Analla Faestar's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

For three days the hound trailed Analla through the forest below the grove. It never strayed far, but at night it turned its head uphill, toward the sacred ground it had left. She saw the pull in its pale eyes. It had a bond now, but no home. If she gave it no place to rest, it would wander back to the grove and be lost to her again. She searched every slope for shelter. On the fourth morning the hound stopped and dug at a mound of stone and root. Analla pulled the loose rocks away and found an opening. Below it lay a hollow chamber, dry and warm. Clusters of glowing mushrooms grew from the walls, casting soft blue and gold light. The floor was smooth. No rain reached it. No wind touched it. She had found a den. The hound pushed past her and went in. It circled the chamber twice, sniffed the walls, then lay down in the center. Its shoulders loosened. For the first time since the grove, it did not look back uphill. It looked at her, and its tail thumped the stone once. "This is yours," Analla said. "Ours." She set to work. She swept the floor clear of grit with a bundle of leaves. She hauled in dry moss and pressed it into a bed against the far wall. She noticed the hound favored one leg, the scarred one. From her pack she took a small jar of dark balm, a gift from her tribe for a familiar's old wounds. She knelt and rubbed it into the stiff joint. The hound let her. Its breath slowed under her hands. This was the start of their wander year, she knew. Away from the tribe, away from any pack. Just the two of them, learning what they meant to each other in this hidden place. At the den's mouth grew a strange plant. Its long tendrils moved on their own, curling and reaching like slow green fingers. Buds probed the air. Analla studied it. It could be a threat, or it could be a guard. She closed her eyes and reached out with the gift that ran in her blood, the silent voice that spoke to living things. She pushed her mind toward the plant. She asked it, without words, to hold the entrance. To let her and the hound pass, and to grip any beast that came hunting them. The tendrils went still. Then they turned toward her. One slid across the ground and touched her wrist, gentle as a question. She held firm and answered it. The plant coiled tighter around the doorway, thickening into a living gate. It had heard her. It would watch the den. Analla opened her eyes. The hound slept on its new bed. The den was warm and guarded. She had given her familiar a home, and it no longer strained toward the grove. But the moving plant now knew her mind, and she did not yet know its price.