The Stray

The Witch, The Cat, and the Dragon

"Stupid, stupid witch." Timothy groaned under his breath. Something loud was going down in the Deepshadow, different from the racing and crashing of Curgars, different from the revels of the fairies. The sound was foreign. Most things in the Deepshadow that weren't giant, axe-horned bugs or annoying magical whatsits preferred to hunt in near-silence, Timothy included. But here it was, not far from the witch's position, deep in one of the free-for-all hunting grounds of the Deepshadow. As if that weren't bad enough, somebody was screaming, and he couldn't tell if it was a monster, a wild spirit, or worse, another person. Timothy swallowed hard. "Y'should know better than t'say that frass."

The wolf kindre had been fishing at the corner of his own territory, trying to scrape up some more supplies for the coming winter. What with the drought, to say it'd gone bad was an insult to badness. The Deepshadow was an old, thick forest, mostly of black-barked shatham trees, whose grey leaves (and magic) kept the sun away entirely. It was always pitch black under the canopy. The undergrowth was tangly and thick with roots, long vines, and a good number of magical, toxic, or otherwise dangerous plants. Normally, it was the kinda place that was almost too alive, a vast, trackless kingdom of life that all wanted you dead. But the drought's heat and lack of rain baked the plants dry and thin this year, seeping through the canopy even if the harsh light didn't. The berries had grown small and hard, his favorite mushrooms were thin and scraggly, and the fish monsters weren't stopping to bite. The Loren still flowed, but many of its finger-creeks were low and dry.

His own small crops had come up brittle, and they weren't enough to last an entire winter. A winter which, he remembered glumly, would be even colder than this extended summer'd been hot. It always was, since the sun stayed out of these woods. If he wasn't stocked up by then... Well, he was already skinny as his walking staff. It wasn't any good complainin', he knew, but frass, did he want to. So he did, and he'd been dumb enough to say "The fishin' today couldn't get any worse."

And then the screaming and yowling and bursts of rushing fire had started, replacing worries of surviving later with worries of surviving now! Outside of marked territory, it was anyone's guess what was going on. The witch was used to sneaking around, so darting from tree cover to tree cover was almost second nature. Of course, that only gave him time to think about the situation, and time to get more and more nervous. On the one hand, a new monster could be an ally... or better yet, he licked his fangs, food. On the other... The wolf gulped. The last thing he needed was another impossible jerk like the Nightmares, or the fairies, or- shudder- the Fae Eater. Actually, no, the last thing he needed was for some poor, dumb unfortunate sap to have lost themselves deep in a magic forest. Either way, Timothy had to know, and that meant he had to get in close, and worry all the while.

The witch's stomach rumbled painfully. Aw, can it. Here in the Deepshadow's eternal night, staying quiet meant staying alive, especially when weird frass like this was happening. And anyway, the last thing he needed to remember was that he was running on thin rations of bark tea and whatever roots he could dig up. For a wolf kindre, this wasn't the kind of diet you could stay on for long. He'd been on it for a fortnight, and boy, was he starting to feel it. I better not hafta waste energy on magic to get outta this...

Suck it up, witch. He thought to himself, sternly. Plenty of lichen on the way. He was getting close now. He took a shallow, silent breath as he made one last run to cover, then a deep, steadying breath as he took his first good peek at the situation.

And promptly lost that breath like he'd been punched in the gut. Frass! Timothy wasn't sure what to panic about first! He'd come to a small clearing. Well, clearing was relative, really, considering the Deepshadow made even this just a lighter shade of black. And now that he was up close, the sounds of the fighting hurt his ears. Timothy groaned inwardly at that-- they were gonna wake up acres of monsters at this rate, and he knew from experience that even the most sociable monsters got testy when they were woken up early.