Chapter 2

A cool breeze stirred the underbrush growing around massive trees on the forest floor. Huddled in the lower limbs of one of those trees, beneath an inconspicuous bundle of branches, imperceptible to even the most discerning eye, two young women lay together sleeping. As they had done the previous four nights, Jaide lay on her side in the crook of the branches while Anna cuddled up behind and draped an arm across her slim waist. The youngest of the pair, with her silvery hair, had grown to take comfort in the presence of her strange dark-haired partner. Exhausted after the past days of hiking through the tangles and brambles of the forest towards her father's civilized lands, she snuggled back against the warm body behind her, marveled for a second at the quality of the shelter Anna had constructed with nothing more than branches and leaves, and then drifted back into darkness. For the present, her dreams were pleasant, and the hellish nightmare she had after the crash did not return to haunt her.

Since their meeting five days before, Jaide had been impressed several times over by Anna and her seemingly endless talents. The woman from the stars had learned to speak with frightening quickness, and by the end of their second day could carry on normal conversation. Her speech became so fluent, in fact, that Jaide had to remind herself several times that her companion was indeed not of this world. Her manners and disposition would do credit to a member of any royal house, and her intuitive grasp of a foreign culture spoke of an intelligence that was at once both incredibly sharp and delicate.

Beyond that, she had proven herself to be cool and composed even after her world had literally crashed down around her. Accepting the decision to make the journey to the North, she had supplied Jaide and herself with equipment and packs unlike anything the princess had ever seen. Between them, they carried over twenty kilos of food and supplies away from the crash site, trusting they would be able to replenish their water supply in the damp environment. Each was also armed with a variety of weapons of Anna's choosing, though she showed considerable dismay upon discovering that some of the weapons - she had used the words 'fire' and 'arm' - in her supply had been damaged.

She claimed to have never before been a forest like that one, but still seemed to know all the little tricks necessary for survival even better than the native princess.

Anna had also shown sense enough to shed the strange blue garment she had been wearing in favor some of Jaide's extra clothing made of natural grass-fibers. While both tighter fitting and more revealing, the brief skirts and tops were also perfect for the damp lower forest climate in which the pair would be living for the foreseeable future. Material woven from grass-fibers kept heat and sweat away from the body much better than the cotton garments worn in the South, and was much less likely to catch and snag on the forest brambles. Jaide, in turn, left her leather thong sandals behind, replaced by a set of alien footwear which comfortably covered her entire feet and made the long walk much easier.

The two had quickly become friends. Their ages were only three years apart - Anna said by her measurements there was actually four years' difference - and their personalities blended nicely together. They spent much of their hiking time discussing common interests and experiences, which were surprisingly many considering their origins. However, Anna became distinctly less talkative whenever the subject turned to the differences between their two worlds, talking a little about governments and nations and cultures, but saying almost nothing about the differences in technology. Jaide could not tell whether her companion was trying to keep her engaged by holding the conversation on their common ground, or if she simply did not know the words to express the things that could be told. She would have, of course, been fascinated to hear about the marvels which she was certain Anna's world possessed, but did not press the issue for fear of straining a new and very strange friendship.

And so they slept. Their fifth night together passed uneventfully, save for the occasional breeze which rustled their shelter. Whenever that happened, Jaide would shiver a little and Anna would pull her a little closer, though neither of them was conscious of it. Pese, the blue moon, and Packe, the white moon, traversed the blackness above on their nightly chase, bathing the braches all around in an eerie pale glow and reflecting off sections of the great ice-rings above as they passed. Stars shown out all around and constellations danced about in the night sky. The outline of the water goddess smiled down at the sleeping women as she drifted above them and over the horizon. An hour before the first stab of dawn, the sun splashed the ice-rings in the Eastern sky in the dazzling display that marked the beginning of a new day for all the forest creatures. Insect chirps and bird calls rang out in the tree branches, and small rustlings spread throughout the underbrush as the world emerged from its slumber.

"Good morning," said a silky voice in Jaide's ear.

"Good morning to you," Jaide said in reply, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and stretching her arms above her head.

She sat up on the limb and looked around, still surprised at how well concealed they were inside the shelter her companion had built. "How did you sleep?" she asked, turning to face the brown eyes.

"Better than I expected. I can sleep just fine on the ground, but sleeping on tree branches is still new for me."

"I know, but you'll get used to it. It's the only way we're going to be safe."

"I know." A beat passed. "So is it break-fast time?" Anna asked with a crooked grin, and both women laughed at their shared joke.

The first morning, Jaide had spent twenty puzzled minutes trying to figure out why the dark-haired stranger kept using the words for 'break' and 'fast.' When she finally realized it was a reference to a morning meal she grew even more confused, trying to understand why anyone would be asking for food so early in the day. It took longer still for Anna to explain that most humans on her world typically ate three main meals every day, to Jaide's wide-eyed fascination. By the each woman fully understood the other, a full hour had passed in which they had been neither eating nor walking. The humor they found in the situation was perhaps more out of a sense that even the simplest ideas had at first seemed impossible to express - even with Anna's keen grasp of the language - than it was out of anything truly amusing. Still, it was the first real experience they had shared, and that made it seem special.

"No, silly. Break-fast can wait until lunch." The idea of giving names to different meals was something else Jaide found rather astonishing, and her mention of 'lunch' brought out another, smaller round of chuckles.

"Ok. Well if you'll get the packs, I need to go pee and then we can leave."

"Hey! Get your own bag. I need to pee too."

It was less than a quarter of an hour after they had awakened, still before the sun had broached the horizon, when the two women had donned their packs and struck out for a new day's hike. By the time the shadows receded from their early dawn angles and the heat began to wash off the ground below, the princess and the stranger had put another three leagues between themselves and the abandoned crash site. Amid the forest sounds and their own footfalls, the lilting, song-like sound of their voices carried across the breeze.

"... wait, what's your father's name again?" It was nearly the tenth time Anna had interrupted Jaide's story for some sort of clarification, and for some reason the princess did not even consider how she would have treated such behavior had she been speaking with one of her subjects. With Anna, the interruptions did not seem a discourtesy.

"... Iosoan. Anyway, he's been ruling for twenty-eight years. As long as I've been alive, there's been peace between the great houses, but before I was born there was a terrible war. My father became a great lord very young, during the war, and under him the Hai Lei became the most powerful house. There were many great battles before the fighting was over, but he was able to divide and scatter the other armies and bring the war to and end. All the subjects of all the houses are in his debt even today for the peace so many take for granted."

Anna had been listening, fascinated. She seemed at several points about to interrupt the story again, but held her tongue in check. Perhaps the dark-haired alien had been comparing the history she was hearing with the history of her own world, but she said nothing presently and let the story-teller continue her tale.

"One of the alliances he made that helped the war to be over was when he married my mother, Psiolia."

"Psiolia," Anna repeated softly, under her breath, as she had done with every new name. Jaide did not even have to pause this time.

"She was a princess from the Hai Menadin under the sea. She gave birth to my brother, Iordan, and then six years later to me..." Jaide's voice trailed off.

"Is she pretty?"

"... I've never met her. She died just after I was born." Jaide had stopped walking and turned her face away, but found gentle fingers turning her face back up. She looked into Anna's brown eyes and saw a kind of sympathy in those eyes she had never before seen. "I've never talked about her before, not even with my father."

"I'm sorry." Anna wiped the corner of Jaide's eye with a thumb and brushed the silver hair out of her face. "If you ever want to talk about her, I'll listen."

"Thank you, but..."

"... not yet."

Jaide nodded in agreement and Anna nodded back in understanding. The pair clasped their hands together briefly and gazed into each other's eyes a moment longer. Then, dropping their hands back to their sides, they began walking again. With the sun high overhead and the heat now at its highest, the two young women traveled for a while in silence. Each was glad for the other's presence, and each knew that the sentiment did not need to be stated.

Neither traveler knew how far they had gone when, at the same time, they each suddenly felt that something was wrong. The little tinglings in the spine and the little hairs on the back of the neck first alerted them, a warning sign which by itself would have been nothing. But then they stopped and realized that while they had been walking the sounds of the forest had stopped. There were no bird calls and no rustlings in the bushes. The insects had not stopped, and had actually seemed to grow louder in the near silence, but those were the only sounds to be heard other than the hammering of their own hearts.

It was Jaide who spotted it first, mostly because she knew what she was looking for. It was the thing she had been afraid of finding in the forest all along. It was the reason they slept in the trees at night rather than on the ground. Anna saw the princess stiffen and slowly turned to look where she was looking. Standing between the tree trunks about fifty yards away was a large, ugly and very angry looking dog. Its teeth were bared and, though it made no noise or movement, there could be no mistaking its intensions. It was one of the wild hunting dogs that roam the southern regions of the forest. Villagers and city folk of the Hai Lei do not normally live in fear of the dogs, since dogs stayed away from inhabited areas; but they also know not to venture alone into the vicious animals' hunting grounds.

Anna may not have heard the stories about what those giant beasts would do to the human prey they caught, but she made no hesitation when her friend yelled out.

"Run!" Jaide shouted. And they ran. From behind they could hear leaves crunch and brush tear as the beast leapt into pursuit. "We need... to... up... a tree," she panted out between breaths.

"I can't climb that fast," came Anna's response, who wasn't out of breath at all.

"... then... what..."

The two women were running as fast as their feet would take them, but they were both encumbered by their packs. The packs had not been overbearing while they were walking, but to run in such a thing was another matter entirely.

Frames squeaked and buckles clinked as two sets of feet pounded through the underbrush. Neither of them seriously thought they could outrun the ugly brute closing in from behind. Jaide knew it would kill them, but she did not think even for a second to swing up a tree to safety and leave her new friend to such a fate.

Jaide had not looked back and had barely glanced to the side. Her breath was coming in gasps and her vision began to close in like a tunnel. She knew Anna was running beside her - seemingly with much less difficulty - but could not concentrate on much else beside that. So when, in a blur, Anna stopped running and threw her pack to the ground it took Jaide an extra moment to realize what had happened. She turned back to find the dark-haired alien had thrown down her entire pack except for one of the weapons which she recognized as a bow and arrows.

Anna stood coolly with the beast rapidly approaching. She strung the bow - which Jaide noticed was not made of wood, but some other curious material - and notched the arrow while the beast grew ever closer. Its teeth were still bared and its paws made a terrible thrashing sound as it bounded forward. Though it seemed almost to happen in slow motion, little more than a second passed from the time Anna first grasped the bow from her pack to the time she loosed the arrow. The shaft flew as if the fires of Hell itself were behind it, and the beast fell to the ground just under five yards away with an arrow almost completely buried in its forehead.

The stillness in the air seemed too thick even to cut, and Jaide stood with her heart ringing in her ears, almost unable to believe her eyes. Anna walked up to the giant dog and, with a foot against its black muzzle, she ripped the arrow from its head and bent to clean it in the grass. It was only when she stood up to face the princess that she realized their mistake: dogs hunt in packs.

Eight more dogs were standing in a similar, if more aggressive, posture to the one which now lay dead. It appeared the first animal had been trying to drive them straight into the pack, and had almost succeeded. Only about forty yards separated the two women from eight sets of sharp fangs.

"Oh... Anna! What now?" Jaide's shaky voice asked, slicing through the silence.

"Just stay behind me," came Anna's reply with almost no tremor. She stood facing the new threat and re-notched the arrow. As Jaide scooted back behind her friend and newfound protector, Anna stole a glance at her full quiver of arrows, and then returned her gaze to the ugly, snarling pack.

With a speed Jaide had not thought possible, it began. Anna loosed her first arrow and notched the second before it had even reached its mark. The dogs leapt to attack against the volley. Seemingly no time separated the arrows as they flew from Anna's bow and four animals lay dead on the ground with twenty yards left to go. As the pack closed in, two more fell, but the last two had almost reached their quarry. Jaide opened her mouth in a scream as she watched two enormous beasts rise up almost on top of the dark-haired archer, but the scream died on her lips.

At such close range, Anna's arrow buried itself completely inside the first dog, and it fell less that a yard away. The second beast was right behind, leaping over the fallen body to maul the young woman, but found itself somehow swatted away. Anna was actually using the bow itself as a weapon while she reached for a final arrow. She first knocked the beast down from its pounce, then away as it came at her from the side, and then again, this time flipping the beast over on its back. She jammed her foot down on the bottom of the dog's head, notched the arrow, and sent the shaft through the ugly head and partway into the ground.

The silence after it was over lasted only a matter of seconds before a screeching chorus of bird cries rang out across the still air, causing both women to jump. Jaide stood in place, frozen between horror and disbelief. Everything had happened so quickly that the images were still flashing before her eyes. The heat washing off the ground carried with it the stench of the nine dead monsters surrounding them; their skin and their dying breath smelled unpleasantly foul.