Day-Lynx (EDITING)

Three Filled Boxes

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The cottage is as silent as a graveyard when Rozell presses his ears against the door. There's no sound of clinking plates, running water, or even Grandpa's hasty footsteps. So after a few counts of gathering his guts, he cracks the door open with his maw and lets his eyes wander around the cottage.

Is Grandpa out to Avoridge Town to buy the materials for his damaged wall mirror?

Swallowing his guilt, Rozell slips through the door and hulks around the place. A thickly sweet smell lures his nose to the tray on the dining table, a few steps away from his room at the cottage's corner. The coldness of the wooden floor stops him from treading too quickly, but once he reaches the table for six, he rests one paw on the chair while pushing himself upward.

He has to control his tongue to stop it from wetting the entire table. For a tray of birch syrup cookies, smelling as clean and refreshing as mint, lies ahead of him. He might be able to fit five into his paw and chew them away in ten counts.

But there are a few things he has to do before gobbling up the whole tray.

Setting his paw back on the floor, he hides behind the table's legs and peeks through the gap. Both the windows at the cottage's front are slightly opened, allowing the misty breeze to dry the lingering sweat on his dirty-white, brown-spotted fur.

Even in this calm silence, Rozell's ears can prick up at the briefest of sounds. So he waits for either a bird's visit... or maybe another creature's.

If a hunter ever finds me like this, they won't spare me. Or even Grandpa—who knows if they'll accuse him of hiding the truth about me? Death won't be so kind to offer me a third chance, will it?

Rozell has barely counted to thirty when several heavy boots crunch against the snow, followed by lots of scratchy shovels and the smell of ash. The sound of grating steel hurts Rozell's sharp ears, and he has to put his paws over them to stop the pain.

Definitely more Mountkirk villagers. Or more like... hunters.

As sneaky as a rat, Rozell crawls under the table and lies on his stomach. It doesn't have much space to comfort the dead animals on his back, but he ignores it as the boots slowly step on the porch.

A hunter curses the gods at his squeaking boots. The uncleaned porch must be too slippery—maybe layered with ice already—for him to stand on. "Might leave with a bent spine soon," the hunter grumbles as his companions chuckle like jeering crows.

Every winter, when Mountkirk villagers visit Borealm Woods to hunt, Grandpa always packs up packages of some birch wood incenses, unfinished mittens and shawls from Grandma's knitting collection, and each a cup of boiled soup and water into a transparent bag.

From the day Grandpa started leaving them at the porch—a few years after Rozell's death—the rowdy men have always ravaged them like hungry wild cats.

Those hunters don't deserve Grandpa's kindness after everything they've done to the animals on my back. Or to the forest. Grandpa isn't the sentimental type to care about strangers this much; maybe Grandma had done it too before she died?

But would she still leave these packages if she knew how the receivers had been hunting her grandson and accused him of being a murderer?

Rozell mentally slaps himself. He tries to calm his heartbeat, but one of the hunters' voices worsens it instead.

"Ah, it's just enough for us four this time. Maybe the old grandpa is running dry of food." The hunter still mumbles as unclear and shaky as the first time they met, like a predator growling in front of its pursuers. The transparent bag rustles noisily in Mr. Clam's grip, as if shirking away from the experienced hunter's rough palm. "This winter starts earlier than usual, after all."