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by Leo Oliveira

“Lions are no easier to fool than anyone else, but they were built to chase lightning wherever it strikes. That’s what thunder does.”

Before the lions came and ate our mother, she filled our nursling ears with tales of The One Who Races the World.

“Races the World was as quick on her feet as she was in her mind.

“She was a queen among cheetahs. A legend across the savanna.

“Impala frightened their cubs with invocations of her name. Hyenas did not steal her kills, for she was strong as well as fast, and she could drag the carcass of a water buffalo up a tree like a leopard, so that only the boldest of baboons would dare challenge her for it.”

Races the World was like a goddess to me. Countless silver nights curled up together in the long grass sheltering under a fallen acacia, begging our mother to tell us another, and another, and another. Of Races the World’s adventures, I could never get enough. I used to wish my mother had given me a proud name like hers, a bold name like hers, but I am only The One With Tiny Spots.

My brother is The One With A Dancing Tail and my sister is The One Who Sheds Black Tears. We had seen the rains come but once and we were three days and nights alone. Three days and nights as orphans. Several times that spent hungry, near starved. Our mother could not feed us anymore; not while she fed the fly-bitten bellies of lions.

Dancing Tail complained first of his empty stomach and how weary he’d grown of running, so I stopped him in the brush to chase down the fresh scent of a hare.

“I appreciate you,” Dancing Tail said, stretching out his long limbs beneath him. I considered giving him a warning not to grow too comfortable, but we’d not rested since before, and we were all tired and hungry. I didn’t have the heart to push him. Not even if our mother’s stories had taught us to be stronger.

Black Tears said nothing. She was the better hunter of us, what little practice we’d been given. But her eyes — measured, focused, and still — told me not to make a mistake. They said that she would not help me if I did.

* * *

I stalked the hare like our mother had taught us to stalk, patient and slow. “We are cheetahs, and we are not given second chances.” If I did not understand it before, I understood it then.

The hare was young and reeking of milk-scent. I followed her trail between brush stalks and golden swaying grass reeds until I spotted her ears. Somewhere out there was a litter of hare cubs, squirming and blind and useless. Possibly fur-less. All they had was their mother, and they would die quickly without her.

The first impala we ever ate was a young female our mother had brought down at the edge of the plains. She’d taught us between heaving breaths how to pull the skin free, how to split open the belly, how to fill our stomachs with the best parts of a carcass quickly, before hyenas or lions or painted wolves came to steal it.

I had never seen a dead impala before. I did not know the moist-slick mass, still blue with its fetal sack, was an unborn cub until our mother told us. I’d crunched through its soft skull, and I did not feel any guilt. I felt none for the hare now, but I twinged ever-so-slightly imagining her litter, tiny and helpless and so much like me and my siblings — my chest clenched with hurt.

Then I ran.

The One Who Raced First was born from a bolt of lightning that’d lanced down and struck the first of the First Cats. We are bolts from the black. We are energy incarnate. We burst to top speed from standing in three heartbeats flat.

Young and underdeveloped as my bones and muscles were, I closed in on the hare. It had not one hope of outstripping me. The ground became a blur. I stopped moving my legs for it was them that moved me. Inertia and instinct.

“If you think, you fall,” my mother had said to us. But that was why Black Tears caught more prey than I ever did.

A scent hit my nostrils through my next gulp of air, and I could not help myself. I slid to a halt. The hare’s fleeing footsteps faded in my ears, but I was not watching. I did not care.

We were born from lightning; lions came from the thunderclap after.

* * *

“The lions! The lions are here!” My fur trembled, feverish with race-rot — that sinking, heady feeling that follows a sprint to the edge, when the world swims before the eyes and the sun glares inside the skull.

Dancing Tail sprang to his feet. “What, where? Did you see them?”

Black Tears remained sitting. “I thought you left to catch a hare.”

“I called off the hunt because I smelled them. They’re close. I don’t know how close, but we must leave before they find us.”

“You smelled them, but you did not see them, and so you abandoned the hare.”

I have never wanted to kill my sister, but at that moment I came close. Her callousness dug into me like her tongue was tipped with poisoned spines. I hissed and spat in frustrated circles. I held my own tongue, but I held it barely.

“We don’t have to fight each other,” Dancing Tail said. “We’ve tricked them before.”

And indeed, he was right. The lions had not been content with our mother. This was not the first time their scents had drifted down to us on the breeze — they weren’t even hiding, that’s how we knew how little we meant to them — and we made use of the environment every time they came near. Switchbacks through the brush, false trails, looping paths that intersected with one another and shot out in different directions.

These had also been tricks our mother had taught us through the old tales of The One That Moves Shadows. If Races the World was like a goddess to me, Moves Shadows was like a goddess to Black Tears.

Black Tears gaped her jaws wide in a tongue-curling yawn. I forced my twitching tail to lie still.

“Let’s get it over with,” Black Tears said. “Hopefully you didn’t scare all the prey off with your yowling.”

“Only the ones slow enough to be caught by you,” I said.

“All of them, I see.”

I glared at my sister. She gave me a blank glance back. Then she turned away from us.

I sighed and pawed at the parched orange dirt. I wished she didn’t follow so closely to Moves Shadows’ favourite lessons, the ones our mother had so often repeated:

“The strong cheetah she is; she hunts alone.”

* * *

It took us until the first high heat of the day to finish our rounds. By then we had no appetite for hunting. Fear is one of the great constrictors, and we had spent so very long afraid. But we couldn’t risk standing still, either. While cheetahs sleep at night, lions are wide awake. To stop was to die. We needed to take every opportunity we had to make distance.

So, we started off and did not stop until tingling exhaustion forced us to. I sank onto my side, soaking in the cool dry earth. Dancing Tail curled up beside me. I shed heat through my open mouth, and each inhalation raked in great lungfuls of evening scent.

The musky tang of distant zebras and wildebeest skipped across the breeze to me. Dust, pressure, and the coming rains. Beetles and bugs and moisture in the air. My sister, my brother, and—

Lions.

I scrabbled upright, huffing, filtering through the scents for new and old, strong and weak, predator and prey. I had not been mistaken.

The lion scent had not gone away. If anything, it had grown stronger.

“Wake up,” I said, nudging Dancing Tail and Black Tears in the ribs. “The lions are coming.”

I could tell right away that they did not want to believe me. But the chance of ignoring a serious threat for a few fleeting moments of ignorance was not worth the trade, so they parted their jaws and confirmed my findings for truth.

“That’s impossible. How did they find us so fast?” Dancing Tail shivered. He was already the smallest of us, and he seemed to shrink further.

“They learned what we were doing.” Black Tears’ tail tip flicked up as if batting off flies. “That’s what we get for doing the same things over and over again. And whose idea was that?”

“Don’t hiss at him,” I said.

“Then you better hope you have a plan.”

I hesitated. This was not for lack of an idea, but for the nature of the idea I had. But both my littermates were staring at me, waiting, and I lowered my eyes as I said, “There’s always the Wall.”

The Wall was a dangerous place. A deadly place. Our mother had warned us in thrice as many words: humans with loud sticks and dogs, rock beasts on baking black paths, fields upon fields where nothing grows. The whole world changed on the other side of the Wall, but what other choice did we have?

“Maybe the lions won’t follow us past,” I continued. “Nobody crosses the Wall. And we can’t be far from it by now. See the baobab splitting the rocks? It’s the vulture skull stones.”

Our mother had brought us to the edge of that baobab once to tell us it was the edge of her territory. When we’d asked her why she didn’t go further, that’s when she told us about the Wall.

Neither of them liked my plan; I could tell this too. But nor did they see any other option.

“All right,” said Black Tears. “To the Wall.”

* * *

The lions stalked us throughout the night.

Several times we swerved off to the side and attempted to bed down, but the lion scent strengthened in half a cooling cycle or less without fail. They kept on coming. We had no recourse but to forget about sleep. Forget about resting. Move and move and move some more.

Cheetahs were not made for the night. We were born of lightning and nursed by daylight. Divots and grooves appeared beneath our paws, and any misstep into darkness could lead down gulleys or dry streams or crocodile-infested rivers. We had no way of knowing. We’d never been there before, and we could barely see.

At the point when the moon had begun to arch its descent, Dancing Tail took the lead. It was his turn to sweep the earth and guide us through the treacherous landscape. I kept my nose to his tail-tip, ignoring how it made me itch and sneeze. It was about the only way to keep together, our scents mingled and muddied as they were.

Then my brother disappeared.

“Dancing Tail?” I called out as he yelped — a sound that grew dimmer beneath a shatter of small stones down below.

Black Tears crouched beside me. Her ears flattened. “He must’ve fallen.”

Wordlessly, cautiously, we picked our way down the slope. It stretched near vertical from where Dancing Tail had stepped right off, and I had more than a couple close calls tempting a similar fate.

When we reached the bottom, Dancing Tail was hissing in pain, but alive.

I let relief brush through me before I saw his front right paw. It was twisted. Almost backwards. Broken.

“It hurts,” he said.

“Tiny Spots….”

“I know it hurts, but we must keep moving. Do you need help up?”

“Tiny Spots….”

“Come on, just lean on my shoulder. You can stand.”

“Tiny Spots!”

“I know what you want,” I hissed back at Black Tears. “It isn’t happening.”

Black Tears was no more than a pale outline in the deep grey gloom behind me. Still, I thought I could see the disapproval in her twitching whiskers. But by some miracle, she protested no more — not when we lifted Dancing Tail up on either side, not when we slowed our pace to a creep carrying him between us, and not when the lion scent began to overpower the scents of strange rock and dead wood closing in from the distance. Not one of us said anything as dawn came overhead. Not until we saw the Wall.

Black Tears stopped first, her eyes open wide.

I could not help but do the same.

The Wall stood as tall as a full-grown cheetah on her hind legs. Impenetrable. Thin bones of glittering rock crisscrossed each other, all strung together so as not to allow even a mouse to slip through the cracks. The very top was tipped in thorns.

“We’re trapped,” Dancing Tail wailed.

Neither Black Tears nor I responded, because we both saw it to be true.

“There must be a way around,” Black Tears said after a moment. “How else would stories get in?”

And then I glimpsed it: a break in the glimmering mass, a hole farther down the Wall the size one of us might squeeze through. “There, quickly!”

We pushed ahead as swift as we were able. It wasn’t fast enough.

The grasses behind us crunched under confident paws. Growls understood without a word to accompany them. The markers of killing intent. It wasn’t long before we saw their golden fur, too, along with their golden eyes.

The lions.

“We won’t make it,” Dancing Tail cried.

He was right. The lions spread out around us, carving the shape of a crescent moon. They would spot the gap; they would run us down. This I knew as I knew my own spots. So, I did what only someone as brave and brilliant as Races the World would do.

“Keep moving to the gap in the Wall,” I said. “I’ll lead them away.”

“Don’t you dare!” Black Tears said, but I was already running.

Lions are no easier to fool than anyone else, but they were built to chase lightning wherever it strikes. That’s what thunder does.

Where my littermates went to one side, I veered to the other. Taunting, close, like prey bolting out of instinct. Fear. The lions caught on like flame, and suddenly the grasses burst alive with giants.

This is also true about lions: they are much larger than even a full-grown cheetah. Our heads fit right in their mouths. I have seen this with my own eyes. My mother’s shoulders fit, too.

My courage wilted in a blink.

There were a dozen lions now — all leaping and lunging out at me, their paws bigger than my head, their claws thicker than my spine. They could kill me in a moment. I tensed my tired limbs and ran.

What started as a distraction turned on a fang-tip to survival. I raced without a thought for where my littermates were, or why I was running, or where I was leading the lions to. I didn’t think about why, or how to slow down to ensure the lions kept up, or what I would do once Black Tears and Dancing Tail escaped. I felt hot breath against my fur. I felt death closing in. I felt my heart beat faster, faster, faster, until I was sure it stood moments from giving out of race-rot.

Then Black Tears caterwauled. Loud and insistent. It was a dying wail, a fear wail, and it drew the lions up short to stare.

I am ashamed to admit it, but it’s true: I did not look twice. I did not glance around. I did not take in what had happened or where my brother and sister were. I flung myself through the gap in the Wall and I did not slow down until I tripped and rolled under a dry bush beyond.

It was only afterwards that I searched the grass for my littermates. Black Tears padded to my side, head bowed.

Alone.

“Where is Dancing Tail?” I asked. I already knew. I had to have known.

Black Tears lifted her eyes to mine. There was a defiant gleam in them. Defensive. “He wouldn’t have survived.”

I don’t remember if I did or said anything right after this. I only remember moving, and then Black Tears saying, “You don’t want to see.”

I didn’t listen.

When the lions ate our mother, we could not bear to watch. I could not bear this time any better, but just as strongly I could not make myself turn away.

Dancing Tail was already dead. I am glad that he was. Had he still been suffocating in a lion’s jaws, had I crouched in the long grass watching, I might have thrown myself back into the pride’s claws out of guilt.

I watched the lions finish eating what they wanted of him. I watched them purr and hum and groom each other. I watched the vultures descend. I watched the lions stand up, stretch, and leave.

“They were going to catch you, Tiny Spots,” Black Tears said. “You know they were. If I hadn’t brought the lions over, it would be both of your skeletons in the grass. I saved your life. And even if we’d saved him… He died quickly now; he would have died slow and alone much later.”

There is one more part to the legend of The One Who Races the World, and that is how she died. The story had always upset me — pouting and mewling for days after I’d heard it, but our mother would groom my ears and tell me it was important to listen. There were things that even Races the World could not outpace. Age, the rising heat, and the selfishness of our own kind. As she lay down, old and dying and mere paces from water, seven cheetahs passed her. Not one stopped to help. She died like that, a goddess to me, nothing and no one to anyone of her time.

I did not look again at my sister. I watched the vultures pick our brother clean.

“Please don’t hate me,” she said.

“This is the way things are,” she said.

“Cheetahs hunt alone,” she said.

She must have left soon after, for she didn’t say anything else. Eventually I fell asleep where I sat. My dreams were filled with storms, and every cloud pierced a hill with blue lightning, but lightning does not last forever. Lightning lives for a blink. A moment. A speck of time in the skies above the grasslands: beautiful and striking and gone much too soon.

 

* * *

About the Author

Leo Oliveira is a queer writer from Ontario, Canada, where he harbours a soft spot for rats, pre-history, and flawed queer characters. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Radon Journal, Fusion Fragment, and Port Crow Press, and has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, Brave New Weird, and Best Horror of the Year.

by Mike Robinson

“Instinct told her to turn back, but what possessed her was not normal instinct. It was herdwind, maybe even greater, too, the winds of many herds well beyond her own, fanning a deathbringing fire.”

Southern Africa

3 Million Years Ago

 

1.

They never believed her until she described the screams. She knew why. Recalling the brain-goring terror of those sounds, from the high squeals to the deep, resigned rumblings, broke open all the realness of that night through her, and her telling of it.

Sweetfoot liked surprising others, especially youngkind. Bigcats threatened the young, some might say, but that threat was finite, and the calves were safe within the thick forest of the herd’s legs and trunks and the canopy of their tusks. In general, the bigcats knew not to even try.

But that was why she told them of the Five Waters: the only place with bigcats bold enough to take down grownkind. They would come at night, lurking on the edges of the grounds, letting themselves be sensed at choice moments. It was artful spooking, a slow build-up of panic. Consisting mostly of females, the bigcats would circle closer, scouting, floating in and out until they’d managed to isolate a young unattached bull, one usually wedged in mud.

At the time, Sweetfoot was only a few seasons old. She couldn’t see much, as it was dark and her clan had quickly enveloped her. Her Clan Mother had insisted they leave the Five Waters. But through the surrounding bodies, she caught glimpses of what was happening: the bigcats perching themselves on different ends of the young bull, one clutching the trunk while others held the legs and all digging in like parasites with tooth and claw. Still more awaited their role of taking out the eyes, which would unleash the worst of the screams.

Today, as a Clan Mother herself, Sweetfoot told that story mostly through those screams, so that the youngkind might always be vigilant. Particularly her own male child, Two-Step, a season-cycle old and a clumsy walker since birth.

Every newborn, it was told, was delivered from the Windrealm, and so had trouble steadying themselves. Yet Two-Step’s struggles were unique, his legs misshapen, maladroit — it had taken many tries just to stand him erect for longer than a blink. Using mostly his front legs, he had, with effort, begun pulling himself forward. He staggered. Hopped. Eventually, over many days, with the supervision of Sweetfoot and the clan’s other mothers, he found his strength and his balance. Because of all this, his Name had come swiftly.

Still, Two-Step had proven the most spirited of her offspring. He played as much as he could, squeal-crying his frustration when he could no longer keep up with siblings or playmates of other clans. Periodically, Sweetfoot would have to right him. It made her anxious, seeing his Windblown spirit struggling against glaring weakness.

Hearing of the bigcats at the Five Waters, Two-Step wondered aloud when he might be much bigger than the biggest of all bigcats. Impatient, Sweetfoot replied that it would take many seasons. As demonstrated by her story, not even a young bull could guarantee escape from the interest of bigcats.

Were there bigcats so big, Two-Step asked, that could swallow whole clans — or herds? His cousin Springtrunk had remarked on herdhunters: great rare roving beasts that outmatched even the mightiest kin.

Always, it came to this: the morbid wonder of the young. There was thrill in grand unknowing, in imagining the many beings that might populate the savannah, its trees and waters, its rocks and burrows.

But no, Sweetfoot told him, the notion of “herdhunters” was not true. Unlike her account at Five Waters, it was a fanciful idea, passed from clan to clan, herd to herd, mainly to titillate the young and not a few of those grown who still enjoyed such stories. But nothing encountered by any of their kind — not the bigcats, spotted or otherwise, the toothy water-dwellers or the hook-beaked birds — would ever presume to destroy an entire herd. Nothing walked that might threaten whole groups of grownkind.

 

2.

Sweetfoot’s own Name had been given late. In those early days, through the Five Waters era and for seasons beyond, she was among two in her clan simply called Littlewind, a common placeholder for those who had not yet earned the distinction of a Name.

Earning a Name meant you had been delivered here in full, in this world, in this body. One could not fully control when that happened, though — it was up to the winds, perennially unpredictable.

One night, as Clan Mother, Sweetfoot slept and crossed into the Windrealm, where memories blew together to make dreams. She felt young again. She was small and restless, back with her old clan in the northerly territories.

Her Clan Mother had brought them to the tree of the dizzyfruit. Higher in the branches, two smaller dark forms stirred, clearly agitated with the clan’s approach. Their vocalizations were hesitant, cautious. Their smell was unique, too, layered and ripe.

Tree-dwellers, they were called. Light-furred and walking mostly on two legs. Trees were their refuge, though not so much from the larger spotted bigcats. Yet much like her kind, tree-dwellers appeared to find strength in family bonds. They coalesced against threats.

Locking her tusks on the heftier branches, Clan Mother wrestled the tree, and the dizzyfruit rained about, where others sniffed for them, trunks curling and whipping overground.

She wasn’t sure why, but in a burst of impishness, Sweetfoot began stomping the dizzyfruit, smooshing their innards all over the bottom of her feet. She found it fun. Cathartic. Until the disapproving honk from Clan Mother, forcing her own mother to step in and halt her play.

Soon after, when she’d eaten enough dizzyfruit, and the world tilted and spun and she laid down, she felt the tickle of other trunks on her feet, and realized other youngkind were scraping off her what they could while she lay there. It was all so silly, a pleasant memory they would all keep.

And so it was, decreed Clan Mother, that she had fully entered this world as Sweetfoot.

Somehow, though, right now, Two-Step was here, among those eating pieces of dizzyfruit off her. In the body of her younger self, she saw him less as a child than a peer. His curiosity was palpable, too, heated like a presence.

She wanted to ask him: why are you here?

But then, in a blink, she awoke. Newday sun glowed dimly on the horizon. She rose to her feet and grazed a little, feeling groggy and oddly disoriented.

Moments later, Two-Step awoke, too. To her astonishment, he recounted what he had seen during the night. Her old clan. The tree-dwellers. That he knew now why she was called Sweetfoot. How he had enjoyed the taste of the dizzyfruit.

Sweetfoot was confused. Had the Windrealm played some sort of trick on her? Or was she still dreaming? No. The sun was rising, the savannah taking steady form around her.

No doubt: she had awakened. Returned.

How, then, did Two-Step know of her dream?

Two-Step himself seemed not to think much of the strangeness. He was happy they had shared an intimate, unexpected moment. He liked seeing her so young, closer to his age.

She considered he might be special, in ways she couldn’t comprehend. Yes, he had been given a name. In all manner of body, he was here. But perhaps some portion of his spirit remained elsewhere, in the shadows of the Windrealm.

*

The season was warming, the sun higher and lingering and driving moisture into the earth. Once eight members strong, Sweetfoot’s clan had come to include several other families, bolstering their herd to over thirty which she now led as they trekked for water, swaying in a loose line of dusty backs lined with dried mud.

Several days in, Sweetfoot heard a cry. Far away, but she was fairly certain—a tree-dweller.

She knew they did not tend to travel far in droughts, which could mean, potentially, that there was a water source near them. As the herd walked, she and several of the younger mothers also picked up scent traces of water on the wind, coming from a northeasterly direction.

Two-Step was now three season-cycles old. Though he managed to keep general pace with the herd, his gait remained awkward, slower. As always, there was a mismatch between his body and his spirit, the latter of which (perhaps because he didn’t move as fast) seeking to pry and to poke at things unwelcoming of his touch: the ground-dwellers in their burrows, or the limbless slithers in the tall grasses. Occasionally, when they were grazing, he would wander, as if in search of some other, unknown food. Angry horn-heads had once charged him away from their herd of hundreds. For this, he had received taunting tremors from even younger males.

One day later, they reached the water source — a murky pool, too small for a water-dweller. A skinny bigcat crouched at the edge, lapping away before sauntering off.

There were tree-dwellers near, too, little more than dark lumps dozing in the branches. Sweetfoot had smelled them well before. Their odor was unique, and could ride the wind — likely what made them vulnerable, and why they remained mostly treebound.

The herd gathered round and drank what they could. At some point, Sweetfoot lost track of Two-Step. Smelling the air and surveying, she found him maybe fifty paces away, standing in grass halfway between the water and the place of the tree-dwellers. She called to him, but he didn’t respond — he was spraying dust on himself in curt, playful snorts.

She went to him.

A sudden, extra plume of dust rose from the grass. As Sweetfoot drew closer, ears perked, she spotted a young tree-dweller. A female, by the smell. Very young. She made soft chirpy noises as she scooped up dust with her limbs and tossed it all over herself. She coughed — a little puff. Her eyes projected light. It was impossible not to see her playfulness. Like she was imitating Two-Step, and enjoying it.

But when Sweetfoot came close enough, the young tree-dweller grew alarmed and scampered back to the tree, where her elders received her. They issued minor yelps, which might have been challenges, or scoldings. Either way, they didn’t concern her.

She told Two-Step to rejoin the herd, thinking distantly, shapelessly, how amusing it was that the winds of play reached every young form — and spirit — of the world.

 

3.

It was multiple seasons since Two-Step left the clan when Sweetfoot, for the first time in her life, knew the intimate brutality of an attack.

Once part of a larger herd, her new clan had broken off and now numbered about fourteen. She led them west, where grazing promised to be more robust. This was also the general direction of the Five Waters, though of course they would not be going there.

At first, she thought maybe the memory of those screams was the cause of the sudden, terrible unease which had descended on her, and which slowed her movement. The rest of the clan slowed with her. Some issued curious grumbles and tremors.

But she kept to herself, which appeared to make them that much more anxious. They wanted to know what was wrong. Yet Sweetfoot could hardly respond for the weight that had struck her out of nowhere — not in body, but in spirit. A Wind harsh upon her. A dream, ambushing under the waking bright of the day.

There was sharp bigcat smell. A dreadful sense of being pulled down. There was twisting. Wrenching. Biting. Ripping. More: the wailing, the anguished cry which seemed to have carried over from her memory of Five Waters, but which she knew belonged to another, younger male, one she could not see, nor smell, nor see — not in body, not now — but who in the throes of death had reached out to her, in his special way, across the Windrealm.

Without any contact with him, she knew, in that moment, that somewhere Two-Step had fallen.

Sweetfoot stood still. Terrified. She had not encouraged him too strongly to leave the clan. She had left it up to him, and he had chosen to go. It was not surprising, considering his restlessness. He might have joined a clan of young males, though that was unlikely. He had set out alone, and probably stayed alone, traversing the savannah with his strange, clumsy walk, not fully grown. Small enough for the larger, more determined bigcats.

Chaotic as the vision had been, she sensed that Two-Step’s attackers were large young males, well-maned and maybe siblings, traveling together.

A flame of Threat sprang up inside her. The feeling of omen. This portended bad things—a growing Threat from the biggest of bigcats, who, generation by generation, might just be growing big and bold enough to take on more grownkind.

She would warn the other mothers in her clan. They would seek other clans and become a herd again. Perhaps, together, they ought to concoct further stories to frighten and instruct the young — tales of enormous, tree-sized bigcats that could circle whole clans with their patient pawing stride and death-lit eyes, that might just be big enough, vicious enough, to become true herdhunters.

*

The vision of Two-Step’s death haunted her, across miles and nights and even a whole season. It was the way of males of a certain age to leave a clan, to wander and seek out similar-aged males and female otherkind. The risks to them were clear, but necessary. Her other male, Moonback, had left well before Two-Step, yet she had not thought much about him.

She had, however, thought quite a bit about Two-Step. Through the seasons, he had kept close to her in spirit, if not body. Part of her imagined the winds would guide them together again.

Cold season was coming, the insects fewer and water more plentiful since the recent rains, which had lasted days and which still blurred the horizon in great pilings of clouds. Leading her clan to better grazing, she tried to downplay the distress, but could feel inquisitive tremors about her, and knew they wondered.

They passed a tree full of tree-dwellers, sleeping and clumped together for warmth. Did their males leave, too? She never saw them alone.

Along the way, she led them to the site of a fallen youngkind, a place she remembered from her early days as a mother, before becoming Clan Mother. It had been another solitary male. No one had known how he had died, yet no one thought it had been the bigcats — even as they, and other sharptooths, had taken swift advantage.

Only scattered bones were left now, including a partially buried skull. One whole tusk jutted from the earth. Sweetfoot caressed it with her trunk, issued perplexed, agitated murmurings. She had never known this male’s Name, nor his former clan. But he was their kind, part of a much greater herd: all those who had come from the Windrealm, and those who had gone back to it.

Anger rose in her, which she released in low, ominous grumblings. Had she spotted a bigcat just then, or even something that looked like one, she might have broken all chains of obligation to her clan to chase it down and destroy it.

The rest of the clan gathered close, unsure as to the nature of this visit, or this deadkind. Yet they maintained quiet respect, even as they especially did not understand why she referred to these bones as Two-Step.

 

4.

Half a season-cycle later, she dreamed — finding herself in the Windrealm.

Darkness pressed palpably at her eyes. She heard only the soft hurried chatter of the wind and, more alarmingly, smelled only decay. Death colonized her whole trunk, creeping up and filling her skull with its own nightmarish herd.

She also detected ash.

Gradually, the darkness broke into discernable shapes. There were hills and trees and grass, much like the world she knew, but all of it felt different — sinister, like a creature waiting in camouflage. Her trunk grasped about for anything. It made its way upon bone, familiar in its contours and sockets and dimensions. And there were more, forming out of the earth and shining dully not by any moon above but by an eerie negative light.

The ground was littered with the skulls of otherkind. None of them felt right, though, because something was missing.

Their tusks. None of them had tusks.

A slow, subtle terror rose in her. This was new. It represented some unknown, terribly unprecedented Threat. Tusks were marvels, artful in display, useful in defense, a feature unique to their kind.

She felt tremors underfoot — rumblings — and knew instantly who was speaking to her. She smelled him, too.

She turned and faced Two-Step, now standing aways from her. He was much more grown, and seemed to walk without difficulty. Any happiness at seeing him, however, was tarnished by the memory of what she’d felt of his death.

And, it seemed, whatever he was trying to convey.

A warning, she thought, frightened.

He came closer, enough that she could see him more clearly. Half his face was gone, the exposed skull dully aglow like the other bones here and the flesh of his trunk and remaining ear hanging in bat-like strands. He was his own cloud of deathsmell. His tusks, however, remained intact.

Sweetfoot sent her own tremors: a jumbled conveyance of her guilt and confusion and fear. She couldn’t think or vocalize straight, and it frustrated her. But then, maybe she wasn’t supposed to talk — maybe her words were just dusting over what Two-Step had come to tell her.

Finally, in a bolt of clarity, Two-Step’s voice reached her:

They will be coming.

Who? Another herd? Clan?

Herdhunters.

She was puzzled. Herdhunters were not real. But there was only one creature that could fit the role.

Sweetfoot answered: Bigcat.

He just stood still. Then, after a moment:

No.

He undid his trunk, unleashed a cry. His ears perked. He backed up a step, trembling such that dark chunks rained down off his frame. Sweetfoot turned to see what he was reacting to and startled at the large object that had suddenly sprouted there.

It was a tree, or something like it. It glowed like the bones and the skulls around her but that was because, she realized, it was made of tusks. Like they were at once the branches and the thorns, arranged as frozen white flames against the night.

But it wasn’t this tree of tusks that ultimately commanded her attention. It was the eyes among them, peering out at her like stars. She stepped closer, raised her trunk and smelled the wind and knew instantly that odor, layered and ripe. Distinct. The eyes moved and the shadows came alive and there were sharp cries, too, which she’d heard many times and considered almost precious.

Tree-dwellers.

Her bewilderment only grew. As did, it seemed, Two-Step’s agitation. He stomped, kicked up dust and ash, ear-flapped like any fight-ready young male.

The tree-dwellers moved in a way she’d not seen before. They seemed to pour down from between the tusks, mobilizing with a strange, headstrong confidence, unlike those she knew who often took anxious refuge in the trees, and who tended to avoid high grass.

Reaching the ground, they split off one another, eyes still staring ahead. Then, remarkably, their shape and their smell began to change. They rose — standing straighter and taller. Their hues and textures varied, too. They carried strange objects.

Threat overwhelmed her, as did unexplainable anger. They were dark spirits, these new tree-dwellers, long gestated in the silly bodies she knew. When they would shed their current forms for these taller, stranger ones, Sweetfoot did not know. But it was, somehow, inevitable.

One of these new tree-dwellers raised a stick-like object (their own trunk? she wondered for a second) and suddenly there were short, resounding thunder-bursts and a series of bright flashes and pop-whiffs of smoke.

A thing struck her — or bit her, she couldn’t tell. More bursts and there was thumping pain which grew worse. Threat crashed down upon her like it never had —these tree-dwellers wielded thunder, had somehow ripped it down from the sky.

She trumpeted and charged, driven less by her own intuition than by forces unseen, as if, in these Windrealms, the spirits of many otherkind had found her, and filled her limbs.

The tree-dwellers broke away. Their definitions blurred into the gloom of the grass. More thunder around her, though she couldn’t sense the source. Two-Step was gone, a lingering deathsmell. Sweetfoot cried out for him, and there was an answer but it wasn’t him — it was Many, a storm of tremors underfoot, great echoes of desperate calls from her kind issued down countless seasons she would in fact never see but which, dimly, she understood would darken with the blood of every generation as the tree-dwellers came with their thunder, surrounding her and surrounding them, all of them, the way bigcats might wounded prey yet these stranger tree-dwellers circled not just one of them or even a clan but a whole herd, and not even just one herd but—

She awoke. A singular sensation had overtaken her: a greater drive, Windblown into her limbs.

By the time she was even half-aware of what she was doing, Sweetfoot was moving, climbing to her feet and hurrying away from the clan. She sent out tremors, letting them know she would return. They sent back baffled cries and vocalizations. A young mother named Tornear almost trumpeted. But she had to go. Two-Step had sought her across the Windrealm in order to warn her.

Sweetfoot made her way across the land. Instinct told her to turn back, but what possessed her was not normal instinct. It was herdwind, maybe even greater, too, the winds of many herds well beyond her own, fanning a deathbringing fire.

Nor far away, other creatures watched with dull interest as she passed—horn-noses, and some of the smaller, more graceful ones that could outrun the spotted bigcats. With a flyflick of the ear, the horn-noses returned to grazing.

She had seen tree-dwellers impaled on those horns, when they drew too close. She had seen tree-dwellers hopelessly mauled by every manner of bigcat. Surely some had been lost to the jaws of the water-dwellers, those that sat like logs before hunger-whipping their prey.

How, then, could tree-dwellers pose a threat to their kind? Or, more astonishingly, to herds? Herdhunters were a thing of myth.

Soon, she found herself facing the tree they’d passed, across a long stretch of grass. She could make out no movement, but with her trunk she knew that ripe unique smell. Her reaction to it had changed suddenly, bringing with it darkness and decay.

Sweetfoot strode forward. The smell was curiously strong. As if—

Then, there was movement — close. A dark figure hopping in the grass. Definitely a tree-dweller. Anger flared in her.

She stepped closer. The odor clarified. It was a breedready male, and he appeared to be chasing something. She caught whiffs of a small ground-dweller.

Closer and closer, she stepped. The creature didn’t even seem to notice her as he jumped about violently. This was strange. It was unlike them to spend much time in high grass.

As Sweetfoot edged toward him, there was a squeal as he raised his arm and slammed it down over and over. He was holding something, too — a stone, which increasingly smelled of blood.

He was killing, over and over. Then he lifted the battered body of the ground-dweller and when Sweetfoot saw and smelled this in full she broke out in terrible aches, as though she and the ground-dweller were the same.

In one explosive moment, she charged this creature.

The tree-dweller screamed and tried to run, dropping his prey and bolting, arms swinging but managing only a few paces before she overtook him and jousted with her tusks, bucking him forward where he sprawled limply, screeching for the rest of his clan who’d now come alive in the tree thrashing and crying.

There was no way to stop her, though, as she stained her soles with the blood of this dweller, felt the pathetic ease with which his whole body broke under her power.

At some point she could no longer distinguish the ground from the body. The smell and the cries only enflamed her resolve, and she turned her back toward the tree and charged, trunk raised higher. The tree-dwellers jumped and screamed and clambered, dark shadows in the dark of the canopy.

She circled the tree, wide-eared, bellowing sharp, raspy trumpets. Several dwellers climbed higher. Others hurled things at her, mostly fruit and feces.

In the excited panoply of smells, Sweetfoot picked up one she knew better than others: a female. Younger. Familiar.

Yet that broke nothing of her temper. The image of Two-Step — face ripped, skull aglow like all those lying tuskless at her feet — burned deeper into her. She charged the tree and the tree-dwellers scrambled higher, and Sweetfoot rose on her hindlegs and sent her trunk curling up and grasping the branches and she ripped one down, catching an older male tree-dweller who plummeted shrieking to the ground. On her feet she mixed the other male’s blood with his, bones pop-snapping and the screeching cut short and the rest of the tree exploding in screams and crazed across the canopy. She grabbed at what branches she could and tore them down, and she leaned her bulk on the tree for leverage but the furry creatures were all unreachable and then they started dropping down the other side of the tree and hurrying away in erratic trails through the grass. Sweetfoot ran after them, catching an older female and shattering her lower half before seeking another, training on the smell and the wayward paths and the shrieks echoing over the savannah.

In the storm of this moment, new sensations bombarded her, making her feel both ill and empowered. Not unlike the effect of too much dizzyfruit.

The grass grew higher. Wind picked up. The tree-dwellers fanned out, but with her height and her trunk full of wind and odor Sweetfoot could still follow them. Another of the older slower ones fell easily. She now had generations of tree-dweller blood on her feet. She turned, trumpeted, charged again, acuity sharpening with every kill.

She paused, took in the air. Their smell-trails had lowered. Picking up one stronger, steadier odor, she followed it across the field.

When the grass parted, she halted for the sudden drop-off, steep and muddy down to a body of water connected by a thin ravine to a larger body of shallowing water.

Crouched just under her was a female tree-dweller. Her foot was twisted, and she was crying out. Sweetfoot recognized her. It was, indeed, the young, playful female who, several season cycles ago, had imitated Two-Step by tossing dust on herself.

Except she was older now, clearly breedready, as indicated not only by the menstrual smell but the whimpering child, now clinging to her fur.

The tree-dweller struggled a few paces between Sweetfoot and the water, injured, terrified. Sweetfoot huffed and stepped to the side, the tempest in her calming. Slowly, the empowered feeling left her, leaving only the illness.

Here, below her, was mother and child. Here, below her, was the tree-dweller who had interacted with Two-Step as if, briefly, she were of their kind.

In the water, soft ripples appeared. A pointed shape drew closer.

The tree-dweller clutched her infant as she limped — or tried to — up the slippery mudslope. Her utterances grew higher, more erratic as she kept glaring back and forth at Sweetfoot and the edge of the water.

Much as with her anger, Sweetfoot could not comprehend that which now spread through her. It was like sunlight, warming away cold. She vocalized, but not in a challenging way. It was a surge of alarm for the pathetic broken creature and her child strewn just under her.

She set her front feet down on the incline, then reached out her trunk. The water-dwellers were of their own world — an alien one, with which Sweetfoot could find no sympathy. But there was a distant spark with the tree-dwellers. Even a kinship, one which had nothing to do with body but which dwelled, perhaps, on the Wind. At some level, a gust out of their eyes could reach her.

Her trunk hung there. She curled and flipped it, hoping the tree-dweller might somehow understand. She sent reassuring tremors — futile.

The water bubbled slightly. Sweetfoot acted, lunging and slipping her trunk around the shoulder of the tree-dweller just as the water exploded with teeth, and she pulled up, mother and baby yelping and drag-kicking a deep groove in the mud quickly covered by the girth of the water-dweller.

Sweetfoot released the tree-dweller atop the ridge. The baby fell helplessly but the mother scrambled and hastily scooped it up. With a brief, harried look at Sweetfoot, she raced away into the grass which swayed with her path, until her motions became the wind’s.

She stood there a moment, sniffing after them, rumbling to nowhere, no one.

Dazed, Sweetfoot made her way down to the water’s edge. The water-dweller had returned to the murk. It wouldn’t bother her. She waded into the shallow end and drew up a volume which she drank, desperately. Her pulse slowed. Then she sprayed her back, cooling her body. Rinsing the dust which felt like ash on her.

 

* * *

About the Author

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mike Robinson is the award-winning author of multiple novels and dozens of short stories, most of them speculative fiction. His work has appeared in Clarkesworld, American Gothic Fantasy, Storyteller, Cirsova, ClonePod, December Tales II, Underland Arcana, Thirteen Podcast and many more, and has received honours from Writers of the Future, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Maxy Awards, The BookFest, Kindle Book Awards and others. His novel Walking the Dusk was a semifinalist in Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize.

As an editor, he has worked with hundreds of authors, including National Book Award finalists, and is the red pen behind J.P. Barnett’s bestselling “Lorestalker” series. A book coach and senior editor with Wordsmith Writing Coaches, he also co-created the New Author Plunge, a workshop for beginning writers, and is on the advisory board of GLAWS, the Greater LA Writers Society, He is also an illustrator, and the screenwriter of the film Blood Corral, which recently hit the international festival circuit.

by Dana Wall

“Oh, and one more thing – the flock has requested that you install TikTok. Something about documenting the journey for their followers.”

“Your Projected Migration Efficiency Rating has dropped to 62%,” the sparrow from HR chirped, adjusting her tiny glasses with one wing. “That’s well below the industry standard of 85%, Ms. Honksworth.”

Gloria Honksworth, Senior Migration Consultant at Wingways Solutions LLC, fought the urge to roll her eyes. Twenty years of guiding geese across continents, and now she was being lectured by a bird who’d never flown further than the office park.

“With all due respect,” Gloria said, straightening her neck feathers, “traditional metrics don’t account for the current situation. The warm fronts are arriving three weeks early, the cool fronts are stalling out over the Great Lakes, and half our usual rest stops have been converted into parking lots.”

The sparrow – Ms. Twitterton, according to her name tag – consulted her tablet. “Nevertheless, your last three migration groups have all deviated significantly from their approved flight plans. The Canadian contingent ended up in Miami instead of Mexico City. The Atlantic seaboard flock somehow got lost over Kansas. And let’s not even discuss the incident with the Hudson Bay formation and that squadron of fighter jets.”

“That was a scheduling error! How was I supposed to know the Air Force would be running drills in our airspace?”

“By filing the proper flight path documentation,” Ms. Twitterton replied primly. “Which you haven’t done correctly since last spring.”

Gloria’s neck feathers ruffled in indignation. “The standard forms don’t have checkboxes for ‘freak thunderstorm’ or ‘entire lake dried up’ or ‘wind patterns completely reversed from historical data.’ I’m having to rewrite the whole playbook here!”

“That’s not protocol–”

“Protocol?” Gloria spread her wings, knocking over a stack of migration maps. “I started flying these routes before you were an egg! Back then, we had reliable seasons, predictable weather patterns, actual wetlands to land in. Now? I’ve got elderly geese getting heatstroke in October, goslings who’ve never seen snow asking why we bother migrating at all, and don’t get me started on the mess with the GPS signals…”

Ms. Twitterton made a note on her tablet. “Speaking of GPS, your requisition for new tracking devices has been denied. The budget committee feels the current equipment is adequate.”

“Adequate? Half of them still think magnetic north is where it was in 1990!”

“Ms. Honksworth.” The sparrow’s voice took on a warning tone. “Your attitude isn’t helping. Now, we’ve assigned you a new group for next week’s migration. They’re a young flock, very tech-savvy, very modern. They’ve requested a more… contemporary approach to navigation.”

Gloria’s heart sank. “Please tell me they’re not the ones with the smartphone app.”

“MigrateGr8 is a perfectly valid navigation tool–”

“It’s designed for human road trips! It doesn’t account for wind speed, wing fatigue, or the fact that we can’t just pull into a Motel 6!”

The sparrow sighed and pulled out a final form. “This is your last chance, Ms. Honksworth. Get this flock to their destination on schedule, on route, and within budget, or we’ll have to discuss early retirement options. Do you understand?”

Gloria stared out the office window at the autumn sky. The wind was all wrong for the season – warm and southerly when it should be a crisp northerly blast. Just like last year, and the year before that. But nobody in management wanted to hear about climate change or habitat loss. They just wanted their neat little reports and their efficiency metrics.

“Fine,” she said finally. “I’ll do it. But I want it noted that I’m flying under protest.”

“Noted.” Ms. Twitterton gathered her papers. “Oh, and one more thing – the flock has requested that you install TikTok. Something about documenting the journey for their followers.”

After the sparrow left, Gloria slumped at her desk, surrounded by outdated maps and useless weather reports. On her computer, another email popped up: “10 Hot Tips for Modern Migration Management! You Won’t Believe #7!”

She closed it without reading. Instead, she pulled up the satellite imagery for next week’s route. The weather models were a mess, showing three possible storm systems and unprecedented temperature variations. The rest stops she’d used for decades were mostly gone – drained, paved, or dried up. And now she had to guide a flock of influencer geese who probably thought “ground effect” was a photo filter.

But as she studied the maps, a plan began to form. The official route was impossible – but there, cutting across an unexpected urban heat island, and there, following a new wind pattern she’d noticed last season… It wouldn’t be pretty, it wouldn’t be protocol, but it might just work.

She opened a new document and began to type: “Alternate Migration Strategy: Adapting to Modern Realities.”

Let the HR sparrows chirp about protocol. Gloria had a job to do, and she’d do it the way she always had – one wing beat at a time, adjusting to whatever the changing world threw at her. Even if it meant learning TikTok.

She just hoped the younger geese knew how to fly in formation while taking selfies.

 

* * *

About the Author

Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood’s agents and lawyers in perfect order. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College’s MFA program. Her work which has appeared or will appear in Intrepidus Ink, 96th of October, Fabula Argentea, Summerset, 34 Orchard, Eunoia Review, The Shore Poetry, Dreams and Nightmares, Bright Flash Literary Review and Sykroniciti confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance.

by Anne Larsen

“My dam’s eyes do not glow. Why do you smell like her? Where is she?”

My dam remembered when Lore was a sorrel mare with a bad hock. By the time I was foaled, Lore was a dun mare faded by sun and salt water, her muzzle going grey and her eyes — well, Lore’s eyes are what they are: green and gold, like no other horse in our herd’s heritage.

“Can she really see the wind, mama?” my third foal asked.

“My dam said she could, but how can we know?”

“Did you ever talk to her?”

“Only the lead mares speak to her. Sometimes the old aunties graze by her and listen. She tells them the stories they must tell the weanlings.”

“What stories?”

“Soon enough, you’ll know, won’t you?”

He leaned into me then, lipped my udder enough to show that he appreciated my milk, though he didn’t drink much these days. His foal fuzz came away in patches revealing his bright bay coat, a gift from his sire. By late summer my colt would be off with the others of his year learning all the things a horse needs to know to live among his kind on this harsh place: how to see patches of sucking sands, how to brace side-by-side with cousins, rumps to the storm wind and heads low in the lee of their shoulders, how to run and spar in the bachelor band where friend and rival are the same thing because they both strengthen you. But for now he stayed close, bending his knees to graze in the shelter of my body when the wind off the water blew cold.

As my foal would soon do, I had learned Lore’s stories grazing among the senior mares who no longer bore foals but guarded and guided the weanlings into maturity. She remembered sweet grass in marshes far back before men, when only the wind’s hands had touched us and we carried no burdens. She remembered generations when ice locked the land and when it had weakened, she had led her people north to new pastures fed by the waters of its retreat. She remembered the hot, golden hills we had run before we came here, packed in the dark bellies of wooden ships that crossed the saltwater.

One evening, in the dusk after sunset, with the offshore wind fading and the herons settled on their high nests, Lore called us all to Gather. She had never called a Gather in this land before now, but we all recognized the summons as it lived in our bones and blood. The lead mares sent the bachelors up and down the island, leeward and windward, to bring every horse to hear her. Last to come were those on the far side of the fence that humans had stretched from inner sea to outer sea, nonsense dividing the sand. Those horses skirted it by swimming around the sunken end. Rumor said they had left a great pile of manure banked against the sun-warped planks.

By moonrise we were with her in our hundreds, mare and foal, weanling, bachelor, and herd sire. We surrounded her, the lead mares at the center and the rest of us around them, circle around circle, silent but for tail-swish and hoof-stomp when flies bit. The Gather Truce prevailed, so none of the young stallions challenged their elders or one another for mares. They knew the penalty for disturbance was exile, as good as death, for no horse can live alone.

Into our minds she came, silent as snowfall, showing us what we needed to know and what we had to do.  “Far over the gray ocean in the direction of morning,” Lore said, “lies an island with a fiery heart. That heart swells and will soon break, shattering the island above it. Most of its body will fall into the sea, making a great wave rise and run. In less than a day it will travel from there to here. When it arrives, it will shrug the ocean over this island and roll far inland across the channels, washing everything before it, then drag the shattered mess back out to deep water. The flood will run faster than we can, so we must leave now to be far away and safe when it comes.

Lore’s plan was to take us across the channel to the smaller sister island, through the town there, across the second channel, then over fields and into a forest we had never seen. She knew some of that country from the times she had been caught in the high summer penning-day, when many of us were driven across the water and into the town to be looked over by humans, with some youngsters taken while the rest of us returned. Because they were her kindred, Lore could touch the minds of those horses carried away to new pastures, so she knew roads and open land none of us did. She selected our destination inland from what she had learned from these distant lives.

The vision of tall, dense trees startled us, for we were creatures of this windswept, watery place, living on seagrass between sand and sky. But for horses, the sense of home is the same as the sense of safe, not tied to a bit of ground, but to a feeling of peace, where a watchful eye is all we need to keep our foals and families from harm.

Lore sent urgency rippling through our spiraled herd, and the outermost bands peeled away, trotting toward the channel crossing. The senior mares led; their stallions took the rear guard, guiding the youngsters between them. As the great mass of us moved out, I felt the other lives of the island stirring. The white tips of fox tails flickered through the scrub, and I heard the light footfalls of deer shadowing us.

The wading birds, who have their own ways of knowing, lifted from the shore in skiffs and swirls, strangely silent. I had never seen herons leave their rookery so close together, one after another, long legs behind them and their wide wings scooping the night air, the lines of them long strands like a tail swept back in the wind. The egrets, large and small, were easier to see, their whiteness gathering the scant moonlight. By the time the first horses entered the channel, the air above was filled with birds, the differing rhythms of each kind’s flight blurring together into a whoosh like rushing water.

When I plunged into the channel my foal pressed close to my shoulders. He’d splashed in the ocean shallows with me before to escape the black flies but this was his first real swim. It was low tide, so there was little current in the narrow stretch of water. His brave muzzle never wavered as he swam, ears swiveling to listen to huffing breaths around him and the murmur of crossing wakes as our band pressed forward. The moment his hooves found the far shore he bounded onto the beach, soaked tail high with pride. He nuzzled his year-mates as they checked one another, affirming that all were here.

Whitetail and sika deer had blended into our great herd, but sifted themselves apart as soon as they landed, bounding away across the yards and gravel roads toward the leeward beach. Foxes and raccoons arrived in our wake, staggering on the trampled sand as they shook water from their pelts before disappearing with the deer.

Lore came in the middle group, but all the bands waited for her to take the lead in the next part of our journey. She led us past the wooden houses and yards of short, thin grass, sending her peace outward to soothe dogs startled awake by our footfalls. We walked so the foals and eldest could rest and so the muffled rumble of our hundreds passing would wake no human sleepers. The island’s captive horses heard us, though, and some called to Lore. She quieted them, but I believe she gave them the message because several of them ran their fence lines and rattled the gates that kept them from joining our numbers.

“Will they die here?” my foal asked.

“I don’t know. I think the humans will leave the island and take their animals with them in a few hours.”

Our great herd bunched together on the leeward shore as Lore assessed the condition of our weakest and then considered the best crossing. Marshy sand spits littered the inner channel, some of them standing proud at low tide and others merely clots of reeds trapping muck that gave no rest or purchase to a tired horse. Lore’s light touch in our minds asked us to attend her again.

“It will be a long swim, maybe hours to reach the far shore. Some will be lost to the water.” The lead mares nodded, their ears twisting with fret. “But there is another way. We take the narrow road above the water that goes straight across. We could trot and canter that distance, reaching the far shore with enough night left to hide us as we run inland.” The adults raised their heads to study the distant ribbon of stone and steel. Ever reckless, the bachelors nudged one another, their feet shifting in anticipation.

“We might meet with humans crossing. We would have to share the road with their machines as there is no way to leave it once we have begun. Are you willing?” Mares and herd sires pressed together, necks arched and muzzles close, seeking reassurance from one another. Shifting along the shore road, the herd shuddered as each family band made its choice. One by one the lead mares sighed their assent and the entire herd stood still, waiting.

“Together then,” Lore said.  She led us up the island, the stallions keeping our long herd clustered on the road. Past houses and cars and buildings we walked through the silent town. Most of the adults had walked through the town on penning day, so the shapes were familiar. The waning moon was high now. Lore turned onto the wide, white road that ran over the water. Lead mares and stallions kept us bunched close on the shallow rise to the road. It was wide enough for us to travel several abreast, the mares with foals at heel. My colt and I trotted near the front. We could see Lore’s pale coat glint in the moonlight, her dark tail held half-high, signaling her concern. From the well of my heart through every muscle and sinew I knew she would keep us safe.

Lore kept our trot steady, a cadence to cover distance without exhausting our youngest and eldest. The bachelors longed to break and run, but lead mares pinned their ears and drove the males back into line with nips and glares. My colt’s boldness pleased me as he matched my pace. I raised him with that courage. In a different band I would be a lead mare, but my older sister guides us, the strength of her spirit rare and worthy, so I am content to follow. Perhaps one day she will leave our band to go with her chosen mate when he is displaced by a younger stallion, and I will step into her place. Until then I trust and obey her and insure all my foals do as well.

The road crossed reed beds that hissed in the sea breeze, the long stems rippling like water above the water. Now and then we heard deer splashing over the sand spits, traveling in pairs and severals with few fawns among them. I doubted that fawns could survive the long swim, so many does had not started this part of the journey. By now all the birds had vanished inland so the sky above us was deep and calm, though on the far shore lights from another town tainted the dark horizon and smothered the stars. The rhythm of our two-beat pace blurred into a low thunder on the hard road.

We had reached the place where the road crosses the deepest, widest water when the truck came, heading toward the island. I had seen one of these at rest in the town last penning day. It was huge, three times our height, and its face lights flashed as it roared toward us.

“Move over!” Lore commanded, and the whole herd flowed sideways to the upwind side of the road, crowding many horses against the low metal fence. The truck made so many different sounds that it seemed to be more than one creature. I heard thumps like a woodpecker on a hollow tree, though there never was so huge a bird. I pinned my ears against its mind-piercing squeal.

The horses in the front bunch balked and those behind them piled into one another, screaming. Some that were crushed against the low rail leapt off the bridge, and I heard their bodies hit the water below. A filly panicked, breaking out of the herd and running blind toward the beast, screaming for her dam. Lore spun and leapt, shoving her back into the stumbling mass of us. The filly found her dam but Lore could not escape the truck’s path. It hit her broadside, throwing her several lengths down the road.

She lay still.

The truck halted, its eye-lights glaring at the heap of her golden body.

The mass of plunging, panicked horses milled on the road. My colt squealed and the lead mares cried out, frantic to contain their bands and push them past the rumbling truck. It was not moving anymore, but clouds of smoke billowed around its feet, its eye-lights shattered our night vision, and a human had climbed down off of its side. He yelled at us and waved his hands but the horses at the front ignored him. Beside his deadly, reeking beast, he was no threat at all. The leading band had tangled in rage and fear, stomping on their own youngsters and not even the stallion could shift them by driving from the rear of the group.

“Lead them. They need you now. Get them across the water.” Lore’s voice steadied me, directed my attention away from the press of legs and the roiling sea of necks, manes, and haunches. “Go on. This is who you are. They are all, every one, yours to lead.”

“I am not a lead mare,” I answered. I could not keep my feet still. Terror had streaked my shoulders and flanks with foamy sweat.

“You are far more. Now you are Lore. Call your people together and they will follow you.”

“How can they hear me?”

“The same way you hear me now. Believe with your whole heart — know with your whole mind — that they are your people. Then speak.”

I turned away from the empty body on the road to look at the shuddering line of horses stretching far back toward the island we had fled. My night vision returned and I saw them, each one, knew their names, their lineages, their strengths and sorrows. White feet, blazes, stars, patches, and tails gleamed under the waning moon. Scents of fear-sweat and mare’s milk whipped past me on the landward wind. My colt found me, ducked under my neck and pressed himself against my chest, his voice quavering in time with his skittering feet. I bowed my neck over his back and laid my cheek against his face.

“Shall we leave, beloved?”

He bleated in answer.

“Follow me, stay close.”

I turned my mind inward, stroking the memory of every horse I knew here, discovering that somehow I knew them all, even the bands from the north whom I had never met.

“My people, my family, follow. We move forward now.”

I stepped around the dead mare and passed the hot body of the truck, pausing only to bare my teeth and strike at the human so he would step back. I arrived at the front of the line, nibbled my colt’s curly foal-mane to reassure him, and spoke again with my whole body, a strong trot ringing on the hard road as I stepped into the darkness beyond the horror.

“Follow, follow,” my two-beat gait sent a tempo through the herd. The confusion at the front dissolved into order, the simplicity of the trot, and with motion came clarity and calm.

All down the herd the lead mares matched my call, walking until the ripple of forward movement opened space for them to trot. I directed one of the old bachelors to keep the human pinned against his truck until we were all past that narrow place. I knew, somehow, when the last horse was on the open, empty road, and I pulled the whole herd into a canter.

On the road we crossed the main channel, then the marsh islands and the smaller channels. A knowing, rather like a scent, came to me that the horses who had leapt into the sea were making good time. All were strong adults who could smell the mainland.

“We will wait for you on shore,” I told them. “We will rest until you join us.” There was no lead mare in the water with them, so they could not answer me, but I felt them take heart and stroke onward.

I cantered above the last marsh island. The road was level with the land again and swung left a short way onto the shore. It lay beside the ocean’s edge for as far as I could see, short grass and white sand on either side. I saw a fence glint in the darkness, but there was enough space on our side of it for all of us to gather. I walked onto the grass, my colt walking beside me, his body trembling with exhaustion.

“We will rest here and wait for the swimmers,” I told the arriving bands. “The foals need to feed and sleep. Come close to the fence, away from the road.  Our band, led by my sister, stayed near me. We claimed a space and I dropped to my knees, then to my side, rolling to rid myself of the sweat and distress of that crossing. I stood and shook, then invited my colt to nurse. He drank all I carried, and was asleep, flat on the grass but for his round belly. I felt the last of our herd, mud-caked and staggering, rise from the channels and marshland and rejoin us. They found their bands and lay down, their need to rest greater even than their desperate thirst. I also sensed does and fawns on the bridge, their hard, tiny hooves tapping as they followed our lead, foxes and other small animals scampering among them, pulled far from their home ranges by their terror of being left behind.

“Ask the aunties to watch for a time so you can sleep,” I told the lead mares. More tired than I had ever been in my life, I lay down beside my foal and slept.

In my dreams, Lore’s power and knowing flowed into me, blending my own life’s experience with that of all the generations of our people who came before, like a tributary stream joining a great river. I was still myself, a dark paint mare of six summers and three foals, but now I also carried in myself so much more. I wandered the memories of these horses, of their sires and dams going back to a place I had never seen. Hot, stony mountains and hard land, sparse grass, black cattle. Men on tall horses used long poles to drive us and the cattle to high meadows season on season. I dreamt of the wooden ships that bore us over the water, not to our island but to a place far to the south, hot and wet. We carried humans, pulled wagons and plows, walked beside sheep and cattle, and plunged into the noise and stink of battle, steel spurs sharp against our sides, urging us into the blood and hurt and press of angry, frightened bodies. Horses came north, dispersed across forest lands and grass lands. So many places, so many seasons, and yet we were one people under a clear and fair justice meted out by the lead mares. At the edge of my awareness, further than eye can see or ear can hear, bands of horses ran under the setting sun with their own Lore among them, as all horses across the broad face of the world, mountain to desert, grassland to island, have a Lore among them who keeps them safe.

I dreamed each member of this herd: the white-faced foal born deaf, the exiled stallion going blind, the fierce, wild minds of the young bachelors, the foals like marsh lights, faint glimmers at birth but burning bright and steady by weaning. The lead mares bound together all other mares connected by blood and friendship, the strands among them gleamed like a dew-touched spider web on a clear morning. Now I stood at the center of them all, promised to them and promising them, bearing in my body all we are and will be. This is how it has always been, Lore passing from one mare to another, shifted by deaths sudden or slow, always a shock to the anointed one. I would never be our band’s lead mare. I would not bear another foal. I no longer belonged only to myself, but to all of us, and I loved each quick-footed foal and senior stallion, each vigilant dam and cocky bachelor, and every one of the brave lead mares. I loved them all with a fierce, determined, sheltering understanding of who we had been and who we will be.

I woke, rose, and snatched at the short, tough grass, frantic and ravenous. While I grazed, I sought out the memories Lore had left to me of the way from here to safety. My awareness drifted inland, following the tendrils of memory from other island horses who had lived here for generations and guided by the minds of those who lived here still. The living horses showed me that fences closed off the most direct path to a forest. They also shared the knowledge of ponds and creeks where we could drink.

The light grew brighter long before the sun lifted above the water. My colt stirred, blinking and groggy. He rolled onto his belly, braced his forelegs wide and shoved himself up, shaking himself from nose to tail tip. I lipped his forelock and invited him to nurse. He looked up at me and scrambled backwards, legs splayed and the whites of his eyes bright against his dark face. He fell into a frightened heap, struggling to rise.

“Who are you?” he bleated.

“You know me, beloved,” I said, sending my breath to comfort him.

“My dam’s eyes do not glow. Why do you smell like her? Where is she?”

“My eyes glow? I did not know that. I am who I have always been for you, though now I am also more.”

He sorted his legs out, rose, and bolted toward our lead mare. My heart twisted in pain to see him so afraid. My sister met him, curling her piebald neck over his and nibbling his withers to calm him. When his trembling eased, she shouldered him back toward me.

“She is your dam, child, always,” my sister said. “Close your eyes, take in her scent, and you will recognize her.”

I closed my own eyes and held myself still, but I could hear the panic in his feet as he scrambled beside my sister.

“What happened?” he snuffled against her flank.

“On the bridge, Lore passed from the mare where she had been into your dam. She is now Lore, keeper of all the stories, guide and watcher, the wisdom of all horses living among us.”

My foal made a soft sound of fear and loss and only the steady presence of my sister kept him from bolting. Grief rose in me then, a stain in my tributary as it entered Lore’s ancient river. I knew now that every mare who has ever been Lore had felt this loss, though knowing I was not alone in this did not comfort me.

“I will look away so you can feed,” I said. But my colt would come no closer, and did not ask to nurse again. My sister released him to join the other weanlings in our band. She shared her breath with me, taking in some of my sorrow at this loss. We groomed one another for a time while my heart ached.

A few cars passed us on the road, going out to the island. They slowed or stopped to look at us before driving on. The ground beneath me felt wrong, not the way that sucking-sands do, but dangerous and unfamiliar. Refreshed by sleep and light grazing, my people’s thirst made them restless. I chose to follow this road to its end, then turn into the farmed fields and travel over them to the nearest woodland.

“Rise now,” I said to the herd, “I know you are hungry and thirsty, but we must move away from here. We are not yet safe.” The bands stirred, mares nosing foals up for a quick meal, stallions circling their charges to bunch them together.

“Follow me. We will go to water first, and then take shelter from what is coming.” Speaking to all of them this way disoriented me as I gathered glimpses through the eyes of each horse as my mind touched theirs. I shook off my confusion and set out in a slow trot that would carry us miles though we were still tired.

We stayed off the road when we could, trampling the grass alongside it rather than bruising our feet on that hard surface. Each time my hooves touched the earth, it felt wrong, as though the ground should not be trusted. I wanted to move us faster but forced myself to keep to this easier pace.

Not long after sunrise the earth moved. The tremor swept past us from seaward to landward, a shiver like flanks beset by biting flies. Horses squealed and bucked, scattering. Several foals went down hard and their dams stood over them to fend off the trampling, panicked hooves. Then, as suddenly as it shifted, the earth quieted. None of us trusted that stillness now. Inland and from the islands, we heard the wail of human alarms.

“Follow, follow,” I called and we set out again, the lead mares hard put to keep their bands from tangling in the confusion. The few cars on the road had stopped, their humans out and walking, gesturing to one another. They had had no warning. They stopped talking as we swept by them in our hundreds. The road turned away from the ocean and headed straight inland. I stepped into a canter. We had so little time before the humans would swarm. Now they knew what was coming and we must be out of the way of their rush.

I learned from the horses living nearby that the road went straight from here, and soon we would reach open land. An old gelding paced us along the fence of his pasture, telling me where to find the creek on the far side of the long field. The sun was well up and more cars appeared, so I was relieved when we arrived at the place where we could leave the road. I sent my sister and her band on toward the water and waited while the herd flowed past me. The bachelors, unfettered by mare rules, bolted into the wide field, their hooves flinging up clots of mud and small plants as they tore away, tails flagged high and eyes wild. I joined the last band to leave the road, stepping between them and a group of humans approaching on foot, yelling and waving their arms. We left them their road, and they did not follow us.

I joined my sister at the creek. My son clung to her flank and would not look at me even when I nickered at him. I turned away from the pain in my heart, keeping my attention on the stragglers far across the field. Horses arranged themselves along both banks, upstream and downstream. They dipped their muzzles into the chilly water and drank, lifting their heads in turn to keep watch while the water settled in their bellies. Then others paused and took the watch so the first could drink again. The foals pranced into the creek up to their knees so they did not have to strain past the length of their legs to reach the water. As horses soothed their thirst they stepped away, allowing the latecomers access. There was no grazing for us here, just scrub and a small patch of trees. But there were also no humans here, so sighs of relief rippled through the herd. No one relaxed, as we were in unknown territory, but we were not threatened. The earth beneath was still for now, but I thought it might move again. It was the coming shift in the ocean that threatened us, though, and we had to be further inland before that happened.

When I set out in the lead this time, I kept us at a walk. Even the younger horses kept this pace, as the terrors of the night and morning had drained them. Each band kept its members close, but the bands themselves drifted apart in this open space. It was bigger than any flat, empty ground these horses had ever seen, and it spoke to their blood and bone as good land for horses. We could see any danger coming from far away, and there was ample room for all of us to move if we had to flee.

It took much of the morning for all of us to cross that ground. It was all as flat as our island, which is why we had to go so far away from the shoreline to escape the coming water. We saw only one human far away, a man on a machine that stirred the sandy dirt. He stopped his machine and stood on it so he could watch us pass. I looked back and saw him turn his machine and leave the field.

At noon we reached a place with patchy scrub and some grazing, so we stripped it bare. The foals nursed and slept, and the elders lay down in the cool shade. I stood apart, listening to the minds of horses far from here. Those native to this place showed me that their humans hurried, moving their families and animals inland. I found some of the horses on the small island and saw through their eyes the fear and haste as they, too, prepared to leave with their humans. A filly in a trailer on the long bridge shared her eyes with me, and I saw there was no open road, only a stretch of cars and trucks creeping toward the far shore. I breathed gratitude into the afternoon breeze that Lore had Gathered us when she had.

Late in the afternoon I called, “Follow, follow me.” We left the scrubland and walked another long field, always heading inland. Human alarms blared in the distance. I pushed the herd through fine pastures though many wanted to stop and graze. Even so far from the ocean, I could feel the wrongness in the turning tide, though I could not convey this to my people. They trusted me when I moved them on at a brisk trot. We stopped just once for water.

That evening we reached the forest I recognized from Lore’s memory. She had meant for us to go among the trees, as they held this land fast with their bodies and no great wave or storm surge had ever shifted them. We needed only to spend a night and a day in their shelter; then we could return to open country. The herd bunched against the borders of the forest, unwilling to step into the dimness under the dense branches. Born and bred under wide sky and constant wind, the trees felt confining, and to us, that meant dangerous.

“Come in, my people, come under these trees,” I coaxed. “This is where we will wait. The water is coming, and in a day or two it will retreat. Then we graze under the sky again. In time, we can return home.” The lead mares coaxed their bands from the sunlight into the deep shadows. The bachelors were the last to enter, skittish and resistant to the lead mares’ instructions. I directed seven of the senior stallions to drive the reluctant young males, with teeth if necessary, into the forest. When the entire herd settled at last in this strange shelter, I spoke to the Gathering, my mind touching each of them.

“Come close around me,” I said. “I will tell you stories through this time we must spend far from our island.” The wind in the trees sounded like surf. “We will be safe here.” Away to the east, I sensed the ocean arrive and the world we had left snapped and splintered under the running wave. My breath caught as horses and humans trapped on the road, and those who had not yet left the island were swept under. Sweat formed on my flanks and neck and dripped off my shoulders while those around me stayed dry and calm. I took a deep breath and released a long sigh. I forced my attention back to the shuffling of hooves in leaf litter and the call notes of tiny birds astonished by our arrival. I decided to tell my herd about the golden mountains and the black cattle. “Long ago and far away,” I began, “we lived in a different land and ran with another people.” Even the bachelors stood still to listen.

 

* * *

About the Author

Anne Larsen writes in a bio-diverse household that includes mammals, birds, and plants, in particular a gang of Venus flytraps that rule a dangerous neighbourhood on one windowsill. In addition to direct guidance from her animal family, Larsen draws on biology, history, mythology, and religious studies in her magical realism.

Welcome to Issue 25:  Migration and Survival

The world changes, and creatures great and small, wise and simple, old and young — all of us — must move on to survive.  Gallop with horses, feast on festering fruits with elephants, and fight for your very life with cheetahs, rats, and practically extinct reptiles.  But as you do, keep an eye to the future and the path you’ll have to follow to arrive there.  The animals certainly do.

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The Passing of Lore by Anne Larsen

Migration Mismanagement by Dana Wall

Herdhunters by Mike Robinson

Queen of the Hungry, Queen of the Few by Leo Oliveira

Silver Bones by Michael Steel

Unmaking Extinction by Liz Levin

The Last Breath by Liam Hogan

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Zooscape will be re-opening to submissions on February 1st, 2026!  We will stay open for at least a month, and announce our closing date with at least one week of notice.  However, the exact length of our open period will depend on the volume of submissions we receive.  You can learn more on our guidelines page.  If this open period proves as successful as the last one, we hope to go back up to releasing issues four times a year.

As always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon.  Also, you can pick up e-book or paperback volumes of our earlier issues, complete with an illustration for every story.  The e-book of the sixth volume just released today, and the paperback for it will be coming soon!

Dear Papabear,

I just finished school and am trying to decide where to go from here. I've been living with family in Michigan throughout my 20s to save money, but all my family members have moved out of my hometown to the southern part of the state because it's gotten too expensive to live up north in the resort town I grew up in. My mom got a house in Port Huron (a smallish city just north of Detroit) and invited me and my brother to live with her, though to be honest, Port Huron seems kinda dull.

I have been thinking of moving to a big city for a while, and I had my eyes on Chicago because I've been there before. It's not too far from family, it has good public transit, and it's cheaper than a lot of big cities. My brother said he would come with me if I decided to go.

I'm still hesitant, and I'm wondering if I actually want to live in a big city, or if I just like the idea of it. I've never liked driving, and I like using public transit and being able to walk everywhere. I'm moving to Port Huron in the spring, and I plan on staying there for maybe a year to save more money before deciding where to go from there.

o be blunt, my degree isn't all that useful, but I work for a big company and can transfer, and I do furry art commissions on the side. I went to college on and off throughout my 20s and struggled at first because of undiagnosed ADHD, which I started taking meds for just a couple of years ago. I mostly just finished my degree to make my mom happy. I've also considered doing some kind of online certification to get a better paying day job I don't hate, but I question if it's even worth it since even people with "useful" degrees can't find jobs right now.

I was just curious if you had any advice. Sorry if my letter is kind of all over the place. I'm just a little overwhelmed.

Stee (age 30)

* * *

Dear Stee,

Thank you for your letter. Your query is a bit vague, but let me see if I can encapsulate it in one sentence as: "Do you think it is wise for me to move from Michigan and settle in Chicago at this point in my life?" Sound good?

First of all, as someone who lived in Michigan for many years (mostly in the Detroit and Lansing areas), I am familiar with Port Huron. Although I hear, like any city, it has its problems, I think it is still a nice place overall, and it wouldn't be horrible to live there. It is in a beautiful area and is quite affordable. Also, I understand it has a very good bus system that runs on natural gas, so you shouldn't have too much trouble getting around, especially if you live near a bus stop. I can understand your mom moving there.

While Port Huron does have some fun stuff to do, especially if you like nature walks and boating, it is indeed a bit calmer than a large city like Chicago, which has a thriving arts and theater community, a wonderful waterfront, great restaurants, etc. etc. So, if you like living in the city, it's a good choice. I lived in Wheaton not far from Chicago for a while and visited a number of times. I do like Chicago. And if you like heavy food like Chicago-style pizza and hot dogs, you certainly can't go wrong. Remember, though, that it isn't just a town's amenities that make it interesting. If you are in a home located near a lot of friends and family, then even, say, Needles, California, could be a nice place to live. On the other paw, if you are in a big, exciting city like New York or Chicago but are completely friendless and alone, it would be a pretty sad place to be. Home is where friends and family are.

Okay, so now imagine you are in Port Huron with your mom. You've decided to hang out for at least a year. Chicago is not that far, and you can drive there (I assume you can drive even though you prefer public transit; if you don't have a car, rent one), or you can take a hopper plane, OR you can travel by train! Go to Chicago and check it out for a week or two. See if you like the feel of the city. Also, see if you really are able to transfer to Chicago or nearby through your company (you might think you can, but that is up to your bosses, and they might not want to move you; I don't know, but check on that before you make big plans). If you know anyone who lives there, see if you can hang with them for a day or two and get their impressions of life in Chicago. In short, look before you leap. You might decide Chicago is fantastic and want to try to move there right away; you might decide it's not so great but that, once you've been in Port Huron awhile, you find it surprisingly nice and want to stay. Or maybe, while you're in Chicago, you decide to drive a little north to check out Milwaukee and fall in love with that city.

The point is that you should never make decisions--especially life-changing decisions--without doing some research first. Before I moved from Michigan to the Coachella Valley, I took a trip to Palm Springs and researched the housing market and came up with a plan. Now, I had lived before in SoCal, so the area wasn't completely new to me, but I hadn't been there in years, so it was worth looking into again. Also, as a freelancer, I could live anywhere, so the job thing wasn't an issue. Everyone's circumstances are different.

Cultures are different, too. The culture in Palm Springs is waaaaaaaayyy different than in Lansing, Michigan. Similarly, Chicago does have its own culture. Even the accent of a Chicagoan is different. You really should try to take a trip there for a bit and absorb the surroundings, observe people, try to talk to them, and so on. Again, you might find you love it, you might not.

When it comes to degrees, that is a tricky subject indeed. I'm one of the few people I know whose job is actually related to their undergrad degree. There are also people with kind of, well, useless degrees who succeed anyway in other fields. I have a dear friend who I often use an example. His degree is in American Studies. Ack. But after college, he worked his way up at a law firm from data entry to head of the IT department. He later worked on Comedy Central's website. He has no degree in computer science, but he is very good with computers, nonetheless. My late husband, Jim, had an associate's degree in communications and worked his way up to be the news director at an NBC station. Unless you're in a very specific skill such as medicine or engineering, college degrees are kind of something you do to show you're smart enough to do the work. Nothing I do today as an editor and publisher has much to do with my B.A. I learned how to edit books on the job; I taught myself typesetting; I taught myself how to start a business. Experience is what matters. Remember, people like Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steven Spielberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ted Turner, President William McKinley were all college dropouts.

And yes, a lot of people get graduate degrees in supposedly important fields like computer science and find they can't get employed and are now hugely in debt. Also, AI is profoundly changing the job market, so you have to keep that in mind, too. So, ask yourself what you are learning in your current job; can it be applied to a job you might enjoy more? If not, will getting a certification in a specific area help? If so, then go for it. You have to know what you want to do in life before you can pursue it. Hopefully, you won't pick a career just because you think you will make good money at it. That can lead to quite an unsatisfying life.

Now for the broader picture: You're not here in this world to get a college degree or to have a great career. You're here to experience life. While there are practical things to worry about (earning enough to have shelter and food, duh), you only have a few decades on this planet--and that's if you're lucky. What do you really want to do with that time? What do you wish to experience? What kind of life do you truly want to live?

Without answering these questions, you're really just wandering about aimlessly, which makes it difficult to have goals and plans to reach those goals.

So, there you are. A rambling question receives a rambling answer, despite my trying to keep it focused LOL. Let me try one more time. . . .

Question: "Do you think it is wise for me to move from Michigan and settle in Chicago at this point in my life?"  

Answer: "You can only answer that if you do some research first. Understand where you are going and why you want to go there before you try to get there."

Not sure if this helps at all, but perhaps it will give you some things to think about.

Take Care,
Papabear

At Lightbox Expo this year we met Kyky Yang, an animation artist and designer from Taiwan who’s living in Los Angeles now. She’s become well-known for her black & white “lesbian furry” web comic Detective Alice — and now, she’s self-published her first collection of it as a paperback graphic novel. Follow the adventures of British cat detective Alice and her maid Amaryllis. Visit the official web site — or check out the intro video on YouTube.

image c. 2025 by Kyky Yang

If you’re like me, you probably grew up with a Game Boy Color back in the day and poured hours into 8-bit adventures. I fondly remember my time with games like Dragon Quest IV, Oracle of Ages and a few others. Back in those days, the technology wasn’t very sophisticated, so game design was much simpler and exploration wasn’t guided by nav points. It’s that kind of nostalgia that Doki Monsters Quest chooses to invoke. Memories of bygone days where game mechanics were explained in booklets rather than in the game itself. This philosophy of old meets new works to both Doki Monsters benefit and its deficit.

Welcome to something a bit different. Rather than a traditional Game of the Year style list where I choose my favorites, I’ve instead decided to just take a look back at the various games I played and reviewed on this site alongside a few highlights. My work for GF this year has mostly been these reviews with the occasional preview and news article. Speaking of news, one of the biggest things to happen was the Nintendo Switch 2 and while I probably won’t be getting one for a while, it’s already seen a ton of coverage and support. I’ve covered the news surrounding it a few times and what I’ve seen of it has looked pretty good. It does mean however, that support for Switch 1(at least from first-party developers) is nearing its end. But it's been great to do reviews on my Switch for as long as I have. Cheers Nintendo. I got a few more memories with you this year at least.

TigerTails Radio Season 16 Episode 46 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf Join the Telegram Chat: https://t.me/+yold2C77m0I1MmM0 Visit the website at http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of any song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. Credits: Opening music: Magic by Hedge Haiden (Double Hedge Studios) Character art: Fitzroy Fox - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/lunara-toons / https://bsky.app/profile/fitzroyfox.bsky.social Background art: Charleston Rat - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/charlestonrat / https://bsky.app/profile/charlestonrat.bsky.social If you like what we do and wish to throw some pennies our way to support us, please consider sending a little tip our way. https://streamlabs.com/tigertailsradio/tip * Please note, tips are made to support TigerTails Radio and are assumed as made with good faith, so are therefore non-refundable. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Owners of 3 businesses capitalized on fandom despite years of complaints. Now they face consequences for contributing to the abuse of children and animals:

• (1) Inkedfur owner arrested. Inkedfur is a printing service used by popular furry adult artists since 2014. The owner Sangie had a sex crime conviction in the 2000’s, and kept raising allegations of shady business and pedophilia while dealing at conventions that disregarded his record. He was recently arrested again as part of an FBI operation against child sex abuse. The arrest was in May 2025, but it doesn’t seem to have reached community notice yet.
• (2) Exotic Erotics rejected. Exotic Erotics sells sex toys, including “life cast” toys made by manipulating real animals’ genitalia. This pushed the adult market deep into murky ethics, but they kept being welcome next to regular dealers at conventions from 2009 to 2025. It’s never too late to stop ignoring things, and their inclusion at Midwest Furfest 2025 raised a storm of protest on social media before the con parted ways with them.
• (3) Party Animals West owner convicted. Party Animals West (PAW) rented clubs for parties attended by hundreds, with a group of 1000 supporters. The owner Frisky was reported to police for CSAM possession years ago when his parties were based in Las Vegas, with no results. He got away from the allegations by relocating and resuming operation in the San Francisco Bay area, until he was arrested for new child abuse in 2024. Other group runners allowed the child victim inside after being warned of risk and overruling it; and a fellow group runner was arrested for the same crimes. Associates tried to bury it, but Frisky was just convicted in late 2025.

This story updates previous Dogpatch Press reporting about abuse by the owners of Inkedfur and Party Animals West. Despite known histories, they prospered while continuing to do things they were accused of for many years. The time it took for consequences goes to show that legal action isn’t a solution by itself, especially when abusers keep influence and favor in the community. Delaying makes more victims while waiting for outsiders to do something — if they ever do anything at all — and shows a deeper problem to change inside.

The furry community likes to take pride in being built by and for each other. If we aren’t lying to ourselves by burying abuse while predators prosper, we can scrutinize who is in power and use more discretion about who gets support. Not just on social media, or at one weekend conventions, but in real life all the time.

It’s all wrapped up after the first 3 sections with part 4: Cronies Against Accountability.

(1) Inkedfur owner James Christopher Hoyt (“Sangie Nativus”) arrested for child sex crime again

2025 mugshot of James “Sangie” Hoyt

When Inkedfur was founded in 2014, its owner Sangie had a murky history. He publicly admitted being convicted in 2008 for crime with a child, but got it expunged. This made records hard to come by, while Sangie posted self-serving stories about court bias and lied that he was tricked about his victim’s age. It worked enough to at least distract critics who couldn’t verify why records were expunged. Meanwhile, he would threaten conventions with legal action if they rejected his business, and covered himself more by throwing other abusers under the bus.

One abuser who Sangie leaked on was his good friend Levi “Snakething” Simmons, a ringleader in the 2018 Zoosadist Leaks. It’s incomprehensible to read Sangie’s private interaction with Simmons — who set up his minor nephew as prey for tag-team grooming — and wonder how Sangie wasn’t arrested for it. Legal documents reference Sangie involved in planning crimes that put Simmons in jail for 25 years. This got Sangie’s grooming featured in a 15,000-word Dogpatch Press report about the Zoosadist Leaks, which took intense effort to publish against backlash in 2019. Attacking sources is very helpful to manipulators like Sangie, while some people trying to get him reported would also attack for not getting instant results during active investigation, helping him even more!

[Edit: for more insight on how Sangie manipulated information, compare edits he made to a Wikifur page about him, changing a pedophile label to “accusations” based on “inaccuracies” because his 2008 conviction was “not a sex offense” and that he thought his victim was 19. Legal docs of his current case refute this. He admitted to prior sexual relations with a minor before the one he was convicted for in 2008, while possessing hundreds of illegal images. He took advantage of lying about records that were expunged.]

This explains how Sangie delayed notice… but not how conventions chose a shady dealer like Inkedfur in their selection process. Reporting about him came and went while he kept profiting from porn by popular furry artists. Inkedfur even sponsored a popular fandom lawyer’s blog (later reconsidered.) However, even as a normal businessman, Sangie couldn’t keep out of controversy. Allegations rose about cheating, like selling prints by artists who cut ties, with excuses about clearing old stock when it was print-on-demand, and failing to pay royalties. Social media threads document allegations against Sangie for business cheating and pedophilia, including grooming new victims during Inkedfur operation.

Fake leadership change is a PR deception we’ve seen before – beware!

In 2025, Sangie’s luck ran out. Read about his bust: Justice Department Announces Results of Operation Restore Justice: 205 Child Sex Abuse Offenders Arrested in FBI-led Nationwide Crackdown, Including 5 in the Western District of Texas. “James Christopher Hoyt in Austin charged with distribution of material involved the sexual exploitation of children.”

Legal docs of the case say Sangie was living in a mobile home, outside a property with internet provided by another subscriber, but he used his personal device to download and distribute CSAM… 170,000 images of it. That’s over 3 times more than the infamously huge collection of Jared from Subway. On one pedophile forum, Sangie created a thread for “furry boys” with costume parts on nude children between ages 2 and 10. When interviewed, he admitted having sexual relations with multiple minors up through 2018. He has appealed for release on medical grounds of having cancer (did this start with the worst possible YOLO move in history?) The court denied his release due to:

“the combination of his prior criminal conduct with the vast collection of child pornography and his continued involvement in the distribution of child pornography with others…” and “the danger he poses to the community and the risk that he will reoffend if given access to the internet or contact with vulnerable populations.”

Legal docs also mention bestiality in Sangie’s collection, a common overlap of abuse on vulnerable victims who can’t consent.

(2) Exotic Erotics rejected from Midwest Furfest — “Zoo Positive” business was welcome at cons for many years

Exotic Erotics is an adult toy company that sells fantasy animal dildos, similar to the higher-profile Bad Dragon, but with a more specific niche. Instead of sculpting from imagination, they make toys by manipulating and molding real dog and horse genitalia. Critics say lifecasting is real-life abuse. A guest tells Dogpatch Press: “If this were life-casting off a human child, this would be national headlines kinda bad”.

Here’s a guest-submitted look at the controversy:

When you think of zoophiles, and horrible things they do to animals, here’s one that not many people talk about. The company Exotic Erotics was founded in 2009, and is based somewhere in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Most of their toys are sculpted or 3D printed like adult novelties are normally made, but Exotic Erotics also bases them on molds of the genitalia of live animals. They are very open about putting lifecast toys on their front page.

Before Bad Dragon existed, its CEO Varka had discussed the concept on the now defunct site “Herpy.net”. On December 7, 2007, Varka posted about starting an adult toy business, and wanting to get his hands on live animals to create lifecasts of their genitalia. Varka ditched that idea in favor of hand-sculpting, but is that where it started? The founding of these two companies were very close to each other. Bad Dragon was founded in 2008 and Exotic Erotics in 2009. Both have stayed in business since then. You’d think that Exotic Erotics’ actions would spark serious controversy and trouble, and complaints have circulated before, but not effectively. From 2009 to 2025, they remained eligible to be selected to vend at large furry cons (15 years at Midwest Furfest).

How does Exotic Erotics deflect complaints? They claim “lifecasting is incredibly similar to the methods at breeders all over the world”, and the animals “are happy to help” and “into the process”. Something tells me that dogs and horses are not into being restrained and having their privates forced into a mold. Exotic Erotics compares it to semen collection; but doing this isn’t necessary for animals to exist, and I don’t think veterinarians and breeders go out of their way to sexually gratify people that way. Another thing to note is that abusers love making excuses to cover up their true intentions or blame their victims. It’s a big case of “trust me bro” when there’s no regulation or explanation from anyone but humans who gratify and profit themselves this way. We’re taking the word of a sex toy company. They could sculpt toys without doing this; nothing about it shows caring for animals. (- guest “Shadow Roach”)

• Exotic Erotics selected to vend at Furry Weekend Atlanta
• Exotic Erotics selected to vend at Midwest Furfest
• Bad Dragon is also “swimming in zoophiles” (comparing this to “just fantasy” doesn’t imply good alternatives.)

Exotic Erotics justifies their sales by claiming they quit using the method earlier, and they used 3D-scanning, or it’s just as bad as other things done to animals. It’s already dubious to trust salesmen who keep profiting from original exploitation, but there’s more. Their business is opaque, but critics are making the connection to courting a zoophile base. Exotic Erotics can deny knowing (wink) — but that’s just a technical hair-split away from making community for abusers, and technicality is no protection for victims who can’t tell. Take it from a group of 911 zoophiles who rate them as “zoo positive”:

That’s one underground group of many, where nearly 1000 zoophiles are networking with each other in a way that would scarcely be possible in real life, and they see enabling to go aboveground with Exotic Erotics.

There’s still a “show your work” challenge to identify zoophile networking inside Exotic Erotics, so here’s one of their employees spreading standard zoo-propaganda about consent. The Laelaps anti-zoophile labeler collected these statements as evidence for a zoophile supporter label.

“Enthusiastic consent means seeking out a clear, positive ‘yes’—not just the absence of ‘no.'” – RAINN

Laelaps evidence

With this background, Exotic Erotics selection for Midwest Furfest 2025 raised a storm of protest on social media. Some problems with that…

• It can risk raising attention that helps Exotic Erotics sell more toys. They boasted about their Black Friday sales and made claims about restocking (below).
• Cons can get sued for breach of contract for canceling a vendor. If you want lasting change inside, with staff on your side, a con organizer told Dogpatch Press: persuade them to use discretion for the selection process next year, using calm direct communication, like stakeholders emailing together, instead of threats or social media callouts. That’s how to affect the other 49 weekends of the year.

Protesters did see a change, at least for now. Exotic Erotics says they stayed home for safety from threats, and Midwest Furfest will revisit the dealer process.

Possibilities: (1) Attention helped them to sell all their stuff to sympathizers. (2) Laying low to let callouts die out, or to deal with orders being charged back or lost payment processing.

Furfest statement

[Opinion about strategy] Exotic Erotics is one small company of many, and certain people will keep thinking “lifecasting sounds good to me”. Remember:

• Arguing can raise attention and sales, but you can say consent isn’t debatable.
• Toys aren’t essential to make animals exist like vet or breeder practices do, and boycott is using the free market too.
• Communities can decide standards without having anything to do with government censorship (or “kink shaming.”)
• Zoophiles don’t deserve neutrality to use our spaces any more than churches need to assume they’ll always have pedophiles within.
• For many years they enjoyed “technically legal” acceptance and weak discretion. At this point in time, we have organized NAMBLA-like groups taking advantage of internet platforms to grow, then ride the coattails of our conventions and money into real life, so the only line left is us.
• If you don’t want to be doormats, it can start with drawing a line about organized money-making support. It doesn’t prevent them from existing, but puts values on whether organized zoophiles are more entitled to community than victims are entitled to protection from them.

Ponder the awkwardness that was averted, because an update to the Midwest Furfest security policy also now requires you to carry things in clear backpacks.

(3) Convictions of Party Animals West owner Steven “Frisky” Darling and Leonardo “Naughty Kitty” Medina — they had access to victim after warnings

Steven “Frisky” Darling

Background from 2024: Bad leadership surrounds sex crime case with Party Animals West (PAW) owner in San Francisco. Deeper details here are sourced from chat logs, numerous source interviews, legal docs, and police who agreed to speak.

In 2017, Steven “Frisky” Darling was reported to police in Las Vegas for possessing CSAM. Nothing came of it while Darling moved his PAW events to San Francisco. The parties rented large, mainstream clubs, were attended by hundreds of furries, and ran with a volunteer crew. They grew influence and support under Darling’s ownership, like a Telegram group of 1000 members managed by his crew. A source inside alludes to Darling using manipulation to keep tight control, and receiving large amounts of money. (Drugs are a topic for another story…)

A problem started independently in 2023, when San Francisco bay area furry groups circulated bewares about a 14 year old member who was posing as an adult to get into adult spaces, and sexting adults. It caused great distress to those who found out the true age and high danger. Some group runners removed the 14 year old for being a risk to self and others. A few refused.

One who would not fully remove the child was San Rafael CA-based veterinarian Mark “Zarafa” Willett. Willett is one of the organizers of a monthly furmeet, and a group named North Bay Furs. Willett, who is in his 60’s, stated that he stood by accommodating a risky 14 year old because the child was “desperate for social connection”. A 60-something gave a child’s desperation priority over everyone’s risk, which of course, meant keeping the elder’s own following instead of directing the child to activities with other children. There’s quite a lot more reason to deeply question this adult’s influence, when many people a third his age could tell this would lead to trouble.

Fursuits used by Medina

Meanwhile, a nearby group was run by Leonardo “Naughty Kitty” Medina, named Northbay area Fur-meets (not the same as Willett’s North Bay Furs). Medina also grew influence with events, despite one of his admins quitting because of seeing tolerance for creepy behavior with minors there. Chat logs show Willett advised Medina about naming the group, and called it “sort of a duplicate of the one we run” (more on this below). Willett’s own management also put Medina in North Bay Furs and enabled access to a 14 year old.

It’s not clear how Medina came to know Darling, but they had plenty of time to take advantage of influence until their coinciding arrests in 2024. Legal docs show they were abusing a 14 year old.

NEWS: In November 2025, Darling’s plea of no contest/guilty led to his conviction and sex offender registration. Sources believe his jail time will be 2 years. Medina gave the same plea.

How many others were involved? At the time of Medina’s arrest, his partner and co-organizer disappeared with no info about if he was involved, was a witness, or simply quit a broken scene. The convictions also don’t cover all of the activity. A police officer in Darling’s case told Dogpatch Press that Darling wasn’t just doing child abuse, he was also involved in bestiality. Tips are welcome if you have more information.

(4) Cronies against accountability

Look back at prior reporting of how Darling’s crew tried to cover up his arrest in 2024 to keep the parties going. Then let’s look at an even deeper pattern.

Back in 2018, one of the people who became Darling’s crew, Tyler “Leko” Mark, tried to stop Dogpatch Press from reporting about his predator boyfriend (“Tane”). Leko asked for coverup, and after it was denied, then asked his friend Mark “Zarafa” Willett for dox to use for threats. Willett negligently gave out the dox, and later explained that he doxed someone under his group leadership because Leko was his friend. The resulting threats didn’t stop reporting about abusers getting favor at conventions. Leko went on to enable the same predator boyfriend inside staff of Las Vegas Fur Con. When news broke of Darling’s arrest, Leko also tried but failed to keep Darling’s PAW parties partnered with Las Vegas Fur Con. LVFC ended relations with PAW, but Leko remains staff and enabler at many cons.

Willett was directly questioned about enabling a 14-year-old after being warned of risk. He was also questioned about a pattern with people involved in abusive activity who he brought into the community, befriended, defended, or protected — without screening very obvious red flags — and doing whatever he possibly could do to deny evidence that was pointed out to him. This was one friend he went out of his way to defend, with confrontation Willett started himself, ignoring multiple reports of groping by that friend, and putting the risk on group members to watch their own backs.

A private file collects Willett’s responses full of selective memory, semantic word games, claims of ignorance, refusal to answer, shifting blame, and playing helpless victim. He was the one with power for decisions he made while blaming anyone but himself. Willett’s excuse for keeping the 14 year old was shifting responsibility to the parent, who he did nothing to screen, which apparently was enough to disregard the rest of the community and all the distress they suffered.

Obvious zoophile who he brought into furry fandom and did not take out.

When a group runner can’t face the result of their own negligence

No furry group runner has openly addressed how risk warnings were overruled, before two fellow group runners used their influence to prey on a child member. There’s no apology, promise to do better, or admitting that negligence does harm. That’s nothing surprising to some sources who have tried to engage Willett about past cases of dangerous people in the community.

One former runner of a defunct group, who backed away from furry fandom over this, spoke about experiences with Willett’s unsavory influence and intentions for founding his North Bay Furs group.

Willet founded North Bay Furs with a “no shaming” rule, because of growing bitter at the management of the previous local group for holding pedophiles accountable, says the source. (Around 2018 Willett said the same directly to Dogpatch Press.)

That defunct group runner recalled Willett as “oddly defensive” about the topic, said Willett refused to condemn or address it, misused his influence to undermine people that held people accountable, and called accountability “toxic”.

Willett’s group is only joined by direct private invite. With the founding reason of the group making a bubble of toxic positivity, where “offensive” criticism gets removed, fake neutrality is more selective than it would be to reduce extreme tolerance given to problem friends as if nothing can be done. How ironic that the pedo-shame that irked Willett so much came true in the place he made to shirk it.

After the arrest of Medina, Willett went into Medina’s now-leaderless group, labeling it a “duplicate” while directing members to join his North Bay Furs. Gaining followers that way is convenient, when it became leaderless at the cost of an abused child, after Willett’s decision of acceptable risk. Here’s a case to remember if we want to know how negligent leadership falls upwards.

The pattern in this story isn’t just with a few abusers who were caught. It’s also the influence of cronies and enablers who have been at it for too long, a type we keep having to beware of, making a minefield for trusting anyone at all. Their bubbles are full of a cultishly dogmatic attitude that their critics are enemies, while they’re trying to boost the fandom by keeping the parties going, stopping negative image, welcoming everyone, and keeping everything cuddly and bright. The uncomfortable truth is that they’re selfishly protecting their own comfort, no matter who gets hurt and how they have to deny it.

For many who are frustrated about this, protest brings something more positive than toxic positivity: catharsis.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

At the Lightbox Expo this year we met Greg Anderson-Elysee and learned about his graphic novel series, Is’Nana the Were-Spider. “Accidentally breaking a barrier between our world and theirs (called “The Mother Kingdom”), Is’nana, the son of Anansi (The West African God of Spiders) accepts the responsibility for releasing creatures of horror into our world, villains who want nothing more but to cause chaos and mayhem to achieve their own diabolical or selfish goals. With guidance from his father, Is’nana not only strives to live up to his father’s name but to also reach his own potential while he seeks to discover his individuality and place in the world.” Lots of animal-based gods and demons to be found here, all rendered in a dynamic painting style by artists Walter Ostlie and Lee Milewski. Find out more (and see all the issues) at the Webway Comics site.

image c. 2025 Webway Comics

If you haven't played Squirrel with a Gun, you've been missing out! Our team at Uncivil Gamers very much enjoyed the time we spent with it during our Uncivil Weekly Release Party video recording. Squirrel with a Gun today received the Varmint Collection update, now playable on Steam, Epic, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with Nintendo Switch 2 to arrive soon, announced publisher Maximum Entertainment and developer Dee Dee Creations. The brand-new free DLC adds a slew of mischievous critters to the game’s squirrely action. Take a peek at the Varmint Collection’s wacky additions in today’s trailer: 

The world inside the indie hit BROK the InvestiGator has more to give, as solo developer COWCAT (Breton Fabrice) brings the new standalone title BROK: The Brawl Bar to consoles and PC. The Brawl Bar is a wild party beat ‘em up that features over 60 varied and surprising arcade-style “Event matches” (à la Smash Bros) that range from easy to difficult to complete. Throughout your pursuit of knocking out all of these challenges, you’ll get to know a few of the patrons and staff in this “brawl bar” you find yourself drawn to as you try and rekindle those fighting flames your gator-y self used to love sparking. Though I took my lickings in some of the harder stages, BROK: The Brawl Bar was an exciting game to punch, kick, and finesse my way through.

TigerTails Radio Season 16 Episode 45 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf Join the Telegram Chat: https://t.me/+yold2C77m0I1MmM0 Visit the website at http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of any song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. Credits: Opening music: Magic by Hedge Haiden (Double Hedge Studios) Character art: Fitzroy Fox - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/lunara-toons / https://bsky.app/profile/fitzroyfox.bsky.social Background art: Charleston Rat - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/charlestonrat / https://bsky.app/profile/charlestonrat.bsky.social If you like what we do and wish to throw some pennies our way to support us, please consider sending a little tip our way. https://streamlabs.com/tigertailsradio/tip * Please note, tips are made to support TigerTails Radio and are assumed as made with good faith, so are therefore non-refundable. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Anthropomorphism – it’s the shared interest that unites this fandom. For some, it’s a hobby. For others, it’s a way they see or express themselves. Or is it just a way for some folks to escape the world around them – and is that a good or bad thing?

Episodes are now streamed live on Twitch.tv. After which, the video and audio only formats will be posted within the week after the stream. You can find us on Twitch at FurWhatItsWorth!

NOW LISTEN!

SHOW NOTES Thank you!

Those that were able to join the livestream!

To all of our listeners! And your continued support!

PATREON LOVE

THANK YOU to our patreons! You help us keep the show going!

A Cookie Factory – OwO

*empty*

A Pallet of Cookies

 

Barnaby Panda, Nuka, Lou Duck (Pic Pending)

A Case of Cookies

Basel the Dragon, Black Baldrik, Ichigo Ookami (Pic Pending), Lufis the Raccoon

A Jar of Cookies

 

MephistophEli, Plug, Tenax

A Box of Cookies

• Benji
• Lygris

A Delicious Cookie

• Ausi K
• Christian
• Citrus Fox
• Icy Solid
• Ralley
• Sage Lightfang
• TyR
• Victor Mutt

MUSIC

• Intro: RetroSpecter – Cloud Fields (RetroSpecter Mix). USA: Unpublished, 2018. ©2011-2018 Fur What It’s Worth. Based on Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Century Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth
• Patreon: Inflammatus – The Tudor Consort, Creative Commons 2019
• Closing: Cloud Fields (RetroSpecterChill Remix), USA: Unpublished, 2018. ©2011-2018 Fur What It’s Worth. Based on Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Chill Out Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth

S12E4 – Escapism and Furry

Let me start this review by saying that I’m really not the biggest fan of the Jurassic Park franchise. I’ve read the first book back in middle school and seen some of the first Jurassic Park at a young age but that’s about it. Truthfully, the first film kinda freaked me out at that young age and scared me to the point where I won’t even watch the series at all (Silly, I know). I also haven’t really kept up with the gaming side of the franchise, but occasionally one does enter my radar. Which is where Jurassic World Evolution 3 comes in: The third entry in the park building Evolution series. I do want to stress that I’ll be approaching this review as a casual park builder player so I won’t be going too in-depth with what’s on offer. With that being said, this is a fun game but it has some issues that I feel may hurt the enjoyment for many casual gamers.

December has arrived! It’s the jolliest time of year – and you can be sure that the Guild has some early presents under the tree.

First of all – allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gabe Foxx – editor, publisher, all-round writing girl, and longtime FWG author myself. Lovely to meet you all!

To explain why I’m here, and why you’ll be hearing a lot more from me – I recently stepped up as guild president, and will hold the post alongside Kate until taking the reins completely in April to allow her some much-deserved rest after two long, dutiful years of service. It will be an absolute honor to work with and support all of you!

With my background in marketing, and my position as the founder and director of soon-to-debut Doppelfoxx Publishing – the fandom’s first globally-focused publishing and distribution house – I aim to bring fresh passion, professional edge, and a world of new opportunities to the Guild and its members for a long time to come.

Speaking of which! Secondly, and much more interestingly, is the exciting news that we’ve been teasing for quite some time! (Just to build up suspense, of course. Everything’s gone completely according to plan.)

You’ve waited long enough – so, with no further ado, let’s unwrap!

Thanks to the hard work of our admin team, especially our Advocate With Other Organizations (AWOO) Tempe O’Kun, the FWG is proud to announce that we are launching a member-exclusive audio fiction narration service pulling from a list of professional voice actors that will continue to grow over time!

With the help of this initiative, our writers can now commission experienced furry, cartoon, and anime voice actors to narrate their works, using a clear, budget-friendly commission structure similar to that we’re all used to working with for cover art and illustrations. This is your easy, convenient chance to easily break into the audiobook market, diversify your offerings, and put a voice to your work that fits, delivers, and brings their characters to life.

For a full rundown on details and how this came about, however, I’ll leave credit where credit is due, and hand the proverbial mic to our AWOO himself, Tempe O’Kun!

Until you hear from me again – warmest wishes, seasons’ greetings, and take care!
Gabe Foxx

Furry and Cartoon/Anime Voice Actors Unite to Narrate FWG Audio Fiction

Written by Tempo O’Kun, Furry Writers Guild Advocate With Other Organizations (AWOO)

TL;DR: FWG members can now hire furry/anime/cartoon voice actors to narrate their books and short stories.

Member-Exclusive Audio Fiction Narrator List

Wait, what?! How’d this happen?

First off, I’m buddies with Bodi from Rock Dog. Specifically, I’m pals with Graham Hamilton, voice actor for the main character in the second and third movies.

Badge I made him for when he attended VancouFur. Tibetan translation by Bearywell. (Source: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/60395198)

I interviewed him for Furry Film Burrow a few years ago. 

He’s a good dude. He’s been super curious about the fandom. He’s also been learning more about Tibetan culture from furries of that country, so as to voice Bodi more authentically. 

Graham and I were talking a couple weeks ago. I asked if he had ever considered narrating (furry) audiobooks. He said sure, but he’s a member of the Union of British Columbia Performers, so the union had rules anyone who hired him had to follow. These rules are designed to keep large corporations from bullying individual voice actors, but they’re complex enough to be daunting for any author looking to hire a voice actor.

That said, the thing about actors’ unions is they want their members to make money and create art. So I reported this back to the FWG leadership, who decided it was worth reaching out. We’re always on the prowl for new ways the Guild can benefit furry writers, so this was deemed an excellent scheme.

And so it came to pass that I set up a meeting with the union that represents the My Little Pony voice actors. 

How to AWOO

Let me tell you about being the Furry Writers Guild’s AWOO. I’m the Guild’s tame extrovert. Most furries have a sense of shame, which is a feature I’ve never unlocked. I’m also a dog. Thus, I simply leverage the fact that people like it when a doggo shows up and befriends them. It works just as well outside the fandom. 

I reach out to people about crazy projects regularly—furries, non-furries, whomever. I get rejected about three-quarters of the time. As with writing, that just means you need to keep trying.

The Pony Union

The UBCP was a little surprised I reached out. I am a medium-size person and not a giant corporation. Having an organization of 340 indie authors reach out is unusual. Also, I’m a cartoon dog. They’re used to talking *for* cartoon animals, not *with* them.

Jason, their rep, was super helpful in navigating the process. He helped us navigate the rules and set up a simplified process for how much union voice actors can be paid. Normally, the rates include different rates for different stages of the project and possibly even recurring payments for decades. That’s easy if you have an accounting department, but furry authors generally do not. 

Also, turns out that the Vancouver acting scene calls anybody who’s been on My Little Pony a “pony” forever, so he talked about hiring “the ponies” for the duration of the call. As a furry, this satisfied me on a linguistic level.

The weirdest part for UBCP was that we were flipping the whole process around. Studios out a casting call, get in touch with agents and talent agencies, and might even call people back  for multiple rounds of live try-outs. That’s a lot of work for one person to do, however, especially if that person would rather be writing. What FWG wanted was an old-fashioned furry art commission. We wanted authors to be able to commission voice acting like we do book covers. (My constant references to “the commissioner” initially left Jason thinking I was talking about the guy in charge of the Bat Signal—just not a term they use in the VA industry.)

It was actually really cool to have a guild-to-union conversation like this. I don’t know if we’ve ever had one. Just goes to show you the power of professional organizing. The only way we were able to make this happen was because FWG is a union and we could promise 1) a single point of contact for negotiation and dispute resolution and 2) that we had vetted the folks who’d have access to voice actors and could enforce a code of conduct. 

After the meeting, we had a green light. While UBCP covers voice acting in Canada, the process was really helpful in covering the basics, so that pro voice actors in any country could sign on. But wait! We wanted voice actors from inside the fandom too!

Ethically-Sourced Fandom-Local Voice Acting

I really like audio fiction. I’ve had stories on The Voice of Dog and recorded the Puplift series for Furry Film Burrow. 

So it should come as no shock to you that I’m buddies with Savrin Drake, Dralen Dragonfox, and assorted other fluffs and floofs of the furry voice acting world. Many of them are always on the lookout for more projects. They basically get work by word of mouth only, so this was a handy way for FWG members to make offers to commission voice actors.

You might think furry voice actors wouldn’t want the competition from cartoon voice actors, but they thought it was super cool to be working in the same space (they’re fans too, after all). And given that union minimum is two or three times what furry narrators charge, we have a nice spectrum of audiobook budgets.

I specifically recruited The Voice of Dog’s talent because they all clearly have experience and have finished at least one project. Any furry can go listen to their work at any time. Many of them have worked on a lot of other cool projects too, so we included space for that on the list entries.

We still had a little room left on the project, though, which is just enough for a fennec…

The Fennec Connection

I’m also pals with Fenneko from Aggretsuko. 

Badge I made her for DenFur. Ears and tails by FantasticallyFluffy. (Source: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/60395444/)

Like Graham, I met Katelyn Gault when I interviewed her for Furry Film Burrow on YouTube.

We still talk about theatre prop construction and fennecs. (She had worked with fennecs in real life as a volunteer before voicing Fenneko!) She is also the best. She’s taken to furry fame like a fennec to sand, mostly because she gets why people get so passionate about their fandoms and is so willing to yap with fans.

Feeling Lackadaisical

Oh, and I’m also the lead developer of the Lackadaisy card game, so I made sure to reach out via Tracy Butler to the Lackadaisy voice actors. That’s how we recruited the terribly talented Willow Wilde (voice of Mitzi May) to our narration gang. 

Authentic Anthro Voices

One thing that was super important to us in setting up this project empowering folks to have projects where the voice actor is matched up with a project they can narrate confidently and with authenticity. This includes everything from their cultural background and accent to their hobbies and interests. Obviously, voice actors can adapt to pretty much anything you throw at them (consider all the weird situations in games, anime, and cartoons), but everybody has a different mixture of backgrounds, so we wanted to have those on display to entice authors to hire them. In the case of fandom actors, we wanted to help authors tap into this amazing talent pool where everybody knows the ins and outs of the furry fandom and can talk about its tropes and terminology with ease. 

We also worked hard to be inclusive and bring folks in from a variety of backgrounds, so that —no matter your gender, orientation, or race— you can hear someone like you in furry audio fiction. You all belong here. 

Settle in for Story Time

Here at FWG, we are super excited to see what audio fiction comes out because of this. Whether its short stories, novels, or something else entirely, this fandom has so many passionate and creative people that it’s going to be wonderful. 

To our home-grown voice actors, you know your way around the fandom, but we’re happy to have you more involved with the FWG directly. You’ve been working hard to bring our writing to live for years. We look forward to making that easier.

And to our cartoon comrades, thanks so much for taking the leap. We know you come from fandoms of your own (e.g. theatre, music, gaming) and think you’ll find furry as supportive and energizing as we do.

For everybody else who is curious, you can read more about the project on the official FAQ and narrator list. 

Member-Exclusive Audio Fiction Narrator List

This list is going to grow over time. Registration will remain open, so if you know someone with voice acting experience who’d be interested, send them our way.

Tempo O’Kun, Furry Writers Guild Advocate With Other Organizations (AWOO)

And, as usual, here are the current open markets for your short stories:
Plott Hound – Deadline December 15, 2025
Indecent Exposure – Deadline December 22, 2025
CLAW Vol. 2 – Deadline April 30, 2026
This Is Halloween – Deadline When Full
Children Of The Night – Deadline When Full

Please also check out the latest book releases from our members:
Dragon’s Soul, by J.F.R. Coates, Released June 7, 2025.
Two Strikes and I’m Out, by Michael H. Payne (poetry), Released June 16, 2025.
Lesser Gods: Reckoning, by Alex Frey, Released June 17, 2025.
Tales from the Guild: Blood and Water, Released June 30, 2025.
A Portrait for Tomorrow, by Raynarde, Released June 30, 2025.
Winterfall, by Lauren Rivers, Released July 15, 2025.
The Bones Behind the Glass, by Renard Avec-Histoire, Released August 18, 2025.
Gravitational Pull, by Ty Fox, Released August 19, 2025.
Tikadi’s Gift, by Moth Flutterby, Released October 17, 2025.
Legend of Ahya: A Divinity Decayed [Book 5], by Matthew Colvath, Released Nov. 30, 2025.
The Wideness of the World: An Early Modern Anthology, Released December 13, 2025.
The Analog Cat and Other Animals, by Alice Dryden, Releasing December 2025.

Bandit the Raccoon shares their trip to AFC 2025! Hosted in Ontario, CA from Sept. 19-21. Editing: @BanditTheRaccoon Fursona Artwork (THUMBNAIL): Com (dr11white via Telegram) Fursona Art TRD GROUP: Weka Phreak Art: NettleTea Series Logo: Fifth Forager See more at http://www.TheRaccoonsDen.com -------------------- MUSIC BY: Soaringjupier: https://soundcloud.com/soaringjupiter MDKai: https://midekai.bandcamp.com ❤ GOJII ❤: https://gojii.bandcamp.com DayFive: https://dayfive.bandcamp.com FACEBOOK: http://www.Facebook.com/TheRaccoonsDen TWITTER/X: http://www.Twitter.com/TheRaccoonsDen FURAFFINITY: http://www.FurAffinity.net/user/TheRaccoonsDen INSTAGRAM: http://www.Instagram.com/TheRaccoonsDen TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@theraccoonsden #TheRaccoonsDen #AnotherFurryCon #furryfandom

Here’s a new animated film we’ve been hearing about for a while, but now we finally have a release date (and a new trailer) for Charlie the Wonderdog from Icon Creative Studios in Canada. “This heartfelt animated film follows Charlie the Wonderdog (voiced by Owen Wilson), a beloved family dog; after discovering his superpowers, he sets out to fulfill his destiny and protect the people he loves  — only to learn that real heroism comes from courage, kindness, and believing in yourself.” Look for it in theaters on January 16th of next year.

image c. 2025 Viva Kids