The Children of Destiny

Chapter 8 - More Bad Luck!?

I awoke the next morning to see that Roxie was no longer in the set with me. I immediately began freaking out, wondering where she could have gone on such short notice.

With her limp, she couldn't have gotten far. I scrambled out of the dodger set and started frantically calling Roxie. Suddenly, I heard low growling and turned around to see Roxie growling at a berry bush.

"Oh, thank the stars!" I sighed. "Roxie, come here, girl!"

But Roxie didn't even pay attention to me. She just kept growling at the bush. So, I decided to check out what she was looking at. When I got close enough to peer inside of the bush, I saw a mass of black, grey, and white fur and immediately knew what Roxie was growling at: a dodger. The dodger stalked out from behind the bush and glared at Roxie. It was about her height, so I knew instantly it was a full grown female, which would make it way harder to fight. Female dodgers are super aggressive when hungry, stressed, angry, or right before and after their mating season and, just my luck, this dodger looked hungry and it was a few days before dodger mating season.

Great... The dodger had long, skinny forelegs and short, muscular hind legs; all of her legs were black. She had the head of a black and white dog and from her torso to her hind legs she was full badger. Her blue eyes flicked from me to Roxie as if she didn't know which of us she wanted to kill first. The dodger's jaws were dripping hungrily with what I hoped was berry juice and foam. I pulled out my knife and Roxie crouched low to the ground, getting ready to pounce.

Before either of us could do anything, though, the dodger lunged forward and grabbed Roxie in her jaws. Roxie yelped and clawed at the dodger's chest, which made the dodger even angrier. She threw Roxie into the berry bush and rounded on me, her jaws parted and dripping with blood. The dodger leaped forward to try and get the first hit on me, but I jumped to the side, avoiding her attack, and stabbed my knife into her flank. She howled in pain and Roxie jumped out of the bush, covered in berry juice.

Roxie landed directly on the dodger's back, bit her ear, and clawed at her neck. The dodger tried to shake her off, but Roxie had tightly gripped her with her claws and teeth and was determined to either kill or scare this thing off. I took this as an opportunity to attack and sliced at one of the dodger's hind legs. Finally, the dodger decided she'd had enough. She rolled over until Roxie yelped and released her ear and neck, then scrambled to her paws and ran off, snarling with frustration that her prey had beaten her so easily.

Roxie and I exchanged a glance before I rummaged through my backpack to find something that would heal the wounds we got from the battle. Luckily, the dodger hadn't gotten in any fatal blows, so we'd be fine even if we didn't stop to heal ourselves. It was a good thing we did, though, because that made me notice how hungry I was. I picked some berries from the berry bush and looked around, trying to find some sort of stream to wash them off in. Then, I thought of something.

There's water in the air, right? So, what if I could freeze the water particles in the air, making ice, and then melt the ice to make water? It seemed like a good enough idea to me, so I decided to try it out. I closed my eyes concentrating solely on the air, and the microscopic particles of water in it. Suddenly, something fell right in front of me and I opened my eyes to see a block of ice as tall as me. I stared at it and it began to melt until it held only enough water to clean the berries I'd collected. I picked up the ice cube, raised it over the berries, and let it melt over them, cleaning them off with the pure water coming from it.

Roxie lapped at all the water that dripped off the berries like she hadn't drank water in months. I ended up giving her the rest of the water from the ice cube when I was done cleaning the berries. After Roxie and I ate the berries, we set off to continue our journey to find the other child of the prophecy.