Chapter 3 - The Village.

Brach and I looked around.
“Heed my warning!”
Brach put his arm around me. Usually I would have resisted, but at the moment I was too scared to care.
“I’ll protect you.” He whispered into my ear, his breath tickling.
There was an immense crash. I gasped. Then a barrage of scales and claws rained down on us. I screamed and scrambled under a tree, not even thinking about Brach. When I was in the relative safety of the tree, I looked around. I saw that Brach had managed to get under another tree. And I saw what had landed on us. A Dragon.
The dragons’ scales were a deep, majestic purple, and there were trails of smoke escaping from between his claw like teeth. His black eyes were unreadable, as he swung his big head back and forth looking for us. His wings had been tucked neatly in beside him, so I couldn’t tell how wide they were. His tail was a thick as the tree I was hiding under, and possibly just as tall. The final thing I noticed were the spikes that lined his back and down his tail.
“I told you to GET OUT!” he roared, lashing his tail.
I ran over to where Brach was hiding, avoiding fallen branches as I did so.
“Come on!” I grabbed his wrist and yanked him away from the river through the trees. All of a sudden, I tripped, and came down hard on my wrist with a loud crack.
“Amile!” Brach helped me up. I clutched my wrist, biting back tears.
“It might be broken.” Brach started rummaging through his pouch, trying to find something that would do to bandage my wrist “we need to find a doctor”
A couple of minutes later I had my wrist bandaged and so we tried to find our way out of the forest. Night was falling and it got darker and darker between the trees. We were on the verge of giving up and making camp for the night when we stumbled onto what looked like a small village. We went around to the nearest hut and Brach knocked. A few minutes past, then the door opened, and an Anthro stepped out.
“Humans!” She exclaimed. The Anthro hustled us inside, muttering to herself. “Ooh, if the Chief sees you...”
I took a good look at her then. She had short orange hair, and fox ears poking out of the top. She had soft brown eyes, beneath which her nose extended to a pink point. Her arms and legs were human until you looked at her wrists and her ankles, where they extended subtly into paws. As she turned, I caught sight of a red and white tail extending out behind her.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
“We were trying to get away from the dragon when I fell on my wrist. Now we just want to get out of the forest.” I explained in a hurry, wincing as my wrist gave a particularly painful pang.
“Give me your wrist.”
“I unwrapped it and handed it over. She examined it.
“I can fix this.” She put her paw over where my wrist hurt most. She had fairly covered it, but as she concentrated, a soft orange light surrounded my wrist, seeping out from under her paw. It was beautiful – I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Then it was gone.
“Your wrist should be fine now.” as she let go of my wrist, I knew that whatever had happened, wasn’t likely to happen again soon.
“Thank you.” I said gratefully, flexing my wrist.
“My name’s Sensa.”
“Mines Amile and this is Brach.” I gestured behind me to Brach.
“Oof!” Brach gasped as my gesturing caught him in the stomach.
“Sorry!” I apologized.
Sensa laughed.
“You can stay here until morning – you don’t want to know what will happen if the chief finds you.” She led us over to a back room. “Here. You can stay in this room.”
“Thanks.” Brach said.
The little room was fairly bare, with only two single beds and a small table between them.
As soon as I saw the bed, not thinking, I crawled straight under the bedclothes.
Brach didn’t, but perched on the end of the bed I was in.
“Amile.” He started.
“What now? I want to go to sleep!”
Let me say this, and then you can go to sleep.”
“Fine.” I yawned, putting my head back on the pillow. “But make it quick.”
“I want you to go back to Evrep and stay with the children.”
“What!” I sat straight up, now wide-awake. “No way!”
“It’s getting way to dangerous out here. There are Dragons, Anthro, and you’ve been injured already.”
“So?” I said, throwing back the covers and standing up. “This is my fight. Not yours. I bet you wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t be. And now I’m going on alone!”
“But why?”
“Because I love you and I don’t want to see you get hurt!”
I just stared at him, dumbfounded. I ran past him into the main room. I needed someone to talk to.
“Sensa? Sensa!”
“Yes?” she trotted out of another room.
“Can I talk to you?”
“I suppose so, seeing as you’re already talking to me.”
I managed a weak laugh.
“What’s wrong?” I could hear the concern in her voice.
“Well, Brach just told me he loved me.”
“I wondered. I saw deep love in his eyes as he gazed at you.” She looked at me carefully. “Yours to.”
“You can see that? Wait - my eyes? There can’t be deep love in my eyes for Brach... unless... it was for mother” I lowered my eyes.
“We Anthro can see many things. Meddling with them is not our job.”
“So what should I do?”
“Whatever you think to be best.”
“Thanks for your help.” I said with just a little bit of sarcasm. Sensa said nothing. I went back into the little room that Brach and I were sharing. Brach had buried himself in his bed.
“Brach?”
The covers muffled his reply.
“I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about going back.” I got back into bed, tossing and turning before finally falling asleep.

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