First Crusade

Metal under her paw was warm, like a big bear. Krina pressed herself against the wall, closed her eyes and plunged into her own thoughts: cozy, big, clumsy… Now when Arraina is leading the Seekers forward, they will definitely find a Warm Sunset. It's very, very soon, just stretch out your paw! And here it is, the sun… The bear thought about her father's hives: how are they doing there, little bees? Old Moody went to the south, escaping from the cold, and if the Seekers manage to return the heat, everything will be fine with the old man and his apiary…

 Trying not to detach herself from the warm wall, Krina hobbled like a clumsy crab to the window and stared at the snow-covered plains floating far below. I think there was a town here-a nice pastoral town—and then it started snowing. And walked, and walked… And walked… And the town was gone: only a snowy plain under the cold sun. And above, further away, where it is darker - a snow fog, a blizzard wall, in it…

 For a moment, Krina thought she saw a huge silhouette in the distance, in the middle of a storm… She smiled and shook her head. What just does not fancy. Fata morgana, fata snezhana… But the silhouette appeared again - there, at the edge of vision, and the bear frowned, gradually peeling away from the window. Huge silhouettes in a snowstorm are not the best sign. Whatever they are. Krina scratched her head and thought.

 She was clearly not appreciated for her quick thinking.
...

Tavru wanted to build a small house with three small flower beds, small windows and a small courtyard. Everything small seemed cozy to him, and therefore the rather big problem of the freezing world especially annoyed him. There was simply nowhere to take comfort in a world where you can't go out into the fresh air without freezing your hooves off.

Tavru was a bull. De jure. The only one from the Celeste clan on a flying ship, which caused its own problems: his brothers, genetically related to bulls, were more like antelopes… Which, however, also belong to the bovine genus. But try to explain it to the blockheads who determine the value of the beast by its horns… And the power of his clan. The Celesti clan could boast neither horns nor brute force: only scientific research and, as someone illiterate would say, dark magic. Pha.

Thoughts of houses, horns and ungrateful brothers fell out of my head when I collided with something big and fluffy.

- Tavru! Figure! The storm! Whopper! Mad…ness! Fuf…

The bear couldn't catch her breath and shouted random words with a solemn intonation. Krina was one of the few people he didn't mind spending time with. She couldn't be called very smart, but a heart of gold covered all her disadvantages.

- Calm down. Inhale, exhale, think about your bees— - the young celeste was not one of those who knew how to calm his friends well, but this was enough for Krina, — what did you see?

— I look out the window, so, and there in the storm like a bear is standing, a giant, and waving his hands, well, at first I think, well, well, you need to sleep more, and then… In general, this is not good!

 Tavru closed his eyes and plunged into thoughts: cold, fast and not very pleasant. An optical illusion. The madness of Krina. A statue or ruins. All together? "Kai, if only it wasn't you, you fool...". Celesti opened his eyes:

— It seemed to you.

...

She ran her paw over the surface of the compass and peered into its interior, clicking mysterious mechanisms. A unique masterpiece, the principle of which has never been revealed, the last hope, a thin trembling arrow on which the entire animal family hung.

 Arraina shivered and sighed. The whole city, with all its metal, all its inhabitants, all the engines, screams, laughter, was now behind her. And on her shoulders. And inside, somewhere in the area of the heart.

It was hard for her, but she forged herself into metal. She had made everyone believe in a little fluttering arrow, and now she was afraid of only one thing: to be a liar, who doomed everyone to a cold death.

Hryx, an experienced boar mechanic, coughed loudly behind him. Arraina turned around and expertly put on a reassuring smile: another fluttering arrow supporting the animals around her. The boar instantly stretched out, smiled and even seemed to turn pink under the dense brown stubble:

- I report, all engines are normal. False alarm. We go smoothly.

 A couple of hours ago, several animals reported that they heard a prolonged roar, resembling the grinding of metal. Hricks was afraid that the hull of the ship had been damaged, or something in the engine had failed:

- Never built such huge ones. A miracle of technology, Arr, a miracle of technology—" he liked to repeat.

"The blizzard is coming," Arraina said thoughtfully, peering at the gloomy wall that was approaching the city.…

 A huge figure appeared out of the darkness right in front of her.

The screech of metal, like the moan of a thousand whales, swept through the city. When everything began to tilt to the side, and countless mugs, plates, ladles and honey-knows-what fell to the floor, Krina realized that it was time to start panicking.

 She decided to panic in a classic way, shouting and running in circles towards the exit. Considering that there was no way out of the ship, Krina decided to panic towards the deck of the ship.

 The fuse went out when she ran out into the corridor, ruined, filled with screams, in which there was real horror. Krina, on the other hand... could not physically feel fear. Sometimes, among friends, when they found a very creepy caterpillar, she screamed along with everyone so as not to break the unity of the fear, but inside she never felt anything like that. However, she could feel sympathy, sadness, grief, and this cooled her desire to panic. Something has happened. Something very bad.

 A clawed paw grabbed Tavru by the shoulder and spun him around sharply. Krina carefully looked at celeste, turned him around a little and put him on the ground:

"You look... Alright." What's happening?

Tavru shrugged nervously, throwing off his girlfriend's paw:

- We hit into something. I don't know, I'm just going upstairs. Everything is like in a damn book, friends go to investigate the cause of the disaster.

Krina smiled good-naturedly and ruffled his mane:

- That's the mood! I like that. An adventure!

But Tavru didn't think about adventures.

He was thinking about his childhood.

And about my best friend... called Kai.

They met back in the cribs—the only celeste and the only polar bear, l'dana, among the wild boars. Both did not like to run or throw a ball, mostly reading books or doing crafts. Tavru preferred to sculpt houses (small and cozy), Kai - animal figures. Boars preferred to take houses and crush animal figures with them. After that, Kai and Tavru preferred to roll plasticine deep into the fur of bullies in a sleep-hour, and then hid in the branches of a large tree and giggled at the angry piglets.…

It was warm and... cozy.

Then, when they got older, everything changed. Kai engaged in serious research, went on an expedition to the north and returned ... different.

...Celeste's thoughts were interrupted by another jolt that tipped both him and the heavy bear onto the wall of the hovering ship.

— Yes, it was awkward, - Krina said thoughtfully, pulling out the bike she had crushed from behind her back…

Somehow she managed to remain carefree even in such a situation.

With difficulty, they got up and wandered towards the deck, stumbling over broken things and other unlucky fellows…

”Not a compass, not a compass, not a compass...", thought Arrayna, dodging a huge bone paw piercing the hull of the ship. There was no room for other thoughts. Very close by, Hryx fired from his huge cannon, almost deafening Arrayna in one ear. A bone paw crushed him like a stuffed toy, and Hryx disappeared somewhere below, into the icy void.

 In a blizzard, a huge figure made of the skeletons of animals seemed to be something otherworldly, coming from the depths of nightmares. The gaze of the bear was riveted by the icy crown hovering over the huge dark skull of the monster. Inside each of its prongs, she could make out a familiar silhouette… The leaders of the beast clans who have disappeared in recent years, sleeping inside a dead sleep in all these teeth, in all but one... Arraina guessed who the last cradle was prepared for and smiled nervously.

No. She won't give up so easily.

Arrayna Golden Fur from the Sollu clan clicked on the symbol of the sun at her heart and her armor began to glow with bright solar fire...

Krina woke up in the snow. Upside down.

 Last minutes (hours?) they were crumpled up by a huge bone hand: all hope, all dreams, everything that moved the animals forward…

 Krina sighed and coughed: the snow hit her throat in a wet lump. Bears should not exist upside down. Somehow this is wrong. The bear began to actively shake all her limbs, gradually breaking out of the heavy snow captivity. Yes, if she were a little weaker, she would lie like a frosty icicle until she froze to death…

 When Krina got out, she regretted that she had not stayed in the frosty comfort, there, under the white snow, where it was sleepy and dark around…

 Wegg was burning nearby.

 And some of its residents.

 Nearby, someone from the Court, pigs, was looting the pockets of a dead bear.

- Hey, what are you doing, scavengers?! Krina screamed, fluffing her fur. The pigs turned to her and looked... indifferently.

— Why are you silent?! Looters, ugh, damn you—" she cursed more quietly, noticing an impressive gun at one of the Court. Krina was unarmed. The pig with the gun finally spoke: in a raspy voice, like a claw on glass:

— Your Wegg is over, fur! Everyone is on their own now. Everyone n…

 Something interrupted him. Krina looked in surprise at the bear's hand breaking through the place where the pig once had a heart. The dead bear, who had just been lying on the cold ground like himself, now stood sullenly behind the dying Court.

 Krina ran.

Everything went crazy. Her tea was mixed with some frosty mushrooms, beans or some other horrors. Or she hit her head. In the morning everything was clear. There was a way, there was hope, and now…

Krina ran through the snow on all fours, like her wild ancestors.

She was... afraid. Probably for the first time.

No pigs, no dead people, and not even the cold, but... the fact that she went crazy. Lost touch with reality.

 “Here I am running now, running, but in reality they are wrapping me in skins so that no one's head is bitten off… Fuck a louse, I'd like to wake up, but I can smell it with my withers, I won't wake up.”

 The blizzard around devoured the view, leaving the bear a small piece of the surrounding world - as white as the blizzard. On, they say, choke, warm-blooded. Krina frowned and growled. And she closed her eyes. I don't need your handouts, blizzard. I'll get there myself. On ancient instincts. I'll be an ancient bear. I 'll start eating hares… Well, what - the Courts have betrayed the animal laws, maybe I... forget yes, forget yes…

In the midst of this deep thought, Krina's head met with something solid, and her thought, incomplete, soared to the blizzard, where it dissolved…

— Why are we lying down? We need to work, not lie down. She's lying down! Did the sides not lie down? A little, lazy people went. In our time, from infancy, pipes were dragged to the construction site… And then five hours in the cold - to school - the grumbling woke up Krina, snatched from the hands of the blizzard. My head ached. Cautiously opening her eyes, Corinna saw an elderly hohu looking at her with displeasure.

— Are you awake? Well, that's wonderful! A skull is like a bully, a bump is possible, but others are less lucky. Get up and help move supplies…

— What… Where are we?.. — it was warm and... vegan bustling around. Karina couldn't help but smile. A dream? Bear paradise?

— In the bunker, somewhere. Talking talks. Ut, youth, hedgehogs-bears… We will be building here. To survive. Then we will return the Veg, we will rebuild it…

 Krina struggled up from the ground and wandered towards the large metal gate. Something heavy was being dragged inside. Square. A lump rose in my throat.

— Compass?..

Dreams of a house now seemed silly. Everything seemed silly and small. even Tavru himself seemed stupid and small to himself. Like a snowflake.

He clutched a bear bone in his hands—black and cold, and wandered on. Seeing the bunker from afar, he turned in the other direction. The cold didn't touch him. The blizzard was circling him. Snowflakes fell on his drooping shoulders and whispered their little secrets.

No small houses and no small gardens.

Tavru pressed the dead bone to his heart.

“I understand you, friend. I understand you”

On the other side of the blizzard, Karina was helping to drag a compass into the bunker. Something was moving inside, behind the glass. Fire, the last particle of it. A golden gleam. Sad look. For a moment, Katrina thought she saw someone very familiar in the play of reflections.

But the thought quickly left her tired head.