This is the thread for my and Arania's story Cub's Crusade: a fantasy/furry coming-of-age tale.

Please feel free to read along and post commentary, speculate or bring up points of criticism, but as of its beginning, Cub's Crusade is just the two of us authors. That may change, or may not: we're not sure yet.

Thanks for your time, and we hope you enjoy the story!


*Filidhe*

Chapter 1



Nari woke one morning to find... things were too quiet. Alright, she thought, where is he? Her ears swiveled and perked as she clambered out of the small cave she and her cousin had slept in. Sensitive as they were, her ears did not pick up a sound.

“Amato?” she shouted, a little worried he might have climbed up a tree again. It's always so hard to get him down! “Amato?” she barked, louder this time, “Where are you?”

She heard the crack of a broken twig, and headed in that direction.

“Surprise!” shouted Amato, jumping from the bush he was hiding in.

Nari screamed as she and Amato toppled to the ground. “Amato!” yelled Nari, “You can't do that!”

“Why not?” asked Amato, giggling.

“Well, let me make a list!” she yipped. “One: you could scare of the prey, which, may I remind you, is one of our main food sources! Did you want to eat today?”

“Uh, huh, sure,” he retorted in his irritatingly sarcastic manner.

“Two: you could tell the entire world we’re here!”

“I’m not that loud,” the cub replied, but he did seem somewhat chastened.

Seeing his expression darken, she lightened up, and gave Amato a hug, “And three: I love you, you little idiot. You’re the only family I have. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you.”

She turned away in order to hide the tears that had started, and ran back to the cave to retrieve her bow and arrows.

“I'm going hunting,” said Nari, “Want to see if you can find some more berries?”

“Can I?” replied Amato. He looked thrilled to be trusted on his own for a little while.

“Of course,” she grinned. “Why else would I ask?”

Her cousin shook his head and shrugged. “I don't know.”

After Amato had fetched the basket Nari had woven for him, they headed down the path and into the woods. Amato slid between the bushes to the creekside and began gathering the berries he found there. When Nari saw he was settled into his task, she went to check the snares she had set the night before. They weren't perfect but they worked fairly well, and although they were empty, she saw the tracks of a coney nearby, and had hopes it wouldn’t be too bright. She refreshed the bait before she set out on her hunt.

The woods welcomed her with their usual comforting scents and sounds: she felt at home and at ease, even as she geared up and began tracking the spore of small animals in the underbrush. Her keen eyes detected the faintest tracks, her sharp wolven ears could pick up the faintest of sounds, her tail,being so thick furred could pickup well... muck.

After about an hour or so, Nari made her way back to where Amato was gathering berries. He’d almost filled the basket, she noted happily. “Looks like you’ve got dessert all figured out!”

He flashed an impish smile at her and shrugged his thin shoulders. “How’d you do?” he asked.

“I got some decent shots today,” she answered, pulling a pair of the purple coneys from her catch bag. “Your favorite kind!” She added the limp form of a squirrel to the small pile and drew her hunting blade to begin preparing the meat. “ This little guy gave me a bigger fight than I’d have thought,” she told her cousin. “I thought I’d hit him square, but I must have just stunned him out of the tree, because when I went to put him in the bag, he came to and went mad! I was all over the place after him, and when I caught him, he went up one side of me and down the other. Bit me, too!” she snarled, and then turned to show Amato the tiny, ragged bite on her tail.

“Aww, poor thing put up a hell of a fight,” Amato remarked and the huntress shot him a black look.

“And we’re gonna eat him anyway,” she remarked bleakly, “Maybe get some of that fierceness in us!”

Once the carcasses had been gutted and dressed, Nari took her bow and found a suitable root overhanging the stream. She followed the flash of movement to where the indigo trout were lazily swimming against the current, and carefully speared one on an arrow. She crowed as she pulled the fat little fish from the water, and looked up to share her delight with Amato, but he was preoccupied with a small pile of feathers he had gathered up once the basket was full of berries.

“Can I borrow your arrows for a sec, Nari?” he asked as she came closer to show off the fish.

Nari looked at her arrows then at Amato's gentle face, still soft and round with immaturity. The request for her hunting weapons confused her, until she saw the feathers: all fine strong pinion tips. The realization that he was going to fix some of the stripped fletching on her arrows snapped her back to real world. “Oh, yeah, sure.” She handed Amato the quiver, and the bow as well.

She built a small fire and cooked the fish, leaving a larger portion for her cousin than she ate herself. Feeling the sting of the bite worse than before, and the afternoon heat beginning to soak into her tired muscles, Nari told Amato she was going to get some salve for the wound, and maybe take a nap in the cave. He seemed wholly involved in his task, and she grinned as she walked away. She couldn’t remember having such single-minded concentration when she was that age.

Amato’s mother had been a healer of some skill, and when her young orphaned cousin had come to live with Nari, he had brought with him what remained of her personal aid kit. There were a few pots and tubes of ointments in it, all carefully labeled, and some wrapped packets of bandages and padding, but Nari knew the tub she was looking for. As she combed her tail’s fur to get down to the sensitive skin, raw around the squirrel’s bite marks, she thanked heaven for the heaviness of the fur on her tail. That could have been a really nasty bite, she realized.

The riverflower ointment soothed, as it always had, and Nari curled back up in the sleep furs to catch a quick nap.

Where am I? Thought Nari as she floated down to the ground. When she landed there was a boy, a crying boy. She tried to speak but the only thing that came out was “Mffmmm!” She couldn't speak. She then realized that the boy who was crying was Amato. Amato! She thought, just then, he stopped crying, stood up, pulled an arrow out of a quiver lying next to him, and spoke five words, “I know what I'm doing.” he pulled up the arrow to his chest height, about a foot away from him, and plunged the arrow straight through his chest.

Blood spurted out all over the ground in front of her, “Amato! No!” she blurted out, she tried to run towards him, but her feet were glued to the ground. “Nari?” he faintly said as he slowly turned around, but failing and falling to the ground, just making the arrow go deeper through his chest.

Everything started to melt as she too was blacking out, then nothing.

Chapter 2

Amato frowned down at the arrows in his left hand. The fletchings were more than loose on most of them: the feathers were frayed and missing more than a few follicles. Two of the arrows even had broken nocks: the notch cut into the back of the arrow to rest against the bowstring had been broken or split. Without access to his father’s tools, he knew there wasn’t much he could do to fix that problem, but the feathers: that was easy.

The boy laid the arrows that needed fixing aside, after examining the line that bound the feathers to the shaft carefully. He chose feathers based on their straightness and the tightness of the follicles: the best fletches were even and had small follicles, but were still stiff enough to retain their shape in flight. An arrow’s fletches provided both spin and lift to the shaft, he recalled his father showing him the flight of an unfletched arrow compared to the flight of a fletched one. It allowed the archer to shoot farther, faster and penetrate deeper.

After selecting the feathers best suited to fixing the specific fletchings, Amato peeled the worn fletches off the first arrow, being careful to preserve the fine twisted threads. His father must have fletched these arrows, he realized, recognizing the colours of the waxed cotton: the yellow made the fletches easier to see when recovering the arrows from a missed shot, and the fineness of the thread was definitely his mother’s handiwork. He rubbed hard at his eye, knowing crying for them wasn’t going to bring them back.

Even saving as much of the line as possible, he’d need more thread to properly secure the new fletches, especially as he couldn’t rasp the pinions down to as close a fit as his father had.

He had some fishing line made of twisted sinew: it was a bit coarse for the task, but certainly strong and flexible enough. He recovered the small coil from his pouch and rubbed it between his fingers, his brow furrowed as he concentrated on the problem. He could shave it, he knew, or even split it and double its length, but then he couldn’t guarantee its uniformity, and if the fletches were ripped from her arrow because he’d done a shoddy job, Nari would never let him hear the end of it. No, he decided, I’ll use the sinew as is, but I’ll completely re-fletch the worst, and transfer the salvageable of the old fletches and line to the other arrows. Nodding to himself he got on with his task, cutting and shaping the new fletches and rasping as much of the pinion column away as he could to better fit the fletches to the shafts.

Even crouched in the dirt of the riverbank, concentrating on his task, Amato was not oblivious to the forest around him. The trees moved with the wind, and the sound of birds was everywhere. Over it all was the scent and sound of the brook. Nothing disturbed the peaceful routine of the forest, and Amato made good progress on his task, feeling at last, almost useful.

He had just stowed the last of the spare fletches and line away when he heard the cry from the cave. Leaping to his feet, his short but sharp dagger in his hand, he pelted up to where Nari was fighting with the furs, sure she was under attack. He was taken aback to see her eyes flashing about the cave, her arms flailing as she fought whatever demon had possessed her sleep. For she was still asleep, he could see by the blank expression in her eyes.

“Nari!” Amato tried, “Nari, calm down. It was a dream.”

“Amato…” she murmured, and he was appalled to hear her voice break, and tears fill her eyes. “Oh Amato don’t… please don’t… can’t… need you… please…”

“It’s okay, Nar’” he tried again, sheathing his little blade as he came closer, easing her back into the furs. “I’m here, and I’m… I’m fine. Just go back to sleep now.”

She sobbed some as she settled, and Amato frowned down at her damp face, then pulled the furs back up for her to nestle into, before moving away to stand at the opening of the cave, wondering what she’d been dreaming about.

When he realized her breathing was even and quiet again, he slipped back out of the cave and retrieved the arrows, which he returned to Nari’s quiver. He went back for the basket of berries, storing them with the rest of their food cache. He considered going back to the stream to try his hand at catching a fish for them to eat for dinner, then recalling the panic in her voice, decided he probably shouldn’t leave Nari alone for as long as it would take him to pull a trout from the stream. He crouched at the entrance of the cave, his dark eyes occasionally looking with concern over at his sleeping cousin.

Besides, he just wasn’t all that hungry anymore.