#fwirl

Fwirl marshalled her thoughts, tail flicking. "If I left the Abbey tomorrow," she started, looking back through the trees at the red sandstone spires, still visible. "If I left- I could come back. The gates wouldn't be closed to me. A week, a season, ten seasons- I could come back."

"You," Tagg said, his voice hard, "Were raised by woodlanders. You are pretty, and small, and soft-spoken. You look like them. You talk like them. You think like them."

Fwirl looked at him again. He was staring fixedly at the trunk of the tree she perched in. She read anger in the set of his shoulders, the shiver of his whiskers. Anger, and misery. 

"I do," she agreed, because it was true. "And that's why I know you'd be welcome back, too. If you need to leave, to be under the trees and stars and carry a knife and be called a different name, you can. Nobody will stop you." 

Brian Jacques. One of the Redwall books.

There's a squirrel whose backstory is that she was raised by her mom until bandits attacked, and her mom took an axe to her head. She did not wake up. Obviously. Because she took an axe to her head. The child eventually had to leave the house after several days, fend for herself, and grew up. This takes place in Plotline A.

Meanwhile, in Plotline B...our characters run into a squirrel. She is quite mad. That is her name. Madd. She is bloodthirsty and off her rocker, due to a head injury. Turns out, she took a severe head wound years ago when she was attacked by bandits. She almost died, but was rescued after several days by a stranger. Sadly, he could not save her daughter, who was obviously killed by the bandits.

And that's the end of their stories.

I mean, not really. They live on. Both of them.

Mhera: Yeah, but you had stuff we don’t have.

Mhera: How are the trees?