Red Snow

10

"Kota! I'm here!" I yelled.

I ran towards the little light, ignoring Krishana's warnings. I probably should have been less trusting and foolish; it could have been a baddie mimicking me. But luckily, it wasn't.

As I got closer the light illuminated the darkness and I could see the features of everything. The glowing thing was hanging on a string from Reesha's neck. Kota, Jova, and a leopard I didn't know were following her.

I rammed right into Kota's chest and hugged him. "I didn't think you guys would come!" I said, feeling tears well up in my eyes.

"Why wouldn't we?" Kota asked.

"It's nine days till Christmas; we need all the help we can get." Reesha said. It was probably the best thing ever to hear her silky, rolling voice.

After seeing Kota, of coarse. And the others.

Shauna ran up to us, but she stopped a couple meters away. She hesitated to come near us. It must have been really hard for her to suddenly see other animals, especially chasers. She barely trusted me.

I drew away from Kota. He looked a bit uncomfortable. What was wrong? I thought we were friends.

"Who are they?" Shauna whispered quietly. Her yellow eyes slanted dangerously.

"These are my friends; they're chasers." I said. "They won't hurt you. You're with me. Krishana, this is Kota, Reesha and Jova. I don't know your name yet." I said, gesturing to the leopard with my tail.

"I'm Qiwi. I've heard a lot about you, Mika." She said.

"We should get out of here. Baddies could be anywhere; we met one on the way here." Reesha said.

"Tell me about it." I said.

"I'm not going to the North Pole with you." Shauna growled. "You're not taking me there."

"Krishana, why not? We'll take care of you there." Reesha said.

"I can take care of myself, thank you very much."

"I'll tell you about it later." I whispered to Reesha.

Reesha didn't say anything else.

"Follow us if you wish. We need to be out of here as soon as possible." Jova said.

We started to walk away. Just as I thought Shauna wasn't coming with us, she started to follow us. She caught up quick. "I need to get out of these caves. I don't know how." She whispered to me. I nodded.

"How do we find our way out of here?" I asked.

"We've placed glow stones every couple dekameters." Jova said. "I kept a few with me. When we get close to them, they glow. Like right now."

Ten meters away, by a fork in the tunnels, a stone was glowing blue. Pretty cool.

"How did you guys find me?" I asked.

"That blue thing hanging around Reesha's neck is part of a frost horse brain." Kota said. "It's 'programmed' to follow you, so it will glow when we get closer to you."

"That's cool." I said. I still had plenty of questions, but I didn't ask.

"Hey," Kota said. "Why did you think we wouldn't come get you?"

I didn't know how to answer that. I was about to say that I didn't mean it and I always thought my friends would come rescue me, but then I would be lying. I didn't rely on my friends to help me. I couldn't afford to. I couldn't sit around, hoping for them to rescue me while the ice wolf was planning something diabolical.