Chester Chipmunk's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Chester moved through the underbrush toward the eastern oak groves, his paws quick against the forest floor. The morning light filtered through the canopy in thin streaks. He knew the groves held the densest clusters of acorns in the Big Dark Forest. The first grove came into view between two standing boulders. Chester stopped. The ground beneath the massive oaks lay nearly bare. Half-eaten acorns scattered across the dirt, their shells cracked and abandoned. He moved closer, scanning the exposed roots and leaf piles where whole clusters should have been waiting. Nothing. He checked the second oak, then the third. The same story at each tree. Someone had already harvested here, and they hadn't been careful about it. Chester sat back and pulled the acorn from his cheek pouch. He turned it over in his paws, then tucked it away again. His eyes tracked across the grove floor one more time. There, near the edge where the shadows thickened, two small acorns rested against a stone. He gathered them quickly and added them to his pouch. Three acorns total. The eastern groves were supposed to solve his problem. Instead, they'd made it worse. A low opening in the hillside caught his attention as he turned to leave. The stone grotto sat partially hidden behind vines, its entrance just wide enough for a small creature. Chester stepped inside and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The space stretched back farther than he expected, dry and cool. Not ideal, but it would work as an emergency cache if his other sites failed again. He marked the location in his mind and stepped back into the daylight. The system needed more than speed now. It needed places no one else knew about.