Under Paw | Shelha Series 4 | ✔

South River Base

The blizzard howled into the evening and through the night, then blew itself out around sunrise. Snow lay as deep as a Coppertail's shoulder across the South Forest. Fletch reached a tunnel exit and looked outside. He turned around and went right back into the Labyrinth. He had to pee, but not that badly.

A musical sound tilted over the wind, and Fletch stopped walking. He returned to the tunnel mouth. In the eerie calm, a voice hummed in the distance. It was coming towards him. A breeze sprang up, the kind that raced over the forest like a kit in play. Suddenly, the humming was everywhere. It was the wind making it. The breeze's main body passed with a shrill moan and then died, taking the sound with it.

Fletch shivered and pulled back inside. Hardly a day went by on the Rock Flats when the wind didn't sound like a voice, just far enough away that you could not make out the words. But this... this was more unusual. In flatland lore, wind-music usually heralded something sinister.

Taz wandered around a tunnel corner. He looked only half surprised to see his twin. "Oh, it's you. I thought I felt you around here somewhere. I have to pee."

"So did I." Fletch touched noses with his brother.

Taz gazed past him out the tunnel exit. "Ah. Okay, I'm waiting then."

They started back into the tunnel together. This was a secondary base the Coppertails had staked out when they first returned from the Highlands. As they drew near it, Adder the herd's Northlander appeared, walking towards them. He nodded back the way he had come. "Phoenix is tired of being cooped up inside. I'd stay out of there if I were you."

"Thanks," said Fletch, more out of habit than intention.

"You mean Phoenix has attention, energy and attitude problems?" said Taz under his breath when the Northlander was gone.

"Taz..."

"What? Deny it."

"I'm not, but you still don't need to diss him for it. He's alone and a long way from home, and might I remind you you weren't so agreeable either at his age."

"I wasn't half that bad at his age!"

"Oh, you just don't remember," said Fletch under his breath, as they rounded the corner into the base.

Phoenix was poking about a ledge by the ceiling, shedding dirt on everything below him and ignoring Echo's demands for him to please get down. As the twins entered, he jumped to the floor and scooted up a tunnel, using them as a roadblock. Echo's tail lashed. She had been sorting herbs on a blanket beneath the ledge; her morning's work was now dirt-covered.

"Let's go," said Fletch quietly. By the healer's spiked fur, she probably didn't want company.

They had gone hardly a tail-length when Rose skidded into the room behind them, breathless and urgent. Echo followed her immediately. The room stood empty for several heartbeats, then Phoenix wandered back into it. He sniffed over Echo's herb piles, then peed just shy of the blanket's edge—and not really shy of it—and darted away restlessly. In a flash he had sprinted past Taz and Fletch and vanished into the base.

"Kastar's fever is back," said Fletch when Taz looked at him. "Rose thinks it's the humidity."

Taz's face crumpled and he looked away.

"Wing's strong, Taz. He'll live."

"He's not strong." Taz knocked his twin's tail aside. "He's not going to be strong until Jay gets back. You've never paid attention to bonding Coppertails; you don't understand."