The thicket rustled as Quiet’s dark tail tip vanished from view. Clay sat there, shocked to stillness, staring with his mouth agape like everyone else. Another laden silence stole over the three meer. I can’t believe it, Clay’s mind spun, he wouldn’t actually- he can’t be- he’s not going to do it, is he?

Clay gulped as the moments passed and his groupmate didn’t return.

It was again Suri who ventured to speak first. “Great, this is just great. Males and their egos,” she mumbled under her breath before raising her voice. “Quiet! Wait, Quiet!” Then she was plunging back through the thicket. Clay didn’t hesitate to go after her and Haywood again brought up the rear, though he seemed too stunned to add his own yells to Suri’s.

“Quiet!” Suri emerged, shaking thorns and burs out of her fur. Clay popped up beside her, standing on his hindlegs to scan the area. There were no signs of Quiet. Only a couple of bickering ground squirrels and the grass beyond the No-End Path swaying.

“He’s gone.” Clay muttered, falling back onto his haunches, at a loss. “I can’t believe he actually went.”

Suri dropped down to all fours as well and rounded on him. “You’re the one who dared him to do this, Clay! How could you be so stupid?”

He’d never seen her so angry and balked. “I didn’t know-”

“Oh yes, you did!” Suri insisted and Clay found her ire much harder to bare than Quiet’s had been. He lifted a paw and leaned away from her. “You never would’ve challenged him if you didn’t think he’d do it!”

“No, really, I didn’t mean-” His whiskers juddered he held them so tense.

“Are you trying to get him killed?” Suri commanded.

Clay swallowed and took a measured breath. “No, Suri, I promise you that wasn’t my intention. I just…” He averted his gaze.

“You wanted to make him look foolish by giving him a challenge he’d have to refuse? You wanted to humiliate him as he humiliated you?”

“Yes,” Clay answered quietly, the chastened feeling creeping up on him.

Suri’s sigh was ragged. “I’m tired of your rivalry with Quiet. I am not a piece of ground to be fought over and won. I’m sorry that he has been cruel to you, but what you’ve done today was cruel as well. Your feud ends now, do you understand?”

Clay nodded glumly, scratching at the back of his head with a forepaw. Suri stalked to the other side of the thicket, her tail arched, and crouched at the edge of the branches. Not even the whining breeze rapping on the side of her snout deterred her from staring out at the No-End Path.

Clay slumped and settled in to wait, hoping that Quiet would realize how hopeless his task was and return to them soon. Despite all the taunting and bullying, Clay didn’t want to see the other pup hurt. A soft nose nudged his shoulder and then Haywood’s teeth began to nibble him. Clay relaxed under his friend’s grooming. As the day wore on, he started to doze on and off. At one point he caught Suri’s gaze and stood to approach her, but her glare hardened until he laid back down again. When Haywood finished grooming Clay, he moved on to run his teeth through her fur. Clay almost resented that Haywood was allowed near her, and he wasn’t. He rested his head on his paws, even more lost than before.

Evening colored the sky red. A flock of birds streaked overhead too high to tell what they were. A vulture followed them, it's dark shape circling lazily above Dragon’s Lair and leaving Clay with a pit of dread in his stomach. Haywood’s head rested across his shoulders, bocking Clay’s side from the quickly cooling air. Several paces away Suri shivered, her coarse fur fluffed. Clay edged to one side until Haywood’s chin slipped from his shoulders to rest on the cool sand, but his friend didn’t wake. Once free Clay stood and shook out his pelt.

Suri tensed as he pressed his side to hers, crouching, but said nothing. He looked at her, golden fur and bright amber gaze, admiring and apologetic. At last, she spoke. “I’m sorry, Clay.”

“No.” Clay shook his head and touched his nose lightly to her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Suri turned to rub her cheek to his, sharing scent. “It’s alright. The dare was stupid, but I guess…” She sighed. “I’d hoped that Quiet was intelligent enough to realize that.”

“His ego got the best of him.” Clay murmured, just as mine got the best of me.

She chuckled and tightened her tail around her paws. “Doesn’t it always?” They fell into a comfortable silence and Clay listened to the crickets calling. It was a lyrical, chirping tune, that would’ve put him to sleep had the cold not been seeping through his pelt to breathe on his skin.

“How long should we wait?” Clay asked as the sun fell behind the horizon. At the edges the sky was melting from a bloody red to bleak navy. A single star winked to life, looking small and infinitely distant.

Suri lifted her snout to look at it, eyes glazed with concern. “I don’t know.”

For the first time Clay entertained the possibility that Quiet wasn’t coming back and prayed. Star, my ancestors of The Before Us, all the meer who’ve ever walked this desert please protect Quiet and bring him back to us. I can’t be responsible for a groupmate’s death… how am I supposed to lead when I always say the wrong thing?

Both Clay and Suri were staring at that single star, lost in thought, when Haywood uttered an urgent rasp. “Quiet.”

Clay’s head swiveled to see his friend blinking groggily. “Haywood? What is it?”

Haywood’s orange eyes widened. “Quiet!” He scrambled to his paws. “Quiet!”

Clay and Suri sprang to their paws and saw him. Quiet was staggering towards them from the direction of the No-End Path. His head drooped, his tail dragged, and his paws looked too heavy to lift. He was barely recognizable, and Clay was reminded of how he himself had looked after Click dragged him from the clay pit, his pelt slicked with muck.

Except Quiet wasn’t covered in clay, his fur was matted and dripping with blood. He collapsed before he reached them.

Suri was the first to break out of the horrified stupor that had descended upon them with talons icier than an owl’s. Clay and Haywood pounded after her. Quiet was shuddering on his side, his flanks quivering as he gasped. Two winding, thick claw marks ripped his chest. Blood gushed from the wounds with each breath. Superficial but also bloody bites dotted his flanks and sides. His dark brown eyes rolled and wouldn’t focus, his nose and whiskers twitched. When he tried to speak, he gagged.

A thick, cloying scent clung to him that made Clay feel faint. He wished he could close his eyes and open them to discover that he was still dreaming under the acacia tree. In a single moment his life had transformed into a waking night terror. Watching Quiet struggle to breathe, his own heart seized violently. If Quiet died, would he be held responsible? What kind of future leader sent a groupmate to his death?

Clay gulped his throat dry and paw pads clammy. He willed himself to take charge and do something instead of just standing there but his legs wouldn’t move.

He startled when Suri barked. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

“How?” Haywood panted as if he’d just sprinted to Delta Territory and back.

Suri’s eyes scanned the landscape. “The grass over there!” She pointed with her snout. “We’ll use it to clog the wounds for now.” The explanation had barley left her lips when Clay and Haywood dashed over to a patch of grass. The strands were a bitter pale green, going brittle with the onset of the dry season. They dug along the base of a tussock each. Flinging a cloud of sand behind them. Clay had little trouble wrenching a clump out of the sand and holding the strands gently in his teeth, so they didn’t break. Haywood did the same and they rejoined their companions.

Suri took the grass and padded it into Quiet’s chest wounds. Quiet sputtered and twitched but didn’t have the energy to move away or cry out. Clay flexed his claws, feeling helpless. Finally, the bleeding slowed, and Suri propped him up. Clay crouched and Haywood maneuvered the injured meer onto Clay’s shoulders.

Quiet was heavier than he had expected, and his knees threatened to buckle. Come on, Clay urged himself, come on! He managed to straighten and as he took his first step Quiet’s blood dribbled into his fur. The other pup’s head lolled, flopping to the side of Clay’s neck. Suri steadied Quiet, propping his forepaws onto Clay’s shoulders, and sliding over his flanks. Clay staggered another pace, jostling Quiet again. Haywood rushed to his other side and pressed against him.

“Clay…” Quiet gasped, his nose bouncing beside his ear. His voice was strained and hardly there. “Where are… are we… going?”

Moving faster Clay muttered, “Home, Quiet. We’re taking you home.”

*****

Clay’s pelt itched, he could feel a flea crawling over his skin right between his shoulders, but he couldn’t reach it. The group milled about, some standing on their hindlegs with their dark-skinned stomachs facing the sun to absorb any and all warmth. Others kept warm by doing chores and upkeep on the burrow area. Suri was one of the active meer digging out a burrow entrance, sand piling up as she shoveled big pawfuls between her hindlegs. Early dawn light spread pink feathers across the lingering gray of twilight as Clay made his way over to the meer who would one day be his mate.

“Suri.” He peered down the broad slope of the hole. She didn’t hear him and continued to dig. “Suri.”

Halting, her amber gaze found his. “Oh,” she mumbled, “Clay. I’m kind of busy here.”

He studied her face and she looked down at her paws, her chest heaving from the exertion. “Maybe you could take a break?”

She shifted from paw to paw. Above them a blackbird swooped, clacking its beak raucously and Suri jumped. “I don’t know…”

Clay jumped down beside her and pressed his flank to hers. She sighed and nudged her nose under his chin. He nibbled her ear. “I just wanted to know how Quiet’s doing.”

“His bleeding stopped, but now he’s developed a fever. Marsh says that if he does survive, he’ll always have scars.”

Clay shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. “Have they identified what attacked him?”

Suri’s lips twitched downward. “They think-”

“Powers!” Ripper’s deep, sharp bark summoned. “Gather!”

Clay and Suri jumped over the lip of the hole and padded to join the crowd of their family members. Ripper perched on the edge of a raised flat boulder mostly buried by sand. It was strange seeing the dominant male up there without Marsh by his side, from the murmurings of his groupmates Clay thought they felt the same. He found a spot on the spriggy grass at the rim of the gathered meer with Suri at his side. Haywood wriggled his way over to join them and fidgeted at Clay’s side.

Clay placed a paw on his friend’s shoulder. “How are you?”

Haywood just stared at the back of the meer in front of them. “I wish Sniffle were here.” He whispered eventually and Clay’s heart ached for his friend. Not for the first time he wondered why it was fair for Haywood and Quiet to be separated from their mother while he got to be near Click. Sniffle, wherever she was, probably didn’t even know that her son was hurt.

And what if Quiet died? He wouldn’t get to see his mother one last time… Clay swallowed the thickness building in his throat.

“Friends,” Ripper began when the whole family was present. “As I’m sure you’ve heard one of our own has been attacked.”

“What happened?” Someone shouted.

“He was following the No-End Path-”

Clay tensed, preparing for Ripper to tell the whole ill-fated tale where Clay was not the heroic aspiring dominant male that he tried to be and instead was the villain. “It was the bold idea of a pup trying to prove himself.” Ripper explained with a sad shake of his broad head. “He got it into his mind that he could find the path’s end, obviously his journey ended before the path did.”

Clay released a breath he didn’t know he was holding and glanced at Suri. “You didn’t tell them about the…?” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the word dare.

Suri’s flank bumped his and she peered at him out of the corner of her eye. “No, I didn’t.”

“Why?” Clay blinked, stunned, he’d assumed she’d tell her parents everything.

“There’s no point in ruining their opinion of you for good.” She said quietly into her chest.

Whiskers falling, Clay looked back up at Ripper. Were they really so disappointed in him because of the clay pit? He’d spent every day since trying to prove he was brave enough, smart enough, and powerful enough to rule the family by Suri’s side. Nothing he did seemed to be enough.

“It is only due to the strength and quick thinking of two of our own that Quiet made it home to us alive.” Ripper was saying when Clay started listening again. The dominant male’s brown eyes flashed with pride and the small scar at the side of his mouth rippled as his whiskers twitched. “Suri, Clay, could you stand?”

Suri rose at an elegant pace, not too fast or too slow. Clay was a heartbeat behind, his pulse beginning to throb. His expression was slack and dull as several heads turned to look at them. His fur burned under the weight of their stares. “Without Suri’s leadership and Clay’s strength Quiet wouldn’t be here with us now, so on the behalf of the family, thank you. Quiet’s lucky you were there.”

Clay nearly choked. Ripper was praising him, after moons of speculation over his future in the family, this is what made him believe in his understudy again? Suri brushed her tail down his side, and he sat down in a heap as if his legs couldn’t support him anymore. The gratitude he’d felt for Suri leaving out his role in Quiet’s stupid quest morphed into regret. Guilt pummeled his heart with furious paws, and he opened his mouth to announce that he didn’t deserve any praise, in fact this was all his fault-

A different voice broke into his thoughts and Clay paused with his mouth agape. “Do we know what attacked him?” If was Click, at the front of the crowd his mother looked up at Ripper.

The dominant male went stiff, his claws digging into the stone, and whiskers rigid. His dark gaze surveyed the group, mouth set in a hard, inscrutable line. The fur of his nape stood on end, and he lifted his slender snout as if he were trying to display confidence, but the movement was jerky. Clay’s own fur prickled with unease. Beside him Suri was tense, her neck stretched to watch her father. Haywood was wide-eyed and trembling with anxious anticipation. Recalling the cloying odor and the thick gouges on Quiet’s chest Clay imaged that whatever predator had found the six-moon-old pup wasn’t something to be trifled with. And yet, nothing prepared him for what Ripper said next.

“Yes.” Ripper’s bark echoed through the still morning air, the sky outlining him in a flush of pink. “We know what attacked Quiet.” His swallow was audible. There was a pregnant pause and then Ripper’s gaze flashed with resolve.

“It was a leopard.”