27a

Cae ran. She didn’t know where she was or where she was going, but she knew she was running away from the beast she saw. The trees were unfamiliar, the flowering bushes the wrong color, but she knew forests. She knew how to hide. She splashed through a stream then followed it several minutes to throw off her scent before darting up a tree. She climbed as quickly as her body would allow then pressed her back to the trunk and held her breath. She strained her elven ears, waiting, listening, searching for the sounds of pursuit. Bugs. Prey. The wind in the leaves. Nothing of any significant size or ferocity.

She slowly released her breath and tried to steady her heartbeat. She’d been walking along the main road in Bellbury with her daughter, making plans for a summer festival when suddenly she was alone in this forest. No, not alone. There had been creatures, creatures that weren’t quite men, nor were they beasts. Werewolves, her mind offered. There hadn’t been werewolves in Vyon in ages. The curse had been eliminated from what her wife had been told. She reached out from the branch she sat on and grabbed a red fruit. She cracked it open and watched the purple blood of the fruit run down her arms. There’s not a fruit in Vyon that I wouldn’t recognize… so where am I?

She shook her head to focus her mind. There wasn’t time to think about all the possibilities and impossibilities that could have brought her here. First was survival. She thought back to the days before she met her wife, the days when she would use nature magic and skill to track bandits and poachers through the woods. The skills may be rusty now, only used for playing hide-and-seek with her daughter or running off a stray beast that had found its way into their orchard, but they were still present. She focused her senses, magically sensing for disease or poison in the area surrounding her and decided the fruit would be safe to eat. She tasted the bleeding flesh- a little too sweet, but edible. There was plenty of it around, so at least she wouldn’t starve. The stream could give water, the tall trees some bit of shelter from creatures on the ground.

Weapons. She needed to be able to defend herself, especially if the werewolves were territorial and decided she was a threat. All she had was a small knife on her belt, used for whittling not combat.

She swept her eyes around the forest, scouring the green for motion, then slowly, carefully, quietly, she climbed down the tree. She could see the tracks she’d left in her haste, the broken twigs, the footprints in the mud. She was careful not to leave any tracks now. Let them follow to this tree and find nothing. She passed through the forest, letting her old training and her elven instincts take over. By nightfall she had a serviceable bow, spear, arrows, and dinner from a flock of fat birds that donated their feathers to her cause. She climbed up another tree then traveled through the canopy far enough that she was sure nothing could track her and settled down to rest.

It was just before dawn when her rest was disturbed. The sound of soft grunts and whispered words from the base of the tree she’d climbed last. She leaned around the massive trunk to get a look and there she saw the hulking forms of at least four of the beasts in the pre-dawn light. She carefully got to her feet and started moving from branch to branch through the canopy, trying to keep as many trees between her and the wolves as she could.

A flash of movement caught her eye, but it was too late. Another beast, this one separate from the main pack, stood there on the bough of the tree in front of her. This one was orange and striped where the others were grey and brown. The weretiger walked silently over the branches towards Cae, its snout drawn up in a snarl, baring massive teeth. She backed up into the trunk of the tree behind her and before she’d made the conscious choice, she was dropping down the branches as quickly as she could. In the choice between wolf and tiger, she’d risk the wolves. She heard the feral roar of the tiger above as it started leaping from branch to branch and the answering howls from wolves giving chase.

She grabbed for her weapons before realizing she’d lost them in her haste and instead pushed harder, ran faster. She was tackled by one of the wolves, thrown across the ground in a pile of fur and teeth and mud and bone. She reached for a rock and slammed it into the wolf’s face to give herself time to escape.

She nearly bowled into a group of strange people. “That’s her, let’s go,” one said, grabbing hold of Cae’s arm.

Another one pulled out a magic rod and pushed a button. The world flashed and the forest was replaced by a basement cluttered with semi-magical contraptions and people from the various races of the world, the half-orc that had grabbed her, the tiefling that had held the rod. And there, pushing her way past the others, was her wife Eloise. Cae’s eyes watered as she started to wrap her arms around Eloise, but she stopped with a hiss when a shooting pain flashed up her arm.

She looked down in shock at the clear bite in her upper arm and the blood-soaked sleeve that covered it. Her eyes widened, her face went pale, and she just whispered, “No…” She looked up at Eloise.

“Ellie… I— I’m so sorry.”

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