Callie's Heroes

PART II - THE JOURNEY IN A WHOLLY UNINTERESTING DIRECTION

She flew, weighted down by the gold metal thing in her pouch, but determined to never let it go. For two days she flew nearly non-stop, resting only during the high heat of the day, taking refuge from the sun in the rocks and then emerging once the sun began to turn orange to fly all night. She didn’t eat due to her queasy tummy, because she didn’t want to spend the time and because she was already weighed down by the treasure she carried.

As the sun rose on the morning of the third day, she realized that the wholly uninteresting direction to the north and east of her abandoned hoard wasn’t actually that uninteresting. The endless, flowing dunes of sand had given way to a land of short, scrubby bushes and grasses, and she saw many small creatures she did not recognize running across the ground. She briefly wondered what they might taste like, and even saw a strange, small bird that looked invitingly delicious, which she instinctively made a half-hearted attempt to catch. It was fast and nimble and flew away in spite of being eyeburned in a last attempt to get it. That was fine. She really should be focused on the calling anyway, not trying to eat strange, foreign food.

By the late morning, the sun was high enough to be too warm, despite a cool breeze from the north, and she began to look for a place to nap until the sun was lower. It was then she saw something she’d never seen before, something simply unbelievable. Water!

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen water before. The stones around her den would capture water from the air, depositing it drop by drop into a tiny pool inside that she could drink from. She’d even seen torrents of water, when it would rarely fall from the sky, the tiny pool in her den filling to overflowing as the extra trickled away. But never had she seen water like this. A huge, long, forever line of water, with plants of green laden with brilliant, bright flowers, growing on either side. She then had to admit that the land to the north and east was becoming an interesting direction.

She stopped to drink and found something strange in the water. They moved not on legs or by slithers, but by wiggles. They would wiggle and move over here, and then wiggle and move over there, and never ever leave the huge flowing water. She had been traveling now for three days and was getting quite hungry despite her rolling tummy, so she decided to eat one of the wigglers. She tried to eyeburn one to kill it, and in return, the water hissed and blew moist, hot air back at her. Still, she wanted the wiggly thing, so she focused, shoved her head into the water, and snapped her jaws around the wiggly before pulling it out. It was so big and was flopping, so she eyeburned its head off, before cooking and eating the strange creature. It was very good and she wondered what new and delicious exotic things might be ahead of her in the fascinating direction to the north and east.

On the fifth day, the scrubby bushes and rocky terrain gave way to wide, endless swaths of green grass waving in the winds. Gentle rolling hills as far as her eyes could see spread in all directions, all covered with the endless waves of green. Occasionally there were bright flowers here and there, and when taking a few minutes to rest she saw strange insects flying from flower to flower, as if attracted by the colors. Curious, she rippled her tail in the same colors, and the insects changed their directions towards her, attracted by the ripples. They were very tasty, with a strange sweetness she hadn’t expected, so she lured and ate her fill.

By the sixth day she finally needed to rest. To really rest, that was. She’d been flying almost non-stop for days, only resting briefly during the height of the sun or an occasional meal, and all that time had caught up, so she decided to rest for just one night. The world around her had grown strange. Huge trees so tall they reached far into the sky were all around her, large enough to make shadows on the ground where barely any sun came through their wide, leaf-filled branches. There was no sand anywhere any more, and part of her missed it.

That night, she was discovered by other creatures while she slept. She had been sleeping in one of the tall trees, close to the top, when a dozen ugly green and brown colored ones like her began to screech and snarl for daring to be in their territory. She rippled a warning to stay back and most of them did. But one green male, easily four times her size, grew close and she could tell he wanted to mate. But he didn’t even bring a gift for her hoard to ask to mate, which was just as well, as she couldn’t carry anything more than the shiny metal thing. To ward off his advances, she rippled to him that she wasn’t interested, and when he didn’t take no for an answer, she eyeburned his head off. That served as a warning to the others, and they all flew away in fear. She didn’t have time for mating anyway. She needed to keep following the calling.

The pain in her tummy had lessened now, or changed, or maybe she had become used to it. It was still there, and only satisfied when she flew to the north and the east, an absolutely amazing direction. She didn’t know why she was receiving this calling, and had no idea what she might find when she got there, but from what she had seen so far on this journey, she had no doubt it would be unbelievable.

It was on the ninth day that she arrived. She knew she had arrived because the queasiness in her tummy finally stopped, and then began again when she flew past. She had come all this way to find a strange sight. All around her were hundreds, no, thousands of the sky-high trees. It had been this way for many days now, but here, in the middle of all these high trees, was an open area with only a few of them, although one was much, much taller than even the sky-high ones. Could one even go higher than the sky?

What she truly couldn’t understand were the creatures living in this almost-treeless area. While a few had wings, most had none. Some had tails or fur or both, but many many more had no fur except for some on their head. But, in spite of all these differences, the one thing they had in common was that nearly all of the creatures had four legs, but only walked on two of them. Walked quite well, in fact. She was also able to walk on her two hind legs if she had to, but it was slow and clumsy, and she needed to use her stretched-out wings for balance. It was not at all like these strange, upright creatures that could walk on two legs quite easily. And while they didn’t walk on their front legs, they did use their front paws and legs quite a bit in strange ways, often using them to move objects, many of which they used to strike dark, evil-seeming creatures and kill them.

She didn’t know what to make of these evil creatures, or why she knew that they were evil, for that matter. But, as she watched, they would appear out of nowhere inside of strange green and purple colors, and proceed to fight with the upright walkers. Almost always, the uprights would win, killing the evil ones, but occasionally one upright would need help from others to kill it, or to make their injuries disappear. Injuries usually took a great deal of time to heal, so this was yet another fascinating strangeness about this truly unbelievable direction to the north and east.

She spent much of her time trying to find the one the calling was telling her to find. It was a great deal of work, forcing her to fly close to and away from as many of the uprights as possible without being seen, gauging with her tummy whether this was the one. She didn’t know what she’d do when she found the creature she was looking for, but she knew it was one of these uprights, just not which. Why would the calling bring her here to find one of these upright creatures? Except for their little winged babies that lived in the trees, which she left alone as there was plenty of other food and she didn’t feel it would be right to eat them, the uprights were so much bigger than she was, so what was she supposed to do?

After three days of watching, she finally found who she was seeking. It was a female, she could tell by the shape of her body and how she smelled when she sweated. The creature was furry, with yellow fur and black spots, and sometimes she put something dark on her head. She concluded the dark thing must be to attract a mate. One of those often with her upright, who was much smaller than the one she was watching and had a head of pink fur, also sometimes had the dark thing on her head. It appeared that she had attracted a mate with it, too, in the form of a winged upright with blue fur. Even though they would never have babies, because they were both female, the pink-furred and the blue-furred uprights seemed to enjoy mating, which they had done a few times since she had arrived. It seemed silly to mate if you could not make babies, but these were strange animals with strange ways, so she simply accepted it.

While she now knew the spotted upright was the one calling to her, she still wasn’t sure what to do next. Part of her said she should approach, and maybe ripple a display asking why she was called. Part of her was afraid though, because the uprights were so, so big. While she could eyeburn them if she had to, it might not be enough if one of them tried to catch and eat her. So she was wary. Not knowing what else to do, she decided to watch and learn about this upright. As long as her tummy wasn’t in pain any more, she could spend some time doing that and maybe come to understand the why.

Eventually, after much watching and consideration, she finally understood what was happening. Her spotted upright was learning to fight! The upright giant snake creature was showing her, and several others, how to kill the evil creatures. The way her spotted upright fought was very confusing, but the evils died quickly and the uprights all made noises in apparent celebration when that happened. This was good. It was important to know how to kill evil things, even if she didn’t understand why she knew what evil was.

Slowly she worked to understand more about her spotted upright, stalking after her from the shadows and watching what she did and who she touched, and watching her kill the evil creatures. She even learned that the upright that had called to her had a name, reacting many times to a certain sound. She didn’t have a name herself, although there was a specific, unique sound that she would use to identify herself to the others of her kind back at her old rock, so maybe that was like a name. It seemed odd that she knew what a name was, though. She struggled to emulate the upright's name, but it was hard, and came out as a hiss, sounding a little like ‘heska’ instead.

So she watched, learned, and determined what the social structure of her upright’s pack was. She could see uprights that Jesca was submissive to, and see other uprights that seemed to be on the same power level as her. There was even a six-legged white creature that was submissive to Jesca, following her around and always staying close, although it would occasionally play with the pink-haired one by carrying her on its back. It was a curious hierarchy that did not make a lot of sense to her, although it must make sense to her upright.

She knew it was only a matter of time before she and the upright would meet each other, but she was so wary of that, because the spotted one was so big. But her upright also seemed gentle, often petting the white creature with the horned head while making pleasant noises, or embracing the other uprights and laughing. They ate strange foods together, seeming to have no territorial disputes, and spent long hours in each other’s company. They were almost … friends perhaps? What was it like to have a … friend … and why was the calling telling her she should be friends with the uprights? And, for that matter, how did she even know what a friend was? Her kind didn’t have ‘friends’. This was yet another oddity of this truly stupendous direction to the north and east.

The passing dreamlike thoughts about friendship awakened her from her dozing. She shook her body, stretching her wings and tail, rippling their colors back to normal before peering down. Her upright was no longer there, and she realized she’d been sleeping harder than she thought in the warm sun. She knew the routine though, and knew where her upright would be, or would be able to sniff her out if she had to, and took flight to find her.

Friends. That’s what she was supposed to be. She didn’t really understand what it meant to be a friend, except maybe to share the same territory, but somehow knew that was the reason to be here. She knew Jesca needed her as a friend, and that she needed Jesca as a friend, too. She had no idea why, but knew it was true. So with new resolve she searched, deciding enough time had passed to learn what could be learned about Jesca and the others in her pack, and that it was time to force Jesca to be her friend.