Big thanks to arisuvixen for letting me play with her character Arisu.

***

The bones near the edge of the pit are absurdly large, the ribs easily three times Arisu's height. She has no idea what beasts they came from. Several long thin bones remind her of the struts in the wing of a bat, but the bat would have to be several houses big. The tar there was too shallow to drown the creatures but deep enough to hold them. Thirst took them, probably.

Arisu knows she doesn't have to fear that slow death, at least. She's way beyond the shallows, and way smaller than the lost beasts, and the tar will have the last of her by the next hour. She goes on struggling, but more out of principle than hope.

Arisu left town when the new mayor and his cronies took over the snow-leopard village. They believed in "Lineage Hygiene", which meant basically that if you weren't one hundred percent leopard, you were officially food. Arisu's mother had been a fox, and she had no interest in being anyone's meal. By nightfall she was out of the mountains, and the next morning she headed north through the lowland savanna.

She had to move quickly: several of the cronies would be on her trail. They would consider her escape an insult. So on reaching the tar-pit belt, she took the most direct route, running lightly across the tar rather than navigating the uncertain trails between the pits. The weather had been cool, and she gambled on the tar being firm enough not to catch her if she moved quickly. Her panic on losing the gamble faded quickly into resignation.

Part 2