Walking through the forest was difficult, between he dull ache in her back, the lacerations all over her limbs, and the brush and undergrowth entangling her feet or snagging on her dress. Leaning on her staff helped, leveraging herself forward with it on each step. And her golden-haired brother walking ahead made it all that much easier to bear. Strange, it seemed to her, that though he was once her older brother, she should now be ten years his senior. Time stood still for Mal in the state in which she had left him. He spoke some of their childhood together, and remembered small moments of his time as her familiar. Simple things, like chewing on bits of dried yogurt, watching her work in her Book of Shadows, and curling up in the pouch on her hip, peeking out to see with blurry rat’s eyes the world passing by.

As they rounded an enormous redwood, larger around than the home in which they were raised, a clearing opened before the siblings. Unfiltered sunlight shone down upon the small meadow, and wildflowers blossomed away from the towering trees and tainted illumination of the woods around them. Alma felt a warmth radiating from her brother as he dashed ahead into the field, likely the last vestiges of her familiar bond with him. Trickster though he had always been, there had as well been an innocence to Malakai, that shone through now in the way he rolled mirthfully through the grass and flowers, as comfortable in this temperate forest as in the jungles of home in Q’Dosh. She took the opportunity to sit back against the redwood and tend her wounds. Spreading a thick, pungent balm over the cuts and bruises eased their stinging and aching pain, and with regular treatments they wouldn’t scar.

Just as she began to think how strangely safe the Red Forest had become since finding Malakai, a shrill voice pierced the peaceful clearing. A young blonde woman stumbled over a root across the field, falling to the dirt before turning over and backing on her heels and elbows toward her brother and away from whatever sought her. Moments later, she heard it. That grunting, rumbling engine from before. Tankita Bananas!