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Dy stared.

The two pups stared back.

How could his luck have been so bad? He’d not been the captain and master of his own ship for very long and already things were going awry. Not like having pups around was necessarily a bad thing, now! It was just rather troublesome when they were young, definitely not his, and appeared to be a breed he was entirely familiar with if the feathers were any indication.

His first instinct, of course, was to get them off the ship and back to their parents, or caretakers, or owners, or whoever came forward to claim them just so they wouldn’t be on the ship anymore. Seeing as he and his small crew had shoved off more than an hour ago and land was far out of sight, that wasn’t exactly a viable option. Turning immediately around and heading for port wasn’t the best option either, seeing as they would lose the tide and the favorable wind. Just dumping the two on the next foreign shore they ran into wasn’t a choice either because they surely had people missing them…

Conscience won over and mind made up, Dy turned to go tell his helmsman to turn about and return to the land they’d just left. Before he could fully leave, though, the flit of pure terror that ghosted across both pups’ faces in macabre unison stayed him.

“Please!” The first one, all black with a shockingly bright crack of lightning on her leg, piped up.

“Don’t send us back!” The second one, grey and striped and defiant, cried.

Dy stilled, half wondering if he should just ignore the pups. In all likelihood, they were just a pair that were mad at their parents and wanted to keep away, but there was something about the way their eyes pleaded with him that kept him from believing the lie he told himself. There was a story in these two waiting to be told, he could feel it. There was nothing that could persuade Dy more than a story.

The big blue Kukuri plopped down in front of the, rather large, pups and looked at them expectantly.

“Alright, then tell me why you’re on my ship,” he prompted when a story was not forthcoming.

The two shared a look and it was the grey one that spoke first. “Well… We were… trying to escape,” he mumbled, as if afraid the words would be enough to make Dy get up and turn the ship around.

Dy blinked. Blinked again. Looked closer at the two pups. They were thin… too thin. God, he could see every one of their ribs! Despite this, they had been neatly groomed and trimmed, though the hard work of whoever had done the deed had been mussed by the pair’s escape, the sea air, and the tiny hiding place they had squeezed themselves into. It was all starting to paint a picture; a picture that Dy didn’t like.

He took a deep breath.

“What are your names?”

They each seemed surprised by the question. ‘As if no one had asked them before.’ Dy thought to himself, trying to keep the grim frown off his face.

“Haikili,” said the black one.

“Storm,” said the grey one.

“Okay, Haikili. Storm. Who were you trying to escape from?”

Silence. Neither seemed to have an appropriate answer for that. Dy changed gears.

“Okay. Tell me your story.”

That seemed to be a little easier.

Haikili spoke first. She took a deep breath and Dy noticed her dark fur ship against her ribcage. He tried not to notice again.

“We used to live in Death’s Valley,” she began, looking to her company for confirmation. Storm nodded.

“Our dad… he said it used to be a beautiful place; all green and pretty with lots of plants and prey and rivers everywhere,” Haikili’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she spoke.

Storm chipped in next, “O-only… only, when we were born, everything in our valley was dry and brown and dead.” The pup fidgeted with the primary feathers on his arm a little. “It was… not fun.”

“We had to eat weeds!” Haikili exclaimed, looking indignant at the very thought. Almost immediately, however, she seemed to wilt and curl in on herself, as if remembering something painful.

Storm pressed against the dove’s side and carried on.

“We were stuck in Death’s Valley,” he looked up, eyes distant. “The mountains on all sides were too steep to climb.”

Dy looked at the two pups lost in the throe of memories, a frown playing across his lips. It was at this point in so many stories where, just when things were going along at a steady pace, something sudden happened to change everything.

“Then… She came.”

“She came.”

“She…? She who?” Dy asked, looking between the two of them.

As one, they looked to Dy, eyes dark with loathing.

“Death,” they echoed in unison, faces grim and haunted.

A thrill of surprise and excitement ran down Dy’s spine at the thought that these two might have actually seen one of the Goddesses he had been searching for! Then, the reality of the situation set in. He had long known that stories weren’t always true, but something about the way these two children reviled the very moniker of the deity told him that there was a lot less truth to the Tale of Two Sisters than he had once thought.

“What did She do?” He asked, fully drawn into the tale the two pups were weaving.

“She knocked down the mountain,” Haikili spat hatefully.

Dy processed this for a moment.

“Wouldn’t it have been good? To get out of the valley?”

Storm snorted and crossed his little arms over his too-thin chest. ‘God these kids look so unwell!’

“Maybe if She would have just let us out, but She brought The Others,” the little grey pup looked just as disgusted as Haikili did.

“The Others,” Dy rolled the new moniker over his tongue in contemplation, feeling the pain and hate that rolled off it like he’d bitten into an unripe crab apple.

“The Others were brought by Her into the valley to ‘save’ us and ‘take care’ of us,” the words were spat like poison, like a child fed lies they already knew to be false. “The Others did not save us. They did not help us. They came to our home, our dying paradise, and tried to take us. To civilize us.”

Storm looked too steamed to go on, so Haikili picked up the narrative in a plaintive voice.

“We tried to stay; tried so hard to hold onto our families and friends. They were all we had after all She had taken from us by neglecting our valley. But The Others came with the featherless Kukuri and they dragged us apart with ropes and chains!”

Oh god, there were tears in her eyes. Dy momentarily panicked; he’d never had to comfort a crying girl before, but Haikili dashed away her own tears and carried on with a vengeance.

“I- We had to watch them drag our father away from us! He tried to protect us, but they separated us from him and tied him down so he could do nothing but watch while they did the same to us,” she sniffled and rubbed furiously at her eyes, determined to let none of her traitorous tears fall.

Storm pressed himself closer to Haikili and Dy was struck by the realization that, even though they weren’t done with their story yet and the details were still unclear, these two only had each other left in the world. An ache in his heart replaced all the enthusiasm he had mustered upon getting to hear a new story, but he couldn’t stop them until they had finished. He had asked and it was no right of his to stop listening when things became ‘too painful.’

“They dragged us out of Death’s Valley and locked us in these… these pens! Cages! W-we had to watch,” his breath hitched as he recalled the horrors a young creature should never have to see, “while they forced the eldest of us to mate with each other or with the featherless ones. They stole the eggs and sold them like produce. They were going to sell us off like a bunch of livestock!”

“So we escaped,” Haikili continued, almost sounding defeated by now. “Just us. We… w-we couldn’t get any others. Our friends… our dad…” She bit her lip, chest hitching in withheld sobs.

Storm scrubbed at his face too, trying to stay strong like Haikili. The rage on his face was unrestrained but unfocused, like he didn’t know exactly who to be angry at. Dy could empathize; he had been in that place more than once when he was naught but a pup himself.

“Death,” the grey pup spat, fan of ears and feathers flattening with disgust. “It’s all Her fault. She led those she thought qualified to deal with a bunch of savages like us. There was no talking. They took us and they used us like goods, like we were mindless creatures. Like we were less! A proud race, reduced to slaves and livestock.”

“She thought us weak and I resent Her for that,” Haikili agreed, hardened features out of place on her gentle face. “We were no more than goods to be purchased and used up until we couldn’t be used at all. It’s all because She let us wither in that valley. She doomed us to a life of misery and then of servitude because she was too busy hiding in her mountain and doting on her favorites.”

Haikili’s fur burned with rage and her fur puffed up as if building a static change, but Storm never moved and his expression of disgust and fury never faltered. Dy was thunderstruck at the sudden revelation. This… this was a story he never would have known about the believed-to-be-benevolent Death. Sure, the stories aren’t always right, but for someone portrayed to be so kind and gentle as She doing this to another creature was… nigh unthinkable.

“Where was She,” Storm spat, indicating that the story wasn’t quite over yet, “when other pups, our friends, whimpered in the night because there was no food? Weaker and softer each night until they could whimper no more?”

“Where was She,” Haikili followed Storm’s lead, bowing her head and screwing her eyes shut, “when we begged to be free of the valley? Begged for the plants to stop dying and the prey to come back?”

“Where was She when The Others invaded our valley and destroyed us? Pulled us apart with force even though we fought and begged and pleaded for them to leave us alone? To let us have our families and our dignity?”

“Where was She when we were huddled in pens and cages, desperately asking ‘Why?’ Where was She when we prayed that we would not be the next to be used for their despicable ‘breeding projects’ or torn apart from each other to be sold to the highest bidder?”

Dy looked at the two pups again, his heart pounding in his chest. Before him sat two kids, kids, that had been so horribly, terribly wronged by someone they should have been able to rely on. They had been born into a world ruled by a deity that cared so little about them that Her only thought had been: ‘Save them from extinction, by any cost.’ Dy’s fist clenched and he had to remind himself to try and view the story impartially; all stories were biased and it was his self-appointed task to track down all sides of the story until the picture became clear, but that was a lot easier said than done when two victims of such horrible crimes sat trembling and nearly crying before him. Maybe Death had her reasons for doing as she did, Gods are not infallible nor are they rumored to understand mortal thoughts and emotions well, but, however the story stood, there was one thing that was true: these two children had been through something terrible and they were not going back.

Before anything else could be said, Dy wrapped Haikili and Storm up in a huge bear hug, clutching them to his furry chest as he tried to show them some ounce of comfort they had been denied up until now. He could not replace their father, wherever the poor rook was now, but he could certainly try to be their caretaker for a time.

Both pups started and wiggled a little, unused to the sudden display of affection, especially from a featherless Kukuri of the same breed that had done so many cruel things to them. After a short time, though, they relaxed and gave into the comfort they both so sorely needed. Haikili sniffled and clung to the matted blue fur of the Kukuri whose ship they had stowed away on, desperate for any shred of comfort she could get. Storm curled his face down into Dy’s ruffle and tried not to cry; tried so hard to hold it together until he just couldn’t anymore.

“I’m not sending you back there,” Dy growled, fire burning in his heart.

He thought of his father, Captain of the Adventure, and his number one goal in life: Freedom. He thought of Hensley, who still had scars around his wrists from the chains that had shackled him at one time in his life. He thought of Oxley and the permanent scar he’d had across his face from some punishment undeserved and received long before Dy had been born. He thought of days spent skipping across the waves with a good breeze at their back, singing songs together, telling stories over a small fire on deck in the middle of the midnight watch, and of splitting into groups to explore deserted islands in hopes of finding treasures of all shapes and sizes.

Freedom, just like Stories, was worth protecting.

Haikili and Storm tore their faces from his fur and looked up at him with the most heartbreaking looks of distrustful hope. They wanted so hard to believe that Dy was telling the truth; that a featherless Kukuri like him would defy all their expectations and do something they had never dreamed of.

Dy inhaled sharply, releasing the two pups and watching them scramble back a safe way until they were nearly squeezed back into the hidey-hole he’d found them in.

“Freedom is to be prized and treasured; anyone that would dare take that away is a monster, pure and simple. You will not ever be treated in such a way while I am around. Your lives are yours to live and do with as you please. And the first thing I’m sure you want is a good meal; let’s start there.”

He stood and beckoned them to the door of the storeroom. After a moment’s hesitation, Haikili and Storm followed, never once moving far enough away to separate the physical connection they had. Dy led them out and closed the door behind him, leaving behind the hiding place, the store room, and the painful story of two small pups.

After a good meal and some well-deserved sleep, Dy had the ship turn back and put into port where they’d left.

By morning, not a single Prairie was left in a pen and The Storyteller was long gone across the waves, two pups in tow.

Description

Dy stared.

The two pups stared back.

How could his luck have been so bad? He’d not been the captain and master of his own ship for very long and already things were going awry. Not like having pups around was necessarily a bad thing, now! It was just rather troublesome when they were young, definitely not his, and appeared to be a breed he was entirely familiar with if the feathers were any indication.

His first instinct, of course, was to get them off the ship and back to their parents, or caretakers, or owners, or whoever came forward to claim them just so they wouldn’t be on the ship anymore. Seeing as he and his small crew had shoved off more than an hour ago and land was far out of sight, that wasn’t exactly a viable option. Turning immediately around and heading for port wasn’t the best option either, seeing as they would lose the tide and the favorable wind. Just dumping the two on the next foreign shore they ran into wasn’t a choice either because they surely had people missing them…

Conscience won over and mind made up, Dy turned to go tell his helmsman to turn about and return to the land they’d just left. Before he could fully leave, though, the flit of pure terror that ghosted across both pups’ faces in macabre unison stayed him.

“Please!” The first one, all black with a shockingly bright crack of lightning on her leg, piped up.

“Don’t send us back!” The second one, grey and striped and defiant, cried.

Dy stilled, half wondering if he should just ignore the pups. In all likelihood, they were just a pair that were mad at their parents and wanted to keep away, but there was something about the way their eyes pleaded with him that kept him from believing the lie he told himself. There was a story in these two waiting to be told, he could feel it. There was nothing that could persuade Dy more than a story.

The big blue Kukuri plopped down in front of the, rather large, pups and looked at them expectantly.

“Alright, then tell me why you’re on my ship,” he prompted when a story was not forthcoming.

The two shared a look and it was the grey one that spoke first. “Well… We were… trying to escape,” he mumbled, as if afraid the words would be enough to make Dy get up and turn the ship around.

Dy blinked. Blinked again. Looked closer at the two pups. They were thin… too thin. God, he could see every one of their ribs! Despite this, they had been neatly groomed and trimmed, though the hard work of whoever had done the deed had been mussed by the pair’s escape, the sea air, and the tiny hiding place they had squeezed themselves into. It was all starting to paint a picture; a picture that Dy didn’t like.

He took a deep breath.

“What are your names?”

They each seemed surprised by the question. ‘As if no one had asked them before.’ Dy thought to himself, trying to keep the grim frown off his face.

“Haikili,” said the black one.

“Storm,” said the grey one.

“Okay, Haikili. Storm. Who were you trying to escape from?”

Silence. Neither seemed to have an appropriate answer for that. Dy changed gears.

“Okay. Tell me your story.”

That seemed to be a little easier.

Haikili spoke first. She took a deep breath and Dy noticed her dark fur ship against her ribcage. He tried not to notice again.

“We used to live in Death’s Valley,” she began, looking to her company for confirmation. Storm nodded.

“Our dad… he said it used to be a beautiful place; all green and pretty with lots of plants and prey and rivers everywhere,” Haikili’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she spoke.

Storm chipped in next, “O-only… only, when we were born, everything in our valley was dry and brown and dead.” The pup fidgeted with the primary feathers on his arm a little. “It was… not fun.”

“We had to eat weeds!” Haikili exclaimed, looking indignant at the very thought. Almost immediately, however, she seemed to wilt and curl in on herself, as if remembering something painful.

Storm pressed against the dove’s side and carried on.

“We were stuck in Death’s Valley,” he looked up, eyes distant. “The mountains on all sides were too steep to climb.”

Dy looked at the two pups lost in the throe of memories, a frown playing across his lips. It was at this point in so many stories where, just when things were going along at a steady pace, something sudden happened to change everything.

“Then… She came.”

“She came.”

“She…? She who?” Dy asked, looking between the two of them.

As one, they looked to Dy, eyes dark with loathing.

“Death,” they echoed in unison, faces grim and haunted.

A thrill of surprise and excitement ran down Dy’s spine at the thought that these two might have actually seen one of the Goddesses he had been searching for! Then, the reality of the situation set in. He had long known that stories weren’t always true, but something about the way these two children reviled the very moniker of the deity told him that there was a lot less truth to the Tale of Two Sisters than he had once thought.

“What did She do?” He asked, fully drawn into the tale the two pups were weaving.

“She knocked down the mountain,” Haikili spat hatefully.

Dy processed this for a moment.

“Wouldn’t it have been good? To get out of the valley?”

Storm snorted and crossed his little arms over his too-thin chest. ‘God these kids look so unwell!’

“Maybe if She would have just let us out, but She brought The Others,” the little grey pup looked just as disgusted as Haikili did.

“The Others,” Dy rolled the new moniker over his tongue in contemplation, feeling the pain and hate that rolled off it like he’d bitten into an unripe crab apple.

“The Others were brought by Her into the valley to ‘save’ us and ‘take care’ of us,” the words were spat like poison, like a child fed lies they already knew to be false. “The Others did not save us. They did not help us. They came to our home, our dying paradise, and tried to take us. To civilize us.”

Storm looked too steamed to go on, so Haikili picked up the narrative in a plaintive voice.

“We tried to stay; tried so hard to hold onto our families and friends. They were all we had after all She had taken from us by neglecting our valley. But The Others came with the featherless Kukuri and they dragged us apart with ropes and chains!”

Oh god, there were tears in her eyes. Dy momentarily panicked; he’d never had to comfort a crying girl before, but Haikili dashed away her own tears and carried on with a vengeance.

“I- We had to watch them drag our father away from us! He tried to protect us, but they separated us from him and tied him down so he could do nothing but watch while they did the same to us,” she sniffled and rubbed furiously at her eyes, determined to let none of her traitorous tears fall.

Storm pressed himself closer to Haikili and Dy was struck by the realization that, even though they weren’t done with their story yet and the details were still unclear, these two only had each other left in the world. An ache in his heart replaced all the enthusiasm he had mustered upon getting to hear a new story, but he couldn’t stop them until they had finished. He had asked and it was no right of his to stop listening when things became ‘too painful.’

“They dragged us out of Death’s Valley and locked us in these… these pens! Cages! W-we had to watch,” his breath hitched as he recalled the horrors a young creature should never have to see, “while they forced the eldest of us to mate with each other or with the featherless ones. They stole the eggs and sold them like produce. They were going to sell us off like a bunch of livestock!”

“So we escaped,” Haikili continued, almost sounding defeated by now. “Just us. We… w-we couldn’t get any others. Our friends… our dad…” She bit her lip, chest hitching in withheld sobs.

Storm scrubbed at his face too, trying to stay strong like Haikili. The rage on his face was unrestrained but unfocused, like he didn’t know exactly who to be angry at. Dy could empathize; he had been in that place more than once when he was naught but a pup himself.

“Death,” the grey pup spat, fan of ears and feathers flattening with disgust. “It’s all Her fault. She led those she thought qualified to deal with a bunch of savages like us. There was no talking. They took us and they used us like goods, like we were mindless creatures. Like we were less! A proud race, reduced to slaves and livestock.”

“She thought us weak and I resent Her for that,” Haikili agreed, hardened features out of place on her gentle face. “We were no more than goods to be purchased and used up until we couldn’t be used at all. It’s all because She let us wither in that valley. She doomed us to a life of misery and then of servitude because she was too busy hiding in her mountain and doting on her favorites.”

Haikili’s fur burned with rage and her fur puffed up as if building a static change, but Storm never moved and his expression of disgust and fury never faltered. Dy was thunderstruck at the sudden revelation. This… this was a story he never would have known about the believed-to-be-benevolent Death. Sure, the stories aren’t always right, but for someone portrayed to be so kind and gentle as She doing this to another creature was… nigh unthinkable.

“Where was She,” Storm spat, indicating that the story wasn’t quite over yet, “when other pups, our friends, whimpered in the night because there was no food? Weaker and softer each night until they could whimper no more?”

“Where was She,” Haikili followed Storm’s lead, bowing her head and screwing her eyes shut, “when we begged to be free of the valley? Begged for the plants to stop dying and the prey to come back?”

“Where was She when The Others invaded our valley and destroyed us? Pulled us apart with force even though we fought and begged and pleaded for them to leave us alone? To let us have our families and our dignity?”

“Where was She when we were huddled in pens and cages, desperately asking ‘Why?’ Where was She when we prayed that we would not be the next to be used for their despicable ‘breeding projects’ or torn apart from each other to be sold to the highest bidder?”

Dy looked at the two pups again, his heart pounding in his chest. Before him sat two kids, kids, that had been so horribly, terribly wronged by someone they should have been able to rely on. They had been born into a world ruled by a deity that cared so little about them that Her only thought had been: ‘Save them from extinction, by any cost.’ Dy’s fist clenched and he had to remind himself to try and view the story impartially; all stories were biased and it was his self-appointed task to track down all sides of the story until the picture became clear, but that was a lot easier said than done when two victims of such horrible crimes sat trembling and nearly crying before him. Maybe Death had her reasons for doing as she did, Gods are not infallible nor are they rumored to understand mortal thoughts and emotions well, but, however the story stood, there was one thing that was true: these two children had been through something terrible and they were not going back.

Before anything else could be said, Dy wrapped Haikili and Storm up in a huge bear hug, clutching them to his furry chest as he tried to show them some ounce of comfort they had been denied up until now. He could not replace their father, wherever the poor rook was now, but he could certainly try to be their caretaker for a time.

Both pups started and wiggled a little, unused to the sudden display of affection, especially from a featherless Kukuri of the same breed that had done so many cruel things to them. After a short time, though, they relaxed and gave into the comfort they both so sorely needed. Haikili sniffled and clung to the matted blue fur of the Kukuri whose ship they had stowed away on, desperate for any shred of comfort she could get. Storm curled his face down into Dy’s ruffle and tried not to cry; tried so hard to hold it together until he just couldn’t anymore.

“I’m not sending you back there,” Dy growled, fire burning in his heart.

He thought of his father, Captain of the Adventure, and his number one goal in life: Freedom. He thought of Hensley, who still had scars around his wrists from the chains that had shackled him at one time in his life. He thought of Oxley and the permanent scar he’d had across his face from some punishment undeserved and received long before Dy had been born. He thought of days spent skipping across the waves with a good breeze at their back, singing songs together, telling stories over a small fire on deck in the middle of the midnight watch, and of splitting into groups to explore deserted islands in hopes of finding treasures of all shapes and sizes.

Freedom, just like Stories, was worth protecting.

Haikili and Storm tore their faces from his fur and looked up at him with the most heartbreaking looks of distrustful hope. They wanted so hard to believe that Dy was telling the truth; that a featherless Kukuri like him would defy all their expectations and do something they had never dreamed of.

Dy inhaled sharply, releasing the two pups and watching them scramble back a safe way until they were nearly squeezed back into the hidey-hole he’d found them in.

“Freedom is to be prized and treasured; anyone that would dare take that away is a monster, pure and simple. You will not ever be treated in such a way while I am around. Your lives are yours to live and do with as you please. And the first thing I’m sure you want is a good meal; let’s start there.”

He stood and beckoned them to the door of the storeroom. After a moment’s hesitation, Haikili and Storm followed, never once moving far enough away to separate the physical connection they had. Dy led them out and closed the door behind him, leaving behind the hiding place, the store room, and the painful story of two small pups.

After a good meal and some well-deserved sleep, Dy had the ship turn back and put into port where they’d left.

By morning, not a single Prairie was left in a pen and The Storyteller was long gone across the waves, two pups in tow.