Hunger

Part I - Chapter 2 - The Storm

Iya crashed through her woods heedless of stealth intent only on escape.  He knows, she screamed silently, he knows!  Silence ran after her, and she could hear him gaining ground.  It was all a lie!  He is just like the others!  Tears blurred her vision, but the trees seemed to sense her need and did not hinder her flight.  Silence was not so fortunate.  More than once Iya gained ground when she heard him grunt as he tripped on a root.  She heard him crash into a bush of thorns that seemed to have parted as she had passed and closed behind her. As she ran, the forest seemed to hide her trail, but Silence still pressed on.  The fact that she could not lose him fed into Iya’s sense of impending danger.

Lightning flashed above and thunder rumbled.  Soon the rain was pelting down in heavy torrents.  Iya paused to catch her breath and looked for signs of pursuit made futile by the deluge.  Iya made her way toward one of her tree havens, a bluebirch so old that it towered above its neighbors.  Water runoff from seasons of storms had eroded the dirt away from the roots making the tree appear as if it were living on stilts.  The trunk was more than twice as wide as Iya was tall and hollow within.  The tree had suffered greatly from a lightning strike long ago.  She had discovered an entry point under the base of the tree and inside widened the haven into a small shelter.  This was where she had spent many cold seasons, sheltered from the storms. 

Even in the violence of the raging winds around her, Iya found her way on hands and knees through the tangled roots.  Iya felt blindly above for the small loop that would allow her to release the catch and push open the trap door to her shelter within.  She had not visited this haven in several dyos but as she grasped the clasp and pushed open the door, she found nothing amiss.  Familiar scents of the tree invaded her.  Safety, the tree-smells said.  Home.

Iya was so exhausted both physically and emotionally that sleep claimed her as soon as she closed her eyes.

Sometime in the night the storm abated.  Iya woke up gasping and panicked, with Little Death clutched tightly in her fist.  She never remembered the nightmares but always woke up with the same thoughts:  Danger. Death. Iya touched her middle finger to her forehead.  Oftentimes when she awoke with this feeling, she had no idea what the danger was until she laid eyes on it.  Once, while sleeping in the boughs of a bluebirch near the Beryl Mountains, she had awakened with the same sense of dread. When she had started to climb down from her hammock, a black mountain cat that stood thrice as tall as Iya and nearly twelve paces long was prowling beneath. Today’s sense of impending doom was no different:  Death is near.

Iya stood and stretched and noticed that she could not stand fully upright.  Either the tree has shrunk, or I have grown.  Iya frowned and felt along the wall for the window she had carved.  She pulled the loop and released the clasp removing the part of trunk she had carved out.  She reached forward and unfastened the camouflage, not dissimilar to her treecloak, and pushed it to the side.  Iya gasped at what she saw. 

The predawn light bathed the woods in red.  Light shimmered and reflected off the frost that covered the ground and devastation the storm had wrought.  Trees half as tall as the one in which she had spent the night were torn up by the roots and lay strewn about her shelter.  None of the trees within forty paces stood.  The bluebirches beyond looked to have had been hacked apart and stood jagged against the horizon, like rows of teeth in the maw of some giant beast.  Red light reflected off the frost and made it seem as if hundreds of animals had been slaughtered and dismembered, their parts scattered about in disarray.  Iya shivered.  She fastened the camouflage and shut the window against the gore outside. 

Iya emerged from the roots of her tree haven and surveyed the damages.  Her tree haven was unscathed, but two paces away the devastation began.  As she picked her way amongst the rubble the premonition of danger clung to her like a stench.  Iya drew Little Death as she made her way away from the tree haven.  Iya had weathered many storms in her years within the woods, but never had she seen such destruction.  A faint breeze rose gooseflesh on her bare arms and she drew her treecloak close.