The quaint proposal.

[Yurrechire]

When a living weapon broke, it shattered.

Some things were easily overlooked, when one practically lived in the saddle. The foremost was this: in order to engineer a living creature capable of carrying hundreds of pounds across inhospitable terrains with barely a honk of complaint, sacrifices had to be made in other areas. Some bloodlines spooked easily, some had the attention span of a peanut, while still others were plagued by physical defects. Sometimes it was easy to forget that a peco by the strange name of Cookie, while moderately intelligent and effective in battle, failed spectacularly in long treks.

Catherine McWren huddled by the slowly rising and falling flank of the bird; both have seen much better days. The branches of a great tree touched the ground all around them, forming a protective canopy from the prying eyes. The avian had been sleeping since the middle of the day prior, with more of the same to come in the foreseeable future. Piled just outside of the green shelter, a pile of grizzly, scaled, and, (most importantly), edible, remains was steadily drawing scavengers. Eat. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat. Cat would have been quite happy to fall back into the primitive cycle, waiting on the bird to regain its strength. Except, thoughts interfered.

It had been a strange week, complete with wholesale clearing of the ancient halls below the Rachel temple, manifestations of doom-prophesizing world surveyors, angst-filled faeries with chips on their shoulder, slightly apologetic sisters of angst-filled fairies with chips on their shoulders, and very paranoid fairy men. None of this was terribly good news. Under the blustering bravado, denials of supernatural powers and the gruff exterior, Catherine hid the backbone of a very practical woman. This woman knew: when a big fish came into a small pond, the small fishes had two choices- hide, or be eaten. With a disabled bird and a lack of strong allies, ‘hide’ seemed like the wiser of the two choices.

As per her earlier conversation with an idiot of an idealist, and an unlikely comrade, ‘Hide’ was no longer an option.


An acorn fell from above, thumping softly against the leaf litter.


Catherine jumped.