Firefly | Shelha Series 5 | ✔

Chapter Eighty-Three: Trails

"You have got to be kidding me," said Taz.

"We're not," said Firebrand. "But Sethral, we're not screwed. Look at these." She grabbed the wilted base of what had once been a flower cluster. "They're already rotting. None of these vines are going to make any nuts, and the nuts so far have all washed in from upstream. These were pollen flowers, not fruiting ones."

"There's a difference?" said Taz helplessly.

"Most flowers are both. Some are one or the other."

"So we need to find the fruiting ones," said Sethral. "The other half of the species."

"That's where all the nuts are coming from. And that is the thing nobody has ever seen."

"Except maybe Salisetta's crew."

Fletch coughed lightly.

Firebrand closed her eyes. "The skeleton. I get it."

Fletch turned serenely and started walking. Firebrand loosened the shells off several sprouting nuts and jammed them in her bag. She and Sethral followed the other renegades.

The Thaliar's Tree vines grew like nothing Sethral had ever seen. By the time the mud on the vine floor dried, the fastest had roots halfway down to the forest floor. The nut shells—and everything else left behind by the storm—were consumed by a network of white tendrils. The jungle's resumed canopy chorus ceased halfway through the afternoon. The renegades ran for shelter before the storm broke. The downpour was violent but short. Very short.

"Back to normal," said Loki. Even the flood was nearly gone, and the river seemed to have resumed its regular flow. "I guess this explains why it still took three years for Salisetta's logbook to get back to the Lowlands. I wonder if this place gets a storm like that more than once a year."

Sethral poked the residual mud. "I doubt it. The winds completely change when my clan's forest goes into the wet season, and then switch back in the dry season again. That storm was probably what happens here when it goes dry to wet. They probably get something else for the other way around."

"You lost me at winds changing."

"What, that doesn't happen in the North Forest?"

"There's no wind in the understory."

"Ryatzi, what's up?" called Fletch.

The Saberel had stopped some ways ahead. Slowly, he lifted his head. "Fibes? And Loki. You might want to come look at this."

They joined him. He had found a hole in the vines, large enough to provide a clear view of the forest floor. In the mud there was a slender trail. It could have been made by a snake, but there was a gouge down its center.

"That's the same as the giant one we found," said Firebrand. "Did you see what made it?"

"One of those eels."

Whipper jumped on Firebrand's back and clung there like the group was going to attacked at any moment. Sethal saw Loki swallow hard, and turned a pointed gaze on him.

"I... thought I was dreaming," he said.

"About what?" said Firebrand.

"A few nights after we got here, we camped behind that waterfall, remember? I woke up in the middle of that night, and there was... something in the water outside."

Everyone backed away from the hole.

"What was it doing?" said Firebrand.

"I think it was trying to get to us." Loki glanced at Phoenix. "Feefs held it off. Then it left."