Merry Christmas! I hope your holiday is filled with laughter, cheer, and goodwill, with family and friends and food—I hope it’s everything you could have hoped for.

As a Christmas gift from me to you, here’s the prologue to Halfwhisker, in its current form.

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“I thought I’d heard it around here,” Meadowlark whispered. She held her ear in her forepaws, fidgeting with it nervously. “Something raspy.”

Pebble looked around the moonslit glade, alert but suppressing a sigh. She and Meadowlark had left a warm burrow full of family and food to scamper about the frosty forest surrounding Whiskerroot. Pebble liked Meadowlark, liked the young gorskrmus enough to humor her when she expressed worry about suspicious sounds in the forest—also enough to not chastise the pup when Pebble realized how far from home she had wandered the night before. Tonight’s hike had taken them nearly as far as the outer Sharptooth perimeter. Pebble was glad she had come fully prepared, longspear in forepaw—currently used as a walking stick—and an ice-stone fang with a leather-wrapped handle on each hip. The latter two items were rat weapons, and she liked the strange looks she got while carrying them: such things were unique in Whiskerroot.

Truth be told, she didn’t really believe Meadowlark had heard anything meaningful. If she did, she’d be holding her longspear in both paws, ready to stab at the slightest provocation, or she’d be holding her curved ice-stone fangs at the ready. Walking into unknown danger with a weapon in paw and already pointed outward could make the difference between life and death, after all.

Maybe a younger Pebble would have been more cautious. But the Pebble following Meadowlark now, brushing past the leafless branches of shivering bushes and grumbling about her aches and pains, was four winters old, not trying to impress anyone, and perhaps growing a little cynical.

Pebble shivered. Winter’s shadow rested on her keenly in more ways than one; the air was still cold, few plants had any signs of green, and there was frost everywhere. Yet the forest was full of noises, a sure sign of growing spring.

That Meadowlark had heard something that had spooked her, Pebble didn’t doubt, but was it worth this joint-aching trek—

What was it that Meadowlark had thought she had heard? A rat? Pebble pursed her lips. Unlikely, but not impossible. Once Pebble might have thought that impossible, Whiskerroot nestled as deep as it was in the forest… That was before what had happened at Threetree. That distant colony was much closer to the forest’s edge than Whiskerroot, but still deeper than raiding rats had ventured in living memory.

The stories alone had nearly curled Pebble’s whiskers, and the nomad sharing the news hadn’t even been a halfway decent storymus. Nothing like Nusk.

Then again, Pebble had collected her ice-stone fangs from a rat on the most distant outskirts of Whiskerroot. A dead rat, and nearly a winter ago. Long before Threetree.[1]

Near enough to Whiskerroot nonetheless.

Meadowlark hopped to the top of a tree root tall enough that her short gorskrmus tail didn’t touch the soil even when she sat on her haunches. She looked around, confused, then said, “I think we went that way…” Stepping lightly on the toes of her hind paws, she jogged down a narrow trail that edged the base of an enormous tree trunk, weaving over and around roots and, occasionally, through a tunnel dug under.

Walking up an incline, Pebble winced as her leg sent a jolt of pain up her hip. An old bite injury, though she didn’t remember from what beast; she had too many scars to remember every story. Pushing aside a twig that cracked with ice crystals woke an ache in her shoulder, reminding her of a spider bite she’d taken late in the former spring. Pebble had thought that gorspider was going to kill her. She was a lucky, lucky mouse to have survived all she had. Perhaps the consequence of such luck would be that she’d have to put down her spear earlier than most. Old before her time, and hobbled by pains. Forced to watch others bear the burden of protecting Whiskerroot so their families could live in relative safety.

Pebble shook her head. Four winters old! That was too young to be slowing down. Most mice, with the favor of Ral-Vormtsuud, saw six winters, maybe saw a seventh, and didn’t slow down much until near very end, when their strength suddenly fled. Pebble was moons and moons away from being a greywhisker.

I’d rather be dead, Pebble thought firmly, banishing that miserable idea. Her band would have to pry her spear from her cold, stiff paws before she gave it up.

A blue-tinged beam of moonslight pierced through the treecover, illuminating a stretch of brown dirt that patches of snow still clung to. A cluster of leafless shrubs with gnarled branches stood at the far edge of the beam; the shade of the moonslight told Pebble that the second moon was now brighter than the first, and past the sky’s zenith. Night was half over.

“How close are we?” Pebble growled. Her growing cynicism that Meadowlark’s imagination had embellished the whatever-she-had-heard was nearly strong enough for Pebble to turn them around and head home. “It’s been a while since you last said we were near.”

“I think… I was so scared when I ran away! It’s hard to remember.” Meadowlark stopped walking and stroked one of her ears for comfort. As she thaymaed, she said, “I swear it, auntie! I’m not lying! I heard something—a voice, raw and mean. It startled me so badly I nearly shook off my tail and whiskers!”

Pebble bent over to put her face at the same level as Meadowlark’s. As a gorskrmus, Pebble was gargantuan compared to most mice, almost seven inches long from nose to rear; she towered over Meadowlark, even though at four and a half inches her niece was adult-sized compared to any Whiskerroot mouse that didn’t share their blood—mus, acomus, skoppr. Cræmus especially.[2]

Meadowlark sniffed miserably, avoiding eye contact.

“It was brave of you, if you were so scared, to lead me out here. But I think you imagined the sound, or the creature moved on,” Pebble said. She gentled her expression as she repeated herself. “It was still brave of you to face that fear.”

Meadowlark sniffed again, calmer than before, but didn’t look like she agreed with anything Pebble had said. Still, she said, “Thank you, auntie.”

Pebble stood tall, frowning as an ache in her back started up. That was new. “Now, enough with those nose-noises. Maybe on our way home we can spot some mushrooms, or berries that were preserved by winter freeze, and bring back a prize. Then your siblings will applaud our adventure instead of making fun of you for it.” And my brothers and sisters won’t tease me for indulging you.

“I’d like that,” Meadowlark said, forcing a smile. She hopped to her hind paws and glanced around, staying close to her aunt.

Pebble shook her head and set off toward home. Meadowlark was too gentle to ever be a Sharptooth—her anxiety was as obvious as the stench of skunk spray. She was still worried about imagined monsters out in the forest.

Well—most does had no interest in being a Sharptooth. Bucks were better at that sort of thing. Does like Pebble were a rarity.[3]

“Why were you so far out, anyway?” Pebble asked. “It’s not safe.”

“Oh, nothing. No reason,” Meadowlark said.

Oh ho, Pebble thought. That was quick! “Come on, tell your auntie. It’s more suspicious when you tell me terrible lies.”

Meadowlark turned her head slightly as she walked, and in the gentle light of the moons and stars Pebble could see her expression had become mischievous. “Momma won’t like it.”

“I’m not momma, I’m auntie. And if your story is good enough, maybe I’ll share some stories about your momma that will make your fur stand on end.” Naturally, Pebble would leave out the parts where she usually instigated the trouble her sister got into.

Meadowlark brightened. “I was going to meet someone out here… a big, strong buck named Hasper…” She looked over her shoulder at Pebble. “You know. Have some fun.”

Pebble raised a brow, surprised. “Really? I thought you were smarter than that.”

“What?” Meadowlark looked confused, then her brows raised as she realized what Pebble was suggesting. She faked a gag. “No! Ick. We weren’t thinking about that—we’re not even married! We were just looking for treasures, chasing each other. Innocent stuff.”[4]

“Yeah, I’m sure his every thought was innocent,” Pebble grumbled to herself. She immediately regretted her quip and hoped that Meadowlark hadn’t heard it. The pup had her whole life ahead of her, and Pebble would regret it if she poisoned her niece with her own pessimism toward anything romantic. It wasn’t Meadowlark’s fault that Pebble had a few bad experiences that stuck to her heart like burrs in her fur.

Something caught Pebble’s attention. She couldn’t quite describe what it was, but after spending most of her four winters of life in the wild parts of the forest, where danger rarely was far and often was hidden, she’d learned to trust when her mind sensed a threat. She listened to Meadowlark with half an ear as the pup chattered about her buck, but shifted her longspear from one forepaw to two, sharpened cat-tooth head pointed outward. She scanned the forest around her, lingering on the underbrush and many wet, thawing piles of leaves where something could be hiding.

Was it above her? Pebble glanced upward, painfully aware of how visible she and Meadowlark would be to a passing owl. They should be trying harder to keep some sort of barrier between them and the upper levels of the trees—she was lucky her laxness hadn’t cost their lives.

A raspy sound, the voice of some creature that was distinctly not Meadowlark, crawled into Pebble’s ear. “He is hungry. He hungers. His stomach always rumbles. He is the Hungry. I am his nose.”[5]

Whatever Meadowlark was babbling on about ended with a shrill squeak of terror. She dashed behind Pebble and clutched the fur of her aunt’s back, crying, “That’s the sound! That’s the sound! A rat!”

Pebble narrowed her eyes. She pointed her longspear toward where the sound had come from. All she saw was a cluster of brown grass slumped against a rock, free of snow but still as ice.

Not seeing a living creature didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

“Let go of me. Stay here,” Pebble growled. Meadowlark slowly released her grip and Pebble began creeping forward.

The voice repeated itself, raspy and low. It was paired with a wet gurgle that Pebble had missed before. “He is hungry. He hungers. His stomach always rumbles. He is the Hungry. I am his nose. I cannot… I can’t go on.” This was followed by coughing, then utter silence.

All of her aches and pains were forgotten. Pebble focused, feeling sharp, like an owl’s beak. Quietly, ever so quietly, pawstep by pawstep, she approached the grass, holding her longspear in one forepaw and reaching for an ice-stone fang with another. She slashed, the nearly see-through blade of the black ice-stone fang cutting down a swath of dried grass almost without a crackle, then leaped backward, longspear pointed toward where she had been.

Nothing leaped out.

Pebble stood up on her toes and raised her head to see better.

Behind the grass was a little den, dug out between the rock and a bulbous root, deep enough to block whatever laid in it from view. Pebble kept her eyes focused on the den, but she swiveled her ears in all directions, alert to any hint of an ambush. She crept forward, leading with her cat-tooth spearhead as she approached the lip of dirt at the edge of the den. She peered inside.

It lay on its side in the dirt, eyes closed and jaw twitching.

A rat.

Pebble growled, all fierce coldness outwardly, but felt a stab of worry within. The rat’s coarse fur was deep-cave-black, its tail long and grey, and it had gashes in its side and neck that leaked constantly, staining the soil it lay on. That explained the gurgling Pebble had heard—blood must be trickling into its throat.

Pebble edged closer, feeling pity for the creature. There was no love lost between mice and rats, but she didn’t enjoy seeing a living thing suffer. Perhaps a fox had found it, or a weasel—something awake and hungry, but not clever enough to keep its injured prey. In escaping, all the rat had done was deny the predator a meal. If it had companions, they had either abandoned it or not been so fortunate.

It would not survive its wounds. Pebble thought a wet glimpse of pink was its stomach; red and brown there, stirred and clumpy like thick mud, might be a ruptured intestine. She doubted that even Thorn, the most skilled bloodskræcher she knew, would have been able to save the poor thing.

As unlikely as it was that he would have wasted the effort on an enemy.

The rat rasped, “He is hungry. He hungers. His stomach always rumbles. He is the Hungry. I serve Him with my nose. But I can’t—” The sudden sound almost made Pebble jump. Eyes still closed, it scratched the dirt as if trying to push itself up, then lay still again, save for labored breathing and the continued movement of its jaw.

Pebble’s pity grew. This creature was a fighter; its death would be long, slow, and painful if she didn’t intervene. She aimed her longspear. A quick death would be a mercy. “Stay back, Meadowlark,” she growled. “Cover your ears.”

“What are you—” Meadowlark began.

The rat’s eyes snapped open. They should have been black, or maybe red; instead, they were the yellow of urine, and bulged out of the creature’s skull like froth over water. The rat screeched, its voice deepening and somehow sounding like a multitude speaking at once: “Wesmellyou, wesmellyou, littlemice, littlemice, theWhiskeriscoming, theWhiskeriscoming. Whiskerwillfindyou, litterofHa-Thitzel! Andthen… andthen… Then…” The creature coughed. When it spoke again, its voice was one once more. “My… my nose… for Matagroskr… In… the… Rattank—” Unable to finish, the rat gasped its last breath. The trickle from its neck stopped. Pebble stared, transfixed, as the rat’s eyes changed color, draining from yellow to black. All was silent, save for the distant mating calls of crickets and other insects.

Pebble hesitated, then stabbed, piercing the rat’s heart with her longspear. She pulled the spear out and wiped its head on the rat’s fur, the change in its eye color making her suspicious of what might be in its blood, then turned and looked at Meadowlark.

The poor, foolish mouse. She had crept up behind Pebble and seen everything. In her terror she wasn’t even breathing, save for the shallowest of rapid breaths.

Pebble held back a sigh. She didn’t understand what had just happened—the rat’s words had been nearly indecipherable. She needed to talk to Thorn. But first, she needed to see her niece safely home. She stowed her longspear in the sling on her back, approached Meadowlark, and gently led her underneath a nearby bush, well out of sight of the dead rat and mostly protecting them from being seen. She helped Meadowlark thayma,[6] continuing until the pup was capable of comforting herself. Then Pebble stood, glaring through the bush’s bare branches at the cold world outside, lost in thought.

Rats stuck to the plains and grasslands beyond the forest, and neither rat nor mouse went out of their way to interact with the other. The two groups didn’t even fight all that often. Yes, rat tribes raided mouse homesteads on the edge of the forest, or killed travelers, but not often enough that mice had given up living at the forest’s edge.

Something had changed, something that led to the attack on Threetree. A raid on a great nest. Pups stolen, eaten in front of their families—things out of stories meant to scare pups into obedience. They weren’t supposed to be real. It was a dramatic evil that bordered on parody.

But news of rat sightings had trickled in from Mosswillow, Stonehome, and others. Even Bubblenest, which shouldn’t have been possible.

Then there was Whiskerroot. Untouched thus far.

It seemed that was about to change.

Yellow eyes. A gross yellow. Some of the nomad’s stories talked about something being wrong with their eyes.

When it looked like Meadowlark was calm enough to talk, Pebble asked, “Do you remember what you heard?”

Meadowlark immediately started shaking again. “I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about that. Something about smelling. Finding. Matagroskr. The rat’s… nose? Oh…” She moaned.

Pebble held Meadowlark close and shushed softly. “You’re fine. You’re fine. As soon as you’re ready, we’re going home. Where it’s safe. Heart and heroism, Meadowlark. Be brave.” And, after a time, Meadowlark’s shivering stopped and Pebble was able to usher her along the long trail toward home, a foreleg held over her shoulders most of the way.

Later, the clearing that surrounded the hill of Whiskerroot just ahead, Meadowlark bouncing on her toes in readiness to quit the forest, Pebble was still thinking. She wished she could have immediately gone to Thorn to talk over the matter, then bring him to the corpse, but the bloodskræcher had been missing for a moon now—almost half of winter. Her frustration at her friend’s disappearance warred with concern that he might have gotten himself into trouble he couldn’t handle this time.

Once within sight of Meadowlark’s family burrow, dug into the side of the massive Whiskerroot hill, Meadowlark bounded ahead of Pebble on all fours, running as fast as she could, whiskers whipping her face from the speed. Pebble stopped. She turned and looked back at the forest, lingering moonslight creating every shade of darkness in the shadows that hung under branches and leaves.

“The whisker will find… something? A whisker is coming? Is that what it said?” Pebble whispered. She shook her head, more confused than before.

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[1] Threetree still exists at this time, if you’re wondering. Its population is perhaps a quarter of its previous size, but still there.

[2] The many varieties of mice are not limited to this list here, of course. These are simply the majority mouse populations in Whiskerroot.

[3] Warrior does are almost exclusively gorskrmus. After all, gorskrmus are larger and more aggressive than other mice—in many ways they are like smaller rats. Which is a comparison that might get your nose bitten off.

[4] For context—since pre-intelligence mice weren’t known for being reserved in their mating—intelligent mice have developed to have strict standards and social expectations with regards to mating and marriage, specifically that it shouldn’t be done in that order.

[5] The Hungry is another name for the ur-rat Matagroskr, first among rats and one of Fryth’s many archetypal creations. Mice speak of him as the eternal enemy of their kind, and often blame him for rat hatred of mice, while rats see Matagroskr as a stern father who taught them the realities of a cruel world.

This is all per mousy (or ratty) myth, I should clarify. I’m skeptical of the literal accuracy of such stories, but at the same time I think there’s something here beyond by ability to explain.

[6] Self-grooming for comfort, essentially. Mice don’t consider it as adorable to watch as humans once did.