The Knight

[Vin]

Marunae
Tundra Hare
29 seasons

There was a river on the very edge of Marunae's territory - or what she liked to call her territory, the patch of woodland where she was allowed to play whenever the great family were at rest in the crook of hill and woodland they called home when the leaves were falling.

On her thirteenth season, two seasons into her Vassaling, she came to the edge of the river and saw something new.

A beast at the base of the little tree in the middle of the river, pushing and cursing at something, getting more agitated as she drew closer.

A fox, tall but young. She had her practice rod with her, but it wouldn't be enough to drive away a beast this size.

She stopped, river water up to her knees, and called out. "Hello?"

He yelped, leapt clear into the air, came back down with a mighty splash, and she couldn't help herself - she laughed, far longer than she should have done.

The fox stood and scowled at her, and his scowl turned in due time into a grin and a chuckle of his own.

"Haeiron," he said, pointing to himself. "Kaj vi?"

"Heron," she pointed to him, and he shook his head with a smile. "Marunae," she pointed to herself.

"Muneree," he nodded, and she shook her head. "Mi korektas ĉi tiun arbon. Ĉu vi donus al mi tiun bastonon?" He gestured to the little tree, its support half washed-out from beneath it.

She saw a few stout sticks and a lot of twine tangled in its roots, and nodded. "You need bigger sticks," she said, and darted away. "I'll find some! You disentangle the twine!"

"...Kaj ŝi foriris. Mi devus liberigi ĉi tiun ŝnureton..."

For a full month, she kept the secret. She tore through her Vassaling every day, from sunrise drills to the afternoon's marches and ceremonial practices. She lied that she was learning to hunt and went out into the forest after the evening meal. Heron always helped her catch something, so it wasn't entirely false.

They saved their tree, and built a shelter on the opposite riverbank, and she showed him how to fight with stave and sword, and he showed her the fireflies he had trained to fly about and look like the night sky and cluster wherever he was so that she would know where to find him.

And then the great family left.

She hoped desperately that she had managed to explain, to break through the difference in their words to tell him that this was their last day together. She hoped that the extra squeeze on the end of their last embrace, or the kiss on his cheek, would tell him that this might be goodbye but it was only for now.

She wondered if anybeast in her cadre knew his language.



Sixteen seasons later she forged through the forest, just a little too far ahead of the others. Their training would tell them something was wrong, but they all knew that she was of the great family and that this little outskirt of the Green Forest was well known to her and with luck, they would put her speed down to that and nothing else.

She burst through the underbrush and there was the river and the tree, a cluster of fireflies in the branches where she had desperately hoped they would not be. Fully grown now, even in her armor she could outstrip most of the other beasts in her cadre. Provided they still had not realised they had a reason to run, she might even have enough time.

"Muneree?"

He was a great broad beast now, red of pelt and long of tail and at least a head taller than her.

"Marunae," she choked, the old correction forcing its way out as she slipped forward, footpaws racing beneath her, skidding across rivermud and gravel until she crashed into him, heedless of the breath she knocked out of him or the bruises she likely left with her armor.

"I couldn't find anybeast who spoke your language, I'm so sorry, I don't even know why I came back, I just wanted to-"

"You have to run," she roughed out in the common tongue. "Rest of cadre, right behind me."

"You speak-"

"Run! Now. Please. Find you again, after the war. Run!"

He ran.

She doused herself in water to wash away his scent. The rest of her cadre slowly emerged from the undergrowth.

"I thought I saw something," she said. "Just fireflies."

They flared, and fell, and faded, and she finally realised what it was that had been bothering her all these seasons.

If she and a southerbeast had met here by coincidence all that time ago...

The Green Forest must be very thin here.