‹ Help!› it cried. ‹ My brother and I are trapped by the fire. Help!›

There was a desperation to the cry, as if the one who gave it had been calling for some time and had lost hope that any would hear. The mind-speech included information not included in the simple message. The two treecats were high in a green-needle, within a grove of such trees.

This was not good for several reasons. Unlike the net-wood groves in which clans tended to make their central nesting places, green-needle trees did not have interconnected branches. Instead, branches tended to taper off, ending in needles that would not bear an infant bark-chewer, much less a full-grown Person. To make matters worse, green-needle trees burned fast and hot. These brothers must have been hard-pressed to take refuge here.

The fire had not yet reached their refuge.

‹ Can you get down? To another tree?› Climbs Quickly asked.

‹ No,› the speaker-he called himself Left-Striped-replied. ‹ The ground is very hot. We tried. My brother-he insisted he could run fast enough-badly burned the pads of his hand-feet and true-feet. We made our way up into a green-needle and hoped the winds would carry the fire elsewhere, but…›

Climbs Quickly knew then what this call really was. It was not so much a call for help-for what help could come in such a situation? It was Left-Striped’s last attempt to make certain that the clan to which these brothers belonged would learn of their deaths and so not be left to empty mourning.

So the situation must have been in the days before the coming of the two-legs, the tragedy accepted as something to be sung of in sorrow, but now…

Climbs Quickly’s “conversation” with the stranded treecat had taken only breaths. Now he rose onto his true-feet and began pointing. He tried to show that he was indicating a specific portion of the fire-affected area by angling his gestures precisely along the lines where he could “feel” the other treecat’s mind-glow.