The trees were not supposed to move the way they did. They were too tall, stretching so far into the sky that the dim impression of their foliage became colorless and melded with the clouds. They were too sturdy, half a mile in circumference, unshakeable, immovable. They were too old, still growing ever taller while their roots dug so deep into the ground that they clawed straight through the other side, to take the forms of trees themselves. A world of nothing but trees, everywhere, and only darkness between them.
They were too tall to reach the ground again. Too sturdy to bend. Too old to be uprooted.
Sade tilted his head.
Like this, they almost looked the way they were supposed to. But when he raised his head again, the trees were still bent sideways.
“The wind,” came a voice from behind. “It is too strong. We need to return home.”
“Home,” echoed Sade. Silver eyes squinted at the trees. “We are home. Aren’t we?”
“The wind is too strong here. We need to return home.”
The thief turned his head.
“You are annoying,” he said. “Tell me why. Why is the wind stronger here? Where is home?”
The yellow-eyed huntress held out a hand.
“A storm is coming,” she told him. “Home is home. Home is safe. Home will not blow away when the trees do.”
Between them, her hand hung in the air, and she waved her fingers at him.
“I don’t understand,” Sade repeated.
To this, the huntress replied: “You don’t have to.”
He looked back to the trees. She caught him by the collar of his shirt. And behind them, as she dragged the thief through the darkened woods, the trees began their descent. It would take arcs for them to reach the ground.
“Lest’ilei?”
Air reinflated a set of lungs, cold enough to freeze them from the inside out. A shock of breath so sudden and hard that it hurt to draw it in, and only slightly less to force it back out. And around these small, air-rich lungs wove brittle, ivory curvatures, until enough of them had formed to encase these lungs with hollow bones. Bird bones. The wrong bones, on the wrong animal, but a ribcage all the same.
“Lest’ilei, come out!” a voice said, muffled through several feet of snow.
But the creature did not have ears yet to hear it. It had only lungs, and ribs, and from these parts next came a curved spine. A sternum. Scapulas, clavicles. A skeleton formed of bones fragile enough to shatter through them with sharp teeth. At the ends of four legs came four dark paws. And burrowing through a heavy layer of snowfall, a pointed snout emerged. The rest of the fox cub’s body shook the snow from its fuzzy, dust-colored coat, and Lest’ilei bumbled out of the pile to try and find where the other animals had gone.
The surface did not look as the young fox cub remembered it. Before his hide had sloughed free from his flesh, before his flesh cooked to blackening, before his bones became as charcoal in the fire of his camp – he remembered the trees being brittle and bare, the way they always were in winter. He remembered the ground being far colder, hard-packed beneath his paws. Now he traipsed through a blanket of snow so high that when he stepped too heavily, his tiny body sunk so deep that he had to dig his way out of it again. And around him, the trees were dense, their leaves bright and green above the white world below.
This is not the way things are supposed to be, thought the fox cub. He continued to pad through and over the snow, in the direction of a few other small voices in the trees. It has never been so warm with snow on the ground. And it has never snowed in this forest!
The fox cub shook his head. He crossed into the shadows of the trees, and thought: The world has never been so beautiful!
In no time at all, the young fox had traveled far through the forest, and the trees began to grow sparse. Here, the snow had melted, or perhaps it had never fallen to begin with. Here, the ground cracked beneath his paws, and the vivid canopy of the forest gave way to dead wood. The wind howled louder, whipped faster with its current unbroken. Centered in the desolate clearing stood a tree that grew differently from all the others, twisted and sharp. And at its base, he saw the other animals that shared his forest: the rabbit, the pheasant, the carp, and the wolf.
“Lest’ilei,” the pheasant cooed. “You’re finally here!”
“Took you long enough!” said the rabbit.
“I was busy dying,” the young fox said. The other animals laughed, and came around to embrace him, but the fox cub could not help but feel confused. That was not what I meant to say. But they liked it. They have not laughed with me before.
“Lest’ilei, you’re going first,” the carp insisted, flopping uselessly in the dirt. “Touch the tree!”
The young wolf whined beside the carp, and though she did not speak with words, Lest’ilei understood what she was trying to convey.
Storm coming, the wolf warned. Go now?
“Storm? What storm?”
“Lest’ilei! Touch the tree!”
And from the distance came a great rumbling, a wail so deep it sounded as if the ground could have split apart at the force of it. Lest’ilei startled, fuzzy fur standing on end, but the other animals only laughed. The carp, flailing slower with each passing trill, gurgled out, “Tou–ch tree! Co-gh– Come on!”
“Lest’ilei!”
The fox cub turned his head. The laughing creatures dissipated, and left but their shadows and the echoes of their cackling behind. Lest’ilei peered behind the old twisted tree.
A pair of arms poked out from the darkness of the forest. They reached out towards him, palms up, but he could not see who they belonged to.
“Lest’ilei,” the voice said again. He raised one of his front legs and pawed at his ear, pretending as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Lest’ilei! To me, little one. A storm is coming, and we need to go home.”
Spoiler
At whatever point Jinyel enters the dreamscape, he might notice these things:
Everything is happening very quickly.
There are noises in the forest that if he tries to focus in on, seem to disappear, only to return once he's not focused on them.
Similarly, the dreamscape is constantly moving, almost in swirls -- and only at the edge of periphery. Like the noise, the movement stills when focused on.
Jinyel had known this task would not be simple. He felt the bond within himself, strong as a chain, but it was no easy thing to track down. The bond moved, and had he not been a practiced hunter then he would not have known how to find it. often left tracks inside one another.
Their first campsite was near the Hollow Prince’s ruins, with shadows in the far distance that suggested Almund. The city itself had no manifestation in Jinyel’s dreamscape, but there was the impression of it, like a memory he couldn’t quite recall.
Tracks led away from that campsite, through forest and past the scent of horses. Many miles away was a second campsite, walked through by man and wolf and horse alike. There were the remains of a fire, and a frozen stream which led southward.
This, Littlespark chirped. I remember this.
Jinyel walked these trails with cloven hooves, and the anak curled nervously between his antlers. In dreams, it took its true form as an axolotl of charcoal and ember, and did not singe the stag when it rested upon him.
We are close. Jinyel pressed his muzzle to the ground. Once I have found it, you must reawaken.
The next leg of the trail was clear enough, but not without its dangers. The Neverending Wolves waited patiently in the forest, though none came forward to bite. Were they hunting him, he wondered, or simply following? Did they know he sought another dreamer? Did they hold back only in anticipation?
He ran, but they kept pace. He looped his path back and forth, but they would not be thrown off. There came a moment, after miles of running, that he felt their eyes disappear from his back. For that moment, he foolishly believed he had lost them.
And then his hooves fell upon the third camp, tucked at the edge of a half-frozen pond. Dream-horses stood alongside it, and the smell of fresh food filled the stag’s nostrils.
Here, Littlespark said. The wolves know you are here.
It is no matter. The stag shook his antlers, and dislodged the anak into the camp’s firepit. They are my own dreams. They will not follow me into the dreams of another.
But they will wait, Littlespark pointed out. They will know this is where you have gone. They will come for you when you return.
Then I will deny them, as I always have. The stag looked into a cave which had once been shallow, but now extended into a tunnel so deep he could not see its end. Watch over us, Littlespark. I do not know when I will return.
The stag kept his head low and his steps light as he ventured forward. He did not dare to scrape his antlers along the tunnal wall, or to strike any root with his hooves. He could not tell where he ended and the other began, and so he treated every stretch of dirt as if it would harm them both if mishandled. He expected some barrier, perhaps a door, which would mark the boundary between them, but none came. The tunnel continued to be a tunnel, and the earth continued to be earth.
And then, eventually, there came a light.
The stag smelled forest, water, and wild animals. For a moment, he feared that he’d taken the wrong path, and would somehow emerge back into his own dreamscape. But the forest on the other side was wholly different than the one he was used to. It was slanted. It was dark.
It was colossal.
The stag, upon emerging into this new dreamscape, almost stumbled from how far he craned his neck. All around were trees larger than legend, wider than buildings, taller than cities. Each one was bent at a lethal side-angle, each one on the verge of falling. The ground rumbled. The wind moaned. The air was warm, and yet the ground slept beneath a blanket of snow.
There was a circular curveto the wind ― what blew from right to left, the stag spied far away blowing right to left. Though only shards of the sky were visible between those impossible branches, there were almost the dark lines of a whirlwind in the making. Whenever he looked too hard at something, it stopped moving. The harder he listened to the wind, the harder it became to hear.
This dreamscape was more mercurial than anything he had seen before, and he did not know if that was because it was a dream, or because it was Sade’s dream. The longer he looked at those trees, the more they seemed to be falling.
The stag took off at a swift run toward the dreamscape’s center. This was a dreamscape which didn’t want to be looked at, and he indulged it as much as he could. The sounds didn’t want to be heard, so he ignored them. The movement did not wish to be seen, so he did not look. Only one thing drew his true focus: the center of the storm, and the one snowless clearing in this sea of white.
The northstar of this dreamscape was another tree, smaller and so twisted as to look dead. Around its base crowded animals ― or, one animal? At first there were many, laughing and conversing with one another, and then they disappeared. All but one.
Lest’ilei, said the wind.
To me, said the shadows.
A storm is coming, said the sky.
The dreamer was somewhere in that clearing. He had to be. Was Sade the last animal, or the shadowy hands reaching for the animal? The stag ran, but everything changed moment by moment and he did not know what would remain in the clearing when he arrived.
Sade! the stag cried out. Do you hear me? Do you know the sound of my voice?
Spoiler
Jinyel is in the form of a stag, running toward the central clearing. He is still at a distance by the time the other animals have disappeared.
Jinyel is using Competent Discipline and Meditation to avoid looking at/hearing aspects of the dreamscape which do not want to bee seen/heard.
A disturbance rippled outward through the trees and waved their mighty trunks like reflections over water. Something new had entered the forest, and in doing so, altered it – but it was merely one disturbance of many that shook through the ever-shifting dreamscape.
This dream did not take kindly to its own drug-induced existence.
At the base of the twisted tree sat the little fox cub. From one end of the clearing, the arms beckoned him closer. From the other came the crunch of snow packed down by hurried hooves.
“Lest’ilei,” urged the other side. “Quickly. Before it reaches us.”
“I do not mind storms,” decided the young fox, unbothered by the rumbling and grumbling of the darkened skies beyond the trees. For this fox was warm, with plenty of snow to play in if he wished. If he could be this happy when things were upside down, he thought, and the warmth of spring could still reach him when it snowed, then it only made sense that if it stormed, such a lovely day could not be ruined by the rain.
Sade?
The little fox looked up.
A shadow gazed out into the endless forest, perched upon a knot in the twisted tree.
This is not the way things are supposed to be, the shadow hissed. You did something. Now the storm is coming too soon.
Sade, the little fox thought again, pondering the word. Where had it come from? What did it mean? Was it another creature, or a thing?
The dry earth cracked outward from the stag’s mighty hooves when the disturbance at last reached the clearing. Atop the tree, the shadow dissipated, as a cloud of smoke that sailed forever upwards into the ever-shifting atmosphere of the dream. Startled by this new arrival that was not the pheasant, the rabbit, the carp, nor the wolf, the little fox hopped back.
In the trees behind him, the hands moved. A trail of each previous motion followed every gesture, as if in echo – in loop. In sign.
Stranger.
“Sade,” the fox cub called back to the stag, silver eyes a-blur with wonder at the sight of this new creature in his forest. He had never seen any beast like this one before. Would it laugh with him, or at him?
Come no closer, signed the hands, while the voice behind them continued to call out to the fox.
“Lest'ilei! Come now, quickly!”
But the little fox was curious, and though he bumbled one half-hearted step closer to the edge of the forest, his head turned back to the new arrival.
The dream did not wish to be entered. It did not like it. A ripple of temporality followed the stag’s hooves no matter how lightly he stepped, and he did step very lightly as he broached the clearing. Let the dream rage at him, defy him, try to shield Sade from him ― defending itself was only natural. Only fair. The stag knew full well that he did not belong here, and his only justification for this invasion was the fact he wanted it.
Lest’ilei, called the darkness once more. The storm is coming.
The stag saw three things in the clearing: a shadowy figure perched in the tree, the grasping ephemeral hands from the forest, and the little fox cub to whom they both called.
But this, like everything else, changed in another moment.
First, the shadow in the tree dissipated, like so much smoke stolen by the wind.
Second, the fox looked up in wonder, and the stag could not help but wonder back at its small size. Was this the dreamer? It must be, from the way all things arranged themselves around it.
Third, those darkforest hands from the trees signed their discomfort ― and their warning. There was a steadiness to them which the stag could see, though not explain. Those hands, and what they wanted, were woven deep into the fabric of this dreamer’s being.
So the stag would not defy them.
The fox cub took one step of halfhearted obedience, looking over its shoulder all the while. It had no memory of the name ‘Sade,’ so the stag presumed he’d do no better with ‘Hunter.’ The fox was young, curious, and still in that time of its life where play and delight were of utmost importance.
So the stag turned aside and put his antlers to the snow behind him. With a flick of his head, he showered the white powder over himself and the clearing.
The hands forbade him from coming closer, so he didn’t come closer. But he circled and huffed, and every now and then flicked more snow between himself and the dreamer. How did foxes interact? Wolves, he knew, requested games by play-bowing, so he made his best attempt. His shoulders pulled painfully at the gesture, because he dared not use any magic here to soothe the injury, but it was something he could endure. For this.
Sade, the stag explained, is an adventure. Sade is what it means to travel one end of the world to the other, and see all delights in between. Sade is what runs as swift as the river, and free as the wind. It plays as long as it wishes, and eats all it can hold. You would make a fine Sade, I believe. The best Sade there has ever been. What do you think, dear one? Could you do it? Only the bravest and cleverest can be Sade, and I know you are those things.
Dutifully, the stag swept its antlers through the snow – once, twice, again. And though only handfuls of the cool white powder were carried with each flick, the dream would not have him showered with only a pittance of snow for his efforts. For each snowy flick of his head, the stag lifted with him the delight of the little fox cub, and a cloud’s worth of soft snow sprinkled gently over them.
The stag wanted to play with him.
Lest’ilei lowered his head, little tail fluffing as he mirrored the stag’s play-bow.
The other animals never play with me, he thought. Even when he tried his best to entice them. Now, this strange and magnificent beast appeared from nowhere to entice him to play, on a day where everything was wrong, and everything was wonderful.
Sade is an adventure, or so his new stag friend said. The little fox came closer, hopping playfully. The stag said so many nice things about what it meant to be a sade – or was it to be Sade? But he still did not know if it was a creature, or a thing. And for all those great things, he knew that he could not be Sade, not like the stag believed he could.
“I don’t think I am a Sade,” said the fox cub, and he hoped that his stag friend was not disappointed. “I am a Lest’ilei. I made my mother sick, and my father sick, too. And if you get too close to me, then the sickness will reach you!”
The little fox did not sound sad, the way a child might have otherwise if they believed in such a thing. He laughed at the stag and hopped a step back, towards the waiting hands.
“But I have been many things before. I could try to be a Sade. What are you?”
The hands from the dark forest seemed to halt, or at least they did not immediately snatch away the cub. The dreamer was delighted by this shower of snow, and the dream likewise responded to make that shower into a blanket. The fox hopped a few steps forward, mirroring the play-bow with his tail puffed out like a new fir bough ― a good start, but only a start.
The cub did not believe it was a Sade. Or perhaps, it did not believe it was adventurous or brave or clever, or all those things which the stag knew Sade to be. That was alright; cubs as young as this one often had no choice but to believe what they were told, or what they saw with their own eyes. The stag was just one person; he wouldn’t pull the fox from this river by swimming against the current.
The stag hummed, and knelt on his front legs. It brought his eyes closer to the fox’s level, but was also poised to run if the occasion called for it. He dug his antlers into the ground, clearing a patch out of the snow in front of him.
I don’t think you are a Sade yet, the stag replied. But who am I to know? A mighty oak is a mighty oak, even if first it seems like an acorn. I think there is only one way to tell which of us is right ― I shall plant you, and we shall see what grows. Look, I have made a hole in the snow, and once you are inside I shall cover you up in it. An acorn will thrive in snow, will it not? I’m sure I have that correct.
The stag’s eye glinted with mischief, an invitation to be challenged for his silly gardening practices.
I am many things. I am prey, and I am Hunter. I am nephew, and I am orphan. I am wanderer and root-grower, but to you, Lest’ilei, I am a humble gardener in search of the right acorn. You do not avoid the snow at all, with your fine red fur and your thick tail ― I think you might be the most snow-ready Sade I have seen yet. I have no fear of sickness -- I caught a cold just this tentrial past, and a fever the tentrial before that. Lay all the sickness upon me you wish, dear one, but it will only slow me down.
Acorns were not supposed to grow in the snow, the way that this stag said they did – but neither was the snow meant to last through such pleasant warmth. The little fox met the stag’s mischievous glance with a suspicious silver stare of his own, but he did not argue his new friend’s logic. Maybe that was what had been wrong with everything, all along. He had just been listening to all the wrong people!
A patch of snow was cleared for him, and beneath it, the grass stood fresh and green. The faint, sweet scent of it caught the fox cub’s nose. At the shadowed edge of the forest, the hands withdrew.
“When it snows, an acorn grows,” he decided, so that it might be so. It made more sense than anything that the pheasant, the rabbit, or the carp had ever told him. The wolf said no such things, but she was kinder. She did not laugh at him the way the others did. She did not laugh at all.
While he listened to the stag’s introduction, Lest’ilei hopped another curious step closer. He puffed proudly when his coat was praised, and flicked his fluffy tail with an enthusiastic swish.
Dear one, he thought. No one but the stag has called me this before. Am I a Sade, or am I this?
“I can be an acorn,” said Lest’ilei. “If you would like me to.”
So saying, the little fox made another mighty hop, diving into the hole in the snow.
An arrow caught him mid-air.
A sharpened bone point pierced his stomach and ripped through to the other side. The fox was stuck on the arrow, its wooden shaft shimmering with a flood of silver blood.
“You were looking in the wrong direction,” came a voice from atop the tree. The same one that had called out to the fox, with a bow held by the same hands that had reached out to him. There, where the shadow had been, now perched a woman with yellow-bright eyes.
A hunter.
The fox cub kicked and cried out, but it was useless. He was too small, and the world swirled around him in a way that it did not around the woman in the tree.
Around her, the dream came into focus.
“You called a mask by my name,” she scolded the stag. “Who are you, to confuse me this way? And do not dig another hole to plant me in, or I will mount your pretty head upon this tree.”
Spoiler
Oopsie, baby fox was bait.
If Jinyel looks directly at the dreamer, he might notice that the movement at the edges of his vision and the noises on the wind briefly disappear.
Nearer. Softer. Sweeter. The fox moved forward, unconvinced by what the stag said, but kind enough not to contradict it. Regardless of what seemed true, regardless of what snow or acorns actually did, it was willing to try for no other reason than the stag had requested it.
It did not reach the hole.
The stag lurched forward without thinking, to shelter the fox although he knew there was little to be done. His first instinct was to charge, to bellow, or worse, to unshoot this creature with magic ― but he dared to do none of it. One heartbeat of half-movements passed as the stag looked around, at the fox, at the tree, at the arrow which had sprung from it.
The dream continued. There came no rip in the sky, nor scream of Emeyans from beyond. Only wind, noise, the twisted tree, and the woman perched within it.
The dreamer hadn’t been hurt. The dreamer would have awoken, otherwise, and the stag been thrown out. That mercurial swirl of the land continued around a new lodestar, and the fox was not the center of this at all. The fox was no dreamer, only an aspect of the dream. A part of who this person was, but not the whole of it.
There was something to be said that the dreamer had slain this part of itself. But that was the dreamer’s right, no matter what the stag felt about it, and he would not defy its right within its own dream.
A woman sat in the twisted branches, her bow leveled at the stag. Here, this quest revealed its true danger: the stag could be physically harmed. The woman could not. Nor could the fox cub, truth be told, although it had shaken him to see it shot. So long as all damage was non-lucid and self contained, that damage was natural. It was wrong of him to interfere.
I see you. The stag’s voice shook at first, but then he steeled it. You are cruel to yourself. I wish it were not so.
She, like many other things, seemed unhappy with the idea of being approached. So the stag remained in place as he looked down to the dying cub, but his form changed ― the antlers crumbled, the deerskin receded, bones shortened and lengthened until there was no longer a stag at all.
Jinyel knelt beside the fox cub, picking it from the ground as gently as he could. He didn’t remove the arrow or offer bandages, he simply held it, and gave a look to the woman which bordered on sorrow. That wasn’t a form he had expected the dreamer to take, but he supposed it was no less strange than his own.
“I am many things. I did not lie to this part of you, nor will I lie to any other. My name is Hunter, for that is what I often am. What name shall I call this mask? And what name shall I call you? I have not come with the intent to confuse you, or to take from you. I have come to find my dear one.”
Spoiler
Jinyel keeps an eye on the surrounding forest with Competent Detection, on the lookout for activity which isn’t inside the clearing.
“Dear one,” the yellow-eyed huntress all but hissed through her teeth.
The invader was a creature of the forest no longer. Antlers disappeared before her eyes, becoming dust, becoming snow beneath hooves that were not hooves by the time it reached them. What once bellowed from the mouth of a stag came now from human lips, human hands, human flesh.
It made no sense, as was often the case within this world. She had her questions, and bit half of them back behind her sharp tongue, for they would do her no good to ask them here in a senseless place.
The stag took now the form of a young man, and knelt in the unnatural snow to cradle the bleeding fox cub within his arms. It angered her, the way he had sheltered it. The way he held onto it now, his hands gentle, careful. As if any harm he could do would make a difference to the dead.
Hunter, he called himself. For that is what I often am.
And this, too, made little sense to her.
Was he Hunter, or merely a hunter?
Was Hunter a creature, or a thing?
“That one was Lest’ilei,” said the huntress of the fox within his arms. “It is dead. Let go of it.”
She spared but a glance for the fox he held. It had stilled not long after he had gathered it into his arms, its fuzzy fur wet and shimmering.
“I am…”
There, just for a moment, she had held onto a name. She had known it when she’d heard it, but it still escaped her now. For a moment her grip faltered.
...Wrong, she thought, but could not place how.
He had called himself Hunter more than once. But she could not peel back the layers enough to understand why it struck her as sharply as her arrow had shot through the fox.
“...Sade,” she said, though it sounded more like a question than an answer. “I am…”
Her yellow glare narrowed on the young man below her tree. Without a word, she lowered her bow, hopped down from her perch, and came closer to inspect the strange and gentle invader.
“Sade,” she said again. “I am…”
It made no sense to her, this repetition, but she could not stop it, could not feel any more confident in her answer no matter how many times she said it or how much she knew it to be true. Sade did not mean anything to her. She was Sade – which meant nothing at all; which meant–
There. Hunter. She knew him, she knew this face. A flicker of recognition swirled within her yellow eyes as she stared down at the kneeling hunter.
“I have seen you,” said the huntress. “Below me, in the forest. I have seen you walk through the trees. But never here.”
This dreamer knew things. Not directly, but surely; she echoed his name and his ‘dear one’ in a way that suggested impact. She didn’t seem particularly fond of them, but he didn’t need her to be. It was enough that she knew them.
Jinyel did as the dreamer asked, and set the slain fox gently upon the ground. He covered it with snow, as he had once promised to do, until only the feathered vanes could be seen in the white. This fox, this mask, was the one called Lest’ilei.
The woman…
… the woman was Sade. Maybe. The way she said it, neither she nor Jinyel seemed quite sure.
She slithered out of her tree. Light steps met the earth. The woman stalked toward Jinyel, bow lowered but not yet put away, and her eyes were yellow with… whatever yellow meant to Sade. A sharp difference from the red and pink Jinyel had come to admire.
Jinyel remained at a crouch. As the woman drew closer, he brought up one knee and set his elbows upon it, arms extended, empty palms facing up. His dream-self had a dagger sheathed at the hip, but that was his only weapon. There was a quiver belted to his other side, but no arrows within it. Instead the quiver spilled over with herb bundles, with pouches, and with colorful rocks attached to its leather. Memories of interesting stones Jinyel had come across here and there. His shirt was loose and sleeveless, and his bandages easy to see underneath.
The position was carefully relaxed, and Jinyel used all his strength to remain motionless, no matter how close she came or whether she touched him. The hunter only met her gaze in glances, from caution as well as habit. For most of his life, eye contact had meant one of two things: closeness, or an attack. He did not wish to put either of those things upon this woman ― upon Sade ― unless she first put them upon him.
What Jinyel did look at without any reluctance was her hands. Not her bow or arrow, but the fingers around them, and the way they curled or straightened. That was the dreamer’s full name, after all. Sade of the Perfect Hands.
“I have walked through the forest below you.” An acknowledgement, and also a memory. In the waking world, Sade had mentioned dreaming of him. “Have you ever come down through the forest to speak to me, Sade? I struggle to recall. I wish to recall, if you will help me.”
shook the snow from its fuzzy, dust-colored coat, and Lest’ilei bumbled out of the pile to try and find where the other animals had gone.
