The sun had climbed higher, burning away the crispness of morning and leaving behind a dry, brittle air.

  The sting of the wind had faded, the snow crunched less, and here and there the trickle of melting water could be heard.

  Callan led them to the head of the trail they had returned on the night before and dismounted Raulski, handing her reins to Cecil.

  "Keep her here with the dogs. I don't want them cluttering the area until I have a look."

  Sierra took the reins and nodded. "Junk, Tracer," she snapped. "Stay."

  Junkrat didn't so much as flick an ear in her direction, but Tracer let out a small protesting whine.

  It had been a while since either of them had spent a day in the woods; they were probably excited, she thought.

  Well, maybe not Junkrat. Grumpy old dog.

  Callan pulled his scattergun from Raulski’s saddle holster, slinging it over his shoulder as he turned toward the brush.

  It wasn't particularly dense here and the girls could keep track of him.

  He hadn't gone far when he knelt out of sight.

  There were three prints.

  Each a perfect circle, the edges smooth and clean.

  The interiors were filled with strange, intricate patterns—random lines and cracks, like the bottom of an animal’s paw but… not quite.

  The pattern might have passed for natural if not for the sharp corners. Even some right angles.

  Nature doesn’t really do corners, Callan mused.

  Crystalline? Crystals could form sharp angles naturally.

  There was no suggestion of toes or claws, just three identical circles, a foot or so apart.

  Each was the size of his fairly large hand, and each filled with a subtly different version of the strange pattern.

  Callan's brow furrowed.

  Nothing had three legs? Nothing had round feet? Crystal shoes? What the hell was this thing?

  He stood and scanned his surroundings.

  The tracks went back into the woods, roughly parallel to the trail the girls had been riding. Each set was a good distance apart.

  This thing had long legs and an impressive stride at speed.

  Savannah had been right—there was plenty of damage to the brush and trees.

  Up to about two meters from the ground, limbs had been broken and snapped off. Even some with a decent circumference had broken clean.

  And there was no mistaking where it had passed through low growth—anything it touched had been scattered aside, leaving a clear path.

  Callan let himself take it all in, scanning for details and clues that might not have been immediately obvious.

  He found nothing else.

  The tracks were clear and easy to follow, the path the creature had taken would have been obvious even to someone who had never been into the forest.

  He called out to the girls, "You can come in, release the dogs too."

  There was a flurry of noise behind him as the girls dismounted and Tracer charged in at full speed; shoving her nose into the ground at Callan's feet and spiraling out around him from there.

  Somewhere further back Junkrat sat, unmoving, in the same place he'd been the entire time.

  Sierra rolled her eyes at him and reached back for a treat,

  "Grumpy old dog," she chided at him as she tossed the bite.

  Junkrat caught it mid-air, without getting up, and chewed it with big exaggerated motions.

  His tail might have twitched.

  Sierra smiled and left him to sit.

  The girls reached Callan a moment later, Sierra dropping to a knee as her Uncle had done, to investigate the tracks.

  Vannah looked at him expectantly.

  "I don't know," he shrugged "but you're right, it was big and fast."

  "And invisible." Sierra added.

  "Only kind of," her sister corrected.

  "These footprints don't make any sense," Sierra poked one with her index finger, "where are its toes? Everyone has toes."

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Horses don't have toes." Savannah chirped.

  "Pedantry." Cecil replied, with disgust.

  Callan couldn't help a broad grin, Cecil's response, down to the tone, was a direct theft from his own repertoire.

  Moving through the brush, tracing the creature’s path back, Callan noted that Tracer had already lost interest in the tracks–and never expressed any in the creature’s path.

  Apparently, her nose wasn’t detecting anything of note.

  As his eyes moved from one side of the creature's trail of destruction to the other, Callan felt a hint of… fear?

  Concern, at least.

  He let it surface, following the thread of it. It didn’t take long to find the source.

  Recklessness.

  Operating on the assumption that a simple explanation would present itself in the morning, never stopping to consider what this thing might actually be.

  There could be real danger.

  Excitement and curiosity had bested common sense.

  Not the first time.

  He stopped advancing and brought his scattergun off his shoulder and into his grip, carefully aimed at the forest floor.

  He took a cue from Vannah, and listened.

  His gaze drifted over the trees, unfocused.

  Birds and insects.

  Wind.

  The soft drip of melting ice in the sun.

  He closed his eyes.

  Something small shuffled in the underbrush off to his left.

  Tracer was sniffing around behind him.

  The girls paced, coming closer.

  He inhaled deeply through his nose—water, moss, tree sap.

  Leather and gun oil.

  A hint of animal droppings.

  Flowers, from the open range just beyond the trees.

  V was wearing a scent.

  Nothing unusual.

  Callan let out a slow breath and whistled for Tracer as they returned to their horses.

  He swung into the saddle, adjusting his grip on the reins.

  "I want you to take me to the ridge, where you came down," he said flatly. "I want to see something. Then we’re going to have a chat."

  He nudged Raulski forward without waiting for a reply, his mind following paths, trying to find a line that made sense.

  ***

  Callan stood at the top of the ridge, the girls, mounted, waited below with the dogs.

  Raulski was hitched to a sapling behind him.

  His curiosity gnawed at him, but he was becoming convinced they weren’t in immediate danger.

  Still, anxiety had always been a part of him, costing him more than a few opportunities over the years.

  In response, he pushed his girls to be adventurous, to be brave—to make sure they didn’t inherit his hesitation.

  Now, standing here, he pressed himself to be sure his own desire for answers-- and excitement at what those answers could be-- wasn’t putting them all in unacceptable danger.

  The prints here were deep and clear, the subtle patterns fully embedded in the soil and snow.

  It had stood here, waiting, as the girls carefully picked their way down the ridge on horseback.

  Callan scanned the area below, his gaze sliding past the girls as he searched for something.

  When he found it, he nodded.

  A heavily disturbed area at the base of the ridge, about twenty feet out from the ridge wall. He couldn’t make out the details from here, but he was confident now.

  The thing had followed them to the ridge, closing the distance with ease.

  It stood here, waited for them to descend—then jumped.

  Clearing twenty feet outward from a standstill, dropping thirty feet below, and landing clean to resume its pursuit.

  They hadn’t been hunted

  They’d been herded.

  —

  Callan had called the girls up, showed them the prints, the landing site, and laid out most of his theory.

  “So, the good news is that I don’t think it wanted to hurt you,” he said.

  “The bad news is that if it ever does want to, it can.”

  “Great,” Sierra muttered.

  Callan smiled gently at them. “We can go home—that’s the safest choice. Or we can keep going until it feels too dangerous. What do you think?”

  The question was open-ended, but he already knew what Cecil was going to say.

  Vannah’s answer would have the most weight here.

  “Of course we’re going!” Sierra had already started walking back toward her horse.

  Callan called after her, “Hold on, Cecil. Really ask yourself—are you willing to get hurt? To put Nugget and Tracer in danger?”

  This new thought gave her pause, “We can take the dogs back!”

  “No,” Callan replied instantly. “If it’s not safe for them, it’s not safe for you.”

  “Take a beat, kiddo. Really think; I know danger doesn’t scare kids much until it’s close,” his tone was gentle, but firm, “but what might happen to you? To them?”

  “Don’t rush into things–consider, at least, the most likely thing to happen, and the worst that could happen.”

  Sierra nodded solemnly.

  Both girls had always been open to his attempts at teaching, and Cal had always tried to teach them how to think, rather than what to think.

  Callan let her sit with that for a moment and turned his attention to Vannah instead.

  She shrugged, “I guess… I want to go on? In a theoretical, not actually scared at this exact moment, kind of way.”

  Callan let out a short snort of laughter--he genuinely enjoyed the company of his children.

  Reaching out, he squeezed V’s shoulder before turning back to Cecil.

  Sierra sighed, “I’m worried now. If it’s there and Tracer doesn’t run, it might hurt her.”

  Callan nodded. “They both have good recall, but yeah, that’s a real risk.”

  “Can we tie them off? The horses too? Go on foot?”

  “That leaves us in a bad spot if we need to run.”

  She paused to consider, “It’s faster than the horses anyway. We know that for sure—If it was herding us away, would it get meaner just because we didn’t run fast enough?”

  “I don’t know.” Cal admitted.

  Cecil was starting to show signs of stress, torn between the urge to press forward and the fear of consequences.

  Callan knew the feeling all too well—it was the same conflict anxious people felt over even minor decisions. He softened his expression and stepped fully into Dad mode.

  “I think we go on,” he said. “Tying the animals off and going in on foot is a good call. We move slow. Stop often. Just observe. No high risks. No small risks. No risks, period.”

  “Don’t touch anything without permission. Follow directions immediately. And if I say run—you run.”

  “You don’t stop for me. You don’t stop for the animals. You take your sister, and you go.”

  His eyes darted between them.

  “Yes, sir,” Savannah said.

  Cecil echoed it a beat later.

  The thing watched silently from the forest.

  (This Author’s Note Was Created With ChatGPT, Try It Today!)

  I'm sorry--I don't know what's wrong with me.