I managed to write this story in all of one day, which is unusual for me. I got the idea after playing Oblivion for XB360, (I know, it's a stretch,) but it does help clear up some of the more peculiar aspects of my world that are not explained so well. And, in addition, it introduces some of the more peculiar aspects that could use some further explanation in other stories.
Please tell me what you think about it. I wrote it in an incredibly short period of time, so I'm still undergoing "Writer's Rush" as it were, so my opinion of it is kind of distorted, and it would be helpful to hear what you make of it.
“I’ve had it!” she yelled. The younger fox was startled by the exclamation. “This is the third time this month! If they think they can kill our outposts, they’re wrong!”
“It’s not only us? How many other outposts have been attacked like this?”
“I’ve lost count.”
The older fox looked down at the stacks of paperwork beside her. There were three stacks: one for each language. The one with fox language was nearly half a foot high, the stack with wolf language barely even left the floor, and the pile with English language was settled neatly in the middle.
She muddled through the stack of English paperwork, “Where…is…it…ah! Here!” and finally stopped at a piece entitled: “ON ATTACKS DIRECTED AT RYNE WATCH OUTPOSTS”
“Here,” she said to him while removing the piece of paper from the stack, “Come with me.” She put on her fierce-looking hind paw pads and rose on two feet high above the smaller fox. “It’s time to tell those humans to stop this.”
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All was calm at the foreign relations office. The neighboring states had been cooperative, and the native population had done nothing of note. Matthew settled down into his chair to read the newspaper, which had nothing of note besides the news that their home country was removing some troops from the colonies as they were no longer needed.
His assistant, Thomas, was busy stalking the elusive prey of cleanliness in the office. Although nothing of note particularly happened, daily affairs seem to make the office far more entropic than would be possible. However, as he glanced out the window, a certain disturbance appeared, something that might just make a something to note.
“Matthew!” he scurried back to the main desk, “Matthew! There’s someone coming.”
“Hmmm?” he looked up, disinterested, from an article on grain prices, “Is it Adam, the Redcoat officer? Or perhaps Robert from South Carolina?”
“Neither. Fox.”
Matthew slammed his newspaper on the desk and leaned forwards towards Thomas, nearly on the edge of his seat. “Please, just tell me it isn’t the one with the red band around her muzzle and the dragon design on her footpads.”
Thomas stopped to try to remember. “I think it is.”
“Oh, God, no,” Matthew slumped back in his chair.
“But there’s another one, too.”
“Oh, great, she has an accomplice now, too?”
Thomas looked confused, “She?”
‘That’s VYE-NUH-LOCK,” he took care in pronouncing the syllables, “Apparently she handles fox-human relations over on her side, though I can’t imagine what ‘relations’ she needs to handle. She comes over about once a month; last month she complained about an inflammatory newspaper article. I tried to explain to her the concept of free press, but she didn’t believe there was such a thing.”
A vicious rap was heard at the door. Thomas immediately went to answer it.
“And one last thing,” Matthew yelled to Thomas, “Make sure you call them RYE-NUH, not fox. Calling her a fox pisses her off to no end.”
Thomas hesitantly opened the door.
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Vynelok didn’t care about the strange gasps and stares from the local population, all directed at both the small fox trailing behind her on four legs and her just over five foot frame. She kept her eyes locked on the foreign relations office. As she approached the door, she looked back at him.
“Try to stand upwards; it’s respectful.”
He awkwardly wobbled to two feet as she viciously rapped the door. She looked down at him. Even on two legs he was still more than a half foot shorter than her.
The door opened hesitantly. The younger fox nearly lost his balance, but Vynelok steadied him.
“Hello?” Thomas asked, “Can I help you?”
Vynelok pulled her ears up in anger, “I want to talk to Matthew.”
Thomas fully opened the door, “Come in.” The two foxes walked in. Vynelok walked proudly, but the younger fox struggled to find footing on the slick, wooden floor.
“Matthew?” he called as he led the pair into the office, “We have visitors.”
Matthew pretended to read the newspaper, and then pretended to be surprised when he looked up.
“Vynelok!” he exclaimed with a smile on his face, “Nice to see you again!”
Her response was a glare and a scowl.
Matthew leaned back in his chair, “What’s been rubbing your fur the wrong way this month?” he gave off a coy laugh, “Please, have a seat.”
The younger fox instantly leapt up onto the stable chair, sitting up with four paws on the seat.
“I’ll stand,” Vynelok replied. She took a deep breath, and then laid the paper on top of Matthew’s newspaper.
“In this month, three of our outposts have been attacked by your people. These outposts are not military outposts. They are not staging attacks against your towns. The Ryne in these outposts have been shot, sliced, and smoked out. The attackers are isolated attackers, I know, not working with any organization. But this behavior is not acceptable. To show my point, I have brought a victim of these attacks. Please listen,” she looked over to the younger fox, “Please tell them what happened.”
He looked up at Vynelok, then looked down at the desk. “Well, it happened three days ago. My second older brother was taking me out to practice hunting, since we only had one crossbow, only one of us could practice at a time.”
“What were you hunting for?” Thomas asked.
“Just small game,” he replied.
“And you need a crossbow for that?”
“What do you expect us to use?” she interjected, “Out teeth? Please continue.”
“We didn’t get anything. I can’t shoot with a crossbow well, and I missed twice while shooting at a squirrel. After this, my brother and I decided that it was time to head back to my family’s outpost when we began to smell smoke. After that, we heard gun shots. We carefully crept up to where we could just see our house, and we saw five people around the main entrance. Both of my parents were dead outside of the house. Our houses are underground, so they covered up the alternate entrances, in order that the smoke will stay inside. My brother and I were planning to get away, but they spotted us and began firing.
“My brother and I both ran behind a tree. He told me to go to the next outpost while he would distract them. He took the crossbow, and I told him to meet me there. He didn’t say anything back to me. Then, he and I split right and left, respectively, and I ran as fast as I could. Even though I had to run past them no more than fifty feet away from them, they were all firing at my brother, so they didn’t notice me. I heard two screams, and then my brother, so I think he hit two of them before he went down, but I’m not sure, since I was running so fast.
“After about two hours of sprinting, I reached the next outpost. I had seen those two foxes before, since they would come over every once in a while when the supplier from the government forgets about them. The two of them asked what happened and why I was no out of breath. I told them my story, and they told me to go see Vynelok, and tell it to her. I waited the day there, just to see if my brother would come, but he never did. The next day, I went to visit Vynelok, and here I am.
Upon finishing his story, Vynelok immediately asked, “And what are you going to do?”
He looked back up at her, “I’ll probably go out west. I hear the Westies offer to pay for your travel if you join the army.”
“And you want that?” she look straight at Matthew,” You want to turn harmless outposts into warriors? I have the right to mail the Westies and tell them what’s going on. They have more power than you can imagine. If they knew about this, they would do something.”
Matthew rolled his eyes, “Look, Vynelok, what do you want me to do about this?”
“I want this to be a crime! This isn’t ‘Removing the Foxen Menace’ as your newspapers write. This is murder! Why don’t you punish these people?”
Matthew rolled his eyes again and took a form letter from the stack of paper on his desk. Thomas subtly moved a wastebasket and placed it next to Matthew’s chair. Matthew picked up the quill and moved the tip to the beginning of the “topic” line in the form letter.
“Vynelok, what do you want me to write?”
“This is murder! This is not acceptable!”
Matthew swiftly dashed through the line, mouthing the words as he wrote them, “ON…THE…“MURDER”…OF…”
“No writing quotation marks! This is serious!” Vynelok interrupted.
Matthew rolled his eyes, crumbled up the piece of paper, dropped it in the basket, and took a new sheet from the stack. Thomas put on his coat to go out and retrieve the mail.
“ON…THE…MURDER…OF…,” he stopped, and looked up at the young fox, who was following his writing, “Hey, what’s your name?”
The fox looked up at Vynelok, and then looked Matthew straight in the eyes.
“Matthew.”
The room paused for a second, and it seemed so quiet that the only noise was the sun coming in through the windows.
“No,” Vynelok shifted her weight, “Your Ryne name.”
“Matthew,” the fox replied, “I don’t have a Ryne name.” Vynelok twitched and glanced right and left, Thomas put his coat back on the rack, and the old Matthew set down his quill and looked intently at the young Matthew.
“Why don’t you have a Ryne name?”
“My parents thought that, soon, all of the fighting would be over, and I wouldn’t need one. Even though I leaned how to speak fox, they mostly taught us in English.”
Vynelok interrupted Matthew just before he was going to speak, “This is not usual. But most Ryne have three names: one fore each language.”
The older Matthew paid no attention to the older fox, “How many siblings do you have?” he asked the small fox.
“Three,” Matthew replied, “All of them were older than I was.”
“What are their names?” he asked. Vynelok cringed and looked back at the front door.
“Mark, Luke, and John.”
Matthew leaned over the desk, “Do you know why you’re named that?”
“They’re the four gospels of the New Testament. My parents were both Christian.”
“Christian?” Thomas asked.
“Yes.”
“How does that work? You’re not made in the image of God, or anything like that. How can you follow what the Bible says?”
“What’s the image of God?”
“Man: it says that in the Bible.”
“What is man?”
“Us. Human beings.”
“How do you know?”
“The Bible.”
“What if you think about it differently? What if ‘man’ is simply a word? What if it’s only used to describe something greater?”
Vynelok finally broke in, “This isn’t about religion, this is about our territory. Besides, hardly any Ryne are believers anyways; this is just a ‘fringe cult’ reli–”
“Hold on,” Matthew said to Vynelok, and then looked down at the little fox, “Do you believe?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I will know when I’m older.”
“How old are you?”
“Seven.”
“Do you think that you will ever become Christian?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Thomas leaned against the wall and looked over at the two foxes with his arms crossed. Matthew leaned back in his chair. The solemnity of the room was only broken by Vynelok twitching her ears and tail.
“Matthew,” Vynelok said the human, “I think we’re done.” She motioned for the young Matthew to get up from the chair. “If I hear another incident like this in the next month, then I WILL write to the Westies and they WILL do something about–”
Matthew put the quill back in his own hands, stood up from the chair behind the desk, and walked over to her. He put his hand on her shoulder, looked to the other side, and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” As the two foxes walked out the door, Matthew sat back down at his desk, crumpled up the old form letter, dropped it in the trash, and took out another fresh sheet. On the top line he wrote: “ON THE ISSUE OF CHRISTIAN FOXES”.
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As Vynelok and Matthew walked out the door, they were greeted in the same manner as they had been greeted with when they first entered the town. There were the same stares, the same gasps, and the same children pointing.
Eventually, Matthew went back down to walk on four legs.
“I’m sorry, Vynelok. I just can’t walk like that anymore.”
She looked around.
“No,” she added as she removed her hind paw pads, “Neither can I.”
