The land around was silent as fallen snow. No bird calls or even a breath of wind could be heard. You gaze around the dark silvery forest, filled with dust and the smell of death.
Moonlight shone down like a spotlight on the ground in front of you. There, delicately balancing in the crushing gravity, was a feather. A tiny, white, pure feather. But when you look closely, you shudder as you see the blood. Tainting its perfect innocence was a pool of blood beneath it, flowing around and suffocating its light.
What left this blood? But your question is answered when pain stabs your side. You go down with a thump and a hefty grunt. You seem to have been hit by a fastrock, and by the looks of it right between the ribs.
You feel like screaming inside, but a twig snapping behind you makes you hold your tongue. Afraid to turn your head and look, you make yourself as still as possible as if whatever-it-was cannot see you if you are just still enough, and you even still your breathing from stirring the dead leaves.
After many painful moments of awkward silence, you dare to inhale slowly. Working up the courage, you decide to get it over with and determine the existence of the whatever-it-is. With one sharp twist, you turn your head to the darkness beyond.
Your heart skips a beat.
A shape. A moving shape. It saw you! It was coming! Sliding towards you, skittering on the dead leaves, it flowed up beside you, a dark mass of fluff. As you realize it's size, you relax and let out a sigh.
"Hane." The little dove scurried up beside you, leaving more feathers in its wake. "Where have you been?"
Why am I saying this, you think, is its name Hane? You didn't even say the words; they just came out of your mouth, as if they've already been said and you are hearing them again.
As the bird stands there, next to you, it starts twittering and chirping a complex pattern. Somehow you understand the code, and you perk your ears to absorb every cheep out of the bird, as what it said seemed beyond the little bird's understanding. The message was as so:
"The Crossing must begin. Soon this world shall be no more. Meet north. A new reign shall begin. Our reign. Kill this bird when it is done, cannot risk exposure. Although trained in silence, it is a hazard. From Tsuyoi."
Those few small words seemed to last eons coming from the little birds' beak, and they were no easier to process. The Crossing... those words seem so familiar... this world? North? Reign? 'Our'? Kill Hane? And Tsuyoi... you suddenly get another flash of the golden fur. That's him? It was too much. The world spun away, and the frail stars above melted into the murky sky.
{~}::{~}::{~}
"Wake up! Please! Nero did not mean!"
A powerful paw was jabbing your side, the one that had been bloodied a moment before.
"...Cut it out...Tired..." You groan and wave away the irritating creature at your side. Wait. Irritating? Nero! You open your eyes, expecting to see the furrowed, grumpy brow of the shaman gazing down at you. Instead you saw a worried face, with his ears back and gently whining.
You blink up at him.
"I remember."
Comment what YOU want to do next!
~Sorry guys, if I cannot write exactly what you want to do right now, but now I am trying to establish a base plot, then we can let readers work out details and choices such as 'go left or right, sit with her or him, hunt here or there' (of course that is not all the reader will pick, but those are examples). I understand if you're getting impatient with the plot, but please bear with me! Thanks!
