~*~

Daniel finished strapping their minimal luggage to the horse and turned to help Nadia onto her saddle.

"I'll walk from here onward." She said, striding past him to join Matthew and the knight who were already taking their first steps towards the mountain pass, her hair a glowing black despite the scarce light of dawn.

Daniel looked to where they'd set up camp the night before. They had scattered their extinguished fire's ashes just enough to make it seem older than it really was. The knight had insisted they conceal as much evidence of their being there as possible.

Daniel had gone on to even water the grass that had crumpled from their sleeping on it, saying that it would help it straighten faster. When Nadia made a fuss about the water loss he assured them again that he'd walked this route countless times and that there was barely any need to carry water. In fact; He'd made the journey twice without as much as a water skin.

"Enough rivers between here and Wyden to quench the devil's crevice." He'd said at one point.

He gave one final scan of their camp and nodded to himself before leading the horse on its way.

When the sun finally broke through the horizon it made the looming mountains glow red on the edges giving them an ominous look.

After what seemed like an eternity of walking and dawn had fully become day the mountains still loomed, casting their shadows on the travelers. Nadia was beginning to think they would never reach the bloody things but didn't complain out loud. They filled their water skins twice on the countless streams they had to cross with Daniel reminding them each time that there were more up ahead. Matthew merely drank from the stream, silently lamenting his lost supplies.

The sun rose over the mountains to beat down on them at full tilt and they felt its stinging rays scorch their faces relentlessly. Without the walking forest to cover them they had no choice but to trudge on in the open heat. Among the countless shrubs a tree would appear and they'd adjust their route so as to end up in it's shade.

Not wanting to waste too much time they didn't stop for lunch but ate on the road instead. The sun ripened and went from yellow to orange. It now hovered behind, casting their shadows before them.

"Maybe we should stop at the next reasonable tree and set up camp." The knight suggested. "At this rate we'll never hit the pass in time. "

"No. We're already in troll territory. We need to get through the mountains today or head back." Daniel said.

The knight weighed their options.

"Let's quicken the pace then." Nadia pulled ahead and the choice was made.

Shrubs and trees were slowly replaced by rocks and boulders. Yellow flowered grasses sprouted from the sandy soils bordering an evident path that seemed to have been deliberately cleared.

"It looks like there are people about." The knight said to no one in particular, eyeing the path suspiciously.

"No one comes out here. Fire mages from Wyden used to use the pass to get to the walking forest but not anymore. They are not responsible for the path though. No one knows how it came about. We are just grateful that it exists." Daniel informed them.

"What were the mages looking for in the forest? Nothing in there but shrooms and the occasional troll or two" Matthew asked curiously.

"Fire daisies. They harvest them for their experiments." Daniel answered.

"What do they use now?"

"In his experiments, one of them figured out how to plant them and started selling them. Made a huge fortune doing it too, until his secret leaked to the common people. Apparently you just need to grow some purple looking sparkly mushrooms and the sun does the rest."

Matthew looked at the messenger quizzically. Daniel smiled:

"The shrooms act as a fuel you see. The sun ignites it and instead of a fire... daisies grow out of it." He said.

Matthew took this in. He noted it as something he would try out when he got the chance. His mother would have been fascinated by this information.

"Still doesn't explain the mountain pass." He said before any memories of his mother came to plague his mind. Most of the pain had somewhat subsided after the encounter with the hermit, leaving a melancholic longing there instead.

"I read somewhere that the Northern lady used it to go through the mountains. She commanded the rocks to part and the mountains moved. Then told the weeds not to grow where she had set foot and they too obeyed. " Nadia said to Matthew.

Daniel looked between them and slowed his pace. He joined the knight who had kept a professional distance behind. For a knight, he seemed used to guard duty.

"That's from the second verse of Daughter Of The North." Matthew commented.

"You are a moon servant?" Nadia half exclaimed.

"No... feline don't follow any specific religion. But I read quite a bit."

Nadia's eyes scanned over the feline boy, a quizzical expression drawn on her face.

"What's it like to be feline?" she finally asked.

Matthew looked back at her, blank-faced.

"I mean... how do you live? As in what do you do when you are not... uhmm, seeking revenge and such?

Matthew chuckled despite himself.

"I guess we eat... bathe, sleep... and work...and uhmm..."

Nadia sighed.

"Fine. Let me ask a different question. Do your pa..." Her sentence faded off as she suddenly remembered why the feline was there. "Do you have a girl you are seeing maybe? Back home?"

"Uhmm... princess I..."

"No. No, I didn't mean..." She gestured between the two of them. "You are feline and I'm a princess and..."

"Yes, I am... feline."

Nadia noted the sombre tone in his response and quickly added;

"Not that being feline is bad or anything. I know most people think of you as wild savages and all, but it's because of the war right? I've read many books on war. It's not af is you can just turn back and shake your enemy's hand as if nothing happened. Even if they did spare you. I mean-"

"No," Matthew interfered. "It's not that."

"Huh?"

"It's just..." Matthew hesitated to start.

"Did something happen between you and your...?"

"My? Oh, no." He tilted his head to scratch his ear with his shoulder. " I've never really had...friends, or interacted much with other feline. So I wouldn't tell you what it's like. I've only read books and those are all written by men so... I can only tell you what you think we are like."

Nadia nodded in understanding.

"I see, and were we right?"

"Were you right?"

"In the books, were the things the human thought right?"

"I just told you I wouldn't know since-"

"Are you assuming that your own thoughts don't matter?"

Matthew's head perked up and for the first time in their conversation he looked at her. He found she was staring right back at him, blue eyes sparkling expectantly. He quickly looked aside.

"You are feline, aren't you?" She asked rhetorically.

"Yes... I am, I guess."

"Then were the books right about you?"

"Sometimes. I mean, no matter how much we hate the comparison, we do like cats... to an extent."

Nadia laughed at that. A sweet titter that reminded him of a flute in spring.

"And..." she pursued the topic.

"They were mostly wrong though." Matthew paused to scratch his ear again. "I don't consider myself or any of the others savages or anything but..."

"But you still attack any humans on site." she finished his sentence.

"That was a misunderstanding."

"I'm sorry, my humor is not ... I'm sorry." Nadia apologized. "I've always had doubts about feline being savages. In fact, the few I've met in the city were very kind so to imagine that they suddenly became savage when they were beyond the forest was a little hard to believe. It was like having to believe that the forest actually walked!"

She laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea.

"It does walk." Matthew corrected.

"Okay, yes. Anyways, I had my doubts about you being savage and barbaric and such. But hearing constant complaints from the people come to my father with complaints of feline ambushes and how mages dreaded going to collect fire daisies in fear of running into feline folk I wondered. Especially when the royal kitchen staff requested armed escorts to accompany the hunters when they went out."

Matthew scoffed.

"Well, perhaps these mages and hunters should stop attacking every feline in sight and maybe we wouldn't attack them too."

"So that's how it is."

They walked in silence for a while. Matthew a little more irritated at how she brushed off his comment on the forest than the whole politics between their races. He didn't care much who liked whom and personally just hated people who found it okay to hurt others. He scratched his ear again furiously and exclaimed when several rodent-looking creatures skirted away from their path.

"There are so many of them!"

"Huh?"

"Things, just...the insects, birds and all these little animals scurrying around in the grass. It's...noisy."

"Oh... I almost thought my presence was making your ears itch."

"No, your presence is..."

She raised her brow questioningly.

"Your presence is fine."

"Fine? I can live with that." She frowned; "How do you handle crowded places then?"

"It's different when it's people. I can focus on specific individuals then and quite easily ignore the rest. But these are all coming directly at me... I've never experienced this before. "

"What's it like?" Nadia asked, interest brimming from her.

"Like a thousand stories being told to you all at the same time and yet you can still distinctly hear each one separately. It's irritating."

"You mean you can understand them?"

"Not so much understanding but... I can read their signals. A mate call, a warning, directions to a food source, more warnings. Most are just warnings... probably of us."

"That's pretty cool..." She moved closer to him, eying his ears curiously. "Can I touch your ears?"

"Uhmm..."

Before he could respond, she had her hand on his ear. He almost pulled back at her touch. Her soft skinned fingers gently clasped his ears and she caressed it, feeling around the shape of it. He turned to tell her how uncomfortable this was but his words faded when he met her eye for the second time that day. Excerpt this time she was close, really close.

"Ahem!"

Matthew abruptly pulled away from her. Nadia merely turned back to face the knight who'd cleared his throat.

"You worry too much Simon. He's harmless."

"I doubt that's what your loyal knight is worried about." Daniel put in.

Nadia ignored him and quickened her pace to catch up with Matthew who'd hurried on ahead.

"Don't mind him." She matched his pace. "Your ears are rough... no, tough. Do all feline have such thick skin?"

"Don't let her lead you on my feline friend. Her royal highness probably just misses her pet." Daniel shouted from behind.

Nadia stopped in her tracks. She turned, her movements curt, precise. She half walked, half hurled herself toward Daniel. Her stop was punctuated with a slap followed by a coughing messenger.

"Ouch..." Daniel let out.

The knight extended his hand between them.

"My lady, bickering with our guide is not wise. Besides," He pointedly said the next part to Daniel; "we are in dangerous territory are we not?"

"Yes," Daniel agreed, rubbing his cheek.

They resumed the walk in silence, The knight made sure to keep Nadia and Daniel separated to avoid any more arguing.

Matthew kept walking on ahead. He noticed that his ears no longer irritated him. His heart though, was another matter entirely. It had not stopped pounding since the princess had stroked his ear. When she had stopped his breath had come back to him and only then had he realized he had been holding it. Even the sound of a slap cutting through the hum of insects and birds had not cut him out of his thoughts. His mind was still stuck on the delicate features of her face and how close it had been to his. He was not used to intimacy.

As his brain did somersaults and tumbles around his head, he wondered for the first time why he had continued to follow these people even after they had freed him. He wondered why they had freed him and why his mind was fuzzy on the events leading to his freedom. Above all, he wondered why his ankle was throbbing as if being dipped in and out of fire...

~*~