Though Raisa was better suited to all of this rock scrambling business, she wasn't precisely enthusiastic either. There were new plants to take note of and samples to collect, new prey to hunt, but an entirely new territory to get used to. Lower down there had been elk and hares to chase, but those seemed to disappear like magic the closer one got to a crossing point. There, little tailless rats that scrambled and melted into the rocks, pigeons that seemed to deliberately try to shit on their heads and falcons with more bravado than sense mobbing the hawk laguz a hundred times their size.

The biggest quarry here were those odd goats, though they stayed mockingly out of reach no matter how the cats tried to ambush them. At least until one of the hawks came up with the idea of dragging the goats off of the mountainside. Quite clever except for when the horns of a buck shattered on the rocks too close to them and sent Raisa skittering away with splinters in her tail.

It was still bound with a few bandages, but that didn't stop the tip from twitching.

"I hear something," Raisa said, both ears turned forwards. Distant chittering bats...and something breathing.