Souls in the wind must learn how to bend
Hold on, I said I should work on an old writing project and then I wrote an entire chapter of it in the same day? Well, that's rare.
And lucky you, the third chapter answers the riddle, so I won't be rubbing it in your faces anymore. I do really want to know if it's what any of you expected, though.
I'm going to post all three chapters here, under separate cuts, since I've done a little touching up on the previous two and you might not remember them anyway. It has been two or three years...
Chapter One: My Name is Cloud
Her first thought, when she became aware of the fact that she still had the ability to think, was 'Where am I?' Then there was the rather disconcerting question of 'Who am I?' Finally, there was what seemed to be the most pressing issue at that moment; 'Why do I hurt?'
Opening her eyes did not provide any of the answers she had hoped it would. The only information it gave her was that there were a number of large, flat, gray chunks of stone that appeared to have fallen not far from the tip of her nose. How she knew it had fallen there after and not before her, she had no idea. She just knew.
Despite the disturbing realization that her head would have likely been crushed if she'd been in a slightly different position, the world around her seemed calm enough now. Eerily so, in fact. She may not have been able to remember anything about herself or how she had gotten here, but she did know, somehow, that there should have been more sound in the air. Why was it so quiet? Perhaps she had gone deaf.
She lifted her head up slightly, and the patter of small pebbles hitting the dry ground as her movement disturbed them disproved that theory. The feelings caused by the movement drew all of her attention away from that vague worry about the unnatural silence, however. That slight tensing of the muscles at the base of her skull created a wave of sensation down the length of her neck until it reached the place between her shoulder blades. At that point, it bounced back suddenly in the form of a stunning lance of pain that nearly sent her reeling.
It took the span of several deep breaths, with her eyes squeezed shut, before the agony lessened enough to allow her to think about anything else. Even then, she waited for another roughly equal stretch of time before daring to move again.
The pain was not so incapacitating now that she was prepared for it, but still caused her to groan and clench her teeth as she slowly, slowly turned her head enough to find the source of her torment. The sight of it alone was enough to make the pain flare up again as she fully registered the wound's severity. A large chunk of flesh had been torn right out of the base of her neck, leaving a ghastly hole. Any deeper and she could only imagine that the blades off bone which shielded her spinal cord would be showing. She felt faint at the mere thought.
The wound had stopped bleeding, luckily before it had drained her to death. Also, it looked like the blood that must have been there had mostly been washed away. She stared at the ground again, finding it difficult to focus at first, but yes, the earth beneath her was dry. If rain water had cleaned her injury, it must have happened a full day ago at least. She assumed that the wound on her back had been what made her fall unconscious and apparently lose her memories, which meant, when she added that to her observations about the rain, that she had been unconscious for a day at the very least. Since what traces of blood that were left in the wound were dry, and the edges actually looked like they were healing, she guessed that it had been even longer.
When her slow train of thought managed to get over these few concepts, she finally began to notice her surroundings beyond the rock wall. She was lying in a wide, open but uneven area. There was a sloping wall of rubble before her, and a deep gorge behind. The land rose higher to the left and right, as well as on the opposite side of the gorge. She was in some sort of valley or canyon, then. Nothing but gray rock and dry, tan earth as far as her still somewhat blurry eyes could see. She was actually surprised by her own keenness when she noted that many of the boulders and even parts of the canyon wall looked newly carved, their edges sharp and precariously cracked in some places, or covered in loose rocks. She thought that, if the stones had stood in their currant formation for very long, the wind and weather would have dulled the edges and broken away any cracked pieces. These realizations matched up with her knowledge of how recently the boulders around her had fallen.
But what, she wondered, could have caused this much destruction?
A fleeting memory struck her... The earth trembling as her own body trembled in fear. A cry for help from someone precious to her... Or was it the roar of some terrible monster? Something that instinct had warned her to fear above everything else... But was it the monster she should fear, or the jagged crack in the ground that cut towards her as if it wanted to swallow her up? The monster would swallow her up if he caught her. Or worse, if he caught--
'No! No, you cannot have him! He is mine! I will die before I let you take him from me! Run! Run, my darling! Don't let him catch you! Oh, please don't let him....'
The memory was too much for her. Worse than the physical pain. It left her wide-eyed and gasping, her entire body shuddering. She couldn't handle it. She couldn't...
Eventually, she was able to compose herself, if only partially. She forced every trace of that terrifying flashback into the deepest, darkest corner of her mind, not stopping until it was almost nonexistent in her thoughts, just a vague memory of some nightmare. She wished she could erase it completely. If remembering who she was meant facing that horror, was it really worth it?
'Not yet.'
Later, perhaps, she would decide to pull those memories out again, piece by piece, and try to understand them. Now, however, she had too much to worry about without being driven mad by those terrors. Forget them. Move on. Survive.
Survive.
That was all anyone could do, in the end. Was it not?
Deep, introspective contemplations aside, it was probably about time to get up and finish taking stock of whatever situation she had landed in.
Her initial attempt to stand up proved that yes, she had quite literally 'landed' in this situation. And it must have been a rather long fall, at that. If not a freefall from some no-longer-existing height, at least a tumble down that slope of shattered stone in front of her. She had to rethink her original assumption that the neck wound had been what knocked her out. The fall was more likely, especially if it had happened after whatever had taken a chunk out of her.
She did not think that her leg was broken, necessarily, but it had certainly come close. Broken or not, it was certainly as serious as the injury to her neck. She realized - for the brief moment that she was still allowed to think clearly in the rush of new agony - that trying to stand up without testing her legs first had been a very, very bad idea.
Then she stopped thinking altogether, and thankfully stopped hurting as well, falling back into the otherworldly embrace of unconsciousness.
***
It was dark when she reawakened.
Judging by the placement of the stars, night had fallen quite some time ago. Last she remembered, the sun had been shining brightly from above her, so she must have been out for half a day at least. Whatever had happened before must have truly exhausted her. She still held to the decision that she was better off not knowing, at least until the concept of living to see the next sunrise was not such an uncertainty.
Her leg ached, and her neck still throbbed, but lying still for so long had allowed the pain to fade considerably. So much so, in fact, that she became aware of another discomfort.
She was very, very hungry.
Another cautious glance around only reaffirmed the fact that she was probably the only living thing, plant or animal, in this desolate canyon. Not even a dried up bush or a patch of moss in sight, and certainly nothing that would provide any sustenance for her. If she did not want to starve, she would have to move. Just thinking about it made her wince.
There was no other option, though. The longer she thought about it, the more undeniable that truth became. Maybe, if she just kept her weight off that leg... It seemed to be her best chance. She had to survive, and to do that, she had to stand up, and she had to walk. If she was extremely lucky, she might find something edible in another part of of the crevice, or a way out onto open ground. If not, she would have to climb. That fact alone threatened to fill her with a hopeless sense of dread. She greatly doubted that she had enough strength to drag herself up anything resembling a steep incline.
Ah, well. She would succeed or die trying. The oddly comforting mix of surety and desperation in that thought gave her the willpower needed to turn thought into action, though she took even more time than was probably needed to brace herself.
Experimentally, she shifted. It did not help that she was partially lying on an uneven pile of shattered rock. Ever so slowly, afraid that if she moved any faster she might dislodge a precariously placed stone and lose her balance, she managed to get her relatively uninjured limbs beneath her and transfer most of her weight onto them. Then, as carefully and smoothly as possible, she tensed her muscles and began to lift herself off the canyon floor. Her body was stiff and full of aches. No doubt she had been bruised and scratched in countless places during the fall. Still, with her wounded leg lifted clear off the ground and kept very still, and her neck braced stiffly to keep from jarring that injury, she was able to rise to her full height. At that point, she had to catch her breath, trying to relax as much as possible without collapsing. Standing up once had been enough of a struggle. She didn't want to spare the energy for a second time, nor risk further injury.
Her head was bowed, nearly touching the ground as she focused once again on just breathing in and out. It took somewhat less time to recover than she had expected, and that was reassuring. Now came the hard part.
'First, turn around. You can't walk through a pile of boulders. Ohh... Slowly... Good, now right front foot forward. Concentrate on keeping the injured leg off the ground. Now maybe the left front foot. Now the right back foot hops forward... Ahh! Note to self - don't jar the left back leg! This time try right front forward, then balance on the left front and gently step with the right back... Yes... Now left front... Now right front again...'
After some trial and error, she found a pattern of limping that did not cause her too much pain. The effort of walking itself was a challenge in her weakened state, but she gritted her teeth and dealt with it step by step. At first, the going seemed so slow that she despaired of ever finding something before she dropped dead. However, as she focused on moving forward, blanking her mind to all else, the limping steps fell into a more comfortable pattern, not that the word 'comfortable' could be applied accurately to anything she was currently feeling. Still, the individual steps seemed to become less difficult. She stopped counting them, relieved to let them meld into something a little bit closer to the would-be simple act of walking.
The moon was close to full and the stars shone brightly. It was not all that difficult to see the ground in front of her, and the slate gray stone of the canyon walls was slightly reflective in places. The canyon itself was narrower here, which could be good or bad. Bad if it closed up and trapped her, but beneficial if the steep walls shielded her from the eyes of anything dangerous. Now that she considered it, she was even thankful for the utter silence, as strange as it was. If anyone else was down here after all, she would probably be able to hear them before they came too close, if she didn't smell them first.
She kept herself alert, keeping her own thoughts basic so as to avoid despair. Walking was becoming almost monotonous now, as she grew accustomed to the aches of her abused body. It was quite preferable, really, when she remembered how hard it had been just to stand up. She could keep this up. She knew she could. How long, she didn't know, but it would be longer than she had originally feared, and that was what mattered. The canyon could not go on forever. Soon, before the moon set, she just knew that she would find something. She only hoped that something would not be a dead end.
"Having a bit of trouble there, missy?"
The sudden intrusion into her thoughts and the silence of the night nearly made her jump out of her own skin. That of course left her gasping and flinching at the wounds which had been strained by the movement, and it took her several moments to even locate the direction from which the voice had originated. So much for sensing an approach...
"Easy there. I won't eat you. You don't look like you have much meat on your bones, anyway. I do know where you can start to fix that problem, though."
Confused and somewhat frightened by the growling edge to the stranger's voice, despite his reassurances, she squinted into the shadows of a craggy overhang. Then she froze, heart hammering wildly, as the speaker's outline became clear.
Moonlight glinted off a row of white fangs, bared in a wide grin on the long snout of the creature. She desperately suppressed the broken memory of the monster from before. This creature was similar, but not the same. Piercing eyes were locked with hers, filled with what she would call sinister amusement. Granted, that could just be due to the instinctual fear that all predators instilled in her.
The creature moved, coming further into the light, and she considered giving herself a mental kick. Yes, he was a predator, but a small one. Even in her poor condition, she could probably do a good deal of damage to him should he try to kill her. If he had a pack, though, that was something else. She concentrated on her senses of hearing and smell, straining them to pick out any sign of others like him.
"...I told you not to worry. I'm alone."
She might not have believed him, except that no matter how hard she searched, she senses supported his claim. That was not quite enough to make her relax, but it did quiet her racing heart somewhat.
"...Why?" She asked after a moment of silence. "I thought your kind always traveled in packs."
The predator waved one of his forelimbs in a vaguely dismissive gesture. "Rocks fell. Everyone died." He said it with a casualty that was surely feigned. She was not so foolish as to think that predators were completely heartless. Surely even this one had felt love for his family. "I was out on scouting duty," he continued, oblivious to her pity. "We'd heard a commotion. I saw you fight that big one... You were pretty impressive, for a plant eater."
That last comment caused her mind to fog. What was he talking about? Who had she fought...? The big one.... the monster that had tried to...
'No.'
She shook her head sharply, banishing those half-formed images once again. 'I don't want to remember. It's still too much...'
"Ah. He hurt you pretty badly, didn't he? You'll be happy to know that he's probably worse off than yourself. I would be more happy about it myself, if I had found his body under all the rocks. No matter, though. There were plenty of other dead things to snack on these last few days."
A shiver ran up her spine at the thought. Even if she was wise enough not to question how any creature could stand to eat meat, the thought of it was still disgusting. She kept her mouth shut about it, though. Best to stay on this miniature monster's good side as long as possible. She should be grateful, really. He had obviously gorged on the corpses of those less lucky than herself. He would have no interest in attempting to eat her... at least for the time being.
"Not the talkative type, are you?" A couple hops with his proportionately long, powerful legs carried him to the top of a slanted, rocky protrusion, placing him a bit closer to her level. He chuckled slightly at the way his sudden movement startled her. "Oh, come on. I told you to relax. Will it help if I introduce myself? I'm called Feather. You'll see why at dawn. Now tell me your name."
"I..." she trailed off, surprising herself with the way her voice broke, as if expressing the sorrow and desperation that she had yet to allow herself to feel. "I don't remember."
Feather did not say anything for a moment, though she could not tell in the darkness whether that was due to surprise or just thoughtfulness. When he did speak again, his high, predatory voice held more gentleness and compassion than she would have thought possible even despite her insights into a meat eater's capacity for love.
"Well..." the small hunter said slowly, "what name do you think would suit you?"
Somehow, that seemed to be the hardest question she had been faced with yet. Survival was one thing, but identity was an entirely different level. Who was she? What was she, even, besides the obvious?
Her gaze unfocused, drifting upwards as her head tilted back. The silver-blue light of the moon drew her, changing even as she watched. A shadow passed over it, drifting aimlessly. A translucent shape, its edges shifting in a slow, continuous cycle. Breaking apart here... Thickening there... Stretching and wavering with the wind that carried it... Never sure of a destination, or even of its own survival... Ready to be torn to pieces at any moment.. Or guided to its rightful place with others of its kind. And if that happened, would there be something more to existence? Or would its life consist only of drifting, forever and always, across an unknown sky?
It was decided, then.
"My name is Cloud."
Chapter Two: The Way of the Pack
"Feather," his mother had told him on the day of his very first hunt. "Remember the way of the pack. We are a unit. We are as one. If you are alone, you are not whole. You will not be able to catch enough food, and you will not be able to protect yourself. That is why, above all else, the pack comes first. If there is a danger that cannot be beaten without a sacrifice, then you must give your own life to save the pack. Never sacrifice the pack to save yourself. If you do, you will be worse than dead. You will be alone."
Feather had been away from the nesting ground when it happened. He and his brother, Red Stripe, had been sent out to investigate what sounded like a struggle between giants. Indeed, they had scaled the cliff that sheltered their current home only to find themselves witness to a battle of epic scale. One of the great leaf eaters was facing off against a creature that even the pack feared. Those enormous monsters, bulky and disproportionate compared to the sleek, refined build of his own kind, were gluttonous bullies, every last one of them. They'd gobble you up as soon as look at you. That is, if they were bold enough to challenge your pack. True, the pack considered the loss of one for the safety of the rest a noble and necessary sacrifice. On the other claw, a threat to one could become a threat to the rest. Better to rid the world of the threat, or at least discourage it, than to risk being decimated by it.
Feather wasn't all that worried about this one. It appeared to be alone, and it obviously had its sights set on bigger prey. Nothing to worry about, as long as the combatants kept their distance from the nesting ground. So Feather sent his brother to tell the pack as much, while he stayed behind to watch.
It wasn't really being alone. Though out of sight, Red Stripe and the rest of the pack were not far away. They would hear Feather if he called for help, just as he would hear them. Besides, he wanted to see the outcome of this fight. The plant eater was actually holding her own. He was honestly impressed. If her victory destroyed a possible threat to the pack, he would happily cheer her on. Not that he was cheering out loud, of course. No use drawing attention to himself. Better to watch silently, note every detail, and then regale his fellow pack members with a blow-by-blow recount of the fight. Everyone loved a good story, after all.
A tremor ran through the ground beneath his feet. That was troubling, but not uncommon. In a world full of danger, even the earth itself had been known to attack those who lived upon it. Feather had heard stories about the ground splitting open to consume anyone unfortunate enough to be standing on it. Entire mountains sometimes burst into flame, spewing immense boulders and bleeding liquid fire that destroyed everything it touched. A little tremor was hardly worth worrying about.
Unless it foreshadowed something bigger.
The giants were still fighting when the second tremor hit, sending pebbles rattling across the ground around Feather's feet. His tail lashed fitfully as natural instincts tightening their hold over his mind. 'Get back to the pack', they said. 'Get back to safety.'
'Just a moment longer,' he argued with himself. 'It won't last.' It had happened before, and it never lasted long. Stories were just stories, and he still wanted to see how this fight would end.
'Curiosity killed the pack.'
'Yes, and satisfaction brought it back, so shut up.'
The battling giants had not even noticed those minor tremors. They were far too engrossed in their struggle. Something tiny in comparison was scampering around near the plant eater's feet. Two somethings, in fact. Squinting to pick out the distant shapes, Feather realized that the large one was protecting a pair of offspring. It was no wonder that she fought so hard. Many herbivores understood the way of the pack just as well as Feather's kind did, albeit under a different name. And of course the most important members of the pack were the offspring. They replenished the pack, the young replacing the old, so that even as they lay dying, elderly hunters could rest easy in the knowledge that their pack would live on. The hunts would continue.
Red Stripe had not come back. Perhaps he was not as interested in watching the fight, but the tremors had left Feather feeling anxious. He should go back. The pack was fine, of course, but it never hurt to check. The fight was still raging, the opponents evenly matched, but he had seen enough. He could always exaggerate the story. Maybe act out some of the scenes. That would certainly keep everyone entertained for the night.
He could easily picture the scene he would walk in on when he returned. The hatchlings would be tussling on the ground, the elders watching them, and Red Stripe would probably be trying to court Wind Runner again. Feather knew that it was just a game to his brother. Wind Runner was his mate, or would be once the mating season began again. Everyone knew it, and Feather trusted Wind Runner more than anyone.
Even so, who knew what his mischievous sibling was up to? Yes, it was definitely time to head back. His mind was already supplying exciting ideas for how to conclude the story, and he couldn't wait to tell it.
Looking forward to his own heroic return, Feather turned away from the battle.
Then the earth began to shake in earnest.
Never had the young carnivore run so fast, not even during the most intense of hunts. Barely even slowing to check his aim, Feather leaped clear over the cliff edge, using a series of protruding ledges as steps. Jumping more than running, he followed a vaguely zigzagging path down the face of the cliff, often coming dangerously close to overshooting the natural stepping stones. Half way down, he landed on a rock that had been shaken partially loose by the tremors, leaving it at a diagonal angle which Feather had not anticipated. His own inertia sent him sliding towards the edge, talons finding no purchase on the smooth surface. The feathers he was named for snagged on the jagged edge and were instantly yanked out by his own weight as he fell. The hunter plummeted uncontrollably into the shadowed depths with a shriek of terror.
An instant that seemed like an eternity later, he once again struck solid stone, but this was the wall of the cliff where it became a slope instead of a shear wall. His decent continued at a slide instead of a deadly fall. Turning himself onto his belly, he was able to drag all four clawed limbs over the shuddering rock face to slow himself further, until an especially violent tremor nearly shook him loose. It was accompanied by a loud crash, but he barely even registered the ominous sound in favor of keeping all attention on his own immediate peril. Pressing himself flat, pointed teeth nearly severing his own tongue, the hunter jammed the tips of his talons into blindly located crevices and held on for dear life.
He was nearly at the bottom of the widening gorge when he finally regained full control of his sliding decent, but it was enough. Shaken in more ways than one, but still more concerned with the safety of the others, the feathered flesh eater hesitated only a moment before taking off again at a head-long dash. Even with the very earth trying to shake him off, his stride was sure, strength and agility keeping him relatively steady as he made his way towards the cave which his pack had claimed as their own. The fall had carried him farther then his planned decent would have, but the way was still clear. Just around this next narrow turn and...
Feather locked his legs suddenly and skidded to a painful halt, still almost slamming into the unexpected wall before him.
The wall of fallen boulders where the cave was supposed to be. Where it had been, before the planet's sudden fit had dropped the overhanging cliff upon it.
At first, Feather tried not to believe it. Surely he was mistaken. The fall had dropped him farther than he thought. He had run the wrong direction in the confusion. Anything to explain why his home was not where it should be.
Anything but the obvious truth.
A stumble over a loose rock, knocking it clear to reveal the softer form beneath it, made that truth too obvious even for a creature half as sensible as the clever hunter to avoid.
A face looked back at him - looked past him, really. Its short crest feathers were torn loose and scattered amongst the rocks, but a tell-tale red streak over its muzzle made it all to familiar.
Red Stripe... What was left of Red Stripe... lay buried beneath the rubble, clouded eyes staring into nowhere.
Feather could only stare back at his fallen brother, frozen in horrible, mind-numbing shock for a long moment. The cessation of the tremors went entirely unnoticed, his own heartbeat as loud in his ears as the rumble of the earth had been. He knew.... he knew that Red Stripe was not the only one crushed under the fragments of the cliff which had protected them. He could smell the blood of the others on the shivering breeze.
His mother...
The hatchlings...
...Wind Runner.
Feather's world had - literally and figuratively - come crashing down around him.
***
Alone.
It had taken a long time for his mind to even acknowledge the word. In the end, though, it was inevitable. Unavoidable and irrevocable.
The ultimate destination of his distantly frantic thoughts.
Feather was alone. Feather was incomplete. Without a pack, or even a single companion, Feather was nothing.
Feather was in complete and utter shock.
The hunter curled up amongst the rubble, hidden from view more by chance then any sense of self-preservation. He lay there like the dead as the bright circle followed its path above him.
When it crested over the canyon, he kept his eyes shut, wishing above all else to avoid the sight of destruction in the full light of day.
When it sunk beyond the other side, he lay there still, clinging tightly to himself like an unhatched infant who had nearly outgrown his shell.
When darkness fell and clouds shrouded the sky, harsh flashes of lightning replacing the steadiness of the stars, he had yet to move. Even when the rain fell, ice cold and sharper than drops of water had any right to be, he only blinked and turned his face to the ground. Amidst the turmoil of his mind, a desperate wish arose - a wish to become as his dead pack, no thoughts to frighten him or emotions to rend his heart. He pressed harder against the fallen cliff side, wondering if he could merge with it.
If only he could become as cold and hard and unfeeling as the stone.
***
When the dawn came, Feather awoke numb. The complaining of his empty stomach drove him out of the shallow crevice he had burrowed into during his sleep, as if trying to place himself with the rest of his pack, where he belonged.
Still, he thought little of leaving the spot. He thought little of anything as he wandered through the canyon. His path was aimless at first, but eventually the scent of blood reached him again, drawing him all but blindly onward until he found a place where another part of the cliff had fallen, taking with it a trio of unfortunate leaf eaters. Their broken bodies were cold, but still more than fresh and meaty enough to satisfy his hunger. He even took the time to savor the food, tearing it into small pieces and swallowing unhurriedly as he stared into space. There was little danger of other predators finding what he had scavenged. His keen senses picked up no trace of a threatening presence within range. The creatures he did scent were all dead or dying.
Feather envied them.
The thought of starving himself to death or throwing himself over the cliff never crossed his mind. Suicide was not a concept considered by his people, or any others, for that matter. Sacrificing oneself to save one's pack was entirely different. Survival was hard enough without needless death by choice.
So Feather ate, and Feather took care of himself, and, sooner than he honestly believed was right, Feather's feelings of loss and despair shifted back to the recesses of his mind, still very present, but not all-consuming. He gradually began to think things through again, rather than acting on instinct. He allowed himself to mourn for his loved ones, but only in a quiet, controlled manner. Most importantly, he began to plan for his new future, knowing with solemn certainty how much danger he would soon be in.
Blindly fearing his solitary state would accomplish nothing, but the fact remained that Feather was alone. An incomplete being could not live until it was whole. Feather's first prerogative - the only thing that mattered beyond the base acts of obtaining food and shelter each day - was to find companionship. A new pack would mean a new life. Until he found that pack, he would not truly be alive.
'Here I was wishing to be dead like the others, when I'm already closer than I thought.' The realization echoed in his skull with a surprisingly wry note. Wind Runner had often teased him that nothing could destroy his sense of humor. Apparently, she was right.
'Of course. Wind Runner is always right.'
'Was.'
Feather sighed heavily and left the partially eaten corpse behind to rot with its fellows. Whether his appetite had been sated by the meat, or simply dampened by the tragic turn of his thoughts, he could not say.
Despite his decisiveness, he took his time exploring the canyon, rather than rushing to the first possible way out he spotted. While some passages had been blocked by the disaster, others had been opened. Before the light of that day had faded, he found himself in what must have once been a sealed cavern. Within it, an underground stream surfaced briefly. The clean water, the earthy floor of the chamber, combines with the daylight filtering through a crack in its ceiling, had been enough to encourage fauna to grow in this sheltered nook. In a land that was quickly becoming a desert, this was an oasis hidden within stone walls. While Feather could not eat the plant life, the water and shelter were both great comforts. It was here that he settled in for the second night alone, and here that he planned to return if he had not left the canyon by the next dusk.
The temptation of the canyon's relative safety and the easily accessible food and water kept him there throughout the following day, but he did not return to the cavern by dusk as planned.
Still wide awake, having fed and rested well during the day, he was lurking in the shadows of the cliff, watching the stars, when the dead silence of the night was disrupted.
Feather immediately focused all of his keen hunter's senses on the disturbance, and only relaxed slightly when it proved not to be a threat.
It seemed he was not the only survivor after all. Though another look at the intruder gave him reason to wonder how much longer she would last. In all honesty, he was quite startled to see her on her feet, especially when he recognized her as the same leaf eater who had gone one-on-one with that giant predator.
He couldn't help but announce his presence.
"Having a bit of trouble there, missy?"
The much larger herbivore jerked at the sound of his voice, and he almost winced in sympathy when the sudden movement left her gasping in pain.
"Easy there," he said amiably. "I won't eat you. You don't look like you have much meat on your bones, anyway." That comment was more of a joke than a real reason. Starved or not, she was more than big enough to fill his stomach. He would have acted differently, had there not been plenty of meat lying around on the canyon floor already. And, plant eater or not, she was probably the only survivor left other than Feather himself. Just like him, she was alone. If he was not going to put her out of her misery, he might as well show her another kindness. "I do know where you can start to fix that problem, though."
He watched in an odd form of amusement as she strained to pick him out from amidst the shadows. He could smell her fear. It mixed with the scent of her blood and weakness in a way that would tantalize any hunter, but he also recognized what strength she still held. She could crush his skull under her feet, or break him against the cliff wall, should he dare attack her while she was already so tense and frightened. Instead, he tried to ease her terror, if only to lesson his own temptation.
"I told you not to worry. I'm alone." Whether or not she heard the inflection of sorrow imbedded in that last admission, he couldn't say, and he told himself that he did not care. He would show her to his cavern oasis. He had no use for the plants there, and it was not as if the flowing water would run out just because he let another drink from it.
He was really only half listening when she asked why he was alone. He answered her automatically, keeping his inner thoughts elsewhere in order to hold his emotions at bay. He did, however, let her know that he recognized her and had witnessed her valiant fight.
The conversation continued, though he was the one doing most of the conversing. He could understand why, of course. Unlike him, she probably lacked the overpowering sense of humor and optimism that kept him thinking clearly even in this miniature apocalypse, and being so badly injured could not have been helping matters any. Finally, in the continued effort to settle her fear, he cheerfully introduced himself.
"I'm called Feather. You'll see why at dawn," he promised. "Now tell me your name."
This was the part of the conversation he expected her to respond most easily to, so he was surprised when she hesitated, her voice breaking with the very first syllable.
"I... I don't remember."
Ah. Well, that was an interesting twist. So, the calamity had erased her memory, whether by a physical blow to the head, or the emotional blow of so much trauma. In a way, Feather was jealous. At the same time, though, he found himself pitying her.
"Well..." the small hunter said slowly, "what name do you think would suit you?" It was the only way he could think to respond, and probably the best. Like him, she needed to move on ahead, no matter what had happened in her past. It was the only way to survive.
It took her several moments to answer, and he waited patiently. A tough decision, finding an appropriate name for oneself. He watched her scrutinizingly as she turned her head towards the sky. What exactly was she contemplating? He resisted the urge to ask, feeling strongly that interrupting her now would be detrimental. Why he cared about a plant eaters well-being so much, he had no idea.
Her voice, soft as it was, shattered the silence once again, the force of it increased greatly by the edge of determination in her tone.
"My name is Cloud."
Chapter Three: Echoes in the Dark
The way seemed agonizingly slow for Feather. He felt terribly exposed, though his senses told him that he and his companion were the only living things in the canyon, if one ignored the small reptiles and insects which had come to feast on the fallen. The pack-hunter fidgeted and darted around his huge, lumbering companion as she limped along, taking her sweet time to find the easiest path through the rubble.
For her part, she was trying to ignore the instinctual nervousness invoked by a predator scampering around beside her. It wasn't as if she really had the energy to waste on worrying. She didn't think Feather was stupid enough to attack her, unless he was lying about the loss of his pack - a distinct possibility, but her own senses were nearly as keen as his. If there were others of his kind around, she should be able to sense them.
Dawn came before they reached the promised sanctuary. As promised, the lightening sky gave Cloud her first proper look at the little hunter and revealed the inspiration for his name. Feather, predictably, was quite thoroughly covered in a fine coat of feathers. All of his breed had them, she knew, but all the ones she'd seen had only tufts and crests on their extremities or along their backs. Feather almost looked like one of the tiny feathered flyers who lived in trees. His feathers were mostly off-white in color, fading to tan at the tips. Orange, red and turquoise markings adorned the plumes of longer feathers on his head, tail and forearms. It was quite a contrast to her dull grey skin, and she found herself marveling at the difference between her kind and his. How a creature of his size could survive with such poor camouflage, even if he did have sharp teeth, was quite a mystery to her.
When the cavern finally came into view, Feather literally quivered with relief, abandoning Cloud's side to rush ahead and vanish into the wide, shadowy opening. By the time Cloud's long neck cleared the entrance and her eyes readjusted to the dark, he was already sprawled out quite comfortably beside the pool of water. How he managed to relax so totally under the current situation, she had no idea, but she rather envied him. Maybe it was just a meat-eater thing.
As she scent of the water flooded her nostrils, she could suddenly think of nothing else. If she'd had the energy to move faster, Feather might have been the victim of a miniature tidal wave as her head hit the water. Instead her decent was graceful, serpentine neck arching like a great tree limb borne down by its own weight until her parched muzzle grazed the surface of the pool. Feathery idly wondered what it would be like to chew on that neck, not that he had any intention of doing so right now. He was tactful enough not to mention his train of thought while the enormous leaf eater next to him guzzled down her fill. Nor did he need to tell her to eat before she gave in to her exhaustion. At least she had some common sense, he decided, though he had to wonder if all of the cavern's rich foliage would be enough to satisfy her for more than a day or two. It would be incredibly embarrassing for one such as himself to go hunting for a plant-eater's food... but that was the way of the pack. The strong brought home food for the weak. Right now, she really was the only pack he had.
"Never thought I'd be sharing a den with a leaf eater," he rambled, tired of listening to the sound of flat teeth grinding. "I expect you'll be staying with me until we each find our own sort of company." He didn't make it a question only because he was afraid that she might say no if he gave her the choice. "Quite a misfit pair we make, eh? You know, my mother once told me a story about the day she met an egg stealer. Okay, not quite the same. Egg stealers are still meat-eaters, but you know how it goes. We stay with our own kind."
"It's always been that way..." she spoke as if out of a dream, the words not really directed at Feather but at someone far away, and long ago. Or so it seemed. Then she blinked and lifted her head a little, not that she needed to in order to make eye contact. "Sorry. I was... remembering. Nevermind."
Feather tilted his head sideways, studying her as if she were a unique oddity. He almost pointed out that she claimed to have lost her memories, but decided against it. Better, he thought, to be more subtle about drawing those memories out. Telling his own stories had seemed to work, so he continued. "Of course, then there was the time Wind Runner and I -- Wind Runner was my mate, by the way -- Wind Runner and I spent four days tracking a herd of domeheads, just to study their behavior. No contact, of course. We didn't care much for the idea of being used as target practice. Have you seen what they do to my kind when they outnumber us? Point is, though, we didn't kill any of them. It was solely for information-gathering purposes... finding out when they slept and how long, how they guarded their nests, when the young ones were most vulnerable... you know the drill."
Cloud gave him a rather pointed look, reminding him without a word that the subject wasn't nearly as pleasant for her as it might be for him. Then, all apparently forgiven, she swallowed her mouthful of greens and leaned against the side of the cave with a sigh. Her kind did not lie down to rest. They were too heavy, but the cavern wall would at least help to keep her weight off of her injured leg. "...My herd was very traditional," she murmured, and Feather looked at her in surprise. "Or perhaps it only seemed that way to me. We never mingled... hardly ever spoke to other sorts. I never really questioned why, but I think..." Her long neck swept slowly around until she was gazing out of the cavern's entrance at the devastation beyond, breathing in the wretched scent of blood. "I think at times like these, the rules are meant to be broken."
"Tell me about your herd," Feather hazarded, finding himself excited despite the oddity of it all that he was actually helping her to remember.
She closed her eyes, looking inward, painstakingly dredging up the shattered memories, piece by piece. "There used to be many of us, when I was young..." Lines were drawn around her eyes and mouth as she frowned in concentration. "Not anymore. Not for a long time. I can't remember why." The tension in her body seemed to reach breaking point and then released, her entire form sagging as she gave up. "I"m sorry. I can't right now. There's too much."
Feather shook his head hard enough to create a rustling sound as his stiff-feathered crest fanned the air. "Don't worry about it. My fault. You look half-dead as it is. Better get some sleep." Her eyes shot open and he met them without flinching, giving his head a small nod to her questioning look. "I promised I wouldn't eat you. Not unless you die in your sleep. And I even promise that I won't help you along there," he added with a smile that he hoped was disarming - rather unlikely given how it showed his teeth. "Seriously Cloud, if you don't wake up in the morning, I'll be quite unhappy. I hate not having somebody to talk to." While his tone of voice was still light, he hoped she understood the sincerity in his words. As different as they were, surely they both shared an equal fear of being alone.
Apparently it was enough. Exhausted, Cloud turned her head away, pressing it to the cool, solid rock, and drifted swiftly into sleep.
***
Clouds dreams were filled with pain and fire and darkness, and the sweetest voice she'd ever heard.
When she woke, Feather was gone. She wondered if he'd found other survivors of his pack after all and chosen to leave her. If that were so, at least he'd kept his promise. He could have led them back to her, taken her in her sleep. She would have been disoriented and at her weakest, an easy enough kill for even three or four of his kind. If anything, however, she left considerably better than she had before. The entire day and most of the night had passed her by. She truly had slept like the dead. It was dawn again, and she was famished.
Feather found her making short work of the plant life in the cave. He could hardly blame her, considering where he'd just been. "That's going to last another three days maybe, at the rate you're going, and only if you keep sleeping half the time," he observed. "We'll have to find more."
She didn't bother to look at him. She could smell that he was alone, and her nose told her also the reason he'd been away. The hunter had been scavenging.
"... I guess I could go looking for other places like this," his voice was a petulant whine, an attempt to disguise the kindness of his offer. "It'd be faster than searching the whole place with you in tow, that's for sure. That leg better heal up quick, missy, or we're not going to get anywhere."
Cloud hid her smile from him. "It would at least speed my recover if I didn't have to walk very much. Are you sure you're up for the task, though, Feather?"
That did it. His little predatory brain wasn't so hard to read after all. "Up to the task? Up to the task? Are you crazy, missy? I was born for the task. Best scout in my pack, I am." Or was, rather, but he didn't bother to correct himself. "You just relax and enjoy being alive. I'll find you more food and a way out of the canyon before you can eat the last leaf in this cave." And with that he set off again, too fired up to consider taking a break between forays. Cloud simply continued to smile and munch her green food, feeling pleased with herself for the first time in memory.
***
Feather's first and second scouting attempts were unsuccessful, his third only marginally more so. There was no other source of green food in the canyon. At least there was none that he could find, which according to his greatly oversized ego meant that there was certainly none at all. What he had found was a break in the cavern wall, what would have been an easy ramp-way to the surface above... except that the quake had flooded it with enough boulders and debris to form a veritable wall. It was possible, he thought, that someone of Cloud's size would be able to move it, but only if they were in peak physical health, and that was certainly not the case with Cloud. He'd just have to keep looking...
While nowhere near being fully recovered, Cloud's injuries were healing much faster than she had predicted. Her leg was most certainly not broken. The pain had lessened immensely during her time in the cave. The bite taken out of her neck still throbbed, but as it did not restrict her movement and had not become badly infected, she was able to ignore it for the most part. It would leave a terrible scar, but there was no helping that. Her other injuries - mostly bruises and bumps, and possibly a slightly cracked rib - were nothing more than annoyances in her exhausted state. The weariness was more emotional than physical now, though. She still could not remember anything of her past beyond brief, nonsensical flashes.
And a strange, pressing urge to travel west.
She'd talked to Feather about it, a little. She'd told him about her dreams in which a small, soft voice called to her, begging her to get up, to stay with... with... whoever it was that spoke. She tried, but she could not place that tiny voice, and in the dream she did not obey its requests. Instead, she told it to go away, far away. She described the path it must follow. Her own words were like a haze. She could remember nothing of what she'd said, except that it all began and ended with the sun. The little voice must follow the sun. Over and over it would pass, and the little one must go to where it touched the ground each day. She strained and struggled to remember who it was she'd told this to, but her own mind proved her enemy. Only the little one's voice stayed with her, always questioning, always pleading.
In the end, it was Feather who ordered her to stop talking about it. Curious as he was, he could see how it hurt her. Though he'd never admit it, her intensity frightened him. The hunter had a theory, though. He did not share it with her for fear of disturbing her mind further, but there was only one thing he knew of which could inspire the level of desperation and care he could hear in her words. This little one she spoke of, this soft voice... surely it belonged to a member of her herd. An infant, at that. No wonder the loss of it had driven her mad.
But there was something else about her story that struck him as vital in an entirely different way.
"You said to travel west? To follow the great circle?" He didn't wait for her nod of confirmation. "That's the way everyone's been going, isn't it? The herds and the packs, all running away because there's no more food here. All of them traveling west." He paused to let her think about that, hoping it would spark her memories just a bit more. "...Whoever it was you lost, they might not be alive, but if they are... They'll have gone west, right? Just like you said?" He raised his forearms in a shrug, claws turned upward beseechingly. "Either way, if we want to live, we'll have to go too."
***
It was another few days before Cloud relented to traveling. During that time, however, Feather had been quite busy with something. When he finally showed it to Cloud, she couldn't help but feel impressed. While she'd been recuperating, the little hunter and been hard at work making the ravine he'd discovered passable. It was a mad scheme, but undeniably clever. He'd worked along one side of the barrier, using the natural cliff face as support, steady and unyielding in contrast to the loose, precariously piled rubble. If he'd wanted to pass this border alone, he could have done it with none of the fuss. His light, agile form was perfectly capable of scaling the wall. But he was determined to keep Cloud with him, at least for the time being, so he'd worked from the top down, pushing every rock he could move over the edge on the canyon side, piling them up below him until a slope began to form. Cloud wondered how much time he must have spent here, when she'd thought he was scouting or scavenging. By the time she was ready to leave, the rubble slope was shallow enough for her to climb - just barely.
In truth the wall of debris was only twice as tall as she was at the shoulder, which may have seemed like quite a lot to the little hunter, but was not so daunting to Cloud herself. The work he'd done had decreased that height on one side, as he'd intended. It would not be easy going, but she was confident that she could manage it.
She didn't quite have the forethought to realize that walking up a slope would put most of her weight on her hind legs.
Feather jumped and scrambled down to her as she winced and almost fell on her injured leg. She braced herself, though, which was lucky for Feather's sake as well as her own because he couldn't have stopped her if he tried.
"Are you alright?!" he shrieked loudly enough to hurt her ears.
"Yes," she said through gritted teeth," now get out of my way before I crush you, sharp tooth." Startled by the viciousness in her voice, he did as told, and Cloud began to haul herself painfully up the rocky slope. Small boulders and slabs of rock shifted under her weight, making her wobble and gasp in pain, but none gave out completely. Slowly and very unsteadily, she made her way to the top.
"Feather..." Her voice was dry and flat. The little hunter looked up to find her head looming over him, suspended on its wiry neck.
He tapped his claws together, looking from her to the other side of the rubble heap and back. "Aheheh... my bad..." He tried one of his disarming grins, hoping she'd take pity on him.
"Well, what now?" Once the moronic - in her opinion - little scavenger had been thoroughly subjected to her most disapproving glare, she looked down again at the path ahead, or lack there of. All of Feather's work had been aimed at the side of the debris pile that faced into the canyon. Somehow, he'd forgotten that there was still a drop on the other side. Because the ravine itself was slanted upward, that outward side of the wall was shorter than the inward side, but not by all that much.
Feather followed her stare down the steep and craggy wall, feeling very foolish. "You could... um... jump?" he suggested vainly, wincing at the sound of his own words.
Cloud gave him that same flat look again. She really didn't need to point out the likely success rate of that plan, or in fact the survival rate. Was this all some mad scheme to make her kill herself so he'd have a guilt-free feast? Surely he wouldn't have gone to this much trouble for such a thing, but then again, she was no expert on the minds of meat eaters.
"Okay, okay..." the hunter was trying to think sensibly now, his eyes darting around in search of a solution. "We can make this work... Hey, see down there, where the rocks slant outward and meet the ground?" He pointed with a claw, and Cloud leaned forward, craning her neck down to study the rocks from a different angle. As she did so, the immense flat boulder on which she was standing shuddered and then shifted abruptly, tilting forward. Before she could scramble off of it, the entire sheet of rock was sliding down the steep side of the wall, taking her with it. She couldn't even scream, it happened so quickly. Then her rock hit the ones Feather had been pointing out. Instead of crashing down on its end and sending her headfirst into the ground - a most certainly neck-breaking experience - it evened out and continued to slide even as it reached the milder slope of the ravine. The combination of its weight and hers brought it to a quick enough halt, and she stepped off hastily, shaking all over.
Feather was gawking at her from the top of the wall, his mouth open wide. She mirrored his look, minus the show of teeth, and then simply turned around and started limping up the much less daunting slope of the ravine, still trembling from terror and - yes, she had to admit it - excitement.
***
They came to the top of the canyon together and shut their eyes against the sun's glare. It was evening, and the bright circle hung huge in the sky, a beacon impossible to ignore.
Cloud sighed. "That's the way." She nodded her head forward, to the west. "It's a long, long way. Past the rock made in the image of my own kind... and beyond that, the mountains that bleed fire."
"Why is everyone going that way?" Feather asked, suddenly feeling a little desperate.
"There's a place, a sort of haven." Cloud explained softly. "It is safe there. All this... the floods and the famines, even the earthshakes, they haven't touched it yet. I don't believe they ever will." She lifted her head high, closing her eyes and basking in the warmth of the sun for a moment. "That's where I told him to go."
Feather glanced at her curiously. "Him?"
"My son." Cloud's voice was gentle but heavy with the newfound memory.
"The voice in your dreams?" Feather guessed, slightly mystified by her story, despite himself.
"The child I almost lost before he was born. The only survivor of his clutch. The only young one in my herd..." It wasn't exactly an affirmative, but Feather didn't need to hear one. The passion in her voice was the same as it had been when she described the dreams to him.
"Does this young one have a name?" he asked delicately, hoping to lighten the mood just a touch without actually changing the subject.
Cloud looked at him briefly, then stared at the ground for a moment before raising her head again and stepping forward into the sunset.
"Littlefoot."
And lucky you, the third chapter answers the riddle, so I won't be rubbing it in your faces anymore. I do really want to know if it's what any of you expected, though.
I'm going to post all three chapters here, under separate cuts, since I've done a little touching up on the previous two and you might not remember them anyway. It has been two or three years...
Chapter One: My Name is Cloud
Her first thought, when she became aware of the fact that she still had the ability to think, was 'Where am I?' Then there was the rather disconcerting question of 'Who am I?' Finally, there was what seemed to be the most pressing issue at that moment; 'Why do I hurt?'
Opening her eyes did not provide any of the answers she had hoped it would. The only information it gave her was that there were a number of large, flat, gray chunks of stone that appeared to have fallen not far from the tip of her nose. How she knew it had fallen there after and not before her, she had no idea. She just knew.
Despite the disturbing realization that her head would have likely been crushed if she'd been in a slightly different position, the world around her seemed calm enough now. Eerily so, in fact. She may not have been able to remember anything about herself or how she had gotten here, but she did know, somehow, that there should have been more sound in the air. Why was it so quiet? Perhaps she had gone deaf.
She lifted her head up slightly, and the patter of small pebbles hitting the dry ground as her movement disturbed them disproved that theory. The feelings caused by the movement drew all of her attention away from that vague worry about the unnatural silence, however. That slight tensing of the muscles at the base of her skull created a wave of sensation down the length of her neck until it reached the place between her shoulder blades. At that point, it bounced back suddenly in the form of a stunning lance of pain that nearly sent her reeling.
It took the span of several deep breaths, with her eyes squeezed shut, before the agony lessened enough to allow her to think about anything else. Even then, she waited for another roughly equal stretch of time before daring to move again.
The pain was not so incapacitating now that she was prepared for it, but still caused her to groan and clench her teeth as she slowly, slowly turned her head enough to find the source of her torment. The sight of it alone was enough to make the pain flare up again as she fully registered the wound's severity. A large chunk of flesh had been torn right out of the base of her neck, leaving a ghastly hole. Any deeper and she could only imagine that the blades off bone which shielded her spinal cord would be showing. She felt faint at the mere thought.
The wound had stopped bleeding, luckily before it had drained her to death. Also, it looked like the blood that must have been there had mostly been washed away. She stared at the ground again, finding it difficult to focus at first, but yes, the earth beneath her was dry. If rain water had cleaned her injury, it must have happened a full day ago at least. She assumed that the wound on her back had been what made her fall unconscious and apparently lose her memories, which meant, when she added that to her observations about the rain, that she had been unconscious for a day at the very least. Since what traces of blood that were left in the wound were dry, and the edges actually looked like they were healing, she guessed that it had been even longer.
When her slow train of thought managed to get over these few concepts, she finally began to notice her surroundings beyond the rock wall. She was lying in a wide, open but uneven area. There was a sloping wall of rubble before her, and a deep gorge behind. The land rose higher to the left and right, as well as on the opposite side of the gorge. She was in some sort of valley or canyon, then. Nothing but gray rock and dry, tan earth as far as her still somewhat blurry eyes could see. She was actually surprised by her own keenness when she noted that many of the boulders and even parts of the canyon wall looked newly carved, their edges sharp and precariously cracked in some places, or covered in loose rocks. She thought that, if the stones had stood in their currant formation for very long, the wind and weather would have dulled the edges and broken away any cracked pieces. These realizations matched up with her knowledge of how recently the boulders around her had fallen.
But what, she wondered, could have caused this much destruction?
A fleeting memory struck her... The earth trembling as her own body trembled in fear. A cry for help from someone precious to her... Or was it the roar of some terrible monster? Something that instinct had warned her to fear above everything else... But was it the monster she should fear, or the jagged crack in the ground that cut towards her as if it wanted to swallow her up? The monster would swallow her up if he caught her. Or worse, if he caught--
'No! No, you cannot have him! He is mine! I will die before I let you take him from me! Run! Run, my darling! Don't let him catch you! Oh, please don't let him....'
The memory was too much for her. Worse than the physical pain. It left her wide-eyed and gasping, her entire body shuddering. She couldn't handle it. She couldn't...
Eventually, she was able to compose herself, if only partially. She forced every trace of that terrifying flashback into the deepest, darkest corner of her mind, not stopping until it was almost nonexistent in her thoughts, just a vague memory of some nightmare. She wished she could erase it completely. If remembering who she was meant facing that horror, was it really worth it?
'Not yet.'
Later, perhaps, she would decide to pull those memories out again, piece by piece, and try to understand them. Now, however, she had too much to worry about without being driven mad by those terrors. Forget them. Move on. Survive.
Survive.
That was all anyone could do, in the end. Was it not?
Deep, introspective contemplations aside, it was probably about time to get up and finish taking stock of whatever situation she had landed in.
Her initial attempt to stand up proved that yes, she had quite literally 'landed' in this situation. And it must have been a rather long fall, at that. If not a freefall from some no-longer-existing height, at least a tumble down that slope of shattered stone in front of her. She had to rethink her original assumption that the neck wound had been what knocked her out. The fall was more likely, especially if it had happened after whatever had taken a chunk out of her.
She did not think that her leg was broken, necessarily, but it had certainly come close. Broken or not, it was certainly as serious as the injury to her neck. She realized - for the brief moment that she was still allowed to think clearly in the rush of new agony - that trying to stand up without testing her legs first had been a very, very bad idea.
Then she stopped thinking altogether, and thankfully stopped hurting as well, falling back into the otherworldly embrace of unconsciousness.
***
It was dark when she reawakened.
Judging by the placement of the stars, night had fallen quite some time ago. Last she remembered, the sun had been shining brightly from above her, so she must have been out for half a day at least. Whatever had happened before must have truly exhausted her. She still held to the decision that she was better off not knowing, at least until the concept of living to see the next sunrise was not such an uncertainty.
Her leg ached, and her neck still throbbed, but lying still for so long had allowed the pain to fade considerably. So much so, in fact, that she became aware of another discomfort.
She was very, very hungry.
Another cautious glance around only reaffirmed the fact that she was probably the only living thing, plant or animal, in this desolate canyon. Not even a dried up bush or a patch of moss in sight, and certainly nothing that would provide any sustenance for her. If she did not want to starve, she would have to move. Just thinking about it made her wince.
There was no other option, though. The longer she thought about it, the more undeniable that truth became. Maybe, if she just kept her weight off that leg... It seemed to be her best chance. She had to survive, and to do that, she had to stand up, and she had to walk. If she was extremely lucky, she might find something edible in another part of of the crevice, or a way out onto open ground. If not, she would have to climb. That fact alone threatened to fill her with a hopeless sense of dread. She greatly doubted that she had enough strength to drag herself up anything resembling a steep incline.
Ah, well. She would succeed or die trying. The oddly comforting mix of surety and desperation in that thought gave her the willpower needed to turn thought into action, though she took even more time than was probably needed to brace herself.
Experimentally, she shifted. It did not help that she was partially lying on an uneven pile of shattered rock. Ever so slowly, afraid that if she moved any faster she might dislodge a precariously placed stone and lose her balance, she managed to get her relatively uninjured limbs beneath her and transfer most of her weight onto them. Then, as carefully and smoothly as possible, she tensed her muscles and began to lift herself off the canyon floor. Her body was stiff and full of aches. No doubt she had been bruised and scratched in countless places during the fall. Still, with her wounded leg lifted clear off the ground and kept very still, and her neck braced stiffly to keep from jarring that injury, she was able to rise to her full height. At that point, she had to catch her breath, trying to relax as much as possible without collapsing. Standing up once had been enough of a struggle. She didn't want to spare the energy for a second time, nor risk further injury.
Her head was bowed, nearly touching the ground as she focused once again on just breathing in and out. It took somewhat less time to recover than she had expected, and that was reassuring. Now came the hard part.
'First, turn around. You can't walk through a pile of boulders. Ohh... Slowly... Good, now right front foot forward. Concentrate on keeping the injured leg off the ground. Now maybe the left front foot. Now the right back foot hops forward... Ahh! Note to self - don't jar the left back leg! This time try right front forward, then balance on the left front and gently step with the right back... Yes... Now left front... Now right front again...'
After some trial and error, she found a pattern of limping that did not cause her too much pain. The effort of walking itself was a challenge in her weakened state, but she gritted her teeth and dealt with it step by step. At first, the going seemed so slow that she despaired of ever finding something before she dropped dead. However, as she focused on moving forward, blanking her mind to all else, the limping steps fell into a more comfortable pattern, not that the word 'comfortable' could be applied accurately to anything she was currently feeling. Still, the individual steps seemed to become less difficult. She stopped counting them, relieved to let them meld into something a little bit closer to the would-be simple act of walking.
The moon was close to full and the stars shone brightly. It was not all that difficult to see the ground in front of her, and the slate gray stone of the canyon walls was slightly reflective in places. The canyon itself was narrower here, which could be good or bad. Bad if it closed up and trapped her, but beneficial if the steep walls shielded her from the eyes of anything dangerous. Now that she considered it, she was even thankful for the utter silence, as strange as it was. If anyone else was down here after all, she would probably be able to hear them before they came too close, if she didn't smell them first.
She kept herself alert, keeping her own thoughts basic so as to avoid despair. Walking was becoming almost monotonous now, as she grew accustomed to the aches of her abused body. It was quite preferable, really, when she remembered how hard it had been just to stand up. She could keep this up. She knew she could. How long, she didn't know, but it would be longer than she had originally feared, and that was what mattered. The canyon could not go on forever. Soon, before the moon set, she just knew that she would find something. She only hoped that something would not be a dead end.
"Having a bit of trouble there, missy?"
The sudden intrusion into her thoughts and the silence of the night nearly made her jump out of her own skin. That of course left her gasping and flinching at the wounds which had been strained by the movement, and it took her several moments to even locate the direction from which the voice had originated. So much for sensing an approach...
"Easy there. I won't eat you. You don't look like you have much meat on your bones, anyway. I do know where you can start to fix that problem, though."
Confused and somewhat frightened by the growling edge to the stranger's voice, despite his reassurances, she squinted into the shadows of a craggy overhang. Then she froze, heart hammering wildly, as the speaker's outline became clear.
Moonlight glinted off a row of white fangs, bared in a wide grin on the long snout of the creature. She desperately suppressed the broken memory of the monster from before. This creature was similar, but not the same. Piercing eyes were locked with hers, filled with what she would call sinister amusement. Granted, that could just be due to the instinctual fear that all predators instilled in her.
The creature moved, coming further into the light, and she considered giving herself a mental kick. Yes, he was a predator, but a small one. Even in her poor condition, she could probably do a good deal of damage to him should he try to kill her. If he had a pack, though, that was something else. She concentrated on her senses of hearing and smell, straining them to pick out any sign of others like him.
"...I told you not to worry. I'm alone."
She might not have believed him, except that no matter how hard she searched, she senses supported his claim. That was not quite enough to make her relax, but it did quiet her racing heart somewhat.
"...Why?" She asked after a moment of silence. "I thought your kind always traveled in packs."
The predator waved one of his forelimbs in a vaguely dismissive gesture. "Rocks fell. Everyone died." He said it with a casualty that was surely feigned. She was not so foolish as to think that predators were completely heartless. Surely even this one had felt love for his family. "I was out on scouting duty," he continued, oblivious to her pity. "We'd heard a commotion. I saw you fight that big one... You were pretty impressive, for a plant eater."
That last comment caused her mind to fog. What was he talking about? Who had she fought...? The big one.... the monster that had tried to...
'No.'
She shook her head sharply, banishing those half-formed images once again. 'I don't want to remember. It's still too much...'
"Ah. He hurt you pretty badly, didn't he? You'll be happy to know that he's probably worse off than yourself. I would be more happy about it myself, if I had found his body under all the rocks. No matter, though. There were plenty of other dead things to snack on these last few days."
A shiver ran up her spine at the thought. Even if she was wise enough not to question how any creature could stand to eat meat, the thought of it was still disgusting. She kept her mouth shut about it, though. Best to stay on this miniature monster's good side as long as possible. She should be grateful, really. He had obviously gorged on the corpses of those less lucky than herself. He would have no interest in attempting to eat her... at least for the time being.
"Not the talkative type, are you?" A couple hops with his proportionately long, powerful legs carried him to the top of a slanted, rocky protrusion, placing him a bit closer to her level. He chuckled slightly at the way his sudden movement startled her. "Oh, come on. I told you to relax. Will it help if I introduce myself? I'm called Feather. You'll see why at dawn. Now tell me your name."
"I..." she trailed off, surprising herself with the way her voice broke, as if expressing the sorrow and desperation that she had yet to allow herself to feel. "I don't remember."
Feather did not say anything for a moment, though she could not tell in the darkness whether that was due to surprise or just thoughtfulness. When he did speak again, his high, predatory voice held more gentleness and compassion than she would have thought possible even despite her insights into a meat eater's capacity for love.
"Well..." the small hunter said slowly, "what name do you think would suit you?"
Somehow, that seemed to be the hardest question she had been faced with yet. Survival was one thing, but identity was an entirely different level. Who was she? What was she, even, besides the obvious?
Her gaze unfocused, drifting upwards as her head tilted back. The silver-blue light of the moon drew her, changing even as she watched. A shadow passed over it, drifting aimlessly. A translucent shape, its edges shifting in a slow, continuous cycle. Breaking apart here... Thickening there... Stretching and wavering with the wind that carried it... Never sure of a destination, or even of its own survival... Ready to be torn to pieces at any moment.. Or guided to its rightful place with others of its kind. And if that happened, would there be something more to existence? Or would its life consist only of drifting, forever and always, across an unknown sky?
It was decided, then.
"My name is Cloud."
Chapter Two: The Way of the Pack
"Feather," his mother had told him on the day of his very first hunt. "Remember the way of the pack. We are a unit. We are as one. If you are alone, you are not whole. You will not be able to catch enough food, and you will not be able to protect yourself. That is why, above all else, the pack comes first. If there is a danger that cannot be beaten without a sacrifice, then you must give your own life to save the pack. Never sacrifice the pack to save yourself. If you do, you will be worse than dead. You will be alone."
Feather had been away from the nesting ground when it happened. He and his brother, Red Stripe, had been sent out to investigate what sounded like a struggle between giants. Indeed, they had scaled the cliff that sheltered their current home only to find themselves witness to a battle of epic scale. One of the great leaf eaters was facing off against a creature that even the pack feared. Those enormous monsters, bulky and disproportionate compared to the sleek, refined build of his own kind, were gluttonous bullies, every last one of them. They'd gobble you up as soon as look at you. That is, if they were bold enough to challenge your pack. True, the pack considered the loss of one for the safety of the rest a noble and necessary sacrifice. On the other claw, a threat to one could become a threat to the rest. Better to rid the world of the threat, or at least discourage it, than to risk being decimated by it.
Feather wasn't all that worried about this one. It appeared to be alone, and it obviously had its sights set on bigger prey. Nothing to worry about, as long as the combatants kept their distance from the nesting ground. So Feather sent his brother to tell the pack as much, while he stayed behind to watch.
It wasn't really being alone. Though out of sight, Red Stripe and the rest of the pack were not far away. They would hear Feather if he called for help, just as he would hear them. Besides, he wanted to see the outcome of this fight. The plant eater was actually holding her own. He was honestly impressed. If her victory destroyed a possible threat to the pack, he would happily cheer her on. Not that he was cheering out loud, of course. No use drawing attention to himself. Better to watch silently, note every detail, and then regale his fellow pack members with a blow-by-blow recount of the fight. Everyone loved a good story, after all.
A tremor ran through the ground beneath his feet. That was troubling, but not uncommon. In a world full of danger, even the earth itself had been known to attack those who lived upon it. Feather had heard stories about the ground splitting open to consume anyone unfortunate enough to be standing on it. Entire mountains sometimes burst into flame, spewing immense boulders and bleeding liquid fire that destroyed everything it touched. A little tremor was hardly worth worrying about.
Unless it foreshadowed something bigger.
The giants were still fighting when the second tremor hit, sending pebbles rattling across the ground around Feather's feet. His tail lashed fitfully as natural instincts tightening their hold over his mind. 'Get back to the pack', they said. 'Get back to safety.'
'Just a moment longer,' he argued with himself. 'It won't last.' It had happened before, and it never lasted long. Stories were just stories, and he still wanted to see how this fight would end.
'Curiosity killed the pack.'
'Yes, and satisfaction brought it back, so shut up.'
The battling giants had not even noticed those minor tremors. They were far too engrossed in their struggle. Something tiny in comparison was scampering around near the plant eater's feet. Two somethings, in fact. Squinting to pick out the distant shapes, Feather realized that the large one was protecting a pair of offspring. It was no wonder that she fought so hard. Many herbivores understood the way of the pack just as well as Feather's kind did, albeit under a different name. And of course the most important members of the pack were the offspring. They replenished the pack, the young replacing the old, so that even as they lay dying, elderly hunters could rest easy in the knowledge that their pack would live on. The hunts would continue.
Red Stripe had not come back. Perhaps he was not as interested in watching the fight, but the tremors had left Feather feeling anxious. He should go back. The pack was fine, of course, but it never hurt to check. The fight was still raging, the opponents evenly matched, but he had seen enough. He could always exaggerate the story. Maybe act out some of the scenes. That would certainly keep everyone entertained for the night.
He could easily picture the scene he would walk in on when he returned. The hatchlings would be tussling on the ground, the elders watching them, and Red Stripe would probably be trying to court Wind Runner again. Feather knew that it was just a game to his brother. Wind Runner was his mate, or would be once the mating season began again. Everyone knew it, and Feather trusted Wind Runner more than anyone.
Even so, who knew what his mischievous sibling was up to? Yes, it was definitely time to head back. His mind was already supplying exciting ideas for how to conclude the story, and he couldn't wait to tell it.
Looking forward to his own heroic return, Feather turned away from the battle.
Then the earth began to shake in earnest.
Never had the young carnivore run so fast, not even during the most intense of hunts. Barely even slowing to check his aim, Feather leaped clear over the cliff edge, using a series of protruding ledges as steps. Jumping more than running, he followed a vaguely zigzagging path down the face of the cliff, often coming dangerously close to overshooting the natural stepping stones. Half way down, he landed on a rock that had been shaken partially loose by the tremors, leaving it at a diagonal angle which Feather had not anticipated. His own inertia sent him sliding towards the edge, talons finding no purchase on the smooth surface. The feathers he was named for snagged on the jagged edge and were instantly yanked out by his own weight as he fell. The hunter plummeted uncontrollably into the shadowed depths with a shriek of terror.
An instant that seemed like an eternity later, he once again struck solid stone, but this was the wall of the cliff where it became a slope instead of a shear wall. His decent continued at a slide instead of a deadly fall. Turning himself onto his belly, he was able to drag all four clawed limbs over the shuddering rock face to slow himself further, until an especially violent tremor nearly shook him loose. It was accompanied by a loud crash, but he barely even registered the ominous sound in favor of keeping all attention on his own immediate peril. Pressing himself flat, pointed teeth nearly severing his own tongue, the hunter jammed the tips of his talons into blindly located crevices and held on for dear life.
He was nearly at the bottom of the widening gorge when he finally regained full control of his sliding decent, but it was enough. Shaken in more ways than one, but still more concerned with the safety of the others, the feathered flesh eater hesitated only a moment before taking off again at a head-long dash. Even with the very earth trying to shake him off, his stride was sure, strength and agility keeping him relatively steady as he made his way towards the cave which his pack had claimed as their own. The fall had carried him farther then his planned decent would have, but the way was still clear. Just around this next narrow turn and...
Feather locked his legs suddenly and skidded to a painful halt, still almost slamming into the unexpected wall before him.
The wall of fallen boulders where the cave was supposed to be. Where it had been, before the planet's sudden fit had dropped the overhanging cliff upon it.
At first, Feather tried not to believe it. Surely he was mistaken. The fall had dropped him farther than he thought. He had run the wrong direction in the confusion. Anything to explain why his home was not where it should be.
Anything but the obvious truth.
A stumble over a loose rock, knocking it clear to reveal the softer form beneath it, made that truth too obvious even for a creature half as sensible as the clever hunter to avoid.
A face looked back at him - looked past him, really. Its short crest feathers were torn loose and scattered amongst the rocks, but a tell-tale red streak over its muzzle made it all to familiar.
Red Stripe... What was left of Red Stripe... lay buried beneath the rubble, clouded eyes staring into nowhere.
Feather could only stare back at his fallen brother, frozen in horrible, mind-numbing shock for a long moment. The cessation of the tremors went entirely unnoticed, his own heartbeat as loud in his ears as the rumble of the earth had been. He knew.... he knew that Red Stripe was not the only one crushed under the fragments of the cliff which had protected them. He could smell the blood of the others on the shivering breeze.
His mother...
The hatchlings...
...Wind Runner.
Feather's world had - literally and figuratively - come crashing down around him.
***
Alone.
It had taken a long time for his mind to even acknowledge the word. In the end, though, it was inevitable. Unavoidable and irrevocable.
The ultimate destination of his distantly frantic thoughts.
Feather was alone. Feather was incomplete. Without a pack, or even a single companion, Feather was nothing.
Feather was in complete and utter shock.
The hunter curled up amongst the rubble, hidden from view more by chance then any sense of self-preservation. He lay there like the dead as the bright circle followed its path above him.
When it crested over the canyon, he kept his eyes shut, wishing above all else to avoid the sight of destruction in the full light of day.
When it sunk beyond the other side, he lay there still, clinging tightly to himself like an unhatched infant who had nearly outgrown his shell.
When darkness fell and clouds shrouded the sky, harsh flashes of lightning replacing the steadiness of the stars, he had yet to move. Even when the rain fell, ice cold and sharper than drops of water had any right to be, he only blinked and turned his face to the ground. Amidst the turmoil of his mind, a desperate wish arose - a wish to become as his dead pack, no thoughts to frighten him or emotions to rend his heart. He pressed harder against the fallen cliff side, wondering if he could merge with it.
If only he could become as cold and hard and unfeeling as the stone.
***
When the dawn came, Feather awoke numb. The complaining of his empty stomach drove him out of the shallow crevice he had burrowed into during his sleep, as if trying to place himself with the rest of his pack, where he belonged.
Still, he thought little of leaving the spot. He thought little of anything as he wandered through the canyon. His path was aimless at first, but eventually the scent of blood reached him again, drawing him all but blindly onward until he found a place where another part of the cliff had fallen, taking with it a trio of unfortunate leaf eaters. Their broken bodies were cold, but still more than fresh and meaty enough to satisfy his hunger. He even took the time to savor the food, tearing it into small pieces and swallowing unhurriedly as he stared into space. There was little danger of other predators finding what he had scavenged. His keen senses picked up no trace of a threatening presence within range. The creatures he did scent were all dead or dying.
Feather envied them.
The thought of starving himself to death or throwing himself over the cliff never crossed his mind. Suicide was not a concept considered by his people, or any others, for that matter. Sacrificing oneself to save one's pack was entirely different. Survival was hard enough without needless death by choice.
So Feather ate, and Feather took care of himself, and, sooner than he honestly believed was right, Feather's feelings of loss and despair shifted back to the recesses of his mind, still very present, but not all-consuming. He gradually began to think things through again, rather than acting on instinct. He allowed himself to mourn for his loved ones, but only in a quiet, controlled manner. Most importantly, he began to plan for his new future, knowing with solemn certainty how much danger he would soon be in.
Blindly fearing his solitary state would accomplish nothing, but the fact remained that Feather was alone. An incomplete being could not live until it was whole. Feather's first prerogative - the only thing that mattered beyond the base acts of obtaining food and shelter each day - was to find companionship. A new pack would mean a new life. Until he found that pack, he would not truly be alive.
'Here I was wishing to be dead like the others, when I'm already closer than I thought.' The realization echoed in his skull with a surprisingly wry note. Wind Runner had often teased him that nothing could destroy his sense of humor. Apparently, she was right.
'Of course. Wind Runner is always right.'
'Was.'
Feather sighed heavily and left the partially eaten corpse behind to rot with its fellows. Whether his appetite had been sated by the meat, or simply dampened by the tragic turn of his thoughts, he could not say.
Despite his decisiveness, he took his time exploring the canyon, rather than rushing to the first possible way out he spotted. While some passages had been blocked by the disaster, others had been opened. Before the light of that day had faded, he found himself in what must have once been a sealed cavern. Within it, an underground stream surfaced briefly. The clean water, the earthy floor of the chamber, combines with the daylight filtering through a crack in its ceiling, had been enough to encourage fauna to grow in this sheltered nook. In a land that was quickly becoming a desert, this was an oasis hidden within stone walls. While Feather could not eat the plant life, the water and shelter were both great comforts. It was here that he settled in for the second night alone, and here that he planned to return if he had not left the canyon by the next dusk.
The temptation of the canyon's relative safety and the easily accessible food and water kept him there throughout the following day, but he did not return to the cavern by dusk as planned.
Still wide awake, having fed and rested well during the day, he was lurking in the shadows of the cliff, watching the stars, when the dead silence of the night was disrupted.
Feather immediately focused all of his keen hunter's senses on the disturbance, and only relaxed slightly when it proved not to be a threat.
It seemed he was not the only survivor after all. Though another look at the intruder gave him reason to wonder how much longer she would last. In all honesty, he was quite startled to see her on her feet, especially when he recognized her as the same leaf eater who had gone one-on-one with that giant predator.
He couldn't help but announce his presence.
"Having a bit of trouble there, missy?"
The much larger herbivore jerked at the sound of his voice, and he almost winced in sympathy when the sudden movement left her gasping in pain.
"Easy there," he said amiably. "I won't eat you. You don't look like you have much meat on your bones, anyway." That comment was more of a joke than a real reason. Starved or not, she was more than big enough to fill his stomach. He would have acted differently, had there not been plenty of meat lying around on the canyon floor already. And, plant eater or not, she was probably the only survivor left other than Feather himself. Just like him, she was alone. If he was not going to put her out of her misery, he might as well show her another kindness. "I do know where you can start to fix that problem, though."
He watched in an odd form of amusement as she strained to pick him out from amidst the shadows. He could smell her fear. It mixed with the scent of her blood and weakness in a way that would tantalize any hunter, but he also recognized what strength she still held. She could crush his skull under her feet, or break him against the cliff wall, should he dare attack her while she was already so tense and frightened. Instead, he tried to ease her terror, if only to lesson his own temptation.
"I told you not to worry. I'm alone." Whether or not she heard the inflection of sorrow imbedded in that last admission, he couldn't say, and he told himself that he did not care. He would show her to his cavern oasis. He had no use for the plants there, and it was not as if the flowing water would run out just because he let another drink from it.
He was really only half listening when she asked why he was alone. He answered her automatically, keeping his inner thoughts elsewhere in order to hold his emotions at bay. He did, however, let her know that he recognized her and had witnessed her valiant fight.
The conversation continued, though he was the one doing most of the conversing. He could understand why, of course. Unlike him, she probably lacked the overpowering sense of humor and optimism that kept him thinking clearly even in this miniature apocalypse, and being so badly injured could not have been helping matters any. Finally, in the continued effort to settle her fear, he cheerfully introduced himself.
"I'm called Feather. You'll see why at dawn," he promised. "Now tell me your name."
This was the part of the conversation he expected her to respond most easily to, so he was surprised when she hesitated, her voice breaking with the very first syllable.
"I... I don't remember."
Ah. Well, that was an interesting twist. So, the calamity had erased her memory, whether by a physical blow to the head, or the emotional blow of so much trauma. In a way, Feather was jealous. At the same time, though, he found himself pitying her.
"Well..." the small hunter said slowly, "what name do you think would suit you?" It was the only way he could think to respond, and probably the best. Like him, she needed to move on ahead, no matter what had happened in her past. It was the only way to survive.
It took her several moments to answer, and he waited patiently. A tough decision, finding an appropriate name for oneself. He watched her scrutinizingly as she turned her head towards the sky. What exactly was she contemplating? He resisted the urge to ask, feeling strongly that interrupting her now would be detrimental. Why he cared about a plant eaters well-being so much, he had no idea.
Her voice, soft as it was, shattered the silence once again, the force of it increased greatly by the edge of determination in her tone.
"My name is Cloud."
Chapter Three: Echoes in the Dark
The way seemed agonizingly slow for Feather. He felt terribly exposed, though his senses told him that he and his companion were the only living things in the canyon, if one ignored the small reptiles and insects which had come to feast on the fallen. The pack-hunter fidgeted and darted around his huge, lumbering companion as she limped along, taking her sweet time to find the easiest path through the rubble.
For her part, she was trying to ignore the instinctual nervousness invoked by a predator scampering around beside her. It wasn't as if she really had the energy to waste on worrying. She didn't think Feather was stupid enough to attack her, unless he was lying about the loss of his pack - a distinct possibility, but her own senses were nearly as keen as his. If there were others of his kind around, she should be able to sense them.
Dawn came before they reached the promised sanctuary. As promised, the lightening sky gave Cloud her first proper look at the little hunter and revealed the inspiration for his name. Feather, predictably, was quite thoroughly covered in a fine coat of feathers. All of his breed had them, she knew, but all the ones she'd seen had only tufts and crests on their extremities or along their backs. Feather almost looked like one of the tiny feathered flyers who lived in trees. His feathers were mostly off-white in color, fading to tan at the tips. Orange, red and turquoise markings adorned the plumes of longer feathers on his head, tail and forearms. It was quite a contrast to her dull grey skin, and she found herself marveling at the difference between her kind and his. How a creature of his size could survive with such poor camouflage, even if he did have sharp teeth, was quite a mystery to her.
When the cavern finally came into view, Feather literally quivered with relief, abandoning Cloud's side to rush ahead and vanish into the wide, shadowy opening. By the time Cloud's long neck cleared the entrance and her eyes readjusted to the dark, he was already sprawled out quite comfortably beside the pool of water. How he managed to relax so totally under the current situation, she had no idea, but she rather envied him. Maybe it was just a meat-eater thing.
As she scent of the water flooded her nostrils, she could suddenly think of nothing else. If she'd had the energy to move faster, Feather might have been the victim of a miniature tidal wave as her head hit the water. Instead her decent was graceful, serpentine neck arching like a great tree limb borne down by its own weight until her parched muzzle grazed the surface of the pool. Feathery idly wondered what it would be like to chew on that neck, not that he had any intention of doing so right now. He was tactful enough not to mention his train of thought while the enormous leaf eater next to him guzzled down her fill. Nor did he need to tell her to eat before she gave in to her exhaustion. At least she had some common sense, he decided, though he had to wonder if all of the cavern's rich foliage would be enough to satisfy her for more than a day or two. It would be incredibly embarrassing for one such as himself to go hunting for a plant-eater's food... but that was the way of the pack. The strong brought home food for the weak. Right now, she really was the only pack he had.
"Never thought I'd be sharing a den with a leaf eater," he rambled, tired of listening to the sound of flat teeth grinding. "I expect you'll be staying with me until we each find our own sort of company." He didn't make it a question only because he was afraid that she might say no if he gave her the choice. "Quite a misfit pair we make, eh? You know, my mother once told me a story about the day she met an egg stealer. Okay, not quite the same. Egg stealers are still meat-eaters, but you know how it goes. We stay with our own kind."
"It's always been that way..." she spoke as if out of a dream, the words not really directed at Feather but at someone far away, and long ago. Or so it seemed. Then she blinked and lifted her head a little, not that she needed to in order to make eye contact. "Sorry. I was... remembering. Nevermind."
Feather tilted his head sideways, studying her as if she were a unique oddity. He almost pointed out that she claimed to have lost her memories, but decided against it. Better, he thought, to be more subtle about drawing those memories out. Telling his own stories had seemed to work, so he continued. "Of course, then there was the time Wind Runner and I -- Wind Runner was my mate, by the way -- Wind Runner and I spent four days tracking a herd of domeheads, just to study their behavior. No contact, of course. We didn't care much for the idea of being used as target practice. Have you seen what they do to my kind when they outnumber us? Point is, though, we didn't kill any of them. It was solely for information-gathering purposes... finding out when they slept and how long, how they guarded their nests, when the young ones were most vulnerable... you know the drill."
Cloud gave him a rather pointed look, reminding him without a word that the subject wasn't nearly as pleasant for her as it might be for him. Then, all apparently forgiven, she swallowed her mouthful of greens and leaned against the side of the cave with a sigh. Her kind did not lie down to rest. They were too heavy, but the cavern wall would at least help to keep her weight off of her injured leg. "...My herd was very traditional," she murmured, and Feather looked at her in surprise. "Or perhaps it only seemed that way to me. We never mingled... hardly ever spoke to other sorts. I never really questioned why, but I think..." Her long neck swept slowly around until she was gazing out of the cavern's entrance at the devastation beyond, breathing in the wretched scent of blood. "I think at times like these, the rules are meant to be broken."
"Tell me about your herd," Feather hazarded, finding himself excited despite the oddity of it all that he was actually helping her to remember.
She closed her eyes, looking inward, painstakingly dredging up the shattered memories, piece by piece. "There used to be many of us, when I was young..." Lines were drawn around her eyes and mouth as she frowned in concentration. "Not anymore. Not for a long time. I can't remember why." The tension in her body seemed to reach breaking point and then released, her entire form sagging as she gave up. "I"m sorry. I can't right now. There's too much."
Feather shook his head hard enough to create a rustling sound as his stiff-feathered crest fanned the air. "Don't worry about it. My fault. You look half-dead as it is. Better get some sleep." Her eyes shot open and he met them without flinching, giving his head a small nod to her questioning look. "I promised I wouldn't eat you. Not unless you die in your sleep. And I even promise that I won't help you along there," he added with a smile that he hoped was disarming - rather unlikely given how it showed his teeth. "Seriously Cloud, if you don't wake up in the morning, I'll be quite unhappy. I hate not having somebody to talk to." While his tone of voice was still light, he hoped she understood the sincerity in his words. As different as they were, surely they both shared an equal fear of being alone.
Apparently it was enough. Exhausted, Cloud turned her head away, pressing it to the cool, solid rock, and drifted swiftly into sleep.
***
Clouds dreams were filled with pain and fire and darkness, and the sweetest voice she'd ever heard.
When she woke, Feather was gone. She wondered if he'd found other survivors of his pack after all and chosen to leave her. If that were so, at least he'd kept his promise. He could have led them back to her, taken her in her sleep. She would have been disoriented and at her weakest, an easy enough kill for even three or four of his kind. If anything, however, she left considerably better than she had before. The entire day and most of the night had passed her by. She truly had slept like the dead. It was dawn again, and she was famished.
Feather found her making short work of the plant life in the cave. He could hardly blame her, considering where he'd just been. "That's going to last another three days maybe, at the rate you're going, and only if you keep sleeping half the time," he observed. "We'll have to find more."
She didn't bother to look at him. She could smell that he was alone, and her nose told her also the reason he'd been away. The hunter had been scavenging.
"... I guess I could go looking for other places like this," his voice was a petulant whine, an attempt to disguise the kindness of his offer. "It'd be faster than searching the whole place with you in tow, that's for sure. That leg better heal up quick, missy, or we're not going to get anywhere."
Cloud hid her smile from him. "It would at least speed my recover if I didn't have to walk very much. Are you sure you're up for the task, though, Feather?"
That did it. His little predatory brain wasn't so hard to read after all. "Up to the task? Up to the task? Are you crazy, missy? I was born for the task. Best scout in my pack, I am." Or was, rather, but he didn't bother to correct himself. "You just relax and enjoy being alive. I'll find you more food and a way out of the canyon before you can eat the last leaf in this cave." And with that he set off again, too fired up to consider taking a break between forays. Cloud simply continued to smile and munch her green food, feeling pleased with herself for the first time in memory.
***
Feather's first and second scouting attempts were unsuccessful, his third only marginally more so. There was no other source of green food in the canyon. At least there was none that he could find, which according to his greatly oversized ego meant that there was certainly none at all. What he had found was a break in the cavern wall, what would have been an easy ramp-way to the surface above... except that the quake had flooded it with enough boulders and debris to form a veritable wall. It was possible, he thought, that someone of Cloud's size would be able to move it, but only if they were in peak physical health, and that was certainly not the case with Cloud. He'd just have to keep looking...
While nowhere near being fully recovered, Cloud's injuries were healing much faster than she had predicted. Her leg was most certainly not broken. The pain had lessened immensely during her time in the cave. The bite taken out of her neck still throbbed, but as it did not restrict her movement and had not become badly infected, she was able to ignore it for the most part. It would leave a terrible scar, but there was no helping that. Her other injuries - mostly bruises and bumps, and possibly a slightly cracked rib - were nothing more than annoyances in her exhausted state. The weariness was more emotional than physical now, though. She still could not remember anything of her past beyond brief, nonsensical flashes.
And a strange, pressing urge to travel west.
She'd talked to Feather about it, a little. She'd told him about her dreams in which a small, soft voice called to her, begging her to get up, to stay with... with... whoever it was that spoke. She tried, but she could not place that tiny voice, and in the dream she did not obey its requests. Instead, she told it to go away, far away. She described the path it must follow. Her own words were like a haze. She could remember nothing of what she'd said, except that it all began and ended with the sun. The little voice must follow the sun. Over and over it would pass, and the little one must go to where it touched the ground each day. She strained and struggled to remember who it was she'd told this to, but her own mind proved her enemy. Only the little one's voice stayed with her, always questioning, always pleading.
In the end, it was Feather who ordered her to stop talking about it. Curious as he was, he could see how it hurt her. Though he'd never admit it, her intensity frightened him. The hunter had a theory, though. He did not share it with her for fear of disturbing her mind further, but there was only one thing he knew of which could inspire the level of desperation and care he could hear in her words. This little one she spoke of, this soft voice... surely it belonged to a member of her herd. An infant, at that. No wonder the loss of it had driven her mad.
But there was something else about her story that struck him as vital in an entirely different way.
"You said to travel west? To follow the great circle?" He didn't wait for her nod of confirmation. "That's the way everyone's been going, isn't it? The herds and the packs, all running away because there's no more food here. All of them traveling west." He paused to let her think about that, hoping it would spark her memories just a bit more. "...Whoever it was you lost, they might not be alive, but if they are... They'll have gone west, right? Just like you said?" He raised his forearms in a shrug, claws turned upward beseechingly. "Either way, if we want to live, we'll have to go too."
***
It was another few days before Cloud relented to traveling. During that time, however, Feather had been quite busy with something. When he finally showed it to Cloud, she couldn't help but feel impressed. While she'd been recuperating, the little hunter and been hard at work making the ravine he'd discovered passable. It was a mad scheme, but undeniably clever. He'd worked along one side of the barrier, using the natural cliff face as support, steady and unyielding in contrast to the loose, precariously piled rubble. If he'd wanted to pass this border alone, he could have done it with none of the fuss. His light, agile form was perfectly capable of scaling the wall. But he was determined to keep Cloud with him, at least for the time being, so he'd worked from the top down, pushing every rock he could move over the edge on the canyon side, piling them up below him until a slope began to form. Cloud wondered how much time he must have spent here, when she'd thought he was scouting or scavenging. By the time she was ready to leave, the rubble slope was shallow enough for her to climb - just barely.
In truth the wall of debris was only twice as tall as she was at the shoulder, which may have seemed like quite a lot to the little hunter, but was not so daunting to Cloud herself. The work he'd done had decreased that height on one side, as he'd intended. It would not be easy going, but she was confident that she could manage it.
She didn't quite have the forethought to realize that walking up a slope would put most of her weight on her hind legs.
Feather jumped and scrambled down to her as she winced and almost fell on her injured leg. She braced herself, though, which was lucky for Feather's sake as well as her own because he couldn't have stopped her if he tried.
"Are you alright?!" he shrieked loudly enough to hurt her ears.
"Yes," she said through gritted teeth," now get out of my way before I crush you, sharp tooth." Startled by the viciousness in her voice, he did as told, and Cloud began to haul herself painfully up the rocky slope. Small boulders and slabs of rock shifted under her weight, making her wobble and gasp in pain, but none gave out completely. Slowly and very unsteadily, she made her way to the top.
"Feather..." Her voice was dry and flat. The little hunter looked up to find her head looming over him, suspended on its wiry neck.
He tapped his claws together, looking from her to the other side of the rubble heap and back. "Aheheh... my bad..." He tried one of his disarming grins, hoping she'd take pity on him.
"Well, what now?" Once the moronic - in her opinion - little scavenger had been thoroughly subjected to her most disapproving glare, she looked down again at the path ahead, or lack there of. All of Feather's work had been aimed at the side of the debris pile that faced into the canyon. Somehow, he'd forgotten that there was still a drop on the other side. Because the ravine itself was slanted upward, that outward side of the wall was shorter than the inward side, but not by all that much.
Feather followed her stare down the steep and craggy wall, feeling very foolish. "You could... um... jump?" he suggested vainly, wincing at the sound of his own words.
Cloud gave him that same flat look again. She really didn't need to point out the likely success rate of that plan, or in fact the survival rate. Was this all some mad scheme to make her kill herself so he'd have a guilt-free feast? Surely he wouldn't have gone to this much trouble for such a thing, but then again, she was no expert on the minds of meat eaters.
"Okay, okay..." the hunter was trying to think sensibly now, his eyes darting around in search of a solution. "We can make this work... Hey, see down there, where the rocks slant outward and meet the ground?" He pointed with a claw, and Cloud leaned forward, craning her neck down to study the rocks from a different angle. As she did so, the immense flat boulder on which she was standing shuddered and then shifted abruptly, tilting forward. Before she could scramble off of it, the entire sheet of rock was sliding down the steep side of the wall, taking her with it. She couldn't even scream, it happened so quickly. Then her rock hit the ones Feather had been pointing out. Instead of crashing down on its end and sending her headfirst into the ground - a most certainly neck-breaking experience - it evened out and continued to slide even as it reached the milder slope of the ravine. The combination of its weight and hers brought it to a quick enough halt, and she stepped off hastily, shaking all over.
Feather was gawking at her from the top of the wall, his mouth open wide. She mirrored his look, minus the show of teeth, and then simply turned around and started limping up the much less daunting slope of the ravine, still trembling from terror and - yes, she had to admit it - excitement.
***
They came to the top of the canyon together and shut their eyes against the sun's glare. It was evening, and the bright circle hung huge in the sky, a beacon impossible to ignore.
Cloud sighed. "That's the way." She nodded her head forward, to the west. "It's a long, long way. Past the rock made in the image of my own kind... and beyond that, the mountains that bleed fire."
"Why is everyone going that way?" Feather asked, suddenly feeling a little desperate.
"There's a place, a sort of haven." Cloud explained softly. "It is safe there. All this... the floods and the famines, even the earthshakes, they haven't touched it yet. I don't believe they ever will." She lifted her head high, closing her eyes and basking in the warmth of the sun for a moment. "That's where I told him to go."
Feather glanced at her curiously. "Him?"
"My son." Cloud's voice was gentle but heavy with the newfound memory.
"The voice in your dreams?" Feather guessed, slightly mystified by her story, despite himself.
"The child I almost lost before he was born. The only survivor of his clutch. The only young one in my herd..." It wasn't exactly an affirmative, but Feather didn't need to hear one. The passion in her voice was the same as it had been when she described the dreams to him.
"Does this young one have a name?" he asked delicately, hoping to lighten the mood just a touch without actually changing the subject.
Cloud looked at him briefly, then stared at the ground for a moment before raising her head again and stepping forward into the sunset.
"Littlefoot."