Huyn jumped first.
His tail lashed the empty space, wrapping around a thin bough, pulling him up before his body finished dropping. Mokessa came behind, slower, heavier, biting down on the silent agony. Her left hand grasped the damp bark of a tree; her tail secured itself in a knot of creeping plants; her right limb—the stone appendage—struck the trunk with a flat, hard, wrong sound. The timber shuddered slightly. Below, something diminutive scurried away through the brush.
— Easy now — Huyn advised. With his amber eyes half-lidded, he focused on the dark emerald canopy, looking behind them.
Mokessa offered no reply. She climbed a little higher. The petrified elbow creaked like a boulder trying to remember it was once soft tissue. Each motion extracted a parched effort from her, without groan or request.
She did not want Huyn to see "the massif" growing on her physique.
— I said easy — he repeated. Huyn extended his hand. Mokessa noticed the gesture, then fixed her gaze on the gap between them.
— The earth does not pause for the slow! — She launched herself toward the next limb. — I am still the Mogushais' Matriarch!
The impact caused leaves to sprinkle down. The bough bent beneath her weight, but did not snap. Mokessa's tail tightened around the live wood, keeping her tethered while her left arm searched for support. Her right appendage remained suspended for a moment, strange and hardened, as if she were carrying a segment of a bluff.
Huyn sprang near.
— The plant almost emitted a sound.
— Then it still stands firm.
— And you?
Mokessa turned her countenance. Her expression, beneath the leaf shadows, was unreadable.
A dichotomy was present in her: on one side, the veteran Matriarch with deep-set eyes, silver hair, an unwavering mind, and the bearing of one who rules before conceding to rest; on the other, something emanating from the planet's substance itself. Not in appearance, but in the firmness of her choices —the durability of that which, even when damaged, remains unscathed, shedding no vital fluid.
— I am climbing — she stated. — For the time being, that is sufficient.
Above them, the last strands of light rays broke between the canopies. The solar orb had dropped behind the enormous trees, leaving the heavens with a bruised luminescence, part orange, part gray, like a freshly extinguished ember.
The woodland began to shed its outer covering. The diurnal birds collected their tunes. The nocturnal insects sharpened their mandibles.
Huyn advanced along a sequence of narrow supports, using his long forelimbs and tail with the precision of one who often "travels" through the trees. Mokessa trailed him without enthusiasm, yet with tenacity. While Huyn embodied the wind's lightness within bones, she represented the firmness and resolve of a boulder learning to seek prey.
Below, the world opened into dark patches: thick roots like pythons, clumps of wide foliage, dark pools trapped in the clay's hollows, large severed branches resembling lifeless bodies.
Among all this, the ground was sharply etched. Huyn stopped. His tail squeezed the branch:
— Did you observe that? I will descend to investigate closely.
Mokessa tracked his focused attention.
In the dark sludge, situated between two pale-shafted trees, several profound markings were vaguely apparent. They were not creature tracks—neither paws, nor a snake's winding course, nor a Stone-Hide's fierce trail. They were deep, straight, and lengthy striations, created by something considerable and rigid being pulled violently across the terrain. Large pieces of timber.
Many of them. The ground had been sliced open into lines.
There were certain features that still looked newly made on the surface, as if the wood had just sustained an injury and had not yet restored itself. Small sheets of foliage were mashed at the path's boundary. Fine roots had been broken. White fungi were split, exposing their inner yellow substance.
Huyn dropped slightly, hanging upside down, secured only by his tail.
— Not a wild animal. Mokessa moved nearer to the trunk, inclining her torso for an improved vantage. The rocky arm pulled her shoulder down. For an instant, she nearly fell, but her tail gripped her securely.
— No. — Her voice was hushed.
Huyn inhaled the atmosphere.
— I have the distinct impression this aroma belongs to the bare-skinned entities.
Mokessa closed her eyes. The odor was present, potent beneath the moisture and the moss: salt, perspiration, dried lifeblood, cold ash, carbonized anxiety. It was a raw, exposed fragrance, the essence of beings that the planet had not yet managed to fully inter.
— They have returned to the brush — Huyn commented.
— I believe they never departed.
— Perhaps they are only seeking a haven. — Huyn looked at her. — What are your thoughts on this?
Mokessa opened her eyes.
— Everything that avoids destruction seeks a place to cultivate its power.
Huyn wrinkled his muzzle. The current of air stirred the silvery hairs on his chest, but did not move the petrified strands on her limb.
— I suggest we summon the others.
— They are afraid.
Mokessa began her downward movement. Her tail released one bough but secured another promptly. Her body fell six feet before catching itself again, amidst spreading leaves. She utilized her left forearm to slow her descent, her nails scoring the bark, while her right appendage crashed against another shaft, tearing off splinters.
Huyn followed from above, rapid and hushed.
— Mokessa.
She was already on the ground. Her feet stepped into the moist deposit. The soil, which had once felt so distant in her younger years, now beckoned to her, practically calling her. Not by the name Mogu had given her in his insight, but by her primary designation—Kessa.
She squatted before the indentations, running the digits of her left hand across the deepest mark. The mire was recent. Soft. It had not yet absorbed the night's arid dust.
— It was numerous people. — Huyn pointed with two digits.
— Here. A timber dragged. There, another.
The mass settled more heavily nearer the base. Mokessa touched a crushed sheet of foliage. She brought it to her nose.
— Perspiration. — Injuries as well. Huyn brought his face closer to the clay. His nostrils opened and closed. — Weak lifeblood. It is not new. One of the bare-skinned individuals is harmed, the one the Stone-Hide bit. Mokessa's jawline tightened.
— The one who lost the limb?
Huyn lifted his sight.
— Correct.
The recollection came caught in her throat: the Stone-Hide, previously immense and intact, retreating into the gorge with feverish eyes; the azure flare adhering to his tissue; the impossible warmth that did not warm, the combustion that burned like frost; the creature's essence being drained steadily. The beast was not incinerating, but freezing. For Mokessa and Huyn, it felt like a cool sickness, even though the animal convulsed as if it were on fire.
— Because the flame came into contact with him — Mokessa explained. — It reached the Stone-Hide and instilled in him a craving for winter.
Huyn fell silent. He had heard this concept previously. Not using those words, but in her low-toned utterances, in the hours when she presumed she was isolated.
Mokessa spoke with the captured creature about the Perpetual Cold. He, however, had never experienced this season—being too young—yet everyone knew of it through the accounts of those who survived it. The stories of the intense frigidity came from the elders' coarse melodies, in the narratives shared with the young, in the carvings scored into tree surfaces.
An era when foliage turned into lifeless blades. An era when fluid hardened. An era when supports fractured in the frosty air and the forms of those who slept did not awaken. An endless season. A mouthless predator.
— The azure flare might just be thermal energy — Huyn suggested. Mokessa stared at him. Huyn slightly lowered his shoulders, intimidated by her focus. — A peculiar blaze. — Fire consumes. — She drove her fingers into the clay. — The azure flare chills.