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THE FLOOD had caused no end of grief and anguish in the swamp and across the plains. Among the fortunate survivors were a traveling pair of storytellers - the charismatic but frail Wildflower Breeze and his intelligent and brave son, Motes in Moonlight, as well as their animal companions, a mongoose, a songbird and a cheetah. The whole motley had ridden the flood waters upon a half-rotted tree trunk (save for the cat, who always rode upon Motes' without exception) from near the northern border almost halfway to the southern shores. The two of them had managed to pull a few kimeti and, surprisingly, kiokote from the waters, but increasingly they found their brethren limp and lifeless, drowned or battered to death by the crush and press of water and flotsam. The hours wore on into days, with sleep coming only when the bodies could continue no longer without it, and then it was often plagued by nightmares. Eventually, the tide receded, and the swamp was again navigable. Some of the group parted ways, some traveled together. The storytellers left with little company but their own as they began the arduous trek back north.

For a good, long while, Breeze and Motes said little to each other beyond what was necessary. Motes was still struggling to accept the awesome, terrible destruction that he had witnessed, which was a hard morsel to digest indeed. Breeze, however, was facing his own dilemma - along with the flood, his own dreams had been becoming more and more chaotic of late. Memories of Nettle, the old stodgy buck he had once labored under as penance for a misdeed long forgotten; visions of cranes and white kimeti staring from the shadows; strange laughter and the sound of thunder riding on the wind. Adding to this the terror of the flood, Breeze found himself piling bodies for Nettle, while cranes with broken necks and tiny white foals danced and laughed thunder.

At last, on a hot and sunny day nearly a week after they began back north, it was Motes who broke their silence. "Father," he said, "do you think that, if we'd tried harder, we could have saved more of them?"

Breeze did not respond for a long while. Motes was just turning to hide his face in some trivial task or other when Breeze finally did say, slowly, "No, son. I do not think that we could have."

Motes stared at his father, then. His face was sad, and a little disbelieving. "Not even one more foal? Not even another mongoose or lynx?"

Breeze said again, "No. We did everything we could. The swamp called them back to her, and we could not have stopped them from following."

Mote heaved an angry sigh, and bowed his head. "Why would this happen, father?" he slurred through a voice thick with tears. "What did we do? Were we too great in number? Were we too proud? Were -"

Quickly standing, his father cut him off. "I think you are putting too much stock into the stories we tell, Motes," he said quietly. "Floods are not punishments rained down upon bad children by a scolding Mother, nor are earthquakes, or fires, or thunderbolts or frosts. There was rain," he explained, beginning to pace before his staring son, "which over-saturated the land, and burst the rivers, and swept across the plains to the Swamp. The water was deep and fast, and many died, not because they deserved to die, or we deserved to mourn, but because there was too much rain, and they could not swim, or they got trapped, or they got hit by a tree." He stopped pacing and stared down his muzzle at his son, looming over him as he hadn't since the boy had grown taller and broader than he. "Terrible things often happen to good people. This is a fact of life. It is rotten, and unfair, but unavoidable as air or water."

They stayed silent, staring at each other. Breeze turned tail on him quickly, before he could come to regret the decision. "I am going to seek guidance in my dreams," he called back to his son. "Travel north without me. I will catch you up later."

The sound of his son's wracking sobs followed him on the thickened air.