It's not supposed to snow in the South Forest, but the weather in the second-emptiest corner of Shelha is not the only thing behaving strangely. When an ex-tyrant started acting up again, Sethral had hoped it meant the end of lazy days and monotonou...
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Sethral scowled at the sky and wished her clan had names for more kinds of precipitation. Better yet, she wished she had been tasked with naming this one. She could have invented a new profanity.
The sky was shedding some rain-ice hybrid, a slushy mess that stuck to fur and splattered on hard surfaces. The weather had been bawling like a baby Saggitayria for days now, but this took the prize for the most unpleasant. Sethral hunched up her wings and tried to deflect it from her face. In the five years since she had left home, it had never been clearer that her species was not meant to live this far north.
Not that precipitation was meant to freeze in the South Forest's mid cool season. It wasn't supposed to get that cold.
The cloud barf let up late in the evening. Sethral bounded up her tree and craned her neck to peer from the top branches. To the north, a thin line sliced off the forest where the land dropped sheer to the Rock Flats beyond. The mountain chain she was perched on was sliced too, but not before it jumbled the clifftop into a wrinkled mess of stone, the best place anywhere for creatures to get over the cliffs.
There was no sign of the only group whose arrival would lighten the miserable day of waiting. If the Coppertail herd hadn't arrived by now, then they wouldn't cross the cliffs until at least tomorrow morning. Spirits falling again, Sethral bounced her branch up and down until she could get a good liftoff. She drifted back down the mountain slope. The South Forest stretched out below her was a patchy green, a mix of evergreen and leaf-dropping trees so vast and uniform it looked like a carpet from this height. A river slunk through it like a snake, crawling into the distance.
The next morning brought no Coppertails, but at least it brought no rain. Sethral lounged at the edge of the South River with her paws in the air. She plucked at the strap of her fish-leather satchel. Her branch bobbed perilously as she rolled over. She bobbed it more. The river was almost silent, flowing along sleekly at the tops of its banks. Logs glided by like stately Lowland canoes adrift in a whirlpool. Sethral counted them. It wasn't entertaining.
Midday brought a flash in the distance. Tiny figures were picking their way over the wrinkled cliffs. Sethral springboarded into the air and swooped in their direction. It was uncommon for a Coppertail herd to take in a member of another species, but his herd had made an exception for her. The Coppertails were several times her height, with squared-off muzzles to her tapered one, and round skulls where she had backswept horns. They had her ears and their fur was short like hers, but they never seemed to get cold. This year they looked leaner than usual.
