Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapters 2+3
Chapter 5
~Chapter 4~
Grace was the first up. She was watching the sunrise as others yawned around her. Jack came to sit beside her. In his human form, he still had the black wolf ears and the black tail, but he had short, black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. He was dressed in a plain gray shirt and ragged cargo pants. He stood beside her, the exact same height, but skinny. He sat on a stump, relaxed for the moment.
“Another day, another chance that one of us gets caught.” He murmured, barely loud enough for her to hear. She nodded.
“It’s also another chance for us to outsmart them, and take their food.” Grace turned to him. “We need a hunting mission. Soon.”
He nodded. “Yes, but what is there to find? Of course the deer are just fine; there’s plenty of vegetation. But, the amount of meat is decreasing. I still say that we should raid the Scientists’ lab. They’ve got to have food. If we can get it, we can survive, and limit their recources.” He smirked. “We could also raid not only their food, but their records. The less they have on us, the better.” He clenched his fists. She said nothing. “I’ll get someone to hunt.” He stood up without further discussion and walked back to the heart of the camp.
Stella, the lazy snow leopard, took a cat nap in a sunny patch. She was enjoying it, as much as she could while she was sleeping. Her tail twitched invitingly, which of course led to…
“ARGH!” Her head shot up as pain shot up her tail. She whipped her head around to see Colin, the red fox, playing with her tail. She growled menacingly, causing him to look up and his smile to fade. “Get off my tail, you little termite!” She kicked him off, and he ran off with a foxlike squeak. She sighed and laid her head back down. Near her, she heard a small noise that turned into a howl. Her eyes creaked open to see that a red wolf nearby had its head tipped back in a howl to the sun. “Shut up! Some of us are still trying to sleep here, dog!” She hissed.
The red wolf looked at her. “Hmph!” She stuck her snout up and walked away.
Stella rolled over and forced her eyes shut. Of course, she didn’t get anywhere. A shadow intervened, blocking her sun. She growled again and sat up. “You’re blocking my light. Move.” She snarled, before seeing it was Jack. “What do you want, fuzz boy?”
“You are joining a hunting patrol.” He related monotonely.
“Can it, canis. I’m trying to get some sun.” She growled again and laid back down.
“If you don’t go, you don’t eat today.” He informed her, matter-of-factly.
“I can worry about my own survival, thanks.” She stared in to the forest. Her tail flicked in aggravation.
“Get your pelt over there before I skin you and feed you to Drake.” He growled back, crossing his arms. “I’ll throw you out into the forest and tell him to go hunt.”
“Ugh.” She finally dragged herself to her feet. “Fine. Just shut it, and don’t expect to get any of my catch when I get back.” She demorphed and trudged over to the exit of the small place. He watched her, shook his head, and moved on.
Grace sat before her detailed sketch of the forest. She twirled her drawing stick in her hand, wondering what her plans would be. She drew another line or two before being so rudely interrupted by a gecko that landed in the dirt in front of her.
“Graft! You just fell all over the forest.” She sighed.
The gecko looked around. “Whoops. Sorry! Did you know that gravity it a very formidable force, especially when you’re in a tree?” He smiled weakly.
Grace sighed. “Go on!” She chased him off by waving her stick at him, and began to redraw the forest.
“Nice stuff. Who taught you to draw?” Jack appeared at her elbow.
“My art teacher.” She simply stated. “I took it from there.” She stood up, finally finished. “Alright, here’s our camp, and here’s Avian camp.” She pointed them out. “Avian camp is actually closer to the lab, which is why they find more of the patrols. It is also possible that some of the large game that’s still out there has migrated to that area, because it’s not like birds can catch turkeys and mule deer.”
He shrugged. “Some of them are pretty big, but I see your point. What’s the plan?”
“First off, we need to start patrolling up there more. I sent Xylon with a message to Silver so we can get together and talk about….. stuff.” She shrugged. “Now, I think it best you took the patrol out, before Stella breaks someone.” She motioned over to where Stella was, well, being Stella… and yelling at the top of her lungs to another wolf.
“I DON’T CARE! Go stick your dusty old nose in a cobra hole! ” She was screaming.
He sighed. “I’ll do that.”
On her bed with her wings spread out, Silver admired her only remnant of the outside world. It was her favorite book, it had been in her pocket when they caught her, and they didn't honestly care about it. It was The complete works of Mark Twain. She read it constantly.
There was a soft knocking on her door, which was basically a large piece of wood carved to fit the hole and stuck to the tree with make-shift hinges.
“Come in.” She called.
Hope poked her head in. “Hey, Silver.” She came in. “How are you?”
She sat up and folded her wings up. “Hey, Hope. As usual, trying to relax in a tense world and trying to think of how to escape from a fenced in forest. Unfortunately, Mark Twain doesn’t have many answers either.” They both chuckled. “What about you?”
She shrugged. “Leading patrols is getting….. boring. Do you have any more suggestions of what we could do? A lot of people have hobbies, but not everyone.”
Silver considered this. “Do you know any martial arts?”
Hope shook her head.
Silver smiled. Wow, I can’t believe that I came up with an answer so quickly for once. “I believe we have an answer.”
“I suppose.” Cyrus shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know how many people would listen, though.”
“Anyone who’s bored.” Hope told him. “I know I want to. If you just know how to teach it, there’s someone here willing to learn it.”
“Okay.” He shrugged and walked over to talk to some others.
Hope turned to Silver. “Now that that’s that, what else do we need to do?”
Silver pondered this. “I don’t know anything off the top of my head, but probably something along the lines of… Keeping peace, maybe? And not letting anybody crash and burn.” She added, eyeing Paige, an air elemental, in the top of a tree with a new hang glider.
Paige launched into the air. “I’mmmmmm on top of the wooooooorld…..” She sang before nose diving into the trees.
Silver and Hope both cringed. “Too late.”
That night, Merlin sat in the top of a tree, naming constellations. He thought of things that looked like birds and foxes and syringes. But, who was there to listen? No one…..
He sighed, putting his hands behind his head. If there was one thing about living like this, in a forest, contained by a net, it was the great view. The stars were crystal clear, showing how thin the net was. He tilted his head, imagining another constellation, a bird. No, a falcon. He never was any good at Astromony, but who cared? He practically fell out of the tree as there was a rustling noise below him. He carefully leaned over to view Silver, her silver wings almost white in the intense moonlight. Mumbling to herself, she pushed aside ferns and ran her hand over the ground.
“Hmm… No tracks. This must be a recent den, yes, I definitely smell rabbit. Grace was right, there’s more prey taking shelter under these trees.” She stood and her gaze wandered up until she was gazing at him. She placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
He placed his hands back behind his head. “Well, that’s a matter of opinion. What about you? Why aren’t you in bed?”
She looked down again, shaking her head. “You almost sound like someone I know… I am trying to find out if there is some type of prey we are missing because it comes out at night. If we don’t find more, then within a month half of us will be starving, you know.”
His eyes widened slightly. He had never thought about things like that. “Yeah, that makes sense. What else have you been doing lately?” He was beginning to think that he had been wrong. Oh man, no wonder Hope freaked out. Well, it was just a mistake, that’s all.
She shifted, gazing into the trees. “I’ve been going on some solo missions up to the part of the forest near the lab, looking for wanderers. I haven’t seen any new experiments for a while, and now I’m starting to think that they’re not intending to release anymore. You see, that’s inconvienient because if we don’t have more people from the outside world, then we know a lot less of what’s going on out there, and we don’t know if they’ve stopped experimenting, or if they’re doing even more dangerous experiments that are killing more people.”
He nodded and watched her. He was way wrong.
She yawned, finally feeling the effect of late-nights. “Well, I’m going to hit the sack, alright? If you see anything suspicious, don’t feel guilty about waking somebody up. We don’t want to be captured.” She spread her silvery-white wings, the wings of the silver Gyrfalcon, and rose slowly, gliding through the trees like a ghost.
“G’night.” He called after her. “Oh wow… My bad…” He whispered, finally slipping out of the tree.
Hope laid on her bed, awake far into the night. Faith slept happily on the other side of the room. She rolled over and dug her face into her pillow, which was filled with her own down. She was still bugged by what Merlin had said. Maybe Silver’s just a bit distracted. But, not many people have really seen her lately. Mostly during the days, she just disappears. Where? Why? Why doesn’t she tell me? She MUST just be busy with something else….. Must be….. She sighed, filled with doubt. But who was going to mention it? Not her…
The next day was gray and bleak, the day overcast with clouds. Ann, effectively the weather elemental (and amazingly accurate), came through both camps telling them of a 99.1369% chance of rain by mid afternoon. Joy. As always, most people stayed inside, their mood gloomy and damp. Hope was no exception. She sat on her bed, staring at the wall, thinking about her upside down life. Faith was getting a last fly before she was cooped up for the rest of the day, and she could hear Cyrus instructing some ‘students’ in the basic holds of some Korean martial-art called Taekwondo. She sighed with a heavy heart. Her wings twitched, warning her of the oncoming storm. She wrapped them around her to catch her body heat and just sat there, a useless lump, until there was a sound at the door. Knock, knock, knock.
“Go away.” She muttered.
“Tsk, tsk.” Merlin edged the door open. “Someone’s grumpy.”
Yeah, and you’re not helping. “I said go away.” She announced.
“I just wanted to see what you were doing.” He expressed innocently.
“You mean annoy me until I yell at you? You’re pretty close.” She shifted.
“I meant to talk to you about the other day…” He trailed off and he reached out to casually pet her wings. It seemed to be addictive, like stroking somebody’s hair.
“Touch my wings, and you die. I want to be alone. Go. Now.” She hissed, shrinking back. All her feathers puffed up aggressively, and she looked more like a porcupine than a lump.
He backed up. “Alright, I get it. Fine. Alone. I’ll go.” He turned and walked back out.
Faith walked in right after he left, slightly confused. “What was that about?”
“Don’t ask me.” Hope replied coldly, and pulled the cover up over her.
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