A Girl of a Warrior

13 | The Riverbank | 13

Ignore the cattails on the right and the weird wood structure thingy. This is where the Twoleg Bridge is [think of it as that tree branch at the far end of the river].

"Uh...Graysplash?" Duskelle said, her voice cracking because she hadn't spoken in so long. Graysplash didn't seem to hear her and so she tried again, louder this time.

"Graysplash!"

He jumped a tiny bit and turned around to face her.

"What? Is there anything wrong?" he asked, both looking and sounding alarmed.

"No...it's just...I think there's going to be a storm."

"A storm?" Graysplash asked, glancing at the sky as if he hadn't notice the steadily darkening colors.

"Oh-yes, it does seem like it. Hmm, then I suppose that just gives us a reason to hurry along faster."

He picked up the pace, making it so that Duskelle had to struggle to keep up. It was easy for him. It wasn't like he was the one with useless split paws and rounded nails that did nothing to dig into the soil for balance as she [rather clumsily] hurried after her 'mentor'. Until now, they had traveled across mostly flat territory with the entire sky open above their heads, but they had just entered into a small, but thickly tree-packed grove. Duskelle couldn't see the river they had been following, the sky that had been hovering above, or for that matter, anything except for the tree trunks and the dark shadows that they casted. It didn't help at all that her eyes were not able to pierce through the darkness like River's had. At the thought of River, it felt like a heavy stone had dropped into her heart and sunk to the bottom, weighing down her whole body with its weight.

She lifted her head up again at a few rays of sunlight filtering through the damp forest air. The trees had started to thin out. She went a little faster, eager to get away from the cage of trees over her head.

"Duskpaw, watch-," Graysplash started to say, right before one of her weird paws caught on an oversized root extending from the ground and she tumbled head over heels forward and stopped by crashing into a particularly thick tree trunk.

Graysplash ran up to her as she lay panting in a heap, disoriented and dizzy. "-out," he said, finishing his earlier statement.

"Are you alright?"

Duskelle straightened herself and shook to get some of the dirt off of the colorful and flimsy pelt-thing that covered her real pelt. She hated the way it felt against her almost nonexistent fur, but she knew that it was the only thing protecting her from the cold and other thorny objects of the world. But that didn't stop her from getting rid of the things that covered her paws, which she really hated. And speaking of thorns, she had a fat, big one embedded in her right forepaw. She winced as the movement made a white-hot spike of pain course through her. Then she realized that she had a companion and looked up at Graysplash's wide amber eyes, which were examining her with a mixture of worry and possibly a hint of amusement.

"Yes, I'm alright, except for a huge thorn poking into my paw," Duskelle said, a note of irritancy in her voice.

Graysplash let out chuckle, which happened often, Duskelle noticed, and bent his head down to her outstretched paw.

"What are you doing?!" Duskelle exclaimed, flinching, when he clenched his teeth around the thorn and started to move it around, causing more pain to hit her.

"Jwut waith," Graysplash replied through his teeth.

Duskelle winced and bit down on her tongue as he worked the thorn out, trying to keep from moving. Eventually, he succeeded and pulled the thorn out and spat it to the side. Before Duskelle could withdraw her hand, he started to lick it, clearing the blood away.