The Kindreds, Volume 1

The Seventeenth, Pt. 2

"What is it?" Sada whispered. "I see only an Elven girl."

"Indeed," Dedrei said, still eyeing the child. She looked to be about six or seven, and her eyes were puffy from crying. Tears that somehow seemed tinged with gold leaked down her face, her sniffles and shaky breaths doing nothing to halt them.

"Oh, we must go to her!" Sada said, but she didn't move. Her instincts were growing stronger in her hand. She hadn't realized the tingling had begun at all, because the onset had been so gradual, but now she felt it creeping up her left forearm. "DeeDee?"

"Where is the caelicorn?" she asked abruptly. And as soon as she did, the fear returned to Sada's belly, stirring it like a cook stirs a pot.

"I'm not certain," she said, scanning the forest.

Still, she saw nothing other than bright green fauna, lime- and lemon-colored moss, giant trunks, and the Elf girl. There was not an animal to be seen, including Sarana. Sada fought the urge to whistle for her. If there truly was a danger to be had, she wanted the filly away from it, even if her deepest instincts told her to keep her within sight at all times. Instead, she tried to call to her mentally, speaking into that new space within her mind.

Where are you? Sada asked. There was no verbal response, but Sada felt a sense of safety fill her mind. The filly must have picked up on Sada's emotions as well, because a deep sense of concern probed at her next. Sada didn't have time to answer Sarana's unspoken question, and that was just as well, because she wasn't certain what she would have said. Was something wrong? She didn't know.

Dedrei didn't give her time to consider it further.

"Come, Sada," the Druid said, reaching back with one hand while keeping her eyes on the Elven girl and her antlers leveled at her. They had grown, and Sada thought the prongs looked sharper. It raised goosebumps on her arms.

"Ok." Sada wasted no time taking Dedrei's hand and allowing her to lead her forward. The girl watched the two women as they walked past, head turning to track them, never ceasing in her sniffling. Sada felt almost spazzy with nervousness. It wasn't a pleasant or unpleasant feeling, just a barely-containable one. She felt as though the very particles of her body were bouncing on their toes. Her eyes were held wide with adrenaline, and she suddenly didn't feel the need to blink. She held the Elf's green stare as they walked by her. But once they had passed, that lively edginess receded almost immediately along with her instincts and Sada halted, making Dedrei stop and face her.

"Will we not go to her aid?" Sada asked. "She cries ceaselessly, and I see no signs of her mother. She is but a child, Dedrei, and she does not appear to me to be one of your people."

"You have the right of that," Dedrei said. Her voice was guttural, as though even her vocal cords had shifted to become more animalistic with her fangs and claws. "But that is no mere child. As I said, something is amiss. I mislike the energy I feel emanating from the thicket in which she stands." Dedrei gestured with her antlers. "Do you see her legs?"

"No," Sada said. Only the girl's upper body was visible, as though she was crouching in the bushes. "What ails them?"

"I do not know. I cannot see them either."

Dedrei's stare was hard. She couldn't close her mouth all the way for the sharp canines now protruding from her lower and upper teeth, and her lip was ever so slightly curled to reveal her gums, which were slightly orange. Dedrei had never looked human, but she had looked humanoid. Now she truly looked half-animal, and as wild as though she really had been raised by the forest.

"I'm scared," Sada said. Dedrei just nodded. Sada wasn't certain if she knew that she'd meant she was scared of her, not the Elf. Sada wriggled her wrist free of the Druid's grasp, which had become constricting. She backed up a step, not intending for it to be toward the girl, but it had been.