Hounds Rising

Ana and Myla walked their horses slowly, stretching their legs and backs as they followed the stream. Ana had been quiet, unsure of how they would react to her after the fight. She was happy to still have them with her but wanted to ensure Myla wasn’t upset.

“Hey.”

“Yes, Ana?”

“I just wanted to say that I know things were crazy, but I appreciated that you trusted me during the fight.”

Ana turned to Myla, who was watching her horse reach down for a drink.

“It was a little confusing, to be honest,” Myla replied. “It sounded like you would give me up to save the rest of you.”

“I swear, it was only a ruse to stall time.”

“I know that now. The last few times you asked me to trust you, I did, and things worked out. I do trust you, Ana.”

They walked further down the stream, resting occasionally but keeping with the rest of the party. About an hour later, Ana started again.

“Also, you should keep the cloak.”

“Yeah?”

“It was my father’s, but I think it’ll help you more than me.”

“How about this? I’ll borrow it for now, and if you ever need it back, I’ll hand it over.”

“Sounds good,” Ana smiled.

The day moved on to another night, and as if in a routine, they found camp, got situated, and found themselves in front of the fire again. Ana had finished making dinner, and they all rested on their bedrolls. Relaxed, she played some music on her pan flute. Now and then, small flames would flicker above the fire, and she would magically change the illusion to resemble animals or trees they had passed through the day. Though most of the stories had been told the night before, she wanted to push away the brief lack of confidence and share a story from her past.

“You know, I used to have nights like this with my dad and sister too. My dad would take us to this island around my birthday. He called it our secret escape. He would walk us through the tree in our backyard, and we’d end up miles away on a tiny island with nothing to see but water under a massive tree.

I don’t even know if I could explain how beautiful and magnificent this tree looks, and my magic wouldn’t do it justice. It sits on the edge of a small cliff, no more than twenty feet up from the sea. The tree stretched to the sky, hundreds of feet tall, and had to be more than twenty feet in diameter. Like hands, the branches spread across the entire island, and my dad would tell us all kinds of stories there, with the canopy as our shade from the sun as it set.”

Ana closed her eyes and could almost feel the warmth of those days on her skin. She smiled, feeling a bit more at home.

“Sometimes, while telling his stories, he just stared at that tree. It felt like we didn’t exist sometimes, but not in a bad way. It was just that he was telling the stories to the tree instead of us. I still loved every moment of it, and it all felt wonderful. It’s actually where I learned to love storytelling and do magic. I started seeing the world like my dad did.”