave entrance, threading needled branches through it until it was densely packed with evergreens. A bank of snow built up against this helped reduce the heat loss from their small home considerably. They had spent time similarly plugging what crevices they could find in the boulders around them. In the end, the cave was quite cozy, though it was overloaded with the smell of evergreens, and sometimes sticky with sap. Escthta would almost be sorry when they left at the first sign of spring.

The weeks they had spent here had been crowded with hunting during the days and doing small things to better their lot at night. H'chak-di had taken over the meals, for which he was grateful, although their supplies made almost all food bland. At last they had begun to season their food with ash from the fire, which gave them much needed salt. It was small, but even that had improved their lot. H'chak-di had also insisted on their chewing the evergreen leaves once it had been proven they were not toxic. She prepared an elixir of hot snowmelt and needles, and the resulting draught, though slightly bitter, had all but removed his chronic fatigue since their encampment. He suspected there was a compound in the needles that could only be released by heat, and his body made good use of it.

H'chak-di had tanned the hides of the first things he had hunted, flaying the blood and fat off of them as he showed her how it was done, and scraping them clean. Her constant attentions produced buttery-soft leathers that surprised Escthta. She did this for the next few kills, no matter how large or small, dutifully cleaning and tanning the hides and cutting small strips of leather to whipstitch them together. The scraps did not go to waste either; she used them to move hot things in the fire or for making small leather shoes. Sleeping furs were the first things she made, followed by pillows filled with what grasses she could scrounge from around the cave and the dead needles of trees. She had begun to collect long, straight pieces of wood, but for what purpose, he could not guess.

Their food and shelter needs met, their minds were left largely unattended, and so it happened that, when they were not half-dead of exhaustion, they sang and told stories. Escthta easily slipped back into the role of storyteller, only able to half-remember the songs and tales told on Syu'ne's ship. It seemed like a lifetime ago to him, and much of what he remembered didn't seem appropriate any more. He was different now from what he had been then, in more ways than one.

Their close quarters brought Escthta and H'chak-di's minds together like never before. Their time spent together forged what had been at best a tenuous link into a strong bond unlike any other. She anticipated his needs as easily as her own, and she took pains to satisfy them. On more than one occasion, a thought that had occurred to him several miles from their den was taken care of by the time he returned. Their minds were growing closer every day, and their conversations became a strange mix of yautja and human, when they had them. Many times, words were redundant.

These things played through Escthta's mind as he watched H'chak-di inch around the screen that hid the entrance to the cave. Her hair was in dreadlocks, although it was entirely not of her own doing; they had natted up for lack of care and she had reluctantly taken to them. Escthta was mildly amused that dreadlocks should be so time-consuming to keep polished and clean, and simultaneously the result of a lack of grooming. She smelled like smoke, and he took that to mean that the fire was banked against whatever time they might be gone. They wouldn't be able to stay out in the cold for very long, but he felt it was necessary for H'chak-di. She had grown increasingly irritable as the weeks wore on, especially as inclement weather forced them inside the cave for long periods of time.

"It's good to be out," she said, though she was wrapped up in furs. She looked up at the sky and made a face. "I wish it was sunny, though."
"No, you don't. You'd be blinded." Escthta chuckled, taking her small hand and leading her through the maze of dead trees into the forest proper.

"I guess so." She kept close to him, and the austere trees pressed in on them, the silence of winter broken only by the crunch of their feet in the snow. The clouds, grey as they were, pulled away from the sun bit by bit. The emerging sunshine made the day almost pleasant, until a large sheet of snow slid off a branch with a loud flump. It startled them and they paused in their walking. Escthta glanced around nervously, scanning the trees around them for movement. Just as he found the still-moving branch from the first flump, a closer tree branch yielded up its load of snow, with an equally loud thump.

"Oh God, it was just the snow," H'chak-di said with a nervous laugh.

"It's melting," Escthta said, more than a little relieved, and then he realized what he had said. Melting? "How many weeks-"

"Eleven," she replied before he finished his sentence. "We must be getting near the end of this winter," she finished, speaking his thoughts before he could.

He looked back out at the whiteness, and another flump sounded, this one sounding far off.

"Spring," he said softly, and H'chak-di squeezed his hand lightly. He replied with a small squeeze of his own before leading the way again. She did not need to say it, but he knew she was thinking on it; they would be on the move again soon, and he hoped they would find the answers to the questions Hir'cyn created months ago.

They reached a glade in the evergreens and the blinding snow-glare made Escthta wince. H'chak-di, however, did not seem as put off by it as he did. She smiled up at him and trudged out a few paces from him, leaning over to the ground and picking up a large hunk of snow. She packed it in her hand and then turned and looked at him, light dancing in her eyes.

"You can't be serious," Escthta started, but the snowball hit him squarely in the chest, crackling on his mesh suit. She hooted victoriously, but his responding snowball nailed her in the face, and she choked and spluttered while he doubled over with laughter. She grinned at him and then packed several snowballs quickly, lobbing them at him one by one, missing with all but the last, which glanced off his shoulder. She started screeching when he packed together a large lump of snow and began to chase after her. Escthta ran her down in a few strides and planted the icy knot right on her head. He rubbed it into her hair for good measure and she fumed, giggling in spite of herself.

"That's not fair, you're faster than I am," she whined.

"Of course it's fair," he replied. "Besides, you started it."

"It was fun," H'chak-di protested. "That's the most fun I've had in weeks," she said, brushing her hair out of her face.

"Oh, you don't think we have enough fun, huh?" Escthta raised an eyebrow at her.

"Well, we're not in a fun situation," H'chak-di answered, squinting up at him. "But we shouldn't forget how to do it. Might save our lives," she added jokingly.

Escthta turned to look at the large boulder, whose uppermost edge he could barely see above the tops of the trees. "We should be getting back," he said.

"I guess it is getting a little cold out here," she admitted reluctantly. She began walking by Escthta, tugging at his hand as she passed him. When he didn't respond, she pulled harder, developing from concern into panic as his mind bled over into hers.

"Escthta?"

She couldn't smell it. Escthta opened his mouth as wide as he could, breathing in. He needed to know what it was, but couldn't move as his brain unfurled the meaning of the smell. The scent forced him into fear; he could not formulate a rational response. He felt hunted, pursued, and his legs ached to run, get away from the smell, whatever it was. It was fresh—no, it was alive— some kind of carnivore; it was huge.

He saw it out of the corner of his eyes and he howled a warning, something beyond words that spoke of fear and danger. She didn't see it. A blur of white clubbed H'chak-di aside with a sickening crunch and she crumpled to the ground.

xXx

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Onward, dear reader, it is not long.