But he doesn't take the star. He doesn't grab my hand.
He moves with an agonizing, impossible slowness. His eyes are locked on mine, his red gaze burning with an emotion I cannot name.
The tip of his largest, sharpest claw... it touches my fingers. Just a brush. A light, scraping, gentle press of black claw against my pale skin, right beside the wooden star.
It is a connection. A choice.
A horn.
A single, panicked blast from the village watch post.
The sound shatters the moment.
Threk is on his feet, a ten-foot shadow of rage, the red haze flooding his eyes, his growl a sound that shakes my bones.
"Raiders!" The shout is thin, terrified, from the center of the village. "Raiders at the palisade! Human raiders!"
6
BETTY
The horn’s blast is a raw, panicked scream of animal terror. It is followed by another, closer. Human screams. The thin, piercing shriek of a woman—Old Lara, from the hovel nearest the palisade. A man’s guttural shout, "To arms! Gods, they're?—"
The voice is cut short by a wet, sickening thud.
The sounds of chaos erupt, a tidal wave of noise crashing against my small hovel. Steel clanging, a rhythmic, heavy thump-thump-thump of a ram against the main gate. The splintering crash of the weaker, older section of the palisade giving way.
Threk is on his feet.
He is a giant wall of tensed, gray-green muscle, looming between me and the door. His growl is no longer a rumble. It is a low, continuous earthquake, a tectonic promise of violence that vibrates through the packed-earth floor, up through the soles of my boots, and into my bones.
He is not looking at me. His entire body is coiled, his massive, scarred head lowered, his feral red eyes fixed on the rattling door. His breath is a hot, hissing bellows. He is a living weapon, primed and aimed.
Then it hits me.
The smell.
Thick, acrid, biting. Not the clean, warm scent of my own small hearth. This is pine and dry thatch and old wood, burning too fast. This is the smell of chaos.
Woodsmoke.
My lungs seize. The air is stolen from my body.
I am not here.
I am not in my hovel. The memory washes over me.
The small wooden star drops from my fingers, landing with a soundless puff in the dirt. My hand, the one he just touched, flies to my hair, my fingers tangling, twisting, pulling. My scalp screams, a sharp, distant pain, but it's not enough. It can't anchor me.
The world dissolves.
The air is thick with ash. The air is orange. The screams are not my neighbors. They are my mother's.
“Run, Betty! Run! Take your brother and RUN!”
My father’s voice, raw with terror. He shoves me. Shoves me toward the door, toward the snow, toward life.
“Mama?” My little brother’s voice, thin and confused. “It’s too hot, Mama. I can’t breathe.”
