Eiriol's Adventure

Eiriol almost never tensed any more when she time-travelled. The feeling was almost like being in an elevator: it upset her sense of proprioception so that for a moment she couldn't tell which way was up. Her insides all felt like they didn't know what to do, probably as a result of the lack of gravity she knew affected her in this in-between place. She breathed (at first she'd breathed to calm herself down. Now she did it out of sheer reflex) and looked at her watch.

Years forward: 8... 9... 10. She'd taken herself a decade into the future to check out her, and the Susus', hypothesis. To see what the world looked like in the face of their claim.

Re-materialize: Stage 1  The world reappeared around her and it was ghostly, half-solid, translucent and almost jelly-like in texture. She had a preliminary look around. The mangrove swamp hadn't changed height much since she'd last been there and the only real difference - admittedly quite a big difference - was that the trees looked dead. The water lay brown, still and flat. It looked okay for her to solidify.

Re-materialize: Stage 2 Y/N She pressed her time-travel device to signal Yes and touched down in the future world.

It was... She looked around in shock. The mangroves had died, but there was no longer any emerald green beyond it, just barren darkness. "The whole forest. Oh my god," she murmured to herself in horror. "The whole forest!"

Her legs shaking slightly, she trotted back the way she'd come, back to the river.

It was bare, nothing but mud, except for the leaf-less skeletons of trees on the banks. It all looked so brown. Eri slumped to her knees as the horror crept up on her.

What had happened to the Susu?

She ran her hands over her face as she took in the enormity of it all as best she could. Don't panic. You know that the snakes are disappearing and that that probably caused this. So, how? And what can I do about that?

Stop the snakes going extinct seemed to be the obvious solution. Eri tried to think of any other hypothesis, any at all, that might have led to all this devastation. She couldn't think of anything. Then she tried thinking about how to to back and stop the snakes from dying. She'd seen it but didn't know what was killing them, so how could she-

She heard the subtlest noise behind her and turned around.

Tiger!

And a feral tiger at that, limbs coiled and ready to pounce. Eri thought fast, and did the first thing that came to her instinct-driven mind irrespective of whether it was the best thing to do: she spoke to it. "Hello," she said, and tried to breathe to let go of the tremble in her voice. "I'm trying to figure out what happened here. Do you know?" She was too scared not to shake.

The tiger's brows lowered in confusion, or perhaps suspicion. "What mean? I trap you."

She just about stopped herself from taking a step backwards into the river. He was a tiger, not just some hydrophobic cat. He'd follow her in if she went that way. "I'm talking about the foliage. Why are all the trees dead?"

His eyes flickered around but she detected a distinct lack of willingness to look away enough to risk his prey escaping. "Trees green many monsoons ago. Turn brown by river. All dead now."

What was that about the river? "Just by the river? You mean there are trees alive? Have you ever been far away from the river?"

The tiger growled and looked displeased. "Riverbank my territory. Fight for dry territory but fail." He turned sideways a little as if to indicate the line of the riverbank. She noticed that he was long enough that his change in posture didn't help give her a chance to escape, not at all. "Catch prey on edge of other ta'igara territory."

"Aren't there any fish to eat?" Eri asked, daring to relax slightly for the moment that the tiger looked distracted. She was surprised at how tightly her muscles had been clenched and frightened by how quickly they'd fatigued. If there was going to be a chase she'd need to be much more efficient than that.

"Fish. What is it?" he asked hopefully.

"You don't know what a fish is?" She was stunned. Keeping her eyes keenly on him she slowly took off her backpack (he watched her so closely, apparently torn between hope and suspicion) and rummaged inside for her nature guide, and hurriedly searched for a picture of a fish. Her heart beat frantically during the moments she took her eyes off him to look for a picture of a fish. "These," she said and carefully extended the book towards him, terrified that he was going to cut the conversation short and eat her at any time.

He stepped forward and eyed the picture. "How this creature walk?"

"They don't walk," she said, putting the book away. "They live in the river. Or they did, not any more."

He gave her a strange look again. "Nothing live in river. River dead. Feral folk story say anthro made river. Only way it can be so dead."

Indignation and sorrow vied for place in her chest. "Fish used to live here. There used to be lots of them."

"You lie. How they breathe?" the tiger looked offended and leaned away from her in apparent disgust.

Eri's brain ran at superspeed to work out whether that was a good turn of events or not. "They breathe using gills, little openings just here," she pointed to her neck.

He leaned away even more, his eyes, bright amber in colour, widened in something that may have been shock, and his nearside paw lifted off the ground as if to get further away from her. He pulled his lips back a little and lowered his ears.

"Underwater plants make that possible," she said in a husky whisper born of pure terror.

"Plant!" he growled in fury. "Plant underwater! You lie!" He stepped away, keeping the side of his body to her. "You sick! Sick thinking! Keep away! Out of territory, now!"

"Sure, sure..." she said and carefully stepped around him to get into dry land. They seemed almost to dance together, the tiger keen to keep away from her but also to watch her to make sure she did leave, lips peeled back to hiss and growl. She did her best to move slowly so as not to lose her footing and fall, just in case the quick movement spooked him or triggered his hunting instinct. But it was clear he didn't want her to go too slow.

She got past him and felt her way between the trees toward the mangrove swamp, her eyes on him for as much of the time as possible. There, she checked her device and with a shaking paw, pressed the first of the commands to take her back to the present day.

She heard the call of a monkey, not far away. With a final glance at the tiger she climbed up into the nearest mangrove tree and looked around for it. So the tiger was right: there was life in the rainforest, still!

She saw it, hanging by its hands from a branch up ahead. "Hey!" she called.

It spotted her and paused, although it didn't look particularly inclined to stay still for long.

"Have you ever heard of something called a snake?"

It looked doubtful - and a little fearful. "Snake. No."

"Uh - they're long, they don't have legs. They've got scaly skin."

It looked like it was trying to make sense of what she'd said. And then it said, "No. No snake here," and swung on through the trees.

She sighed and finished tapping in the instructions to her time-travel device.

xXx

She returned to the present and felt reassured to see the muddy water swish with the presence of the Susu.

One remained. It brought its head above the surface. She got the impression it was watching her, although it said nothing.

Eri sat down on a fallen log and tried to think, pushing her long hears back over her head and feeling the rough texture of her antlers with her fingers. "Okay," she said finally, more to herself than to the dolphin, who continued to loiter nearby. "The snakes have gone. They're disappearing. Not dying, disappearing. I'm convinced they're disappearing out of history. Something - or somefur - is changing history. Well, who'd that be?"

She tapped her time travel device.

Search: visits - recent additions

...

4 weeks ago [created by Eddie McFur 1 day ago] (She knew Ed. He was a colleague of hers. He was probably making small changes related to raising his teenage daughter.)

3 months, 2 weeks ago [created by Saffron West 3 days ago] (She worked at another institute. No worries, there.)

150 million years ago [created by Timothy Stripeson, 6 hours ago]

Wait, what?!

Eiriol blinked to clear her vision and make damn sure she hadn't misread. "Hey, get this: somefur visited one hundred and fifty million years ago."

If the Susu felt surprised by this then it expressed it only by sweeping water over its flank with its pectoral fin. More likely it simply didn't comprehend what she'd said. Ferals rarely understood numbers so big, and their grasp of the passage of time could be tenuous.

"I don't know who this Stripeson guy is," she continued, although she suspected she'd left the Susu far behind in this conversation and was effectively only talking to herself. "I think it might be worth checking what he's doing."

She chewed the inside of her lip and thought about what that meant. She could go back that far in time but it'd be dangerous. Potentially very dangerous.

And there'd be dinosaurs, scenery porn liek whoa and a whole lot of fun to be had. She came to a decision. "Right, I'm going."

She tapped the instructions in to her device.

xXx

The sheer size of the foliage thrilled her. That was one of the things she liked so much about visiting exotic places and times - the rainforest as much as the Jurassic period. She swam around in the soup-thick air, admiring the majesty of the translucent world materializing around her.

So this is the right time, she thought, looking again at her device. Now to find the right place. Where are you, Mr. Stripeson?

She checked his co-ordinates on her device. The data said he was one hundred and fifty-odd miles to the South East.

Well, then I guess I'd best get going.

One of the benefits of only half-manifesting in a world was that a fur had the ability to float easily through space, propelling themselves along by 'swimming' or 'flying' through space. So Eiriol spread her gliding wings, swept them back and propelled her tenuous self in Mr. Stripeson's direction.

The miles went by and with them red rocks, dusty sand, the hulking forms of dinosaurs, hardy trees and oversized insects. Eri resisted the impulse to stop and look at anything properly, though the temptation was strong, especially when she saw a hunt underway.

She had to find out who was ridding the modern world of snakes.

xXx

Several hours later she zeroed in on Mr. Stripeson's co-ordinates.

She saw him and swooped down to ground level. He was a badger, a decade or so older than herself, and hunting in the undergrowth with a long, stiff stick and a net which she instantly recognized as snake-catching equipment.

The jackalope turned in a circle, checking all around that it was safe to materialize fully. A herd of something long-necked grazed on palm-like trees around half a mile away. Chunky insects crawled along the ground, hiding in the foliage. It looked safe enough.

She solidified.

"Hello," she said.

Mr. Stripeson jumped and turned around. "Oh," he said, cleared his throat and did his best to regain an air of dignity. "Hello." And then he turned his back on her and continued rooting through the undergrowth.

"Can I ask what you're doing?" She knew what he was doing and she knew he knew what he was doing. But this seemed the most... non-confrontational way of dealing with the situation. She could toughen up about it if he chose to ignore her.

"I'm killing snakes," he said matter-of-factly without looking at her, his stocky grey shoulders working as he parted the bracken in search of his quarry.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." She paused.

He continued to hunt.

"Can I at least ask why?"

Thrash thrash. "You can consider me well and truly asked." He said nothing more, and then moved on to another patch of undergrowth.

Eiriol followed him over. "Let's start again, shall we? Why are you killing snakes?"

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, a movement so subtle she almost missed it. "The world will be safer for it."

This caught her off guard. "Safer?" she asked carefully.

"Snakes can kill." He caught one, trapped it under his net, took something from his utility belt and hit the snake with it.

Too late she saw that it was a rock. It came up covered in blood. He shook the net free of the snake's carcass and moved on.

Oh boy, how do I even start with this? "Mr. Stripeson..."

He turned around. "How do you know my name?"

She waved her wrist to show off her time travel device. "All users are registered." The next thing she was supposed to do in this situation was ask to see his time travel license. But something about him told her that he'd illicitly gained ownership. And that his reasons for being here came from the heart.

"You said the world would be safer without snakes. Who are you trying to protect?"

His dark eyes bored into hers for a moment and she wondered if he was going to tell her at all. Finally he answered: "My wife. Don't try to stop me. I need to do this." He turned around and started hunting again.

She thought, and then took off her rucksack and reached inside. "Fancy a break? I've got water."

xXx

Tim took a final swig and passed the bottle to Eiriol. As she had the last of it he gazed into the middle distance and watched a dinosaur with a very tough layer of scales on its back nibble on some sparse foliage in the reddening evening light.

"You're not going to convince me to let them live, you know."

She looked sadly at him. "Every one you kill changes something."

He grunted. "That was the idea."

She sighed and rested her temple against her paw, and idly played with the ear on that side as she tried to think of what to say next. Wait, is that shorter than I remember? She found her hand-mirror in her rucksack and checked. It was - her ears were shorter! "Uh, Tim..."

"Don't. Please, just... Save your words." His voice sounded a little strained.

"My ears."

"What do you mean, your... Oh. Oh goodness," he said, looking more closely. He went to speak and then looked away, a little uncomfortably this time.

"I really think you need to stop this now."

"I can't, Eiriol. Don't you understand that I can't?"

She shook her head. "This is relatively harmless," she said, indicating her new ears. "But everything changes something. That's why we time travellers get licenses. What you're doing... Tim, it's reckless."

"Don't judge me!" he growled and got up to walk away.

"And if you wipe her, or yourself, or me out of history completely?"

"I won't!"

"What if you do? What species was she, Tim?"

He turned an angry look on her. "Does it matter?" he asked as if he'd already decided that it didn't.

You're getting too angry to do this, big guy. You need to be more rational. "What if you change history so that her species becomes something else entirely? You've just changed jackalopes just a little. It can get worse than this. Believe me, it can be worse."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Eiriol's Adventure

The rainforest had a smell, and it was of moist leaves and tree bark and the mysteriously stony scent of water. The air felt thick as if the scents themselves made it into a thick but invisible soup. As Eiriol the jackalope hopped from one rock to another she instinctively half-spread her gliding wings - her patagia - and detected the humidity in the stretch of the skin.

She came to a stop on a particularly flat stone and looked about. She was naturally a very alert fur and thoroughly used to exploration in the various wildernesses of the planet, so just for a moment she trusted her certainty that there were no predators around. She closed her eyes and listened to her surroundings.

The whistles of exotic birds became more noticeable. A high-pitched and plaintive one here. A more raucous one there. One sounded like it was made by a tiny but courageous bird, unafraid to announce where it was despite its vulnerability. And all of these were only the most noticeable calls against a complex cacophony of cheeps, caws and whistles.

She opened her eyes again and checked her environment once more. There wasn't anything visible that hadn't been there before but nevertheless she walked on, hopping on the rocks when she could (it was more silent that way and less likely that she'd attract the attention of any local feral tigers), and striding confidently on the carpet of fallen leaves when the rocks ran out.

Rumour had it that a golden statue of Ganesha resided deep in the forest, and that the cavern in which it stood was almost more glorious than the statue itself. That was all the information that Eiriol had been able to find - there were no other details to be found about the supposed glory of the cavern. So she'd gone to find it herself, to see it and ideally, to record it.

She was loosely following a tributary of the Ganges river, using it as a guide to take her in the right direction. As was her usual habit she kept a certain distance from the body of water but always kept it within sight so as not to lose it.

And then it had the bad manners to curl around in front of her.

"Damn it," muttered Eiriol to nofur but herself. She'd been wary of water since an accident in her childhood where she'd almost drowned in a lake frozen over with a sheet of ice. It had been terrifying, traumatic in fact, so although she'd been rescued and there was no risk of ice to get trapped under around here, still she felt haunted by an old fear that made little sense given the current context. Usually she kept a distance between herself and the water just out of habit, but now...

She had to cross it.

Eiriol looked up at the nearest tree. And then she eyed up the trees on the opposite bank. The distance was only around twenty-five meters, she could climb up and glide it, even with her backpack.

With one more resentful look at the flowing brown water, she grabbed a lumpy part of the nearest tree's bark and began the climb. Soon she found herself high enough and walked delicately out onto a branch. She paused, gauged the distance and felt the ambient temperature (she'd be taking advantage of some thermal buoyancy) - took an instinctive guess at the angle she'd have to keep her wings to, and ran as close to the end of the branch as she dared.

She opened her wings and leapt.

Eiriol glanced down at the water and felt her stomach lurch despite the stability of her wings. And then the thrill came. She may not have liked water but she loved a good stirring of her adrenal glands. And gliding over the water gave her a buzz that made her want to sing. But instead, she simply took a deep breath and enjoyed the breeze in her fringe and floppy ears.

"Is look!"

"Land creature!"

Something reared out of the water in her peripheral vision and she snapped her head to the right to see it. But all she saw was a swirl of dirty water filling the gap where somefur - or something - had been a moment before.

"Land creature! Land creature!"

Eiriol looked to her left and saw something with absurdly long jaws and vicious teeth. It reared down into the water before she could focus on it any better.

"Look up!"

"Look!"

There were lots of them! "Hello?" she called back.

"Stop! Talk!"

"Must talk!"

"I can't! I have to get to the shore," she said at the same time as one part of her brain said, We have to find out what they want! We'll be wondering for the rest of our lives if we don't stop. and another part of her brain screamed, Don't let yourself get distracted! There's water down there! Keep gliding!

Oh, and a third part of her brain pointed out, Did they even hear you? They're only above water for a second.

"Stop! Land creature! Stop!"

"Stop!"

"Yes!" she shouted back irritably, wobbling on her wings slightly. "Just give me a second, I have to get to land first." The tree on the other side was close now but she wasn't sure whether to still aim for that or glide down to the ground instead. Her wings decided to do both, so instead of course she did neither.

"Wait! Wait! Talk!"

She dipped below the line of the branch and hurtled towards the trunk. She gasped with alarm as her body instinctively manoeuvred itself to land on the vertical trunk as her brain frantically shouted a warning about the extra weight of her backpack and gripping extra-hard to compensate but not to grip too hard in case the bark came off in her paws and then she landed on the trunk.

She refocussed her attention on what she could see (for a moment there she'd been all proprioception), hugged the trunk for dear life for a moment and then, when she was sure she wasn't going to rip the bark off, slid bit by bit down to the ground.

She walked to the river bank, her body still buzzing from the chaotic landing. "Right," she said with more confidence than she felt, and knelt down. "What did you say you wanted?"

Three sets of needle-like jaws set into long and delicate snouts broke free of the murky brown water. Sage-green heads with tiny, pin-hole eyes bent towards her and short little pectoral fins stabilized the ferals.

Eri knew these creatures. Ganges river dolphins! "What is it?" she asked, desperately curious now.

"Snakes. Disappearing," said one.

Eiriol tilted her head in confusion. "Where to?"

"Dust. Disappear," asserted another.

"Echolocate at snake. Snake disappear. Dust," agreed the third. "No more snake."

The jackalope fell quiet for a moment to let this sink in. "Oh," was all she could think to say, although her brain tutted at her for not saying anything more intelligent. And what response are they expecting? I can't just say 'oh' and leave it at that! "So... what effect is this having?"

"Fish!" cried out the first. Eiriol didn't speak to dolphins very often but she thought this sounded like something of a lament.

"Fish! Fish!" echoed the other two and dipped their snouts into the water before rearing back up.

Eiriol tried to figure out what to make of this display. "You look upset. What's happening to the fish?"

"No fish! Eat fish, fish gone. No more fish."

Well, that seemed obvious. If you ate something then it was no longer visible outside of you. This had to be about something more sinister - they wouldn't have stopped her to talk otherwise. "You mean the fish are disappearing?"

"Yes! Yes!" More distraught splashing.

Eiriol pinched her lip as she tried to think about what this meant. "So are they not breeding?"

One of the dolphins blasted from its blowhole. "And plant! No plant."

The other two dolphins went relatively quiet and tilted their heads as if listening to their companion.

"What?" she asked it.

It righted itself in the water. In its own facially unexpressive way she felt sure it was focussing, being intent on her, pushing its point home.

"Plant in river before. Now plant thin. Plant die. Like fish."

Was it Eiriol's imagination or were the other two dolphins frozen in horror? One of them ducked under and then the other followed it. A few seconds later they resurfaced thrashing, crying and waving their snouts around.

"Oh guys," she said, unsure what else to say to comfort a pod of distraught dolphins. The greed and idiocy of anthros meant that pollution affected biodiversity even here. It was so sad, what could she say to these rare beings when her fellow anthros - even herself - had contributed to the problem? "But why are you telling me all of this?"

"Help!"

"Help? How?"

"Anthro. You have power. You make it better!"

Oh, hell. "Guys," she said patiently and lowered down so she was lying on her front and could look these poor dolphins in the eye, even if that was more for her benefit than theirs. At that moment she didn't care about getting mud down her front. "I know anthros have technology and expertise in a lot of things. But this is pollution. It's not something I can fix alone. And... I'm sorry," she said earnestly, running her hand through the water. It was muddy but could still have been pollution-free for all she'd known. Except... it wasn't. Pollution had affected life even here. "I'd love to put it right but I can't. If any one anthro could then they'd have done it a long time ago."

She wasn't quite sure how to approach the subject, but their insistence that the snakes were turning into dust was surely a fabrication. They were just dying. That had to be it.

The two dolphins who'd gone quiet before fell silent again but the third splashed defiantly. "No! This not anthro poison! Help!"

Eiriol felt as if she'd been slapped. Just occasionally a feral would call pollution poison. It was an aggressive choice of word, often spat with anger, hissed or growled. Its use was challenging, confrontational. A symbol of feral resentment about what was so often done to their environment and to themselves.

She recovered herself, although her heart continued to beat fast from nerves. The last thing she wanted to do was argue with a local, feral or not. "Well, if it's not anthro poison, what can it be? Do you have any idea?"

The dolphin went quiet and dipped its snout.

"Do you not know," she prompted, "or don't you want to say?"

"Don't know. Snake disappear. Not see this before."

Snake disappear. It sounded unscientific, impossible. Either these dolphins were imagining the local snakes turning to dust (or making it up), or something very strange was happening. And ferals were not known for their strong imaginations or for fibbing. She had to get to the bottom of this. In a moment Eiriol decided to do her best to see it for herself. The jackalope leaned on one elbow and dug her fingers into her fringe as she tried to think how to solve this puzzle. "Is this just happening in the water or on land too?" They might not know but she figured it was worth asking.

"Don't know."

"And the snakes are the only creatures you've actually seen disappear before your eyes? Echolocation," she corrected herself. "And everything else just seems to be reducing in numbers?"

"Yes." The dolphin seemed to have calmed down now although its pectoral fins still looked tense.

This was clearly something she needed to observe herself. "Can you take me to where there are some snakes?"

The dolphin sank down into the water and began to swim upstream. "Follow. Susu know where to find."

xXx

The Susu led her to a place where the river cut into the land a little, where the water became shallow and they could only swim with difficulty among the tree roots.

"Here." said the leader, swishing in a graceful circle in the water and apparently trying to avoid stirring up debris. "Watch for snake."

Eiriol found a relatively safe-looking tree trunk and sat down on it. "Okay."

Ferals often were not strong conversationalists and Eiriol had discovered on their fifteen minute trip that the Susu were no exception. So as it became clear they all had to wait, she decided to eat her lunch. The mangrove smelled pretty bad but maybe that was no bad thing - she'd just eat slow. Heck, it'd pass the time until a snake showed up.

Which happened almost immediately. "Look!" said one of the lead Susu's companions, turning its snout as close to vertical as it could manage. "Snake!"

She squinted into the dappled shadows. Sure enough, a mossy green snake lay across a branch, curled up into a coil. It had spotted Eiriol but was a long way out of striking range - if it was even a danger in the first place.

"Uh-huh, I can see it."

The lead Susu swam on its side in a semi-circle around the edge of the mangrove. "Snake," it said almost casually and pointed its snout at another branch.

"Yup," she answered, swallowing a mouthful of sandwich. "I see."

She took the initiative at this point and looked around for more. She spotted two more snakes which she pointed out to the dolphins. Once she was sure there were no more to be seen she simply waited. Waited in the smelly humidity and cloying heat, grateful that she at least didn't have to sit out in the open sunshine but wishing for a breeze.

And then one of them hissed with alarm and collapsed. Literally, collapsed into dust. Eiriol watched, her jaw hanging, as its remains drifted down to the surface of the water and floated there, slowly dispersing.

"Oh... Hell." She looked wide-eyed at the lead dolphin. "Susu, it disappeared!"

It rolled in the water as if in agreement. "All snake disappear soon."

And lead to how many extinctions? This was a disaster - it had to be stopped! "Yeah. We've got to do something about this."

xXx

Eiriol'd had an idea at that point. Since something apparently unnatural was already happening it seemed to make sense. She pulled out her travel guide and looked for references to wildlife folklore and in particular, snakes.

Snakes are a symbol of fertility and are therefore seen as welcome in the waterways of India. Due to the shedding of their skin they have come to symbolize fertility and the constant cycle of life. They are considered to be half-divine, half-demonic, and protectors of all the earthly treasures.

"Hey Susu," she said, "what do you think of this?" She read the dolphins the passage.

"Snake make life," the leader agreed, splashing itself languidly with one fin.

"Make the water live. Make plant live," gurgled one of its companions.

"Make fish live," said the third.

"Without snake," the leader continued, "All life die."

Had these guys never heard of sexual reproduction? And yet, everything they and the guide book were saying fit together. What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Eri? she asked herself.

TO BE CONTINUED...