The rest of the journey went on in relative silence, with the exception of some seeds and stones that Cloudless threw on me from time to time. Still, after a couple more nights, and some re-tellings of Sunburnd’s Sumixam story, the beautiful cold forest that protected us from the heat of the sun came to an end, and we stopped at its very edge.

“Is there something wrong?”, I asked the old man.

“…No”, he replied after a long pause, very attentively taking in the image of the grass plain beyond. “Let’s go”, Sunburned took the lead, and walked away.

The scenery had changed considerably, with no trees, or rocks, or any distinguished landmark in sight no matter where I looked, only knee-high green grass everywhere. But it wasn’t any worse for the eyes: the wind and grass moved in synchrony, as if dancing to the ever-wide blue skies overhead, then always visible, not anymore hidden behind canopies, and there was just as much life in the plains as in the forest, if you looked close enough; from great distinguished shadows of massive herds of thousands of buffaloes in the horizon following the orange setting sun, to tiny ladybugs resting on top of the green light blades of gr-

“Crash!”, a smiling coyote-girl crushed the pretty insect I was looking at.

“Ah.”

“Got any problem?”, she frowned.

Sighing, I walked away from Cloudless. The traveling adventures I imagined myself in didn’t include bullying…

“Oh, right on time. Help me to set up camp.”

“Already?”, I asked back, helping to unpack the camping materials.

“Tonight will be cloudy. Possibly a thunderstorm”, he explained, looking up, and at heavy clouds that showed up near the horizon. “Night will fall earlier, and we won’t be able to see a thing when it does.”

“I see.”

“No, you won’t! Haha!”, The old man played, and I laughed along.

The night went as usual after that, Sunburned told the story about the “foul beast” for the 10th time since we met, Cloudless praised the creature, the old man resented it, and I found something else to learn, and ask about. Then, it was time to sleep, and my turn to be the first on guard.

“Is there something wrong?”, I asked Sunburned. He had that look on his face, the same one he showed when we first entered that grass plain.

“No, son. Just the discomfort that comes from the understanding I can’t listen to the night as well as I could when younger. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight”, I assumed my position by the fire, and listened attentively to the environment, since it was so dark already that just a little away from the campfire, my vision was useless.

Not that there was much to await for. I mean, if there was something bad out there, we’d see it still during the day, approaching from faaaaar away.

“Thruuun…!”

“Ah, there they are. The thunders.”

“Thruuun…! THRUUN…!”, it echoed again.

“…Echoed?”, I felt something wrong.

There was something coming. Something capable of following us from far away, perhaps with an excellent sense of smell, something furtive enough to wait to the fall of the night, and intelligent enough to hide its approaching steps in the thunder.

“SUMIXAM!”, I warned my companions, and the old man jumped out of his tent, already holding a hand ax.

“Run!”

“What about the camp? And the supplies?” Cloudless, also awaken by the commotion, asked, suddenly nervous.

“Leave them! If we lose any more time, it’ll catch us!”, Sunburned screamed, and caught a piece of wood from the fire, holding it like a torch. “Come! COME!”

And so we did. Cloudless and I ran after the old man through the night, fueled by fear, and suddenly the pretty grass became a sharp annoyance, that hit us all around, putting tinny cuts on our skin. And the darkness: it was so dark, just two meters away from the improvised torch, we couldn’t see a thing!

Then:

“Kyah!”, the coyote-girl tripped on some roots and fell down.

“Cloudless!”, the old man shouted, coming back to his granddaughter.

“THRUUUN”, lightning fell nearby, igniting some of the grass, and revealing, right on top of the coyote-girl, an enormous head covered in red feathers, with a big stalagmite impaled right through the nose, looking like a single stone horn.

“Sumixam…” the old man whispered, frozen in place, pale.

It started to rain.

“RUN!”, my voice pierced the endless silence, as I dashed towards the fallen coyote-girl, surprising even the beast that stood above her, and taking advantage of such unexpectedness to grab Cloudless by the leg, and throw her some 6 meters away from immediate danger, right on the arms of the old man.

But the old man hesitated.

“…Run”, I repeated myself, quieter, as the beast I’ve heard so much about in those last few days responded to my movements with one of its own; in a fraction of a second, Sumixam had its huge mouth gaping right above me, so many teeth, and all of them so big they could easily pierce me and come out in the other side.

Finally, Sunburned got back to fleeing with his granddaughter. I had no time to go after them, not even to take away my eyes from Sumixam. That close, I could finally see how massive the creature actually was; numbers and descriptions of size were not enough to communicate the horror, the imposing presence of the beast covered in red feathers right above me, infinitely tall, and heavy, and hungry.

Before I could even blink, my shoulder, chest, and belly were in the creature’s mouth.

My flesh pierced, and bones turned into dust, I tried to shout, as my mind was consumed by nothing but pain, but nothing but blood came out of my mouth; had my lungs been pierced?

The world started to shake, and my skin, muscle, and tendons were stretched to their limit, as the creature that had bitten me swung its head from one side to another wildly, until my body couldn’t take the pressure anymore, and was torn apart: with a gap coming from my left shoulder to my last left rib, that side of my body was still connected to the rest of me only by few thin strips of meat, and a couple of surprisingly reliant veins. I was sent flying away from the mouth of the huge predator.

From up there, still falling down to the ground bellow, gushing blood everywhere, entrails slipping out of my body through the huge tear on my side, my brain was being consumed by agony, as if the teeth of the beast had bitten right into the gray matter.

The splashing noise I made when I finally touched the grass and dirt below didn’t come just from the mud and water puddles, I knew, but from spilled content that should have never left my insides. I was still trying to scream, to cry, but no words came from my broken body, unable to even externalize a level of torment that shouldn’t exist.

My eyes were turning to the inside of my skull, as I craved the gentle release of death. But right when my vision was almost completely dark, a bright orange wavering light hit my eyes. Sunburned improvised torch. Following it with my eyes, I found Cloudless, crying desperately, crouched down, trying her best to cover her ears, and Sunburned pointing the improvised torch to the tall stone-horned red beast as if it was a spear. Almost as if laughing, Sumixam killed the burning light wheezing from its disfigured impaled nose.

This time, I was very awake, staring attentively, eyes wide. When another light made itself visible… coming right from one of the chain links in my almost-torn off tattooed left arm. Then, said link vanished in black smoke.

*

I was falling. There were a couple of campers a few kilometers from where I calculated I’d hit the ground, but only one of them noticed me, the oldest one, a man with coyote ears and tail.

Was that… a memory from when I was about to hit the ground and lose my memory? If so, wait. There was something wrong with that, no? I wasn’t falling from a random cliff, and surely there was no beast pursuing me…

I was falling from the skies themselves, as if a droplet of the wide blue itself.