The Lord of the Wood Owls was a tall Fir Owl named Oreb. He was big enough to carry Colin with his talons. He had his nest high among the trees, in the middle of a whole bunch of other Wood Owl nests, many of whom were his relatives. There were smaller Fir Owls like Oreb, tall, thin and straight, there were Ashen Owls with large, paler faces and broad shoulders. There were Willow Owls, agile and flexible in the wing, quite able to turn whole circles around branches they sat on. There were Yew Owls, springy and jumpy, with strong legs. There were even Driftwood Owls, seasoned and weathered-looking, who knew the sea as well as the forest.
In the center of them all, Lynn and Colin met Oreb, and greeted each other with short bows (or deep nods, depending on how you looked at it). Surrounded by so many different shades and sizes of brown owls, Colin suddenly felt like he was in the middle of a library, of all things.
"This is the new Forester." Lynn said. "He'll be here at least a week, I believe."
"Hoo hoo… Hoo hoo hoo!" Oreb said.
"Thanks for the welcome." Colin told him. "I'm looking forward to working with you as well."
This caused a bit of stir among the younger Wood Owls, but Oreb nodded with a twinkle in his eye and hooted. "Hoo, hoo, hoo!"
"Oreb," Colin said, "It's the other way around. I wanted to know what I can do for you."
"Hoo, hoo!" Oreb exclaimed with a generous laugh. "Hoo!"
"Actually, there is one thing." Lynn told Oreb. "Can you gather the eight Lords of this forest? Meet us at the Forester's Hut. Also, if you could advise Colin on how things are around here, it would be good."
"Hoo!" Oreb nodded. He hooted instructions at his clan and half of them took off in different directions.
"Yip." Shiro sounded impressed.
Oreb inspected the little white wolfcat cub and his eyes widened. "Ho?"
"Yip." Shiro introduced himself formally.
"Ho?!"
"Yiyip."
"Hoo!" Oreb gave Shiro a broad smile, welcoming him to the West Lamico Forest. "Ho, ho, hoo!"
Oreb met Foxie next, and Eclipse. He was about to meet Kirin when Lynn nudged both him and Colin. "We should go back to the Forester's Hut. The Cougars might already be on the way."
As they headed back, Colin asked, "Oreb, do you know of that camp near Floras, the one on this side of the river?"
"Hoo hoo…" Oreb trailed off. "Ho."
"Can you tell me of it?"
Oreb hooted. Images came to Colin's mind.
{The laughter of men mix with the cries of those driven from their homes. The promise was broken with the screeching of iron beasts. Fifty nests were felled in a night.}
"This is bad." Colin glanced at Lynn. "It sounds big."
"Those idiots." Lynn growled. "We'll go there immediately after you meet the eight Lords."
Lynn's hunch about the Tree Cougars proved right. They had moved the moment they heard of the new Forester. Colin barely arrived back at his outpost when cats started running in.
"Mew." Raiki glanced up. Ardent raised his head.
Lynn waited at the door of the Forester's hut with Colin and Oreb as a broad cat the size of a car and the color of dark chocolate. The three browns of his fur meshed in color so well, he looked almost made of wood, even though Colin could make out individual furs on his face.
"Yachad." Lynn greeted him. "It's been a while, you old Rooty Cougar."
"Kiao." Yachad greeted her.
Yachad had brought a good number of other Tree Cougars; other Rooty Cougars, broad and sure-footed, Trunky Cougars, big heavy cats, Branchy Cougars, who could stand on hind legs and use their forepaws like hands, Twiggy Cougars, skinny and swift, and Leafy Cougars, like Ardent, smaller in body, but better at long-range attacks.
Most of them were various shades of mixed browns also.
"I'm surrounded by brown." Colin noted.
"The Twig Lizards are here." Lynn pointed.
Colin saw them. They weren't quite thin and skinny as he'd thought. In fact, some of them were quite fat. They came in different colors too, blue, green, yellow, red, orange, even a gray. Some of them ran on all fours. Some of them walked on two legs.
"They look more like dinosaurs than lizards." Colin noted.
"Call them by name, Colin." Lynn told him.
Their Lord was Lather, a green-white Cluster-Twig Lizard. Standing on two legs or four, he was still taller than Colin, about the same size as Yachad, the Lord of Wood Cougars. Like all his kind, Lather seemed to have twigs growing out of his body, though Colin felt they were more like antlers. Lather and the other Cluster-twig Lizards had twigs that sprouted many smaller branches in all directions. There were Split-twig Lizards and Fan-twig Lizards and a whole bunch of different twig types.
The Feelo Wasps arrived next, the smallest of them being as big as melons. They were colored differently according to their types. Their queen (or Lord, or Lady or whatever) was as big as Colin, a Rainbow Feelo Wasp named Prisme.
The Bristle Boars had different kinds according to their bristles, whether they were Wood Bristles, Bronze Bristles, Iron Bristles, Steel Bristles, Silver Bristles or Golden Bristles like Rustle, the bus-sized Lord of Bristle Boars.
"He's big." Colin noted, seeing the big shiny Wild.
"Not as big as Deeproot." Lynn pointed. "The Oakin are here."
The Oakin were big walking trees. Deeproot, the Lord of the Oakin, was a Thunder Oakin, with tints of blue mixed in the brown of his wood and the green of his leaves. There were Splashy Oakin, and Creaky Oakin, and Rumbly Oakin, among others.
Most of the Oakin were taller than Colin's hut and as wide as cars, but there was this rather odd small Oakin, although it was really still quite big. This one was pink with yellow polkadots and stood as tall as the hut itself.
"What kind of Oakin is that?" Colin blinked.
Lynn laughed. "That's not an Oakin. Hello, Kyubia."
With a puff of smoke, the Oakin revealed herself as a grinning black fox still as tall as Colin's hut, with a white streak running down her back, and nine tails in neat formation at her back.
"Arf!" Foxie jumped and turned herself into a Oakin also, yellow with blue stripes, although she looked really queer in that size.
All the {real} Oakin, Colin realized, were steady brown with tinted colors according to their kind. {Okay, I get it. Any off-colored small Oakin I see are probably Streak Foxes in disguise.}
Kyubia hadn't come alone, Colin found. With more and more puffs of smoke, other off-colored Cougars and Boars and even an over-large Wasp showed themselves as mischievous Streak Foxes. There were three colors of Streaks, white, gray, and black, and it seemed, no end to the color of the Streak Foxes' fur.
{They can probably change the color of their fur any time they want… Colin realized. The only way to know what kind they are is to follow the color of their streaks.}
But Kyubia herself, nine-tailed and looking very stylish in black, had a streak that seemed to shimmer silver.
"Starstreak Fox." Lynn said, by way of explanation. "Foxie's a Whitestreak, isn't she? One day, if you raise her well, she might just become a Starstreak."
"Oh." Colin darted a glance at Foxie.
Foxie was looking rather enviously at Kyubia. "Arf."
Kyubia smiled back.
Finally, there were the Crested Falcons. Green-crested, Red, or Blue were medium brown in feather with crests on their necks, but White-crested Falcons were such a dark brown of feather, they looked almost black. The biggest of these White-crested Falcons was Sharpeye, who was as big as Kyubia.
"Welcome, all." Lynn said. "I bring you the new Forester."
Colin gave them respectful nods. "Hi."
"We haven't much time." Lynn added. "There's a certain logging camp on this side of the river that's really not supposed to be there. We're going to remove it."
Hoots, barks, creaks and other sounds of approval echoed through the West Lamico Forest.
"Gather your clans." Lynn said. "We go to war."
{War again…?} Colin groaned. "Can we not do war? The entire continent's already so messed up with war! Why do we need more fighting?"
"Why?" Lynn gave him a sharp look. "Why do you think we're going to destroy that camp, Colin?"
"Because they didn't ask permission to put it there?" Colin scratched his head.
"Because they broke their promise, Colin." Lynn said. "Because of betrayal."
Colin sighed. "Great. So, what's the plan?"
"Attack from all sides. Smash everything." Lynn said.
"No battle formations, no sequence of who goes where?" Colin questioned.
"No need." Lynn said.
"Hoo, hoo." Oreb warned.
"Really?" Lynn sounded surprised. "They've never posted guards or anything before."
"Hoo…" Oreb shrugged. He didn't know why either.
"It's the war. The human war." Colin explained. "The Union's worried about attacks from the Protectorate. They've been attacking the Protectorate's logging camps, and expect the same from them."
"I see." Lynn frowned. "Kyubia?"
"Raf!" Kyubia grinned.
"Wait… just wait." Colin held up one hand. "Let me talk to them."
Lynn thought about it for a while, then nodded. "Fine.
"You have one hour."