Sora stirred and tried to roll over. It was still dark out. She didn’t have to get up.

Suddenly a bolt of pain shot up her arm, startling her awake. She opened her eyes.

She was lying on a bed of leaves surrounded by trees. Most of the sunlight was blocked by the trees, but here and there were spots where the canopy hadn’t blocked the fierce glare.

Sora lay there for a moment, wondering what she was doing there. She could vaguely remember a dream; it was green and with many . . . it was gone. Dreams were like that, and if you didn’t try and make the effort to remember them they were as elusive as water between your fingers. She tried to catch it again, but it was like trying to remember a childhood memory everyone says you experienced but you retain no memory of. It should still be there, but you just can’t find it. She lay there for awhile, then rolled over and tried to get up.

She gave a cry as her right arm erupted in pain. Suddenly she remembered. She had flown. The dragon-birds. The fall. Blue. She grimaced. She had sure had gotten herself into a fine pickle.

Her arm must be broken. She tried to get up again, this time careful not to put any weight on her arm. Slowly she rose to her feet.

She looked around, carefully this time. Some limbs were scattered around her where they had been broken by her fall, but otherwise there was no sign of any other life. And no dragon-birds, thankfully.

What should she do now? She had no idea what direction she had been facing when she fell, and even if she had known she could have twirled as she had fallen.

There was only one thing she could do. Look for Blue. Carefully, trying not to make too much noise for fear of dragon-birds or whatever else might be lurking in the forest, she crept through the forest. The trees were not very dense, but the floor was littered with leaves and sticks which snapped and crackled every time she took a step.

What could she use to heal herself? Her arm could never heal properly if she didn’t find the right herbs. There were many ferns and vines in the forest, but she had no idea which ones would help and which would harm. Blue had always been the one who had payed attention in herbology. Hopefully when she found her friend Blue would be able to identify the plants they needed. If Blue was alright. Of course Blue was alright. Of course. Sora had to pause for a second and take a deep breath. Blue would be alright. She would!

Her salien was a mixed curse and blessing. The eagle’s sharp hearing carried over to her normal form, enabling her to hear every crackle and rustle. If Blue had gotten up and was walking around, she would hear it. But the eagle’s vision was designed for scanning the ground from miles above, not for looking at things through a dense forest. While she could see quite far if when the forest thinned here and there, close up things were blurred and distorted. If anything was stalking her or was in the bushes, she would never know it. She shivered. It was a chilling thought.

She gave a cry as something slashed across the hem of her dress, and then blushed as she realized it had just been a thorn bush. Although her dress had not been affected by her battle as a salien, it was dirty and scratched from her fall and the walk through the woods. She sighed. Of all days to wear a dress, she had to choose today. She would be in rags if she ever made it to the castle.

The castle. The optimistic plans that she and Blue had made up before the attack seemed distant and overshadowed. She had to focus on the problem at hand, not how the king would receive a dirty thirteen-year-old who claimed to be the lady-to-be of Goldeneye Keep.

Suddenly out of the corner of her eye she spotted something blue. In the forest of greens and browns, sky blue stood out like a sore thumb. Sora smiled. Blue had been wearing a blue dress!

She hurried forward. Finally! She had been worried she might be wandering around the wood forever. Hopefully Blue was alright. She had to be alright!

Sora nearly tripped and had to catch herself. Hmm, better walk a little slower. She could start to make out a form of light blue. Blue must be very far away if even her eyes couldn’t make out any more than the outline. She ducked under branches and dodged thorny bushes, starting to run despite her resolve not to. Blue was so close, yet so far! Just beyond this fern and she could make the figure out clearly. Just a little farther.

She rounded the bush and stopped short. She could make out Blue’s dark hair now. Blue was still unconscious. But that wasn’t what stopped her short.

She crouched down. What? She must have been mistaken. She crawled slowly forward, putting no pressure on her arm.

A leopard was crouching near to where Blue was lying, sniffing as if wondering what had fallen in its little world.

A leopard. That meant it was part of the bandits she had read reports on! Darn. There was no way she could fight a leopard. Especially if it had friends. She glanced around nervously. Didn’t they always travel in bands? Oh, she was in trouble.

What was she going to do? Wait, and hope that the leopard left. That was all she could do. She nearly ground her teeth together in frustration. Go! she thought, Just leave. I’ll take care of her. She resisted the impulse to jump up and try and scare it away. There might be others around, she reminded herself. Be patient. What if it thought Blue was dead though? What did leopards eat? She shivered and pushed the thought away. She glared even more sharply at the big cat. Get lost! She couldn’t just wait. She looked around. Maybe she could chuck rocks at it.

It whirled towards her and she froze. Maybe it had sensed her small movement or maybe it had heard her angry thoughts, but it had noticed her. It’s going to attack me. Why couldn’t she have just been patient? It would have left Blue alone. She wouldn’t do Blue any good if she got herself killed!

She released a long breath as the leopard whirled and vanished into the forest. Thank you, whatever made it do that. Thank you.

Carefully she crept over to Blue. Blue’s side was burned, but not severely. A little blood leaked from a cut on Blue’s forehead, which must have occurred when she hit a branch on the way down. She was thankful that her friend was not badly injured. Come to think of it, Blue’s wounds were less severe than her own!

She frowned. How was she going to tend the burns? Glancing around found that there was not a single plant she could put a name to. Hopefully Blue would awaken soon. It seemed like that was all she’d been doing lately. Hoping.

She tilted her eyes towards the snatches of blue sky she spied through the thick canopy. They would have been half-way to the castle if they hadn’t been attacked by those stupid dragon-birds. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for any of the stupid monsters! She would have been eating lunch now. Probably some of the berry-bread the cook made. The soft, buttery bread had little fruits in it, giving it a delicious taste. But no. She was stuck in the woods, wounded, with no food, no water, no way of healing herself and no way of getting home. To top it all off her best friend was unconscious. Arrgh!

For some reason she was angry at her uncle. If he hadn’t tricked her by telling her that she was going on a trip this morning . . . And Blue. Why did she have to always come up with plans that never worked? This was a ridiculous idea. It was all Blue’s fault!

She was about to look around for something to kick when she spotted it. Later she would rue ever having spotted it, but for now she couldn’t have been happier.

Yes! Finally something was going her way! The herb was a small leaf, and on the vine two of them were always growing together. The vine of rudnan wrapped around the trunk of a large tree. Rudnan was the best cure for burns she could have found in the wilderness. Large amounts swallowed also cured pain.

She surveyed the tree. Unfortunately the vine was not growing on a smaller tree, but, hey, she couldn’t have everything. She couldn’t turn into her salien and fly up with a broken wing, but if she used her left arm well she might be able to climb up to it.

Putting one hand on the tree she carefully put her foot on a branch and pulled herself up. She looked around for another branch and repeated the process, never using her right arm. Hey, this was easier than she thought! The tree had so many branches it was like climbing stairs. Well, maybe not that easy, but she was making pretty good progress.

She smiled in anticipation as she hauled herself up to the branch below the herb. From here she could easily reach out and grab it.

She was about to reach out when she frowned. Did trees usually have those red circles? She cursed her far-sighted eyes and peered at the rings. What?

Suddenly she caught a glimpse of the mud-brown feathers above the red rings. Not rings. Talons. Every muscle in her body froze. Oh. No.

She forgot about the herb and tried to gently lower herself to the ground. She reached for a branch, but her fear-clouded mind didn’t react properly. Her right hand grabbed the branch.

Her cry of pain was answered by the surprised shriek of a dragon-bird. She saw a red dragon head poke through the leaves and give another shriek, this time of anger. She flew down the tree faster than she thought possible. Maybe she could out-race the dragon-bird. But then the bird she had disturbed was answered by more shrill cries. Dragon heads poked out of the tree’s leaves, and, spotting her, gave another chorus of indignant calls. She hadn’t just disturbed one dragon-bird, but a whole flock of resting birds.

Suddenly they began diving at her with their claws, some scratching her, but most missing as they struggled to fly in the close quarters. She thought she might make it, being only about nine feet above the ground, when a dragon-bird crashed into the branch she was holding onto. She plunged.

As she fell, she saw a flash of a shadow, like a Great Dane. Then she hit the ground and her head exploded into darkness.

***

She was standing in the middle of a field. She had the impression of having been there before, but she knew she had never seen such a green field before. It glowed with flowers and grass, and even though there was no other animal or Salien in the field she had the impression of pulsing life. Bright sunlight streamed through her hair, and she smiled as she gazed around. The light seemed to warm her from the inside out, and there could never be a more perfect picture of beauty. She felt content. But just as she was gazing around, her eye caught on something. She turned around.

Something like a black shadow was falling over the field, darkening everything and killing off all life. At least it is quite far away, she thought. She knew, with the logic of dreams, that that shadow had always been there. Nothing to worry about.

But as she watched, the shadow seemed to grow, cutting a path through the field to her. Fear leapt at her heart. As the shadow moved in a straight line the rest of the shadow filled in the field to either side, like a river set loose from a dam. For once her dream-logic failed to inform her what it was or what it was doing there. Or how to stop it.

That’s not right. It didn’t belong here. Go away! she wished at it, as if it would have any affect on the shadow. Go away! she thought again, like a child stuck in the dark telling the monsters to go away.

Strangely the shadow seemed to slow down, as if moving more cautiously now that it was spotted. But why slow down for her? Was it afraid of her? She doubted it. What could she do?

As if sensing her self-doubt, the shadow sprang forward again, gobbling up beautiful field at a terrifying pace. Closer and closer it came, and it felt like she was standing in front of a charging lion. There was no where to run. Closer and closer it came, until she could see what the shadow was doing to the land.

When the shadow touched a part of the field it turned dark and lifeless, making it seem like a dark shadow. The flowers became wilted and black, the grass dead and yellow. This avalanche of death and destruction was pouring toward her. Her.

Suddenly the realization that she too, could end up like the flowers and grass, started her out of her careful observation of the destruction of the field. She turned around and ran.

Although she could no longer see the shadow, she could sense it gaining on her, confident now that she was within it’s reach. She tripped and fell, and tried to get up, but it felt like the field was grabbing her shoulder, moving it back and forth, back and-

She bolted awake to see a shape bending over her. She jerked up, still afraid of the shadow, when she realized with a start that the shape was a boy about her age.

The boy seemed as surprised that she was awake as she was to see him. He leapt back, landing on all fours, and was almost instantly a large, black panther.

Sora snarled silently. The last bits of the dream and fatigue that had been fogging her mind vanished and she leapt backwards, away from the panther and far away enough to turn into a Goldeneye.

Well, even though her mind had cleared, her memory was not back yet and she forgot about her broken arm. She landed, full weight, on her right arm.

She gave a cry and was pitched forward, directly in front of the panther. Wonderful. Why did all the bad things have to happen to her? She scrambled desperately to her feet, this time not leaning on her right arm at all. How was she supposed to fight with one arm broken and the other being used to keep her from falling on her face again? How? She felt like crying. So much for Blue’s plan. So much for anything.

But the panther seemed to have reassured itself that she was harmless and changed back into a boy again.

"It looks broken," the boy observed. "You might want to wrap it."

No duh. Maybe if there was a nice Nursing Center here, with bandages all prewrapped and stuff, she would wrap it. But in case he hadn’t noticed, they were in the middle of a forest wilderness, without civilization for leagues! Hey, come to think of it, what was he doing here anyway? And where were the dragon-birds?

"Who are you?" she asked suspiciously. It was a big jump, from being terrified to death to being suspicious of the exact same thing that scared you, and she was still a little bit afraid. But she was very confused and needed answers. "And what are you doing here?"

"I’m a-". He paused, as if rethinking giving out that piece of information, and said instead, "My name’s Taylor."

"That tells me a lot," she said sarcastically. Why was he so close-mouthed? Her imagination jumped at the opportunity and she swallowed. Stupid boy.

Taylor seemed quite taken aback.

"Well, um, what else do you want to know?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I live here."

"Here?"

"In the woods."

Sora scratched her head and looked around. How could he live here? There were no shelters, no nothing. What would he eat? She had seen nothing edible on her trek through the woods.

Taylor must have seen her speculation, because he took the opportunity to ask, "Well, what are you doing he-"

"Are you alone?" Sora asked hurriedly, right on top of him. She wanted to find out as much as possible before he found out about her. Who knew how he might react if she told him she was the future Lady of the Keep?

"Alone? Um . . . well, yes, kind of."

"Kind of?"

"Geez, what are you, an interrogator? I say you answer some of my questions first!"

"Hey, who tried to attack me here? I deserve some answers, not you!"

"I attacked you? I saved you from those wrens!"

"Wrens?" she asked, confused. "What are wrens?"

"Wrens!" he said, gesturing as if she should know the word. She shot him an annoyed look.

He sighed. "Wrens! The things that attacked you? The ones half dragon, half bird? Those are wrens!"

"Oh, you mean the dragon-birds?"

He looked confused. "Well, I’ve never heard them called that, but it is an accurate enough description. Their real name is wrens."

"How do you know?" If he was living here alone, how could he know that that was their name? She was beginning to come to a very dark conclusion about this boy . . .

"Um . . . hey, don’t you want to check on your friend?"

She gave a start and leapt over to her friend. She’d nearly forgotten Blue! Rudnan, that was what she had been getting . . . when? She closed her eyes and tried to remember. She had been in a field . . . no, she had been in a tree. Why had she thought that she had been in a field? She frowned. Odd. Oh well. She glanced up the tree she had climbed to get the rudnan and grimaced.

"Are all the drago- ah, wrens, gone?" she asked Taylor. The forest-dweller nodded and peered at where she was looking.

"Oh, you want the murana?" Taylor asked, turning towards her.

Murana? Never heard of it. "No, the rudnan," she said impatiently. As a forest-dweller, he should be able to recognize the plants, shouldn’t he? Maybe he didn’t really live in the forest.

"Rudnan?" he asked, and frowned suspiciously. "That’s the book-name for it. The common folk call it murana. That would mean that you must have received a higher-than-normal education." She glared at him. She hadn’t known that everyone didn’t receive the same education. She would have to be more careful. She grimaced at the thought. What was she supposed to do, not speak?

"I can get it for you," Taylor said, interrupting her thoughts. With one swift leap, he turned into a panther in the air and landed on the branch, which swayed under his weight. He sat on his back feet and used one of his huge claws to cut part of the vine. Sora smiled. His claw might have been big, but it wasn’t a scratch on the Goldeneye.

Everyone transformed into their salien differently, and Taylor turned kind of metallic and then black, transforming into a giant black cat. If he transformed on the ground, his shoulder would have come up to her waist.

He took the cut vine in his teeth and leapt down to the ground. Pacing over to her, he turned back into a boy and handed it to her. He looked rather happy with himself. Jerk.

"See, that way you save time," he said, crossing his arms.

She sniffed. "I could have just flown up there." Alright, so she couldn’t have with her arm broken, but the principle was the same.

"Then why didn’t you take to the air when the wrens attacked you?"

She frowned. If he had been watching her when she had been attacked, he must have realized that her arm was broken. He must have come after the wrens first attacked her then. So it hadn’t been this heroic thing, he had just happened by. Huh. Her hero.

"Just so you know, the Goldeneye could easily have creamed all those wrens." Well, maybe not all of them, but she had taken down quite a few up in the air.

"Goldeneye! That means you must be part of the royal family of the Keep!" he said, surprised and just a little bit angry.

Uh-oh. Ops. Stupid, stupid, stupid . . . why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut? She just had to brag. Obviously, Taylor didn’t like nobles too much.

"That’s right," she said, gathering every bit of haughtiness she could around her. If you’re going to break rules, break them all the way. "That’s right, and you’d better be careful because the Goldeneye can cream a panther like nothing." Maybe a Goldeneye could, but not with a broken arm. She just had to hope that he didn’t call her bluff.

"I’m not a panther," he said, annoyed that she didn’t realize what his salien really was. "I’m a leopard!"

"A leopard! Then you’re part of the gang that keeps on attacked my Keep!"

"And you are the Lady of the Keep that keeps attacking us!"

Darn, she knew there was something bad about this boy. He was part of the Leopards who prowled through the woods, stalking innocent wagons and farmers! And was probably in league with the creatures attacking her Keep too! Stupid boy! He probably helped orchestrate the attack and everything! He was the whole reason that she was stuck there in the first place, the whole reason why the people in the Keep, her uncle, everyone was in danger! The creep! She hated him! A little voice in the back of her head said that that was impossible, that how could he have been the mastermind behind all of it, he was just a boy, why did he save her then?

But she wasn’t listening. She drew her belt knife that she had packed that very morning for her trip, just as Taylor turned into his leopard. And Sora realized that she was just one girl armed with a small belt knife, against a deadly black leopard. As the leopard took a step forward, Sora wondered just what she had gotten herself into. But then she erased all thought and braced herself as she watched the leopard approach. As she looked into the yellow eyes she wondered if it was her death she saw in them.

That’s the end. Yes, I know, what a bad place to end, but by this time egotism killed it. At first I was so blown up over my success with the Gingerbread House Story that it went straight to my head, and I thought this story was insanely better than it really was. My ego was the size of a hot-air balloon (for you DBZ fans, that’s an ego the size of Vegeta’s) but as the saying goes, “The higher they are, the harder they fall,” and it sure rang true for me. The more I wrote, the more my self-confidence dropped, until I thought this story was insanely worse than it really was. Finally, I stopped. I was making it up as I went along anyway. But I did learn a valuable lesson: Never let your ego precede you.

For those of you who are wondering what was going to happen, as far as I myself knew it, the leopard was going to turn into their friend as a boy named Taylor, and help them in their quest. The next chapter was going to be about their encounter with a group of elves who decide to shelter them. I don’t think I can pick this story up again, because even though I have realized now that this story is not as bad as I had made it out to be, the characters are all dead to me. They didn’t have enough personality. But the elves are still with me. Actually, those elves are some of the oldest characters I have, as I had already invented them long before this story, and many of my future characters were based after them. Gryfinn was my first experience with failure, although it was more self-doubt that killed it than anything else. Despite having learned my egotism lesson quite well, I completely missed the other lesson I should have learned: it is harder to support characters and plots over a long-term. This probably lead to the death of my second long story, “The Legend of the Moon”.