In the circle where flame meets ash,
Voices rise in forgotten tongues,
A broken line, a turning star,
The beast stirs, seeking what is owed.
1
Thunder rumbled, deep and distant. Thistle Quickburrow knew she'd ranged too far this time. Her nose twitched, the fine hairs in her long nose capable of picking up scents from even great distances. "Rain," she muttered to no one. She was alone out here. Her curiosity often saw her ranging far into the Rockring Forest, just west of Ripple Cove, the small waterside village she called her home. Her parents often scolded her for being so far from home, and without anyone with her, but she knew the truth: few in Ripple Cove had her sense of adventure, and delving so deeply into the forest turned back even the boldest of her friends.
She muttered under her breath, already imagining the tongue lashing coming her way from mother. She raised the water skin to her lips, taking a long draw of the cool liquid. A chill ran through her, and not just from the cold water. The clouds overhead were cold and grey, and the temperature had dropped precipitously in the past half hour. Not that uncommon an occurrence in the fall… but it was late summer, and still a bit too early for this kind of weather.
Thistle replaced the water skin on her tooled leather belt, and adjusted the moss-green cloak hanging from her shoulders. She was a young mole, only 16 years of age. Her fur was a soft brown, and she had a streak of dark running down her back. Her eyes were typical of her kind, small and black. And while her eyesight wasn't that of some of her mouse friends, her sense of smell was of great renown among the town. In fact, she was the one who had found the secret redoubt of truffles not two springs ago, a delicacy prized among the citizens of Ripple Cove.
The worn leather bag she carried on these outings bit painfully into her shoulder. She had even worn an extra tunic and rolled the sleeve in such a way as to pad her shoulder against this very fate, but to no avail. Nothing worth finding comes without trial, she told herself. The explorer's motto. Granted, she was the only explorer who knew that motto, considering she made it up, but she liked the way it sounded, so she held to it nonetheless. Her white tunic was soiled with leaves and dirt, markings of her day out in the wild. Her breeches were covered in scratch marks from the myriad thorns and broken leg-level branches she had traversed through. And her boots, given to her by her father on her 13th birthday, were caked in dried mud.
She smiled. While she looked a mess, she saw it for what it was: badges of bravery, proof of her resilience and her adventurous nature. Her disheveled look regularly elicited strange looks from the townsfolk. Mayor Peppersmith, a frog of great regard, had never given her anything more than a disapproving look when she would saunter into the town square on shopping day, her clothing various states of disarray and cleanliness. Those condemning looks from him felt extra bad, considering just how large his eyes were, black pools of judgement. Mayor Peppersmith prided himself on keeping their town clean and proper, everything sparkling and in its place.
And Thistle was anything but clean and proper.
She cinched her belt a bit tighter as a distant rumble of thunder echoed over the hills, and she felt the small knife on her left side bump against her hip. She rarely used it for anything but to cut vines and leaves to use for her research. However, she never left home without it. Standing on a hillock rising above the treetops, she could see Ripple Cove off in the distance. Despite the time being just three hours past noon, it was already dark enough that she could see the lights burning in the windows and in the street lanterns lining the cozy avenues from even this distance. She squinted, her nose working. While the lights were only tiny blurs at this range, her nose picked up smells she used to gauge her distance from home: smoke from the forge, Lady Appledale's peach pies cooling in the window, the moss-caked stones of the town hall. "An hour and a half," she said to herself.
She cursed under her breath. The sky above was growing darker by the minute, and she knew that getting caught out in a storm such as this could lead to sickness… or worse. She began walking, and immediately picked up her pace to match her worry. Overripe berries and sun-scorched leaves squished underfoot, and before too long she found herself half walking, half running, her breath coming in ragged gasps as perspiration soaked her from snout to tail. While she knew her mother would kill her - figuratively - if she got caught in a storm, she knew that the storm could… well, actually kill her.
Before long, she passed by the forest's namesake, a large ring of rocks at the heart of the woods. No one knew exactly what its origins were. Had they been placed there by other villages? Were they ruins of some ancient tower lost to time? Or were they something altogether different? Questions like that always caused Thistle's whiskers to itch with curiosity. It was a double-edged sword for her. One one hand, the mystery was what thrilled her, made her feel alive. But often, or at least more often than she cared for, mysteries such as this one went unsolved. Thistle would toss and turn in her bed many nights pondering at the myriad mysteries rattling around inside her head.
Another crack of thunder, close enough that she felt it in her bones, snapped her out of her daydreaming. The rain had begun in earnest now, clumping her fur into wet spikes. The ground beneath her feet had turned to mud, sucking and pulling at her boots, making each rushed step harder to take. Her breath now steamed in little clouds as the temperature plummeted. She began to shiver, partly from the wet and cold, but also because of the creeping feeling of the bad situation she had found herself in. Rarely would she have agreed with her parents that she had gone too far afield. But knowing she still had another hour of hustling to get back home, a creeping dread began to invade her normally jovial thoughts.
What was that? she thought. A shadow half seen from the corner of her eye, the snap of a twig in the distance. The skies growled overhead, and the rain was coming down hard enough she could barely see twenty feet in front of her. A sudden sound, like the snap of a wolf's jaws, emanated from behind her, causing her to twist her head to glance back. Just then, her foot caught in a gnarled and twisted root, causing her to fall forward. She cried out in surprise and fear, and tumbled down the hill she hadn't seen. She tumbled end over end, for what seemed like forever. Her shoulders were battered against the ground, and her head knocked against the bole of a rain-soaked tree, gashing her forehead and causing her vision to waver and blur.
She landed at the bottom of the steep hill on her back, and the wind came out of her lungs in a loud whoosh. She clutched at her chest and gasped, but no air would come. The blood pounded in her ears, an urgent tattoo matching the fear she felt rising with her. She couldn't hear the peal of thunder above her, but she could feel it resonate through the ground. After what felt an eternity, air finally began trickling into her burning lungs, yet her vision still remained compromised. She had trouble focusing, and everything seemed blurry. It's just the rain in my eyes, she tried to tel herself, but deep down she knew she was truly in a bad spot this time. She reached up to her forehead and winced as he nimble fingers touched the sensitive area. A burning sensation told her the wound was worse than she thought, and her furry fingers came back pink with rain-diluted blood.
"Great," she said to no one. She looked around her, trying to get her bearings. She hadn't seen this dale before, and the depression seemed to swallow up the sound of the storm. She could've sworn at one point she heard the wind whispering her name ominously, but shook it off. She felt at her belt, and noticed her water skin had been knocked loose. Not just that, but the sheath which normally housed her small knife on her left hip was empty. She reached her hands out to feel in the leaves and pine straw-laden ground for the weapon. Again, she had never used it as more than a utilitarian tool, but somehow she now felt completely vulnerable without it.
She scrambled on her hands and knees desperately seeking out the small blade, and she smelled the threat well before she saw it. Wet fur, not her own, but fur that smelled musky and dank. Gristle, blood, death. Her hackers rose in abject fear, and her already heightened pulse quickened even more. A sharp acid taste rose in the back of her throat, and her stomach burned as if a molten rock lay within it. Shaking, she reluctantly turned to face the creature.
The coyote was a pitiful looking creature, but being nearly ten times the size of Thistle, it seemed a thing of nightmares. It's fur was a mottled brownish grey, spiked with rain and dirty. Its flanks were narrow, the ribcage clearly showing a starved beast. Yellow eyes stared angrily at Thistle, eyes drinking in every delicious morsel she would provide to its drooling maw. Large clouds of steam puffed from the pointed muzzle, carrying the scent of rot and decay, dead bits of flesh stuck in its yellowed and sharp teeth.
Thistle crawled backward in terror, not noticing that she had voided her bladder in the torrential downpour. The beast bared its fangs, longer than most of the fishing spears the citizens of Ripple Cove used. She attempted to cry out, but her voice failed her, only a pathetic whimper passing her trembling lips. And cry out to whom? She was alone, and she feared her parents' warnings would be a final hard lesson she learned today.
The beast took two measured steps forward, furrows digging in the ground under the clawed feet. Still Thistle crawled backward, her beady eyes darting to and fro, hoping to catch a glint of the knife she had lost. Not that it'll do much good, but I think it'd feel better simply to have it in my hand as this thing eats me, she thought with grim resignation. The jaws opened, thick ropes of saliva dripping from the mouth onto the wet ground. It's pink tongue lolled out in anticipation of the meal it was finally receiving. Thistle saw its muscles coil in preparation to lunge, and just as that power was to be unleashed, it jerked back and howled.
Thistle couldn't understand what was happening. Two more times the beast flinched away from her, snapping at its side. Tiny brown rods with tiny red and green feathers stood out in stark relief of the dingy fur, and another one found a home in the beast's side as she finally understood.
Vesper, her fox friend, pulled a fourth arrow out of the quiver on his hip as he deftly leapt over a small log. His fancy boots, covered in custom leather filigree, were ruined by the mud and moss, and his pants were ripped from ankle to knee on his right side. A trickle of blood could be seen staining his orange-brown fur on his right leg, indicating he had come to her aid in quite a hurry. His strong fingers were covered in wrappings made of leaf and leather, to allow better grip and control on his recurved hunting bow.
Vesper fired another arrow, which lodged in the beast's left shoulder. Its entire flank quivered in pain, and with a wounded howl, it turned tail and fled from the painful assault. Then in as fluid a motion as releasing the deadly payload, he slung the fine weapon over his back, and hopped down to close the distance to Thistle in the blink of an eye. His focused visage changed to his characteristic smirk, now that the threat had been dealt with.
Reaching out an orange-furred paw, he said, "Good thing I don't trust you, eh?" Coming from anyone else, that remark would have bitten deep into Thistle's sense of independence. But more than once she and Vesper had come to each other's aid, so the acerbic jab held no animosity. Even still, she frowned in mock disapproval.
"Yeah," she said, exasperated. "Lucky me that your ego prevents you from trusting anyone." She smirked right back, and Vesper laughed. Thistle brushed herself off as best she could while Vesper picked up her scattered belongings. Thistle's nose twitched, trying to sense if the danger was well and truly gone, or just regrouping. But the rain acted as a shield of sorts, making picking out the scent of the coyote practically impossible from the other earthen scents of moss, rotting leaves, and waterlogged tree boles.
"We need to get moving," she said, even as Vesper stood waiting for her to grab her knife and water skin from her. "That coyote might still be lurking, and I don't think we can take it in a straight-up fight." Her lithe fingers took her things from him, fastening the water skin back on her belt, and sheathing the knife. Maybe I should carry a backup? she thought, but dismissed it as paranoid.
Vesper readjusted the bow on his back, and tightened the quiver on his hip. "Please, that wasn't luck," he shot back. "I'm just that good. And well you should remember! Or else I might start 'trusting' you to range out on your own, and days like this might not end in your favor."
Thistle stopped and turned to Vesper. Sometimes, his normally jesting words and tone broached into sarcasm. And this time, it felt more biting. His eyes were scanning the forest ahead, the way he had come from, yellow irises wide to allow better vision in the dimming light. His mouth was still set in that smirk, yet his eyes had a harder set to them. He probably actually does think I can't take care of myself, she thought to herself, and felt a kind of sadness slide over her for a moment. Their friendship was as mercurial as the weather, and sometimes she wondered if they were indeed friends at all.
Another peal of thunder shook her out of her conflicted reverie, bringing her back to the danger at hand. "Time to get moving," Vesper said, already moving without waiting for Thistle to catch up. Shrugging, Thistle wiped the rain from her furrowed brow and hustled after her friend.
