The Wildeworld: Prologue ◤━━━━━━━━━━◥ (AI was used for the cover.) It is done. My eyes shiver towards the graveyard of splintered stumps that mock what was once a forest luscious with life and song; a watery haven of dewdrop-encrusted leaves that glistened in the dappled jaded light that flowed from the canopy. There is nothing left; nothing but the smouldering bones of a body that once sheltered me, protected me, clad me in shadow whilst the great cosmic rays shot like arrows down to Earth. How could I oppose those gargantuan monsters of steel? The unyielding mouths of death that ground all that walked and breathed and cried, rampaging through crumbling glades until there was nothing left but the sun-tinged blood of the trees… I could not. Blundering through the charcoal shrubs, the hairless apes of the Stonelands drag their slaves towards the barren fields, fresh with the stench of some abominable concoction they claim will make the brittle grass grow taller, and so their animals larger. And those who follow blindly in their wake shall find their bodies stripped of their thick, clouded fur, then herded from savage pasture to savage pasture until they are fit for purpose no more, and are slaughtered. Creatures of the Wildeworld slink beneath the boughs of the innermost trees that form these colossal lungs, or burrow deep within the clay of the mighty river. We are the banished souls of a forgotten time, left to forage the scraps left behind by the little mercy of the ironfolk. Yet even now, with death and destruction stagnated in the air, I feel the spirits of the lost beckoning to me. Perhaps I will be the one to paint life back into this dying world, like dawn with her rippling fingers of iridescent light to the skies. Perhaps I, with my willow-splashed fur, will act as the patchwork that knits the unravelling threads of this ecosystem back together, perhaps I…. ‘Liana?’ Bali’s soft purr of a voice awakens me from my fantasies, and his glistening, amber eyes meet mine. ‘Moonrise is near; we should return.’ He scrutinises me, from my position perched on the rustling boughs of a ramón tree to the little river that gurgles below. ‘Did you catch any fish?’ I crawl deeper into the leaves, shame flattening my pelt. Breathing out a guttural sigh of understanding, he sinks beneath a nearby fern, stomach growling as ferociously as one of the ocelot elders for whom we hunt. ‘Neither did I.’ (+)
(+) The branch sways as I leap nimbly down to the undergrowth, and my paws leave shining imprints upon the rain-moistened soil as I patter across to join my brother, for Bali is a pitiful sight. His face, mutilated by a long scar that slices from his left ear to below his misshapen eye, is overcast with storms of sorrow, and his skeletal chest heaves and rattles with every laboured intake of breath. ‘Please, we need to leave,’ he croaks as I curl beside him, ‘before it’s too late. For once in your dream-enveloped life, just listen to me!’ I don’t know whether it’s pain or frustration or anger that radiates from his shaking body, nor whether his strangled snarl reeks of distain, but I don’t care for his judgement. For all that I love him, my mind is not clouded by his own, cowardly perceptions. ‘Leaving is impossible,’ I remind him, regardless of how his features seem to collapse in defeat, ‘for we swore allegiance to our tribe, and in return for our services, they offer us their protection. Without them, we would be no more than two ocelot half-cubs fighting for our survival in a war between two worlds.’ Flashing like pools of liquid lightning, the pupils of his eyes dilate into snake-like slits, and his tail writhes like a basilisk enraged. ‘You call this a mark of their protection?’ He growls, slashing at his scar, ‘did they defend me from that accursed jaguar who tried to blind me, or protect our territory from the bald apes with their mechanical grinders? No, not once, and yet you still consider them to be your refuge. GROW UP! Most of them are dead, and those who still live weaken by the second. You don’t honestly believe that they have even a chance of living to see the sun rise again over a forest free of Ironland invaders? Do you?’ Now I am the one shaking. ‘I don’t know what I believe,’ I whisper, ‘I truly don’t. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is nothing left for us here. But what if we fight, and we win? What if everything returns to how it once was?’ ‘Fine, let’s go back to the place you call home, eat the sinewy remains of ancient meat and wait for dawn to bring more trees cascading down. Then we can all go and get ingested by the metal monsters in a feeble attempt to save the forest. That’s what you want, isn’t it, so why the hesitation? Death isn’t so forgiving of latecomers, you know…’ I don’t understand him, his words, his sneer that turns my heart to ice. I don’t know what he means, nor what he is feeling or thinking, and all that I know is that everything I have ever known and loved is crumbling and decaying around me… I long for home. All other wildcats of the jungle live in solitude, or so I was told by an elder from my distant past. My tribe is different. We have behaved in sociable ways for as long as I can recall, just us and them against the unwavering cruelty of the world. But now that the greatest threat this land has ever known has emerged, shall we become no more than ashes of the past, whispers of the wind, allegiance broken? Only time can tell…
