Dun, dun, dun, daaaaaaaa!!!! Here is the much awaited SEQUEL, to Land across the Sea. Thank you all for your patience, espescially after that somewhat cliffhanger ending. (snickers, then coughs) ehem, ANYWAY, without much ado...oh wait! Trivia bit; whilst flipping through my Very Best Name Book, I found that 'Mai' in Navajo, means coyote. Flip it around and it's Ami! That was never intentional, hee.

Disclaimer for whole story; I have never, do not at present, and doubtless never will (sobs) own any part in Brian Jacques' wonderful series. Or any of his other books. I do not make money from this, though I do get lots of pleasure from hearing how much you lot like it.

This story is told from Kith's POV only, imagine you're sitting in a comfortable room (preferably at Redwall with lots of food and drink to paw :D) and she's telling the tale to the lot of you. Though she does tend to mix her tenses. I had no part in that.

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Spring time's here, and after three months stuck in either the Seaseeker, or the Onida coon's den, you can bet your brush I was ready to get out and do sommat interesting at last!

Have you got a brush to bet? Better check, it's not wise to bet with sommat you don't have.

Anyway, the snow's melting, and flowers are coming up, so I'm filling my notebook up quite a bit. Plenty of flowers and stuff that's not at home. Vora Onida showed me how to use a lot of them in useful ways.

But an otter crew, a mouse, and a squirrel (that'd be me, I'm not at all patient) cooped up together for a winter does not a comfortable season make, and we're all curious about the tales we've been hearing of what's beyond the forest. So as soon as the snow's properly melted (don't want to take any chances on surprise snowfalls and what not) Lyfo gather's us all together and tells us to get ready for a journey.

"And we don't know how long we'll be marchin', so take care how yeh pack." says he.

I'm all right;

My notebook, my belt, fully packed with anything I might need, my belt knife and sling. I like to travel light.

We ready in three days, then the trouble starts. Loto Onida seems to have picked up quite the thirst for adventure.

Or maybe he had it all along, seems to me all these raccoons are inquisitive types.

Loto's mother isn't thrilled at the idea of her son tramping who-knows-where for who-knows-long, but his father likes the idea of Loto seeing more then their own territory. I'm glad Loto waited this long to say he was going, else wise we might have had to endure Procy and Vora's arguments all winter long.

So Loto gets his way, and we set off with much ado. Even Ami Coyo came to see us off, in a sort of quiet way.

So we walked. And walked. And walked. Very peaceful at first, then just boring. Further more after winter I'm unused to walking so much. But we were in no hurry, so we walked, talked, compared this kind of bored to staying-inside-all-winter-bored, I drew all the new flowers that were coming up, made notes, that sort of thing.

Three days passed this way, the sorts of days they never mention in adventure stories, because then it would get boring, and who wants to be bored when listening to a story?

Oh, are you? Well sor-RY, I'm trying to give you an idea of what it was like

On the fourth day something happened, but I rather wished it didn't. I found an amazingly complex little flower, simply beautiful, had to draw it, color as well. But that was taking too long, so I told them all to walk on ahead, I'd catch up. Lyfo didn't like this, "Shouldn't you have learned something' from last autumn?"

And I pointed out, "Well it wasn't staying behind that got me into trouble, was it? As I recall, I was with you lot the whole time, but was captured anyway."

Lyfo gave me the sort of look I get a lot, the look that says, "I feel as though I should argue with that, but I can't."

So I stayed behind, sketching, rubbing out, adding color. I don't know how long it was, but I couldn't hear the crew anymore. Heard sommat else though, a sort of sniffling, shuffling sound that came from behind me. I slooowly put my things away and drew my belt knife. So far the majority of creatures I'd met here were friendly types, but that couldn't last long with my luck. So I drew my belt knife and crept into the bushes to my left, circled 'round quiet as I could, then paused right behind the noises.

It was hard to see through the bush, but I made out a large animal tearing at the tree I had been standing in front of just a moment before. I decided it would be smarter to just slip off before I 'got into trouble'….again.

And for the record I did edge away at least six paces before I asked myself who I was kidding and scurried back to get a better look.

Still couldn't see anything, so I edged out farther…annnd didn't see the stupid twig, naturally. The creature whirled around and I leapt at it, figuring it would be best to have the upper paw just in case it wasn't friendly.

Good plan, pity it didn't work. The creature saw me leap at it, crouched down and covered its head. I sailed almost all the way over it, almost, and landed with a thump and a scramble right next to its tail. The tail whipped at me, I darted away and managed to get only my right fore-paw badly spiked. The rest of me was merely pricked. Badly, but wouldn't kill or maim me for the rest of my life.

It seemed what I had jumped upon was sommat called a por-cu-pine, which is sommat like a hedgehog only much, much spinier. I lay there, out of breath, and not about to get it back properly anytime soon. The porcupine scuttled over to me, now he could see I was a squirrel and not some coyote or owl trying him out for midday.

"Forgive me, please, not see you and thought you attacking me I was, are you terribly hurt? What can I do?"

Trying my level best not to let him see me cursing myself, I pushed myself up, one-pawed and tried to smile. "Eh, my fault, I'm always jumping in where I shouldn't be, and this isn't the first time I've paid for it."

He scurried close to me and looked at the spine in my paw. It wasn't in very deep, but it felt like it was on fire. As did my side, but less. He gripped it at the very spot it entered my paw and told me, "Hurt much this will," and pulled straight out, very quickly.

My tongue wasn't in between my teeth, or I might have bitten it off, but my paw stopped being on fire, and settled down to a dull throb. The porcupine introduced himself as Delsin and showed me that the flower I'd just been drawing was useful in lessening the pain. What a nice coincidence.

Took me sometime to catch up, then Mari was seeing to me, Lyfo was talking to Delsin and I was lying flat out and falling asleep.

Porcupines are very nice when you aren't jumping on them.

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That's where we'll leave her for this week. As you might have figured, the words seperate from the others mean she's talking directly to you :D