Once again a queen, Winter has a budding army and plenty to offer them to keep them loyal. Besides expanding her territory, she is using her forces to chase specific creatures for reasons nobody knows. None of them seem to be connected.
The changes...
"Good heavens, Pete, I've got one injured and one slowly dying creature in this boat here, and my wife will have your hide if I can't get them to Salix by noon today! Just open the damn gate already!"
Rose awoke to find herself curled in a blanket in a beautiful log canoe. Tornado was asleep beside her. The boat was turned sideways against a log across the river. In the back of it, Laurel was waving a punting pole threateningly beneath the nose of another Watermouse.
Watermice were sleek and grey-furred, with webbed paws, mouse tails, and pinned-back, mouse-like ears. Laurel was the sleeker, tougher and much younger of the two, but the threat of Penny's wrath seemed to have done the trick. Pete grumbled off to a mess of ropes and metal wheels decking a nearby tree. A few tugs dislodged a rock from the branches, and the log glided upwards, dripping.
Once through, Laurel got them moving at a fair clip again. "Crotchety, blithering old bottlenose," Rose heard him mutter. He glanced up and, finding her awake, grinned. "They say Petan there's been the gatekeeper on this waterway for just about his whole life. Been a good pain in the tail for delinquents and seedy waterpedlers and such, but unfortunately he sees it in the job description to question all of us outliers too whenever we need to get to town."
"Outliers?"
"Creatures who live outside the main settlements, for our own various reasons." Laurel navigated the heavy, tail-length craft through a set of rapids. Standing sideways with both paws planted, he made both the punting and balancing on the bucking craft look effortless. It was midmorning. After Laurel told her they had set out close to sunset the day before, Rose wondered just how far they had come.
Small hints of habitation were beginning to show up along the riverbank. Rose had been to the Lowlands' edge before, but its signatures never failed to baffle her. A patch of flattened ground with rows of flowers growing in it. A perfectly square stand of cordage plants. A fruit tree with branches glossed by generations of climbing paws. It was some time before she began to spot houses nestled in the sunny woods. Creatures weren't long to follow. First there were Rivrit—bushy, brown-furred and blunt-muzzled, with an upright walk that was almost a waddle—working on patches of ground, then Watermice, a head taller, crafting all manner of things on the riverbanks. Then there were creatures everywhere.
"It's alright, they're all friendly," chuckled Laurel as his passenger hunkered down.
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There were more novel sights and sounds than Rose had seen in her life. Sun flashed on colour as a Rivrit housewife hung two beautiful blankets out to dry. Nearby, a team of Watermice were hard at work on a log taking the shape of a boat like their own. A swarm of children ran squealing at the sight of Rose, then crept back to run alongside the logboat calling to Laurel, whom they knew by name. Hot food wafted scents so delicious they made Rose's mouth water like a stream in flood. Rivrit and Watermice sat side by side on blankets, sharing an afternoon meal as if they were from the same family, let alone species.
