She couldn't help it. Piri's mouth watered. 

"No hazelnuts," Mama had said. "We don't have enough to trade for hazelnuts. Just get acorns today."

Just one, then.

Piri stood on the opposite end of the market--she couldn't even see the hazelnut stand through the mass of twitching whiskers, bushy tails, and flamboyant hats, but she smelled them. They were roasted hazelnuts. Piri pushed her way through the crowd, the empty baskets mounted over her back swinging gently against her fur, and a third basket handle in her mouth full of tinctures. These tinctures were to trade just for food; her mama didn't trust her to trade for ingredients.

The skee at the hazelnut stand gestured angrily at a customer standing to the side as Piri approached. 

"...and they looked me in the eye and said, 'fucking squirrel." Can you believe that? It called me a squirrel! Do I look like a squirrel?"

To most forest creatures, skee did look like squirrels--the size, the bushy tails, and fuzzy fur--but skee have much bigger heads and eyes and also come in better colors.

The customer shook her head apologetically. "It would be one thing if you had brown fur," Piri twitched her brown nose in contempt at that," but you're gold. How could anyone mistake you for one of those idiot creatures?"

"Exactly. And then the bastard took off with all of the mushrooms I'd spent my morning collecting."

"Honestly, I've never even heard of a wyvern interested in mushrooms."

"It probably was just trying to piss me off. You know what? It probably knew that I was a skee and called me a fucking squirrel to make me angry. And it's worked! I hope those mushrooms poison him. I hope he bleeds out his asshole for weeks and dies painfully.

"I hope you weren't collecting poisonous mushrooms, Pororo," the customer chuckles.

Pororo folds her arms. "They would only be poisonous to wyverns."

Piri moved closer and cleared her throat then sat back on her hind legs and took the basked of bottles out of her mouth. Pororo looked at her and brightened. "I've got some fresh-roasted hazelnuts this morning! You know, they're fabulous with the dandelion root tea on the other side there." She gestured across the road. 

"That does sound delightful." Piri nodded and lifted the basket. "Do you have anything that ails you?"

Pororo squinted at the basket. "You got anything that keeps ailment away?"

Piri pulled out a bottle with a reddish liquid and a few leaves floating in it. "I have a wisefruit tonic. My mama forces me to take a spoonful of it every day and I haven't been sick in years. Ho about this for three hazelnuts?"

Pororo snorted. "Roasting these takes just as much time and effort as a tincture. I'll do two hazelnuts for one bottle."

Piri knew that the fairest trade would be a slightly bigger bottle for three hazelnuts or the bottle she had for two and a half nuts, but she was already bored of haggling and the nuts smelled too good to resist much longer. "All right," she set the bottle on the counter between them which had been carved directly out of a stump, Pororo had taken the middle from the stump so that a line of golden-brown nuts waited behind her, and a small, metal roaster glowed behind that, currently roasting a nut. That must have been where the smell was wafting from. 

Pororo took the bottle and placed it under the counter on her side then grabbed the two smallest hazelnuts from behind her, one tucked under each arm. 

Piri narrowed her eyes. "I think the two large ones on the end would suffice better. My mama had to travel for a day to get the ingredients for that."

"You should have said so before you gave it to me." Pororo set the nuts on the counter. "If you don't like it, you can gather and cook these nuts yourself."

Piri glared as she turned to place one of the nuts in one of the baskets over her back. Two baskets hung on either side of her, secured with a belt around her middle. The baskets rotated to orient when she stood on all fours or sat up on her haunches. She put the second hazelnut in the other basket, then picked up the basket of tinctures in her mouth and walked off without a farewell. Mama was going to be angry with this when she got home, but maybe she wouldn't send Piri out to shop again any time soon. And the hazelnuts would be delicious.

Piri continued down the street. Why did the acorn stall have to be on the opposite side of Tokensaturn from her home? It was late enough in the morning that the early rush was mostly over, but plenty of skee still skittered this way and that and the sounds of chatting, arguing, and bartering bounced off of the canopy of trees above them. Piri's baskets kept bumping into the baskets of others. One woman wearing an obscenely large, blue, hat with a feather longer than her body and tail combined swung around and smacked Piri in the face with the feather. She didn't apologize and Piri smoldered about it the rest of her walk.

The acorn stall was inside of an oak tree on the far end of Tokensaturn, run by a particularly savvy red skee named Woft Thofu Fwiletof that had claimed the tree for himself and had set his family on gathering every single acorn that grew or fell from the tree. His front foot had a white patch on it that climbed up almost the entirety of his forearm, signaling to every skee in the city that he truly was a selfish bastard. It seemed to Piri that Fwiletof was proud of the damned mark. If Piri had a mark like that, she would have worn gloves at all times, or dyed one of her other feet white. 

She didn't like seeing Fwiletof. He reminded her of her own white patch of fur--one hidden between the first and second toes of her left, back foot. Hidden, but there none the less. She was not proud of it, and only she and her mother knew it was there at all.

Fwiletof's kittens scurried around the tree, up and down and around, gathering ripe acorns from the ground and branches of the beautiful oak. One young skee dropped the nuts to the ground while another retrieved them and placed them in a large cart he pulled behind himself. A small line of other customers formed around a hollow at the base of the tree where Fwiletof stood, trading. Maybe Piri was making it up, but from a distance it looked like Fwiletof was waving his red and white paw around like a prize-winning jam. Piri approached the back of the line.

A brown skee at the front of the line argued with Fwiletof. Something about prices. Probably all four of the skee in front of Piri would argue as well and Piri would be here until late afternoon. There had to be a better way to exchange goods than this constant bickering. Piri peered around to watch anyway. There was nothing better to do while she waited.

The brown skee had placed a potato the size of their head in front of Fwiletof, and Fwiletof appeared to be offering only one acorn in return. Piri raised her eyebrows.

"This potato is three times as much food as that!" the brown skee insisted. "You're just trying to steal food from the rest of us."

"Fwiletof folded his arms and sat up a little taller. "If you don't like it, find your own acorns."

The closest oak was a day's walk away, a day's walk back, and of a different species that tasted dry and bland. If anyone went to the trouble of harvesting those acorns, they would have to trade just as high as Fwiletof was asking.

"This is completely unfair. I refuse." The skee picked up his potato and put it on top of a wagon with three other potatoes and marched off with it, quivering with anger. "We don't have to put up with this, you know. These trades are too high! Don't get anything from this crooked squirrel."

The rest of the skee in line shifted uncomfortably. Piri windered if Mama would be more upset if she came home with no acorns or if she paid far too much for them. Two skee followed the wagon of potatoes. 

"Wait!" Fwiletof called. "I'll give you two acorns!"

The skee kept walking.

Piri decided that it might be better to get some seeds instead and also walked away from the oak tree. Piri knew she would end up trading five tinctures for just two acorns if the day continued as it had.

"Ho there!"

Several skee, including Piri, turned to look and see a group of bedraggled skee entering town. It looked like maybe thirty. Several of them carried baskets, but if they were here to trade, that hadn't much more than crumbs to offer.

A black skee in the front sat up on her haunches. "Is this Tokensaturn City?"

Piri nodded, and a few others from the crowd nodded or said yes. Piri moved closer, ears forward. The travelers smelled foreign, less like oak and more like pine. They must have come from the west.

They seemed to be relieved to hear where they had arrived. The black skee smiled wearily. Piri noted that the left-most toe on each of her feet was a stark white against the black of her coat, and a large white spot covered her chest as if the display of inherent selflessness indicated by her paws weren't enough. Despite the situation, Piri felt herself burn with envy. This skee probably oozed charisma and gained respect and admiration wherever she went, something brown-furred, one-spotted Piri would never have.

"We seek safety. May we speak to your council?" The black and white skee said.

The Tokensaturn skee murmured amongst themselves. Winter was close. Sharing resources with thirty new skee would be difficult.

Piri thought of Fwilentof's horde of acorns. He could house at least half of these skee just on his tree alone, and she decided she would suggest as much to the council.

"I'll take you," she said loudly.

All the other skee turned to look at Piri. She hadn't expected this reaction and so she stammered, "It's just right up the road," as if their shock was about what a difficult task she had undertaken instead of who the task was for.

One skee put a paw on her shoulder and whispered, "We don't know anything about these people. The council has better things to do."

The only time Piri had visited the council they'd been snacking on nuts and nibbling fermented fruits. She shrugged off the hand and stubbornly approached the black skee. "The council is this way." She gestured up the road.

"Thank you," the black skee said. "My name is Ruk Yupo Risipo."

Piri started walking. "Mine's Kor Piri." She hadn't received her third name yet. She would in just two short weeks when her apprenticeship to the local lamp-maker began.

Piri sensed Risipo and the others appraising her--and really everyone else in the street too--as the company made their way to a large sycamore tree in the center of town. She felt far too aware of what looked like--a brown skee with no marking at all, the most boring thing a person could possibly be. Piri had never been able to decide if this or if her single white foot displayed for everyone to see would be worse. In contrast to Risipo's dignified black coat and four white toes, Piri felt even plainer. Everyone stared as this strange procession, and she hated how they would be summing her up against this mysterious stranger.

"So," Piri ended their silence against the murmurs of the crowd, "where are you from?"

Risipo sighed deeply. "The west," was all she said.

Piri got the sense something terrible had happened. "Oh. What brings you to Tokensaturn? We see lots of tourists and caravans, you know."

Risipo was looking around at the tall trees, each littered with entrances to skee homes, and the bustling marketplace on the ground, the scents of rosemary and hazelnut wafting on the breeze. "I can see why. I don't think I've ever seen so many hats in one place." 

Not every skee wore a hat, like Piri, but many did, piling dried berries or long feathers or patches of fur from forest creatures onto their heads like little trophies. "Tokensaturn is the biggest skee city. Probably even the biggest city in all of Kelunbar."

Risipo nodded. Piri didn't know why she'd bothered to say that. Everyone knew about Tokensaturn.

She didn't say anything else for a while and eventually launched up a small tree trunk and ran up to a connecting branch. The party of skee followed her onto a larger branch attached to the center sycamore tree. The branch they now stood on was seven skee wide and the bark was smooth from traffic. An oval entrance had been carved into the trunk at the end of this branch. It was perfectly symmetrical, in contrast to the natural door frames most skee had. Two brown skee leaned on either side of it, staring in surprise and confusion.

Risipo placed a paw on Piri's shoulder. "I wish I could offer you more than my thanks, but my thanks you have."

"Um...no problem," Piri replied, a little confused about why such a simple task seemed so extraordinary to literally everyone else. Risipo approached the guards, and the other skee followed, several also offering thanks to Piri.

Piri shifted her weight back and forth, trying to decide whether or not she should stay. Mama would be expecting her home soon and she wasn't close to done with shopping.

Her tail bristled. She'd left the basket of tinctures sitting in the middle of the marketplace.

"You look like someone smacked you with a stick."

Piri twitched. One of the refugees at the end of the line stood next to her. She had orangey fur that Piri was sure would have shimmered in the dappled light if it wasn't covered in the dust of travel. Piri twitched her ears and blinked to get ahold of herself. "It's just that I realized I left my basket in the market and my mama is going to kill me if I lose her tinctures and I'm not sure if I should stay here and--"

"I'll go back with you," the orange skee offered.

"You don't have to do that." Piri sat up in surprise.

"I know. It's just been..." she lowered her voice and leaned toward Piri, "just been stuffy, I guess, to be with my village for so long."

"Oh. Okay." 

The skee waited for Piri to say more, but Piri didn't know what else to say. "Do we need to hurry?" the orange skee prompted.

"Yes!" Piri stood up. "Wait. What's your name?"

"Oh yeah." The two started to walk away from the council entrance. "It's Ruk Yuni Desiri. I didn't catch yours."

"Kor Piri. Isn't the black skee also Ruk?"

"That's my sister." Desiri's ears twitched as they scurried down the smaller tree.

"This may be rude to say, but that seems like a lot to live up to." Piri was intimidated by Risipo just by being near her. Having to live in her shadow seemed miserable.

"It's fine." Desiri's voice pitched upward. "I mean, it's not like people should expect much from me anyway."

Piri stopped and looked at the orange skee. "You're orange! Of course people should expect great things from you." All of the most brilliant scientists, artists, and inventors had been orange. 

"Well, yes, but..." Desiri didn't stop walking and Piri had to catch up.

Desiri never finished her sentence and Piri decided it would be rude to ask about it. Instead, she opted for, "So why are you all in Tokensaturn?"

"We had to escape."

"Escape what?"

Desiri lowered her voice to a whisper so Piri had to slow down and lean in to hear. "The forest is dying. It's strange. Like, trees will be fine one day and the next they're completely dry and their leaves are on the ground. I don't want to keep talking about it."

Piri frowned. It must be hard for Desiri and the others, but if the forest was dying it shouldn't be a secret. They should be warning everyone. "Is it spreading?" Piri asked.

Desiri nodded.

"How fast? Why is it happening?"

Desiri shrugged.

Piri exhaled sharply. She had more questions. Now she wished she was sitting in on the council meeting, getting real answers. And she wanted to hear about solutions. Plans. Desiri's short explanation left her feeling anxious. "Is that your whole village?" she prodded.

"Look, let's just find your damned basket so I can get back to my village. I said I don't want to talk." Desiri walked on ahead, ears flattened.

Piri growled but followed.