Firefly | Shelha Series 5 | ✔

Caged

Her satchel was gone.

Sethral fumbled beside her before she had gotten a grip on her consciousness; there was nothing over her shoulder, or beside her, and she never took it off. Being without its weight left her feeling acutely vulnerable. She was breathing hard before she could stop herself, and the world faded back into existence.

Her claws were scrabbling across a stone floor. Sethral jerked her head up. At her back was a stone wall. To every other side was a tail-length of space and a wall, of vines this time, woven tightly. The ceiling was almost impenetrable. It was nearly dark and no lighter outside. Sethral tried to get up, but her legs would only half obey her. She dragged herself to the front of the cage.

Her cage was one of many, lined up along a stone ledge that slanted away to one side. Past a narrow walkway past its front, the ground turned to air. Smooth, sheer stone walls plunged down to a canyon bottom webbed with rope bridges and platforms all made of living brown and muddy green vines. More vines climbed the walls, making ladders and hammocks, crossing the canyon as more bridges suspended in midair. Their walkways were sturdy and their railings were more like nets; a child could walk across one and not be able to fall off.

Still the canyon walls kept climbing, far, far above this ledge, but instead of flaring like a canyon should, they began to close in on themselves. Where they ended at the surface far above, they were separated by little more than a slot, if one still wider than twice her wingspan. It too was webbed over, crisscrossed by vines woven into a mesh as tight as the walls of her cage.

The whole slot canyon was filled with flitting shadows. Pale shapes moved up and down the ladders so quickly they seemed to be flying, or at least floating. Sethral tested her own body just to be sure, but the force that kept her tethered to the ground felt, if anything, stronger than ever. She tried to get a handle on the shapes. They darted over bridges, met and danced, and darted apart again. They seemed to come and go from nowhere, sometimes straight in and out of the walls. Sethral stared at one spot until her eyes ached, and in a hundred heartbeats she could start to make out the ghostly outline of a hole in the canyon wall. It was confirmed as a pale shadow darted out of it. There were caves.

Sethral stepped back from the cage front as her eyes started throbbing from straining in the gloom. She scanned the other cages in her row. The ones flanking hers were empty, but the two past that each had a motionless figure in them. Ryatzi was still out cold; he always curled up if he was lying down. Sethral ran to the other side. "Loki! Loki!"

He leaped in his skin and jumped up. He had been awake. "Sethral?"

"Over here!"

He ran to the near side of his cage. "I can't see you."

She was the same colour as the vines. Sethral exposed her wing's pale underside. "Can you see this?"

"Oh, there you are."

Sethral screamed as something hissed outside her cage. She backed against the stone wall. Gripping the vines was a Watermouse-like creature with pale, fluffy fur and a tufted tail. It bared sharp teeth at her, then vanished. Loki had a fright as it was suddenly outside his cage. It hissed at him too, then dashed across the path and plunged over the precipice.

"How long have you been up?" whispered Sethral across the empty cage.

"A couple sun's paw-lengths? Who's on your other side?"

"Ratty. Yours?"

"An empty cage and a wall. Are you hurt?"

Some part of her brain was blocking out what had happened leading up to the gap in her memory. Sethral looked down at her claws. They were still burned from the Aria encounter, but they were healing. And she had no white patches. "I think I'm okay."