Clarix found herself pressed against the trunk of a tree, her limbs tangled in its twisted roots, nervous drool running down her chest and forming a puddle under her. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been here, but daylight clouded her vision. 

She was alone in a forest of threats. 

Her mouth worried the air, lips searching for water that wasn’t there. She was dizzy with thirst—

The beast remembered, suddenly, the stream from before. The last place she’d seen one of the kind humans before it turned into one of the unkind ones. The scent of the other kind human, the one that smelled of familiar magic and sweet berries, had been so close. Maybe if Clarix could find that stream again…

Once she’d fought her legs free from the tree roots, Clarix followed her own scent in a panicked, winding path back toward the stream. Clarix trembled as she beheld the magic of the scene, so different from how it had been the first time she’d seen it. All upturned earth, shorn undergrowth, and violence. But blessedly empty. Clarix took a long, greedy drink from the now-muddied stream.

When she lifted her head some time later, it took several blinks of her pale eyes to see the enormous white beast before her. With a shriek, Clarix leapt back, tripping over her own legs and flailing in the mud before righting herself and bounding away. But the white beast didn’t give chase. It just watched her with perked ears and a cocked head. 

They considered each other. Then, finally, the white beast gave a short bark that Clarix understood perfectly. My land. Leave.

Clarix obeyed immediately. But she still had nowhere to go. And the kind human was still there. She had freed Clarix, and Clarix had repaid her by doing nothing while she watched the human be taken, sightless, by unkind humans and beasts. 

Clarix breathed in the wild air and searched it for the kind human’s sweet berry scent.