Minnow groaned loudly as she woke up the next morning as her back and joints protested against the bed she’d been forced to sleep on. For someone used to spending the night in a hammock, which shifted and moved with her weight in the night, the hard wooden floor of the cabin was unforgiving and stressful. She’d managed to snatch a few hours of sleep, but most of the night she’d spent just trying to find a comfortable way to lie without sticking her foot in a stranger’s face. It was still dark when she rose, though it was impossible to tell whether that was because it was pre-dawn, or if the sun was up and masked by the thick clouds of the storm.

Whichever it was, the tads from every culture were also awake, though they seemed less affected by the change in living arrangements than the adults and were on their feet and running around almost instantaneously. Minnow sat up slowly, using Pyre as a back prop as she watched what she assumed was supposed to be a wolf and an aja fighting. Most of the masks were fairly crude, made with the unskilled and poorly coordinated hands of children, but they had served their purpose: removing the fear. Even now the kids were more interested in their imaginary game than in what was going on with the weather.

The peace from the night before hadn’t lasted long. The children’s parents and the other adults were not so easily placated. The Kraken had helped during the night, but the close quarters being shared by so many different, warring cultures was mixing into the situation with the weather and, Minnow imagined, the general aches of sleeping like refugees, and arguments were spouting up around the house as people woke. The room stank of sweat and stress and the sour odor turned the ker’s stomach violently enough that she pushed through her soreness and through the door and into the weather to retch into the murky waters beneath the house. As happens in a tempest, the water was choppy from the wind and from every additional recruit into the collection of drops, and it had risen more than half the normally dry height of the stilts.

Stomach empty and lungs full of fresh air, Minnow returned to the house wet and wind blown, and was greeted by the glares of those closest to the door she’d inadvertently left open. Each of them had felt the sting of the water and the wind bursts and some of their belongings had gotten wet as well, but Minnow was used to those looks. She’d never seen them after making sick, but they didn’t bother her any. Besides, she reasoned, they should be happy to have gotten some fresh air into here anyway. Other than the Rock, none of the kingdoms had cultures that spent much time outside of the elements. Sure, those other elements were tame compared to this, but fresh air was a staple to the surface life. Sooner or later, cabin fever would set in for the majority of refugees, or as Minnow was beginning to think of them, inmates, and all hell would break loose. Her own exposure to the elements had already sparked the madness in her.

As the hours ticked by and the room remained dark, the only thing shifting the monotony of the entire situation was the change in wind speeds, which were being measured by the amount of noise the window boards made when they were blown against the rest of the building. As the noise increased, those who were strangers to Lorraine’s moods grew more and more frightened while the swampies took it to mean they were nearing the eye of the storm, and were grateful that it seemed to be smaller than a true hurricane. Perhaps closer to a depression. Just before peace returned, the howling gusts drowned out the cramped and irritable bickering for a time, just long enough for Minnow to relax to the sound of the outdoors rather than that of the strange accents yelling and crying and fighting for Paradise only knew what reason.

When the eye settled, she was the first to get back outside, and quickly made her way toward Birch’s house where her own bed hung and she stood a chance of a decent night’s sleep. While everyone else basked in the brief period of sunlight they had, the young woman slsipped inside to change into her furs. Although they weren’t great for swimming as the leather hides and soft fur coats that made them were harder to care for than the net and canvas that made up what the swamp ker referred to as “nets,” they also didn’t irritate the skin with their cords, which was why they were frequently slept in and rarely hunted in. Minnow’s furs were made from the hide of a wolf. She had never asked how the hide had been obtained, choosing to believe that she was the direct descendant of a wolf-wrestler (a common belief claimed by many in the Swamp) who had made the set when her wolf had died. Or had made them from the hide of a wolf she’d wrestled and not bonded to.

Stories like that were so common in the Swamp that there was a decent market for furs made from the hides of gray foxes and other, less powerful canids, but Minnow was certain that hers were real.

Once changed, Minnow returned to the sunlight and walked around, though never straying far from her own home. She didn’t particularly want to spend another night on the ground. From where she was, she saw couples canoodling and children playing and she saw her sister and Flint chatting to one another underneath the awning of the smokehouse. Whether they’d gotten permission to continue their “swim lessons” Minnow couldn’t tell, but when Birch walked passed, she took the opportunity to distract her mother from any chance of spotting the lovebirds (the use of that word to describe anyone in her family twisted Minnow’s tail in a knot, but she supposed she wanted Fern to be happy).

“How long do you suppose this will last?” she asked, causing Birch to turn away from wherever she was heading and back toward her young daughter. “The war, I mean, not the storm. Although, the storm too.”

For the first time, Minnow saw uncertainty in her mother’s eyes. Minnow was almost the youngest of Birch’s children, and she’d been born after the previous matriarch had become one with the swamp and floated to Paradise. All Minnow had ever known was her mother taking charge of every situation with a calm, unwavering authority. Tads didn’t often see uncertainty in their parents, but it happened. To see it in the matriarch was nigh unheard of. The sight worried the girl and suddenly she felt very small and very lost and wanted to return to the carefree days of being a tadpole. Quietly, she wrapped her arms around the much older ker and buried her face under her mother’s chin like she had as an infant. Before her eyes could slide shut in the comfort she was trying to find, it was ripped away by Birch’s words:

“I don’t know.”