A two-legged creature in strange clothing sprinted from the newly opened belly. The hood of her clothing fell back revealing a pale face, and a guttural snarl ripped from my throat. Could it be...?

But no, this creature had hair the colour of flames. My mate had looked different. But there was no denying this fire-haired creature was of the same people as my mate. She stumbled in the sand, pausing and looking back, and more creatures like her followed, all appearing to be female, their hides ranging from the palest pink to deep brown, the hair on their heads coming in all different shades and shapes and textures. One of them seemed to have no hair on her head at all. I scanned the group, but none of them seemed to be the one I’d seen in the Lavrika Pools. Fear, something I had not felt since I was a cub, clawed at my guts. Fear at the thought that my mate could be trapped somewhere in the beast, or murdered by foul zeelk. I gave a cry, and my irkdu charged forward.

Another group of women was running from the fallen beast, now. And at the front of their running line, I saw her. And it was like everything else ceased to exist. There was no sea of sand, no zeelk, no sky or sun or cliffs. There was only her, shining like a single star in darkness. Shining like a beacon, a sign, a glorious explosion of destiny. My mate. Every part of my body pounded with this new reality, sacred strength surging through me, culminating in a vicious scream that tore from my chest as my irkdu plunged forward.

My mate was holding onto another female, and that other female stumbled and fell. My mate whipped around, her long light-coloured hair flying around her head in a strange and beautiful cloud, and she called something I could not understand, reaching back for her peer. But then the zeelk were following, screaming and skittering out of the slashed belly the women had just come from. One zeelk was heading right for the two of them, and a fearsome rage unlike anything I’d ever known burst inside me, flooding every limb with dark heat. I hefted my spear, its point made from the barb of a zeelk I’d killed in my youth, the only thing that could damage their black armour. Our ablik weapons were strong and sharp, but they could only inflict damage when aimed perfectly at the zeelk’s exposed joints.

I cocked my arm and my spear shot forward, crashing into the zeelk with deadly accuracy. The miserable creature collapsed, its legs crunching in on its body in the death grip of my weapon. I yanked an ablik knife from the dakrival hide straps criss-crossing over my back, and hurled it at another nearby zeelk. But it clanged off the armour. I gritted my fangs, pulling another knife and throwing it, trying to keep my aim steady as my irkdu charged forward.

This knife found its target, slipping between the zeelk’s body armour and the spot where its leg emerged. It screamed and collapsed, trying to move through the sand with its wounded leg. It wasn’t dead, but close enough for now.

My eyes swung back to my mate. She was pulling the fallen woman. The one who had fallen seemed to be in hysterics. I growled in anger. She was slowing my mate down and hindering her escape. But even then I felt a small swell of pride. My mate was no coward.

I had almost reached the group now, but I had no other plan. There was no way for me to take on all these zeelk alone. I only had a few more blades at my back. My priority now was to get my mate out of the fray and away from here as quickly as possible. But that would mean leaving her kind behind, and that was something that could not stand.

Get her first. The rest comes later.

The fire-haired woman had circled back, helping lift the fallen woman. In her hand she held a black object. It looked like it could have been carved from ablik, with a long, snout-like opening. As another zeelk scuttled towards them I readied myself to throw my axe, but before I could do so she aimed the snouted thing at the zeelk, and a series of terrific bangs clanged through the air. The weapon, or whatever it was, was still in her hand, and yet it seemed like she had somehow gotten a successful shot into one of the breaks in the zeelk’s armour. It faltered, then fell, mere steps from the small group. The other women were running in every direction as more zeelk charged from the fallen beast’s belly.

I was almost upon them, now, almost able to reach my tiny mate, down on the sand, when the fire-haired woman turned and saw me. Her strange-coloured eyes grew wide, and she said something to the others, raising her ablik snout weapon and aiming it directly at my chest. I ignored her. No weapon would make me falter now. Not even a hundred thousand zeelk would keep me from the woman with the long, light hair. I heard the ablik snout thing make a small click sound, and the fire-haired woman gave an agonized scream, throwing it to the sand.

And then they were running. All three of them, along with the others, spreading out and sprinting over the sand, away from the wreckage, away from the zeelk. And from me.

Why does she run from me?

My mate’s tiny, narrow feet sunk into the sand with every step. She would never be able to outrun the zeelk, let alone my irkdu, whose many legs were perfectly primed to skim over the sand with ease. Yet still, she tried, her legs pumping, hair flying behind her. The tenacity was equally appealing as it was irritating. I liked witnessing the fire of spirit that made her run against all odds. But I did not appreciate that she was currently running from me.

My irkdu was at her side, and with a swing of my upper body, I leaned down, scooping her up with one arm, holding my axe at the ready with the other.

“You are safe now,” I said, tossing her across my lap, her small, tight rump high in the air. She was smaller than I’d originally thought, much smaller than I’d been able to tell she was in the vision of the pools. She screamed something, kicking fiercely, rotating so that she was lying lengthwise along the irkdu, her feet colliding ineffectually with my chest as she seemed to simultaneously attempt to buck off of the mount and hold on for dear life.

With my free hand, I gripped the back of her strange clothing and yanked her upright so that she was in a sitting position between my thighs. And still she fought, her short, blunted claws digging into the forearm I’d locked around her torso. Such a show of spirit would normally have been amusing. But here, now, where the zeelk were all around us in the sand, it was... complicating things. Not that it was difficult to subdue her. No, not at all. Despite her fierce energy, she was much smaller than me, and much, much weaker. It was no trouble for me to keep her safely seated with my one arm, her slim back firm against my chest. But it was distracting me. Her flailing kept causing me to lose focus, her hair flying into my eyes, obscuring my view. And I needed to see. I had good hearing, but her screaming and the chaotic sounds of the sands was dulling any extra help my ears would have lent me.

Her head shot back, catching my throat making me cough, just as a long strip of her hair flitted across my eyes, causing me to blink.

“Get your hair under control, woman, or I will be forced to sheer it off with my blade.”

The thought of changing anything about her physically pained me, but as stray strands of her hair got sucked into my mouth, causing me to choke, I realized that it may be necessary.

She screamed something else, and a moment later a slight pain, like the prick of a drizelfly’s stinger, pinged in my forearm.

She was biting me.

I grinned. I’d seen those tiny blunt teeth in the Lavrika pool. They would do no damage to my tough hide. She bit down harder, and I ignored her.

At least with her head down like that her hair is out of my eyes.