I

There had been more than a few anxious moments in the last few days. The men had eyed the spreading soot cloud on the horizon and piled on sail, even though the wind had been average to poor. The nets had lain more or less abandoned, and Toren had gathered more than the usual number of curses and backhanders.

But today it was as if the ship's timbers themselves had let out a sigh of relief. The worst was over.

XIV

She began to smell salt in the air. The stream of animals had become a trickle; they all ran faster than her, even the littlest mice, because by now she was running at a walking pace.

Then her shoe landed in liquid that splashed onto her leg. She bent down to find Samson gorging on water in remarkably efficient manner. If he was drinking, then it was clean. Tsvetka fell to her knees to scoop water to her mouth; its taste made her feel she could never get enough, never want anything else. Samson sat down to gaze at her, having had enough. He was no longer in such a hurry. That was good, right?

At last, she stood up, her face now gloriously cool. They went on, and the cheetah let her walk. The salt smell reminded her of something... brine... sea... the sea? She started running again - the darkness thinned - and thinned even more - thunder, no, waves on sand. And suddenly she was in daylight, and the sun was half-way up the sky... and her feet were in sand, and before her was the grey ocean.

XIII

Although exertion and a nasty edge of fear made Tsvetka's face burn with heat, the floor of the tunnel remained curiously cool, and ever so slightly damp. Every now and again she felt something soft and suspiciously moss-like beneath the toes of her bare foot.

Samson wasn't far ahead of her. His tail flicked once in a while in the gentlest reminder of his frustration at her slow pace, but otherwise he didn't seem terribly distressed. Once in a while he paused to allowed her to catch up with him, and passed the time by studying the dark shapes which scurried past them in a steady stream with mild curiosity.

On one such occasion, blinded by sweat and soot, Tsvetka tripped and almost fell headlong over her waiting companion. Samson chirped a warning, and she threw out her mobile arm to steady herself against the nearest wall. She found that it was warm, but not burning hot. The surface was smooth, and carved into strange contours reminiscent of nothing more than the patterns left by waves on an undisturbed beach. 

It seemed to Tsvetka that the tunnel would have no end. Through the blur of her exhaustion, she seemed to notice a slight downhill gradient to their path, but could not find the energy to speculate about their eventual destination, if such a destination existed.

XII

'Samson!' she screamed. The little feline had been trotting along one second, and had vanished. His face with its tear-streaks appeared again, his fangs slightly bared to hurry her footsteps. He had found a tunnel, its opening well wide enough to admit at least two six-foot men. This was what he'd been leading her to?

But she followed him as he scampered into the darkness. A glance behind her filled her terrified vision with the fiery glow of the volcano's peak. Anything was better than waiting for that. The tunnel was straight, the walls slimy when she touched them. She became aware of the pattering of of hundreds of little feet, and she shrieked as something scampered over her bare foot. A rat. A rat?

Then the earth shifted violently. She fell heavily on her good arm and felt the skin scrape off her knuckles. The noise she'd been dreading propelled her to her feet, and into a faster run, and she heard the other animals pick up their pace too. The volcano had released its pent up anger. She couldn't outrun lava. The mountain exploded again, muffled through the metres of stone above her.

XI

The low, orange sun was on Tsvetka's right hand side as she stumbled along in Samson's wake. By its light she could now see that they were headed across a wide volcanic plane, following a curious path which held no logic to her dull human instinct. Behind them, the crumbling cliff face down which she now supposed herself to have fallen, was falling under the cloud's shadow. Tsvetka shivered.

Samson was less susceptible to horrors, and thus more focused on their prospects in the immediate future. He jogged ahead at a steady pace, snuffling after some elusive goal that remained entirely mysterious to Tsvetka.

X

The cliff which had crumbled under Tsvetka's feet looked set to send down another avalanche; seedlings sprouted at precipitate angles, their roots white and torn - almost as though they were warning her of her near future.

Near being the operative word. Each lightning glance over her shoulder saw the... the cloud gaining on her. There was no way she could outrun it; she gave up looking behind, and tried to find something to help her, to hide her, to... Samson veered into her path, and away at right angles to the way they had been headed. Unquestioning, Tsvetka followed him. He could outrun them, when the time came. She would make sure he did. For now she followed his zig-zagging lead.

IX

Then, by silent mutual agreement, they started running. Samson wasn't really running of course, but even so he easily loped ahead of Tsvetka's laboured progress. Once in a while he'd return to nudge the back of her shins with an wet, worried nose.

This is no time to dawdle, he seemed to be saying. He'd dropped the mangled bird corpse some time ago, but that didn't stop him from sending reproachful and deeply significant glances back at the distant malevolent cloud. They're getting closer.

"I'm doing my best," Tsvetka panted. She paused for a precious moment, gasping for a breath of the air which was rapidly filling with soot. The cheetah gave her sweaty face a forgiving lick, leaving a white trail on the grimy skin.

VIII

Her foot with the shoe on it had sunk under a pile of dirt without her noticing. But as she freed it, the ground swallowed her bare foot. After a few more steps, she resigned herself to walking ankle-deep in the treacherous soil. This made it rather difficult to remain upright; and more so because the balancing aid of windmilling the arms was for Tsvetka definitely lopsided. The little cheetah padded along next to her, looking anxious. But even in his preoccupied state, he didn't stumble over the object directly in his path.

He caught it up in his mouth. Tsvetka stared. Samson bared his canines. Then they both looked back and up... Far up.

VII

The horizon which had, by imperceptible intervals, grown considerably lighter.

"So what do we do now?" Tsvetka wondered, half to herself and half to her companion.She pushed him off and struggled to her feet, glad to discover that although her joints were stiff, her legs seemed to have suffered no lasting damage.

By contrast, her arm was growing more painful with each moment that passed. It was probably light enough to see what was wrong with it, but she found herself averting her gaze to stare determinedly at the distant, growing light.

VI

'Hullo, you,' she said, and spat out more dust. She desperately needed some water. Samson slunk closer, his non-retractable claws making crunch-crunch noises. He licked her face, and she could see his eyes glinting in some left-over light that was hiding where only the cheetah cub could see. He raised his front paws to place them on her chest, and nuzzled her jaw, eventually succeeding in turning her face towards the horizon.

V

The girl who called herself Tsvetka was not a coward. But her heart still skipped a few beats, and she raised her good arm in an instinctive attempt to protect herself. Then, as the little creature's rough tongue rasped across her bare shin, another memory danced across her mind.

She breathed out. It was Samson.

IV

Now was one of those times she regretted being a member of the most visually dependent species the world had to offer. It seemed unfair that although humans relied mostly on sight, they had distressingly poor night vision. She explored her immediate surroundings with her left hand. Soil, little stones, bigger little stones, what felt like torn up plant roots, more soil, and one of her missing shoes. She emptied it, and pulled it on. As she shifted, her bare foot touched something soft and possibly furry. It moved.

III

Tsvetka.Yes, that sounded right. She said it again, this time softly, and nodded in satisfaction.

As she did so, she winced in unexpected pain. Her neck ached. Now the memory of pain started to seep into her brain, and she realised that her right arm was no longer numb. Instead, it burned.

Gathering her wits about her, she commanded the joints and muscles in her back and legs, and managed to sit up, dragging the useless arm with her.

II

Experimentally, she flexed her left arm. Tiny cascades of soil tickled as they were dislodged by her movement. Interesting, she thought, and tried the rest of her limbs. The same thing happened, except on her right arm, which she couldn't feel below the elbow. Not good. Something nibbled at the edge of her mind. Spitting out as much of the dust as possible that had gotten into her mouth, she said quite loudly,

'Tsvetka. I'm pretty sure that's my name. Yes. Tsvetka, right?'

I

She opened her eyes. The darkness was lifting a little, though it was still so dark that she blinked a few times to be sure that her lids had really lifted. But there was definitely a smudge in the general direction of where she seemed to remember the horizon had been.