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"I can't go!" Reya protested, "I can't leave!"

"I'm so sorry Reya! You have to! I already said you were the first to see... her. I'd change it if I could!"

"Send some other otter! You can't be that freaking good at drawing!"

"I - I wrote in the bandages," Aris muttered, "the burns too..."

"Well that's just great! I guess we have to find another otter and shove her into a fire!"

'Reya, please calm down...'

"Don't even try that!"

"What? I didn't try anything!" Aris objected.

"Shut up! I wasn't talking to you!"

"Oh..."

"I can't believe you didn't think before you sent the thing! Do I look ready to go cross country to talk about something that I don't even have any idea what's really going on because none of you jerks will tell me!"

Reya paused. The beagle looked genuinely hurt. Torren just seemed taken aback.

'I... I didn't think you wanted to talk about it... I thought you had enough to deal with without having to think about any of that,' Torren signed slowly. He was obviously thinking carefully about what he said. Reya was very obviously not in the best of moods. It had its intended effect, however and Reya felt herself calming down.

"I'm sorry Aris. It's not even my paws... I would have been fine taking the trip if I hadn't been so stupid. And even now, I'd be fine, but... You know."

She glanced at Torren who looked shocked at her apology.

"Oh come on, not everyone has an ego to match Weisk's."

The concern on the spotted otter's face quickly broke into one of his silent laughs.

'Can't help it.' The serious expression came back almost as soon as it faded. 'Reya?'

"What?"

"Huh?" asked Aris.

"Not you."

"Oh. Um, could you try to maybe say who you're talking to?"

"Fine Aris! Hey Torren! The big ottery guy over there that I'm looking at! What is it that you want?"

'Maybe now's not a good time for it...'

"Hey, now's as good as any time! It's not like you could manage to make this week worse!"

Torren cringed. 'I was just going to ask... Do you not want to leave because of Gither?'

Reya was the surprised one this time. She didn't realize that Torren had read her that well. She'd barely even mentioned her older brother at all in the 5 months that her spotted friend had been living with her. She was kind of surprised that he even remembered Gither's name. Then again, she could recall mentioning him the night before.

"How about a trade then? You tell me what's going on with Talip and all that stupid drama and I'll tell you why I don't want to go."

"Ok."

"Torren."

"Oh."

'Ok. So why are you so against leaving?'

"Gither. My turn."

'That's not fair!'

"I gave you the answer."

'Well I could be just as cheeky and tell you that Talip... uh... Did bad things! Ok? C'mon Reya, tell me what's going on!' Torren glanced over to Aris. 'Are - Are you not comfortable talking about it around him?'

Reya actually wasn't quite sure. She thought that she just might not be very comfortable talking about it in general. Even so, she wanted to tell Torren. He'd been there for her the whole time while she dealt with Gither's abandonment - although with how little she actually mentioned her brother, she wondered if Torren had even realized how much she was struggling to deal with it.

He probably had. Well, she didn't know how much he thought about that stuff. He tended not to dwell on uncomfortable issues around Reya. In fact, the small otter realized that she really didn't know much about her spotted friend. He was a great guy, but he was definitely not the type to be open about his feelings and problems.

Reya honestly didn't mind his silence on personal issues. She talked a lot herself, and had long ago pushed herself to the understanding that other people just weren't as communicative. Maybe Torren talked less than most people, but Reya found herself on the other end of the spectrum. Who was she to judge him?

She sighed. She guessed that it would be a bit easier to talk about her brother if it was just her and Torren. Aris seemed like a really good person, but she'd barely known him for two days. Even so, she didn't really know if she was in the mood to explain all of the backstory behind her and Gither. Even if she were up to it, and not exhausted with her body's efforts to heal her tattered form, she didn't know if she wanted to share her life's story with a funny looking ranger.

Well. He was a ranger; that did give him a lot of clout in her mind. She had made up her mind though.

"I'm sorry Aris... could I get a bit of privacy to talk to Torren? I want to talk about some personal stuff."

"Yeah, that's fine," the beagle said, trying to hide the dejected look that dropped over his face.

"Thanks." Aris made his exit.

'Do you want to talk about it then? We're going to be on the road for a long time and I want to know what's up. I'd rather not spend several months on the road in a confined space with a sulking otter.'

Reya tried her best to look pouty. "I don't sulk! I mean, sulking people are really quiet, right? Can you imagine me going a full day without telling you about the trout scale stuck in your teeth?"

Torren looked like he having a fierce argument with himself over whether to check his teeth for the scale. He obviously couldn't rub his tongue along the inside of his mouth. Half of the necessary body parts for that plan were missing. Reya nearly gave the whole thing up by laughing as she saw the gears turning in his head. She was just leading him on, after all.

Reya watched as the spotted otter slowly ran his lips against his teeth while trying to look inconspicuous.

His paw was twitching.

'I don't know what you're talking about.' He signed. Reya didn't take the bait. He was definitely just trying to get her to admit that there was nothing there.

"Well you can't see your teeth, now can you?"

A frustrated grimace crossed his face. He hesitantly opened his mouth and began to run a claw between his teeth. Reya finally couldn't hold it in anymore and began laughing at the larger otter. He immediately dropped his paw from his teeth and gave her an accusing look.

"Don't even deny it," Reya chortled, "that was really funny." Torren snorted in response, but, in accordance with what Reya said, didn't deny it. He was clearly holding back a smile.

There was silence for a few seconds. "You know, I really want to move." Her paws were aching. Her broken paw was numb except for a continual throbbing. Her whole body hurt. Luckily, it didn't seem to be hurting quite as much as she expected. It was a dull sort of pain. It was the kind that you could just forget about, not a sharp urgent pain that demanded attention.

"Did you give me something to kill the pain?"

'Yeah,' Torren replied. He twirled his paw around the covers of the bed he was laying on. 'Aris went through the medical cupboards here and found some pain relieving poultices. We also found something for the swelling on your arm before we put the cast on.'

"What was in the poultices?"

'You'd have to ask Aris. I'm not good at this stuff.'

"You guys did a good job."

'Thanks.' Torren looked a bit embarrassed. 'That's nice to hear coming from someone as good at medicine as you.'

"I'm not that good. Gither was the real talent."

'I've known quite a few other healers, and I think you're better than any of them.'

Reya blushed crimson. "You're just saying that."

'I mean it.'

Reya didn't respond. She never really knew what to say to compliments like that. She continued to lie there on her back - she couldn't move much anyway - and tried to play off what he said like it didn't faze her. Torren must have been able to tell that she wasn't going to break the silence this time, so he spoke again.

'Would you like to talk more about Gither?'

"Yeah, I would.

Torren waited patiently.

"It's just hard, you know? Starting, I mean. I like starting talks with people, but this is different. I do want to tell you. It just feels kind of... final. It's something that matters to me and it's something that's personal to me.

"Last time I talked about this stuff must have been... Wow, it was that time 5 months ago, wasn't it?

I guess then it was a lot easier because you had just seen that fight between us. I felt like I had to explain myself. That way it wouldn't seem as much like I had just kicked my brother who had watched over me my whole life out for some stranger who seemed like they had just been in some vicious fight. No offense, but you didn't seem quite as charming then."

'Charming?' Torren teased.

The blush that had just faded came rushing straight back to the little otter's cheeks.

"Friendly! I meant friendly," Reya said exasperatedly, "I guess that is a sort of good place to start. With when Gither left. I wasn't really that worried, you know? We had been fighting a lot. We looked a lot happier than we were - I was taught from a young age not to misbehave or fight around strangers. Anyway, I never mentioned this, but I actually ran away from the den about a year before you showed up.

"I went to the west. I didn't want to go back. Gither was just too overbearing and I was out of my mind. I was restless from being stuck around him so much and I was absolutely fed up with how overbearing he was being.

"He didn't even try to find me. I was gone almost half a week - it turns out that surviving on your own is a lot more difficult than I expected - and when I came back he was beyond furious. I think he almost kicked me out of the den, he was so angry."

'Why didn't he try to find you since he was so protective?'

"Well, I say that he didn't try to find me. That's probably wrong. If I know Gither, he got some creature to follow me. It's a small town though, and I never got a confession from anyone so I can't really be sure. Whether he did or didn't follow me, I realized then just how much I hated... No, I didn't hate him. You know what I mean though. I was just bursting with anger and frustration. If I were younger and more immature I probably would have knocked down and torn apart everything I could see. You know, maturity is just the restraint to not do those things you really want to do, and you have no idea how much I wanted to blow up in Gither's face and tear the place apart.

"Anyway, the fact that Gither wasn't showing any emotion other than anger at my disobedience was really setting me off. I mean, it may have just been half a week. And he may have known exactly where I was anyway, but it was really upsetting me anyway. You know, the point to this whole thing - other than setting up a bit of backstory on why I've been so upset with him - is that when I finally confronted him and demanded to know why he wasn't even the slightest bit happy that I'd chosen to come back and continue to live miserably under his iron paw, he said that he knew I'd come back. That's it. He knew I'd come back.

"That also made me really angry, but you don't need to hear more about that. I just shrugged it off and started being as cold as I possibly could towards him. I'd answer him with one word answers when he talked to me. I wouldn't start conversations with him! You know how much I talk to people! Well, he barely heard ten words out of me over the course of a month.

"I gradually started talking to him more again after that. I didn't like it though. Most of the times we talked, at least in private, were fights. Who left the lid off of the flour so that moths could get inside? Who used twice the amount of some stupid expensive herb than she needed to? Who couldn't give a rat's rear end about what that stupid otter thought? Me.

"I really said that well, didn't I?" Reya giggled a bit despite the subject matter, "like some bard from the misty isle come in to tell a story. Well, I think those last few lines at least were pretty great."

'And you say I have an ego,' Torren taunted.

Reya snorted. "If it was you telling the story, you'd have already conquered half the kingdom."

'Since when have I ever told stories?' Torren protested. He was right, really. The spotted otter didn't talk that much. Reya's jabs about his egotism were honestly more teasing him about the fact that he rarely talked about himself at all. In fact, Reya thought he might have been one of the least self-centered creatures she knew. However, the competition wasn't all that fierce, strictly speaking. He was up against the likes of Artaaga and Weisk.

She had asked Torren about his life before, but he always dodged the question and Reya was never good at pursuing it. She was usually too eager to jump on whatever topic he brought up and let it turn into a conversation. She didn't mind, anyway. If he didn't want to talk about things, that was his business. She did however wonder if she couldn't get him to talk a bit.

"Well, why don't you tell one right now?" Reya asked with a smile on her face.

'Because you still haven't said why you're so hung up on staying here.'

"Haven't I?" Reya looked confused for a moment. "Oh, I guess that's right. I didn't explain it very well, I think. What he said sort of resonated with me. I mean about knowing I'd come back. Its kind of stupid, but I feel the same way. I want him to come back. I think he will because my mind tells me that he couldn't have hated me that much, you know?

"I'm being dumb. I don't think he hated me. I just... It was awful. We couldn't get along and we were always so angry with each other. Anyway, I think that I just thought that even with all that bad air between us, he would still be there for me. I guess he really did abandon me. I guess its ok if I leave. It helps to talk these things out, though. You know, last time I did this I ended up crying, didn't I? I guess that shows how little I've grown to care for him. Or maybe I'm just an awful person."

Torren looked like he was about to say something, but Reya cut him off. She didn't need him to correct her on that.

"Now, about that story of yours."

'Not happening.'

"Couldn't hurt to try."

'I can talk about Talip, though. That was the agreement.'

"I don't know if I want to make myself more upset right now."

'That's fine. I'll have Aris explain it later.'

"Ok. I think I'm going to pass out now. Healing makes your body tired, and I need to heal a lot right now."

'Sure thing. Aris and I need to investigate the basement a bit more anyway.'

"Well, let me know what you find, ok?"

'Of course.'

Reya fell asleep without an issue when she let herself relax into the bed. She quickly forgot all of her aches and pains and she left all of her worries and concerns behind her.

She dreamt that she was a ranger. She was in the forest, green cloak covering her small body as she wove stealthily through the tree. Reya called out for someone. Torren! She was calling out for Torren.

"Where are you!" She cried, "Come back!"

The forest was quiet. She scrambled through the brush and the trees, faster and faster. She had to find him. She had to. But she could smell the smoke. Smoke filling the air and her lungs. Smoke was everywhere. She turned, about to run for her life.

When she turned around, the spotted otter was on the ground in front of her. Blood ran from his fur. Gither stood over him.

"I told you that you shouldn't have gotten involved with him. Now look at what happened."

Reya couldn't look away from his face. She couldn't look away from the blood dripping from Gither's maw. Torren's blood. Tears were dripping down her cheeks. Gither stepped forward. His sharp teeth clenched around her neck.

Reya woke up screaming. She hadn't had a nightmare like that in years. She looked around just in time to see Torren jump up onto her bed.

'What's wrong? Did your arm move?'

"N-no, I'm fine," she said that, but she didn't mean it. Reya felt like her dreams knew exactly how to make her feel as awful as she could possibly feel. "It was just a nightmare."

'Oh.' Torren lay down next to her, unable to talk with his head resting on his front paws. Somehow Reya appreciated that gesture more than anything he could have said. Gither would have been probing her for what was wrong and trying to figure out what bits of her were messed up and causing her nightmares.

"You wouldn't run off like Gither did, would you?"

Torren shook his head no.