My name is Darkfur. I'm the youngest of the 4 squirrel brothers, as we are commonly called. My 3 older brothers, from eldest to youngest, are Arrowpaw, Brushtail, and Curltail. I'll be telling the story of how we came to Mossflower since I am the most literate.
I'm not the youngest in my family. I've got 2 other brothers and 4 sisters. We're all named alphabetically so my parents could keep track of us all. The rest of my siblings are Emalla, Firefur, Goldstripe, Hazel, Iris, and Jepy. We lived in a tribe in the far north. We are called the Gawtrybe.
You've probably heard of us and have probably heard that we are a fairly barbaric tribe. I suppose that's true, though we never though of it that way. We just wanted to have fun. That's how my brothers and I got interested in archery, for the fun of it. Archery also is the reason we had to leave.
It all started several seasons back, I forget how long ago exactly. Well, my brothers and I were playing around, mainly shooting at each other and snatching feathers from our tails, which was our favorite game. So there we were, firing arrows and grabbing feathers, when we heard a rustling in the bushes. Brushtail indicated for us to be quiet. "Let's see if we can hit it!" Arrowpaw whispered. We all thought that was a great idea, you see, we were terrible archers at the time. We'd never hit anybeast, so the thought of actually hitting something was exciting. We all drew our arrows and on Arrowpaw's signal, fired into the bushes.
We heard 4 THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNKS. Followed by a groan. For a few moments, we were excited. Until we saw who we hit. It was Raya, the Gawtrybe chief. He was already dead, 4 red fletched arrows lodged in his chest. The 4 of us were so horrified that we had killed the chief that we dropped our bows and raced back to our home as fast as we could.
None of us had any appetite that night, which surprised our whole family. Firefur asked, "Watta matter! Didya eat bad fruit or sumtin!"
"Go jump offa cliff!" Curltail snapped, which shocked everyone because Curltail rarly speaks, even to us.
Later that night, Sairk, Raya's brother, called a meeting, which was uncommon. All the Gawtrybe was really hyper, something like this doesn't happen much. Then Sairk came forward, he was holding something behind his back. I had a really bad feeling.
"Raya is dead!" Sairk said.
Everyone started talking all at once, and my brothers and I slowly stood up and started to creep away.
Sairk silenced everyone and then pulled out from behind his back, 4 red fletched arrows and 4 nearly identical bows. "Thesea belong to the killers!" Everyone looked at us because we were the only Gawtrybe squirrels who owned bows and arrows. "Killa them!!!" was shrieked and we ran.
*****
We ran and ran and ran. Then we ran some more. Even after the angry shouts of our family and friends had faded, we still ran. And when one of us fell from exaustion, the others grabbed him and dragged him along til he could run again. Finally, after what seemed like seasons, we stopped.
"Watta we do now?" Arrowpaw asked.
"Canta go back," Brushtail said.
Like that wasn't apparent. We sat there for a while, wondering what to do. Then Curltail started chuckin' pine cones at me. Then I just had to clobber him. We played for a while, then we ran over a mouse. He shouted and whacked me over the head. "Stupid, mangy savages. Watch where you're goin'!"
My brothers all stopped and helped me up. "Wesa sorry." Arrowpaw said.
"Antone, what's going on?" a voice called out. A pretty female mouse appeared. The mouse who had hit me shrugged, "Nothing to worry about, Shea. Just a few squirrels. They were fighting and ran over me." The mouse looked angrily at us. "Get out of here and leave us civilized beasts in peace."
We probably would of left, except we smelled something really nice coming from the female mouse, Shea. We scampered over to her and tried to glance in a basket she was holding. She took a few steps back, then stopped and smiled. "Antone, look at them. They're just young ones, and they look so hungry. Maybe we could get them cleaned up and feed them. Then send them on their way."
The mouse shook his head. "You're too soft-hearted, my dear." He sighed. "They can stay for a little while. Looks like they haven't had a decent meal in a while any way. Alright you squirrels! What are your names?"
We quickly blabber out our names. Shea shook her head. "Please! One at a time. Goodness, such manners." She got us to say our names one after another then told Antone to take us down to the river for a bath.
"Whatta bath?" Brushtail asked.
Antone sighed. "You picked a fine bunch of savages, Shea. Alright you lot. Down to the river. I'll show you what a bath is."
We enjoyed the first bath of our lives. It was fun to make the bubbles with the soap, but the soap wasn't good to eat (as I found out). After our bath, we got dried off and Antone gave us some clean clothes. Then we got our first lesson in manners at dinner.
Shea was very patient with us, but wouldn't give us any food until we said "Please." She had more of a problem getting Curltail to say please, though. We tried to explain that Curltail didn't like to talk.
"Is he mute? Or does he just not want too?" Shea asked.
"Talks somea times. Notta like too, 'dough." I said.
"Well, he can either say please or he won't eat."
Curltail looked at the table then glanced up at Shea. "Peas," he whispered.
Shea smiled and passed him the food, "That's better."
*****
We spent a season with Antone and Shea. We told them why we had run away, and they felt sorry for us. Shea worked on teaching us manners, how to talk right and even tried to give us some schooling. My brothers weren't interested in learning how to read and write, but I was. They learned a little bit, but I learned all I could.
Antone was an expert archer and taught us how to shoot better. He also taught us "Archery Rules." One of them was "Never shoot at anything 'til you know what it is." He said that if we had followed that rule, we wouldn't of had to run away from our home.
We were very happy with them, but we eventually grew restless, not to mention a little nervous. The Gawtrybe might still be looking for us. So we eventually left and continued to travel south.
Not much happened after we left Antone and Shea. We traveled, played, ate, played, practiced, and played. Then one day, we came across a badger. We'd never seen a badger before so it was new and exciting. Arrowpaw said he looked like a "movin' mountain." Then Brushtail though it would be fun to climb on the mountain. So that's what we did. The badger didn't think it was fun to have us climbing all over him, and we probably would of kept climbing, except that's when Mattia came in. But Mattia covers that so this is where my story stops.