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...
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Six Years Ago
Cold fog rolled over the North Forest, obscuring the canopies of trees so tall the low clouds brushed their tips. A Forester kit shivered and looked around. Small copses grew from the branches around him: sedges, small trees and leafy plants frothing from thick loam mats. Water dripped from every surface. The kit crawled under a bush, knowing full well it offered no shelter.
Thunder shimmered in the distance, and the thought of a warm, dry bed became too much to bear. The kit uncurled and crawled out from under his bush. In the damp, it took twice the usual time to travel back to the colony. Night was falling by the time he slowed. Ahead, an oblong green shape hung suspended between two trees, woven from the living twigs. The Forester nest was occupied. Giving it a wide berth, the kit drifted quietly to the next one. Foresters were nocturnal, and each night at least a few would leave to find food.
The second nest was also occupied. It was spring, and creatures' food stashes were clearly large enough to tide them through the night. When all the outliers proved full, the kit crept to the clan grove and retreated to the bottom branches of a tree. Half the trunk still stretched away below him, to a ground so far below it looked like tundra groundcover. The Forester clan's counterparts lived in the streams and pools that laced that understory. Fishers couldn't climb, but the threat was enough; no sane Forester went lower in the trees than they absolutely had to.
Climbing down just a little further, the kit perched on a branch shielded by a larger bough. He would be safest here.
Not long after dark, voices began to filter through the branches. Foresters—laughing and chasing each other through the trees—appeared in the grove center. The kit heard a group of males land on his tree. One ran down it, paused on a limb and ran back up. There were whoops and laughter. Another Forester dashed down, going even lower than the first. The kit tensed as a big male landed on the branch above him. A daredevil. Would anyone try to beat him?
