Rat, her friends and the world where they live are mine, all mine! Mwahahaaa! (and as a result are probably the result of sleep deprivation) Would have written more of this chapter, but I needed sleep! Please R&R!

The forest in which Rat had gratefully taken shelter days before had done nothing more than make her yearn for her home more than ever before.

In her hollow scraped in the near frozen peat, she had resolved to move no further and wait for blissful oblivion to consume her. At least then, she would no longer be in this scar of a place.

As she lay, she thought of what had brought her here, and how now at home her pack had most probably moved down from the forests where they spent the winter, shed their thick coats and were living on two legs on the plentiful plains.

It was hard to remember them now. Had they ever existed, or did she dream it? Surely she did. The strong features of Wrath, the distant gazes of Fraeja and Yussef, the seers. One kind, one touched by madness as ones with the sight often are. Others faded in and out of view…her family, her friends…or had she imagined everything. Every now and then, from the corner of her eye she would think she saw one of them and turn to greet them, only to be met with an empty, featureless moonscape.

She could remember hardly anything now except the black, grey and occasional brown of the landscape. Her feet, designed for protection against cold, like wide furry snowshoes, now had most of the fur missing from between the toes, ripped out by the stones she had spent an age trekking over. The pads were torn and cut and as long as she remained here, she could tell would not heal.

Yes.

She would wait. And soon she would be in this place no longer. It wouldn’t be long now and the sweet blackness would come.

She closed her eyes…

And someone said her name.

Not Rat…the nickname given to her as a cub by her friends, the name which had seemed to stick like a burdock and couldn’t be shaken.

No.

Her name. Her actual name. The one long forgotten by all except her family – what was left of them – and never, ever used. The name of her heart, of her head and never uttered.

Her head shot up, her eyes snapping open and she looked around to see only the bare forest floor. Her spirits once again sank at her cruel mind playing yet another trick on her and she tucked her head back into her flank.

There!

There it was again! Louder this time. As if someone was whispering it into her ear. The fur on her back stood on end.

It had never been this real before. Never.

But there was no-one there. Her ears twitched, searching for a telltale sound of this cruel prankster, but detected nothing. Not a living soul. Her nose smelled nothing but the leafmould, the sap of the trees and a slight twinge of fear rising from her own body.

This was it. She had finally gone mad. This place had robbed her of everything she held dear, and now it had taken the last thing she had. Her mind.

She stood and looked around the forest again as the voice spoke a third time, not even bothering to shake the pine needles from her coat. She wheeled around as if bitten to catch the tormenter who she was now sure was behind her. But she found nothing.

She shook, as if to try and shed the insanity like loose hair and then stood in the plunging silence. She wondered if this was what it was like to possess the sight like her two friends. To have the dead speak, to see glimpses of the future in blinding flashes. And thought that it was no small wonder why Yussef had almost lost her mind to it.

Perhaps that was what was happening to her.

No.

Plain and simple she was going mad and that’s that. Best to stay here and die as planned and then it would all be over.

She slumped back down into her hollow. And the voice spoke a fourth time. And this time it did not say her name.

It simply said:

"Please"

The sound of the one simple word, the feeling behind it made her want to throw her head back and voice the anguish housed in it. At the same time, she resisted the urge to curl into a ball and weep for the speaker.

She suddenly became aware of the pull again, as one becomes aware of a noise that has always been there.

But it was different this time.

There was a feeling there of sadness, desperation and terrible, terrible loneliness that she felt as if it was her own.

Rat rose from the ground, bunched her muscles, started to run and punched out of the forest like a small red comet.