After we extinguished the fire, we flew from the clearing on a return trip to the very same Elderus I discovered the Redaga sleeping in. Enyll explained to me that it’s unusual for prey to hide in Lithan dens, but it happens often enough that you need to be careful when approaching one — even if the ‘scent marker’ is fresh. Whatever that means.

Guided by the pale like of Maki, we came upon a stream winding through thick evergreen trees and walked the rest of the way to the den. We did without planetlight, I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to follow Kuro through the invisible maze back to the tree, but once she gave me some advice about following sound and scent, I was able to keep pace with her.

“We follow the paths of those who came before us. Over time, our scents become so ingrained that you need only your nose to navigate the darkest of nights.”

After my experience finding the doe in the weald, it makes sense. I tracked it through the grass like I was following an invisible line drawn by its scent. So when I turned off my thoughts and allowed my senses to guide me, it became second nature to keep up with Kuro. Lithan noses are incredible!

When I smell the distinct, fresh scent of Elderus above me I sense Kuro’s posture tighten up. Wings move in the dark and I suspect she’s on alert, well aware that a Redaga was hiding here earlier today. Enyll’s scent is quite clear, so I’m unsure why she’s being so cautious.

Fwoosh!

I gasp, surprised at a sprig of flame escaping Kuro’s mouth. It flies through the air just far enough in front of her face to light up the surrounding area and give us a good view under the tree. Just as quickly as it appears, the fire fizzles into nothing and the area goes dark again.

“No fair,” I quip, now confident that there were only Lithans under the tree. “When I use my fire it causes a natural disaster. You’ll have to teach me how to control it like that.”

“If we’re allowed to,” Kuro reminds, keeping to her flock’s rules of not being able to train outsiders.

I follow in her talonsteps until we reach the hole in the roots where the den is. Enyll’s scent is strong, mixed with the smells of damp moon and the sounds of slow, relaxed breathing. Kuro releases another flash of fire and I’m offered my first interior view of the den. From the entrance, the ground recedes into a slight depression where clumps of leaves and other bedding lay. Enyll was resting along the back wall with his wings slightly open against the ground, sleeping peacefully. Although I only had a brief glimpse, it seemed like there was only enough room for two Lithans to sleep there.

“Alright,” Kuro speaks in a hushed voice. “You go in first. I’ll let you be on the bottom tonight.”

“I’m sorry, come again?”

Kuro pauses a moment as if she were confused about what I was asking. “Enyll is sleeping against the back wall. I’ll sleep near the entrance, and you’ll be in-between us. If you fold your wings, I’ll rest mine on top of yours so you stay warm.”

“Oh!” I reply. She’s going to use her wing like a blanket. That makes much more sense. “Um, thank you. Is this how Kin normally sleep?”

“In dens this small,” Kuro sniffs. “We don’t have enormous ones like you Farlanders.”

I chuckle to myself, imagining a building as ostentatious as the Lordanou palace built to house a single bedroom. “I’ll have to explain how our dens work, too.”

Trotting into the pitch-black den I feel a layer of soft, loose feathers under my talons. I lay down next to Enyll and he rustles half-asleep, slurring something indecipherable. A wing rests across my back.

“Enyll?” I whisper into the dark. There’s no response.

“He’s already out,” Kuro says, laying down and drooping her wing on top of me. “Trust me, Enyll is a restless sleeper. He goes in and out of sleep faster than you can flap a wing.”

“Mmh,” I reply, sluggish and drowsy. “I just wasn’t expecting him to rest a wing on top of me.” We lay with feathers nearly touching each other, the warmth of our bodies quickly absorbing my energy to stay awake.

“Kin watch out for each other,” Kuro whispers with boastful pride. “Even Enyll has the decency to keep another Lithan warm.”

I exaggerate a scoff. “Decency from Enyll, I can hardly believe it,” My sarcasm lands and Kuro buries her head in her fluff to stifle a chirrup. It wasn’t clever, but I’m glad I got her to laugh.

She pulls her head out and exhales a deep yawn. “I’ll see you in the morning. Fair dreams, Asha.”

“Goodnight, Kuro.”

I lay my head against my foretalons, processing everything that’s happened to me since I woke up in Sarlain, confused about who I was. It’s been one breathless moment after the other ever since I declared my intention to help Sofl at the breakfast table on that innocent morning. I think of everyone else who was around me at that moment… Mom, Dad, Sofl, Duncan… I hope they’re holding together in my absence.

I draw a long breath, taking in Kuro and Enyll’s scents. The scents of friends.

I’m so grateful to not be facing this crisis alone anymore.

My mind begins to wander, contemplating what whole new experiences tomorrow will bring. How will the flock receive me at White Mountain? Will Keuvra and the elders be sympathetic to my story? It’s not long before my consciousness subsides and drifts into a deep slumber.

I woke the next morning to the sounds of feral shrieks rising from the forest.

Stumbling out of the empty den into the cool morning air, I followed Kuro and Enyll’s scents to the forest surrounding the Elderus. My hunch about where they’d gone was proven correct when they returned through the trees a few minutes later holding prey in their jaws. Three feline-looking creatures with short brown fur, thin tails, and large, round noses. They called them, ‘Litsha’ — I suspect if I were still a Lemur they’d be almost double my size. But for now, they were simply breakfast, and they made a tasty one.

We left for Flat Rock shortly afterward, rising high through a drizzle with Kuro leading our group of three. With the gain in elevation compared to our low flights yesterday, I began to get a better sense of the biome in this region of Felra: The low-slung deciduous forests I saw when I arrived here slowly changed to tall conifers, and still larger Elderus trees began to scatter the landscape like confetti. The air is damp and thick with the smells of fresh pine and abundant prey.

After an hour or so of flying, we come upon a clearing at the top of a ridge where a cluster of peculiar dead trees grew. Different from everything else around us, their branches are completely stripped, leaving only a few disparate twigs still attached to their sides. Curiously, while we glide overhead the stale scent of other Lithans becomes quite pronounced.

RaRAK!

Just when I was about to ask Kuro about it, she cries out for us to land. Following her lead, we lowered from the sky and sat in the center of the grassy clearing.

Around my talons are numerous slabbed tree stumps, blackened and charred by fire, burned down low enough until the montane grass and shrubs nearly covered them whole. Beyond Kuro’s wings is the tress I saw from the air, which I now recognize to also be affected by the fire. Brittle and gray, at the center of the roughly ten scorched trees is one standing much taller than the rest that… appears to still have foliage growing from small branches near the top! It’s still alive!! Clearly, this scene was created by Lithans using their fire to alter the environment. But, why?

Perhaps sensing my confusion, Kuro turns to address me. “Asha,” she says, ruffling her feathers of the rain that built up on them during the flight. “If you’re going to spend time in Felra then you need to know about the guiding trees.”

I flick my gaze to the gray trees beyond and then back towards her. “I take it they’re the dead ones behind you?”

“Just one of them,” she corrects. “There’s one on this ridge, and many others located around Kin territory. Come,” she beckons with a wing to follow.

We tread over the damp ground, our talonsteps muffled by decaying autumn grass. The morning drizzle had begun to dampen the aromatic scents of the ridge, but the stale Lithan smells were overpowering and impossible to ignore. With my enhanced nose, I can make out at least 20 distinct dragons — males and females, young and old, all of them have stopped at this ridge sometime recently.

Kuro approaches the large tree in the center of the group, the one I now recognize as alive. Based on the size of the trunk, it appears to be a member of the sequoioideae family that’s unfamiliar to science. Charred bark encircles the trunk, extending upwards until it fans off into a series of tangled sprigs that grew long, spiny leaves in a spiral distribution. It seems the top half of the tree was removed while burning and allowed to grow back into its current state.

“This is the guiding tree,” Kuro announces, staring straight up its trunk. “The flock’s territory is vast. We use guiding trees to mark the edges of that territory, and to signal the routes to large settlements in case Kin become disoriented and lost.”

“Which happens more than you may think,” Enyll adds, approaching my side. “Bad weather can confuse even the most experienced flyer.”

I nod in understanding. A scenario like that isn’t difficult to imagine after flying through that fog bank yesterday. I wonder what sort of extreme weather could cause someone experienced like Enyll or Kuro to get lost?

Kuro uses the claw on her right wing to point to the center of the trunk about halfway up. “Asha, can you see the marks on the tree?”

I step in closer to get a better look. Above her wing claw are four long and vertical claw marks, deeply engraved in charred bark. Above that, another engraving of a horizontal line stretching across the bands of the sequoia.

I incline my head and she continues, “These marks are not natural. They were created by Kin to communicate a message to Kin who are lost. This mark…” she pauses to run her wing claw against the tree and deepen the horizontal engraving, “…Represents Flat Rock. A single line across the tree will always mean Flat Rock.”

I nod absentmindedly, aware that I’m being talked down to. Kuro has never mentioned if she’s trained fledglings before, but I get the distinct impression this is a speech intended for those who don’t yet understand symbols and the meanings they can possess. How quaint. I wonder how she’d react if I told her Farlanders have entire alphabets of symbols with multiple, complete written languages?

Hmm.

“Below that, of course…” she pauses to stand upright on her haunches and lean against the tree. She raises her foretalons to the top of the claw marks and drops to the ground.

RNNNKK!

“…Up-and-down claw marks. Claw marks on a guiding tree indicate the direction you must fly to reach the destination. When claw marks are vertical, you fly straight. So, to reach Flat Rock from this ridge, you would fly straight on from this tree. Does that make sense, Asha?”

“It makes perfect sense,” I reply. “You engraved the tree with your claws so the bark doesn’t grow back over the symbols. And you’ve allowed this tree, the biggest in the grove, to survive your fire. It will stand and continue to be a waypoint while the roots of the dead ones wither and eventually cause the trunk to collapse.”

Kuro ruffles slightly. Erm, sorry, couldn’t help myself. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly right,” she says with a hint of surprise. “Do Farlanders do something similar?”

“We manipulate the environment in many different ways,” I explain. “Knowledge of how trees grow is essential to our way of life.”

A growl is loosened from Enyll and he brings his head in close to mine. “Don’t be so arrogant, Asha. You should be grateful we’re mentioning the trees to you, It’s for your safety.”

Wha…?

I recoil a little, taken aback by Enyll’s sudden accusation. Um, excuse me? Just how was I being arrogant? Why are you blaming me all of a sudden?

…

I’m… not sure what just came over me, there. I guess I must have sounded ungrateful after Kuro talked down to me. I force my hackles to lower and exhale. “Um, sorry, Enyll. I didn’t mean to come off that way. I appreciate everything you and Kuro have done for me.”

I wasn’t trying to sound ungrateful, but I guess it just… came off that way. Back in the palace, nobles would routinely talk down to me because they knew how much it upset me. Once I realized what they were doing I learned to let it slide… Most of the time. I couldn’t sit around and watch my brother get abused by somebody like Orlando, no matter how much I knew they were doing it intentionally.

But this isn’t the palace, and these aren’t nobles. They’re ferals who couldn’t even begin to comprehend civilized society and the things my education taught me. But despite the gulf of knowledge between us, they’re treating me like a fledgling because, in a lot of ways, I am still a fledgling. I don’t know how to hunt, I only just learned how to fly the other day, and I know nothing about their flock’s lands or traditions. I need to be more conscious of this as they teach me new things… the last thing I want to do is wear out my welcome.

Enyll retracts his head and grunts, seemingly unconvinced by my apology. “Uh-huh, sure thing. I’m ready to leave once you are, Kuro.”

“You’re in luck,” Kuro scoffs, lowering her head but keeping her gaze fixed on Enyll. “That’s all I needed to show her. We’ll reach Flat Rock soon, you’re more than welcome to visit your sister while I take Asha to White Mountain.”

The two Lithans stare at each other for a tense moment before Enyll breaks away, turning to trace his steps to the center of the clearing where the winds are stronger. For whatever reason, Kuro didn’t seem to take any offense at my arrogance. Instead, she got upset at Enyll for his attitude. She really isn’t fair to him, is she?

I dip my head toward her all the same. “Thank you for showing this to me, Kuro.”

She smiles, making me feel better about my lapse. “Come on, let’s go.”

I turn around and pace back towards the center of the clearing where Enyll is preening his wings, waiting for us to catch up. But after a few steps through the grass, I don’t hear Kuro trailing behind. I crane my neck back to see her rear end crouching next to the guiding tree, and…. and she’s….?!?

“K-Kuro…?” I croak.

Her face grew concerned. “What is it?”

“You’re peeing on the guiding tree.”

A damp breeze blows through the clearing, setting free wet leaves from a nearby pin oak. They glide through the air and settle in the grass between me and Kuro while she stares at me perplexed. “I’m marking the guiding tree.”

“…You’re peeing on it.”

The feathers on her brow curl. “Asha, how else do you expect me to renew the scent marker?”

Wait a second… the scent marker? Where did I hear that bef—

…

…OH.

I dip my head so fast that it nearly gives me vertigo. The smell of the den where the Redaga was lying in wait. The stale scents of Lithans I smelled when we were flying overhead just now. Asha, you idiot! Lithans marked those areas with their urine!!

“Um, yes, I suppose that’s the only way, isn’t it?” If Kuro could see through my feathers she’d find cheeks flush with embarrassment. Here I was, thinking only a few moments ago about how smart and intelligent I was… they have every right to talk down and treat me like a dumb little fledgling!

She finishes up her business and trots back over to me. “Honestly, do Farlanders not scent mark? How do you know where you’re going when you travel?”

“We have different ways of getting around,” I force my gaze up to meet hers. “Ones that don’t involve, um, leaving our scents.”