“Playing now,” ETAg Thai chimed, oblivious to the somber mood.
The projected screen turned on. Ember positioned herself so the image fell on a nearby tree.
“Would you like me to turn on auto-translate, Ember?” Thai asked.
“Are you joking? You could translate this thing the whole time, and you’re only just now bothering to bring it up?”
“I couldn’t before because I didn’t have any translation modules installed.”
“Okay, fair enough. Yes. Yes, please translate it.”
“Auto-translate is now on. Enjoy the film.”
Songbird, Farlight, and Kivyress stared at her and her screen. Ember recalled how they hadn’t been present when she’d showed her father and her mate the enlarged snowflake, yet even Cloud and Hyrees looked startled.
As the documentary began, her family inched its way closer to her. She knew they did it to see and hear better, but their closeness filled her imagination with her favorite color: maple leaf orange, the color of family. It was almost enough to make her forget how they saw her, yet not enough to stomp out the pain entirely.
The documentary itself played out how she remembered it, but with the addition of the humans being translated into Felid. They explained their side of the story well. Project Appala, named for the location of the facility, was started by someone who wanted to cure disorders causing developmental discrepancies, most notably ones having to do with the brain. He’d lost a child to one of these, and wanted to prevent it from happening again. Instead of risking human life, they decided to risk animal life, and so the first appalas—a couple of rats, then Dark, Flare, and Forestfire—were born.
By the time they made it to Dark’s first appearance, Ember realized none of the humans involved seemed to recognize just how much they’d changed the animals they’d enhanced. They’d given them the minds of their own kind. Minds that could understand right from wrong. Minds that wanted freedom from crimes the humans hadn’t even realized they were committing. They’d created their own equals and they hadn’t even know it.
After Dark’s pleas for help ended, Ember tried to turn her head to see the expressions on the faces of her family. Her ETAg shifted positions, making the projection move. She pawed it back into place and forced herself to remain still.
‘Do they realize who that is? Do they know who they just heard?’
“Was that Dark right there?” someone behind her asked.
‘Whitehaze?’ Ember flicked back her ears. ‘Oh, how many cats are watching this?’
“Y-yeah, yes sir. Flare and Forestfire are in it too.”
“Huh. It seems he was as good a speaker as he was a clawmarker,” Whitehaze replied. Something about his voice sounded different: more subdued and quiet. It took her a few moments to fully recognize it. “Noble, noble cat.”
When the film moved on to show the escape, two cats caterwauled encouragements behind her. Several others moaned, growled, or hissed when would-be escapees got left behind. Their hisses and growls grew louder upon seeing how the captured appalas got treated. When the cat in the collar and leash was shocked into obedience, they yowled with outrage.
Her kin’s dramatic responses to each revelation sparked a new color to appear in her mind. It was a color she usually only felt in dreams: a surreal, metallic turquoise.
‘Oh. I’m doing this. I’m teaching my colony. This is it. This is the moment where I start being useful and stop being a pathetic little failure of a feline. Starting tonight, I’m going to change things, and things are going to change. I can show them so much, and they might actually take me seriously for once.’
Ember’s eyes lit up. The sounds of the documentary faded as the feeling of authority she’d discovered earlier that day seeped into her, filling her mind with prideful oak brown. ‘Wait a moment, knowing what I know, and having what I have, I’m the most powerful cat in the valley now. And it’s not even entirely my fault. I mean, I didn’t force anyone to unknowingly tell me secrets, and I certainly didn’t force Michelle to give me access to the biggest collection of human knowledge in the universe. I didn’t stop them, of course, so yes, it’s partially my fault, but it’s not a bad thing. I can choose to do a lot of good or a lot of bad with all this, so I guess I’ll have to be careful where I step from now on. In more than just a literal sense. It shouldn't be too hard, though. Make the right choices, get right outcome. I’ve made it this far; I can make it the rest of the way.’
The sound of muffled gunshots snapped her back to reality. It took her a moment to realize they were at that part of the film: the part she’d turned it off at. The part where humans hunted down her kind. Gasps and mews followed the image of the dead, bleeding appala, making her miss part of the audio. Ember closed her eyes and bit her tongue, trying to make the image disappear.
Even after the escape and the hunting scenes, the humans in the documentary still didn’t seem to recognize appalas as being sentient. Instead they viewed them as vermin. Problems—accidents—to be dealt with and cleaned up to protect the natural balance of life.
Ember’s mind wandered back to one the oldest passages on the History Tree. For the first year and a half after their escape, every cat had hunted for itself. Food had become scarce, and many cats had starved in the second year. Then the Founders had developed group hunting, allowing them to take down larger prey the whole colony could share. Ever since then, the small wildlife flourished and only occasionally got tapped into when the hunters couldn’t catch anything big. Even with the steady population of outsiders, life continued on, and Dark’s Valley still hadn’t become a wasteland.
She opened her eyes. The documentary showed people shouting and holding up big sheets of paper with their own marks on them. The noise was so jumbled, Thai couldn’t even translate the narrator. After that, a few humans spoke in defense of appalas. It ended with the ARC people talking about other methods of ‘population reduction,’ and the hope they expressed in their quest to find their missing property and right the wrongs they’d done—to the local ecosystem, not to the ones they wanted dead.
The screen turned off. The voices of her kin rose to an uproar.
“They’re still looking for us!” one cat yowled.
“Maybe we should move,” another said. “If we don’t, it’s only a matter of time before—”
“Lupine, what do we do?”
“Lupine? Hah! He doesn’t know what to do. And the council’s gone foxing crazy. Ask Farlight what to do. Maybe he can—”
“The East and the humans want us dead. Maybe Whitehaze was r—”
“We’re all gonna die!”
Ember shivered with the howl of every new voice. Cyan trickled in. ‘Breathe in; one, two, three, four, five. Breathe out. Don’t panic, Ember. Not again. Two attacks in one day is way too much. But what am I going to do?’
The dark brown feeling of pride and power came back, dancing with the cyan. ‘Wait a moment. Maybe I can stop this. Thai, when was that documentary made?’
[The Animals Of ARC was released in 2026.]
‘And what year is it now?’
[The current year is 2110.]
‘Okay, okay, I can use this. Get your words together, Em.’ She inhaled slowly, trying to breathe in some tangible form of confidence, then she stood up, eyes closed. “Hey! Everyone, stop! Er, that thing you just watched is from eighty-four yea—winters ago. They still haven’t found us. We’re, uhm, we’re safe.”
To her surprise, they listened. Lupine even helped quiet them.
“Go ahead, E-Ember,” he said. “What were you, uh, were you saying?”
She turned around. Almost the entire Western Colony stood or sat behind her, looking to her for reassurance. The brown took over entirely. ‘I don’t have to keep hiding. I don’t have to wait for the world to go away. If I have useful enough information, I guess I can make them shut up myself. Sometimes. I wonder if they realize what I could do to them if I wanted to. I won’t, of course, but some healthy
respect for the possibilities certainly wouldn’t hurt anyone.’
“Uhm, er, well, what y’all just watched, it was made eighty-four y—winters ago. It’s, ah, over four times older than any of us. So, er, if they were going to find us, I-I think they probably would’ve done it by now. Stop being so cyan and green. We’re fine. And remember the good humans. There are ones out there who are on our side. Humans that helped me and saved my life. We have allies, and if the bad people were to find us, I could call on the good ones to help. We’re safe.”
The murmurs came back, this time too subdued to make any one voice out. Ember smiled. She glanced over at Cloud, who watched her with an expression she’d never even seen on him before. His ears were cocked slightly and his mouth hung open wide enough for her to notice one of his upper fangs was missing.
‘Hum. That’s different. Well, you were wrong, Dad. But so was I,’ she thought. ‘Understanding the emotions of others is important. And you know that, which is why you want me to stay confused. Well I’m not playing that game anymore.’
She glanced down at the dying flames. Her namesakes sparkled and flickered in and out of being, providing almost as much light as the star-filled night sky.
‘They might be mostly silver right now, but once I figure out how to see the rainbow, if even just a reflection of it through the silver, I can do so much more. I can stop this war before it even really starts if I place my paws right. I can do anything within reason.’
She chuffed to herself and walked toward the Glade. ‘All these mooncycles I’ve been trying to get everyone to understand me, when really, I was meant to be silver. Thinking differently; why did you never realize how big of an advantage it gives you? And to think, for a few moments, you actually thought it was a bad thing.’
When she passed the first fire pit, Lupine trotted up to her. “E-Ember, wait.”
She stopped and looked at him. The fur along his back and tail was slightly more raised than normal. “Sir?” she asked.
“I absolutely do not approve of all these human gadgets you’ve got, but that one on your neck might be useful. W-what else can you do?”
“Er, more than I’m aware of right now, but give me some time and I’ll find my limits. I know some of them already. I can’t clawmark, or fly, or recognize most emotions, but I’m still working on that last one. Still don’t know if I can fight.”
He didn’t respond immediately. His tail twitched three times both ways. “I-I-I can’t offer you a position on the council,” he began, “but-but don’t be surprised i-if I call you in to give me some advice or ask a-a question. You wouldn’t mind, w-w-would you?”
Yellow flickered through her thoughts. Ember stepped back, almost catching her tail on fire in the process. “Uh, no, no sir. I could do that. I can help. Just let me know when you need me.”
“I will. I’ll definitely be needing you. F-Farlight and me both. Times like these, we’ll need a-all the help we can get.”
As they exchanged goodnights, then parted ways, a flame of red burned deep in her chest. ‘Need me? Need my help? It really is happening. I’m going to change things. I can fix almost everything and put it all back where it belongs. And make it stay that way.’
“Hey, Em, just thought I’d mention we’ve got a den now.”
She turned around to find Hyrees walking toward her. “We do?”
He caught up and rubbed his cheek against her side. “Yes, I know—an actual roof over our heads. Shelter from all this goop. And falling icicles. Amazing, huh? Don’t have to worry about getting impaled in our sleep.”
“That’s convenient. Is it the one your dad had?”
He winced. “Ah, yeah. It was . . . it was his.”
“Sorry, was that the wrong thing to say?”
He sighed, then offered her a smile. “No, no, it’s okay. Come on. Let’s go get some sleep. It’s been a long day. I’m tired, so I know you must be too.”
Ember pressed her head against his. “Of course I am.”
He pulled back, ears perked. “So you’re okay with not sleeping in the History Tree?”
Ember snorted. She cast a longing glance at the massive oak she’d come to love. She shook herself off, then started for her new dwelling place. “Like I said, I’ve got my own History Tree, and it’s always with me. I don’t need to risk getting impaled by an icicle to learn or study anymore. Now onward, my loving mate—to the den!”
Hyrees chuckled. He shook his head and followed. After they got there, but before they could settle in, Cloud, Songbird, Kivyress and Farlight came over to say goodnight. Farlight decided to spend the night with his adopted family to give her and Hyrees some privacy.
After they left, Ember paced in a circle around the cave-like space and, by extension, around Hyrees. ‘I’ll help Dad with the armor tomorrow, then I can work with Lupine and Farlight to figure out the best way to avoid another fight altogether. There doesn’t have to be any more needless bloodshed. If we work together, we can end this war before it really starts, and then everything can go back to being as normal as possible, only better. In some ways, at least. I can’t bring back the fallen.’
“You’re making me dizzy,” Hyrees said. “I thought you were tired. What are you thinking about?”
“How to keep things from getting worse, and how to hopefully make things better. At some point.”
“Oh.”
She stopped. “Okay, so since this is my first night back, and we’re both still alive, we should probably do something nice together. Don’t you think?” Ember asked.
She rubbed her cheek against the den’s cool, packed dirt wall. Her ETAg clinked against a rock. The collar still irritated her neck, and the tag still bounced against her fur when she moved, but knowing how much good the tiny machine would soon do made every itch it caused worth the trouble.
Hyrees’s ears perked up. He smiled. “Uhm, yeah, sure. Anything specific you had in mind?”
“Actually, yes. I was thinking we could curl up in each other’s paws and get the answers to all our biggest questions. I mean, look at this, I’ve literally got the greatest collection of knowledge in the world hanging around my neck. We can find out anything we want to know. We can learn the secrets of everything, and not just other cats anymore—the world as we’ll soon know it. Why the sky is blue and the grass is green. What clouds are made of, and where wind comes from. Anything. Romantic, right?”
His ears lost their perkiness. He turned his head to look outside. “Not exactly . . . well . . .”
“What? Is that not romantic enough? Do you have a better idea than discovering the secrets of the universe together? I thought it might be fairly appropriate, considering everything that’s happened over the past few days, but if you want to do something else, that’s fine. Maybe we could take a walk in the moonlight or something and enjoy the quiet. I’d be fine with that too. Oh! Or we could take a walk in the moonlight and discover the secrets the universe at the same time. That’s about as romantic as it gets, isn’t it?”
She bit her tongue and thrashed her tail. ‘And this is the part where you agree with me. Right? Come on, Hyrees, please. I’m giving you the opportunity to gain all the knowledge in the world, and we can do it together. Isn’t that enough for you?’
He looked outside for a few moments more, then turned back to her and offered another gentle smile. “No, no, that’s okay. Let’s do it. It sounds like fun. Let’s discover the secrets of the universe.”
Chapter 19
Cloud
“So fourteen days, you said?” Cloud asked. “They have to soak for fourteen days? That’s impractical if we ever want to make enough for everyone. You’re sure there’s nothing else we can use? Anything faster or easier to make?”
He stared into the specially made clay tanning box that was painstakingly filled with water, tree bark, and pieces of deerskin. He sighed. His breath came out in a puff of steam, like the thick mist weaving in and out of the trees and duel abatises. Morning sunlight c
ut through the fog, making pristine rays of light scatter through the forest.
Ember sniffed at the water, which bubbled cheerfully beside the fire heating it. “Well, technically it’s only eleven now, but unfortunately, unless you can figure out how to get and use metal, that’s pretty much our only option. As far as armor goes, at least,” Ember replied.
The flames keeping the water from freezing snapped, making her jump. Her fake limbs whirred and whined with the sudden movement. The little fire was contained and controlled in one of the four large, clay half-bowls built onto the sides of the tanning box. Smoke billowed from the flames and steam rose from the water, adding to the intense haze in the air.
‘Those humans had better know what they’re doing. Fourteen days of waiting is a lot of time lost if this doesn’t work. How did they even discover how to do it in the first place? It’s so convoluted and time-consuming, it can’t have happened by accident.’
He placed a paw into the fire-heated water and quickly pawed out one of the skins. It didn’t feel any different than it had the day before, only hotter and maybe a little more wet this time, if that was even possible. He snorted and pushed it back in.
His stomach growled. “Come on, let’s go get some food.”
“Y-yes, sir,” Ember said.
They left the crude ‘tanning yard,’ positioned between the two walls, and re-entered the inner Glade side by side. Ember had given the yard its name, claiming it to be what the humans called such places. Cloud flattened his ears at the thought of the two-legged creatures.
‘Humans. I wish you’d stop comparing us to those humans. I don’t care what they call things or how they do things. We aren’t humans, Ember, we’re cats. Sometimes things are the way they are for a reason. If we keep trying to be something we’re not, we’ll only find ourselves with bigger problems.’ He shook his head. ‘And I’ll never be able to tell you that, will I? No one listens to me anymore. Not even you half the time, now that you’ve got all this.’
“You get to be my patrolling partner again today,” he said instead.
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