One: Duet Before the Snow Falls

            The autumn leaves tickled my forehead, and I swatted them away, too focused to deal with pesky nature. I didn’t even look at Kitsuni when I aigne-labhairt to her. We never did this as gently as it was done in my childhood days anymore. Kitsuni told me that we should find a good vantage point from which we could kill our quarry.

I didn’t want to kill anyone for those violent people. They take away everything you have: freedom, love, family, hope. I could barely remember the days my parents described from their grandparents childhood days. They had said that life was easy, and everyone lived freely. No one was under any world dominating order. No one had any reason to live in fear of people in general. People had what they had told me was called trust.

            I asked Kitsuni to share with me the man’s face again. She shared her memories with me, and I looked at a young man, blonde hair long enough to cover his eyebrows, and a brilliant myriad of colors in his eyes. Blue, brown, green, mixed together in a way that made you think you were looking at the unfocused scenery of a forest. Where the sky blended with ground and the trees became clouds. I stopped for a second releasing the image. I do that a lot, lose focus and forget what I should be doing.

Kitsuni, do we know him? I asked her with interest. He bears a very similar resemblance to your father, but I doubt we actually have met this human. She nudged her head under my bent knees, and her eyes scolding me. Is your interest too great for the completion in this mission? She flicked her tail questioningly. “No,” I said aloud. She cocked her head annoyed, her red ears flattening against her red and white face. No, I repeated, I can do this for James.

I walked to the edge of the valley we traveled to. I had to focus. I was here for one purpose and one purpose only. I looked up after a sudden chill I felt up my neck. A flake fell on my nose, and the breezy autumn wind turned as harsh as winter. Weather changed so frequently, it was hardly noticeable anymore. I just slipped on my brown hide boot and my bear hide jacket to keep away the cold bite. By the time I found a tree I could hide in, a thin layer of snow covered the grassy floor of the valley.

I settled myself in the tree expecting a long night of waiting for the hunt to begin. I brought out my bombarde to play alone in this quickly changing valley, and played a quick tune my brother used to play to me when we were little.  It’s missing the biniou, Kitsuni commented after I finished the song. I haven’t seen one since ours was stolen, when dad was still alive. I looked up at the very fast setting sun, and Venus shining like a piece of glass in the sky.

As my eyes drooped like the setting sun, I heard a haunting high pitched flutter, and the drone of a biniou. The drone went, on as if calling for its counter parts voice to be raised to the trees. The sound stunned me, and I almost wanted to run away. I lifted the reed of my bombarde to my mouth, and fluttered my fingers with the drone sounding in the distance. I replayed my song, and heard the octave higher voice follow along slowly until it caught up with my melody. It nearly brought me to tears, so I could no longer breathe and stopped playing.

The song the instruments created echoed among the trees long after we had finished, and weaved in and out of my ears as if hanging on to the fibers of my being. I had to find the musician that belonged to the voice of the biniou.

            A howl lifted in the night, the sun, an orangish-pink sherbet painted in the sky fading to black not but a short time ago. Kitsuni and I d’aontaiomar* quickly and in the blink of an eye my tail twitched as did hers. We placed our nose in the air to sniff to find which direction we should head, and let out an eager howl in response carried on the winter wind.

            We pawed quickly through the already deep snow resting on the ground, leaving our belongings and provisions behind us. The shared interest in this new mystery wiped clean the thoughts of killing for the dominating order holding what we love captive. A pure d’aontaiomar was reached like that of Kitsuni and my childhood days, as if we both wanted the daisies growing in the fields near our simple house as young kits.

We eventually came to a tree, much bigger than that of what naturally grows, and had the desire to discover its secrets.  As we rounded the front, a biniou was seen resting in the snow, while further steps revealed a blonde haired boy resting against the trunk of this magnificent tree.  We skittered to a bush, breathing hard, heart beating hard. A simple duet had leaded us to the inevitable, yet we were unprepared and defenseless. We decided to sulk in the foliage until we could derive a plan from our oh-so-clever brains.

It was the blonde haired man in Kitsuni's memories. Our quarry.

Author's Note

*d’aontaiomar: to be united, past tense verb taken from the Irish Gaelic language, to help in this context, describe the magical unity between a human and a chara when they two become one being.