Everything hurt. Searing, white-hot pain shot through less than 31 pounds of fur-covered flesh, the fire that had burned so brightly in the sky coming to rest among the leaves and moss that carpeted the forest floor. The scent of blood filled the dark night, snapping its owner’s eyes open with metallic urgency. Helgi did what he could to lift his head and look around himself, but it was of little use. His forelegs and left side were wrecked with lacerations of various sizes, the result of plummeting through branches on his unwilling descent to the ground. Reddish fur was matted with dark liquid that shone in what little blue light his fire still cast.

His fire.

Helgi could feel the way it weakened bit by bit with every breath, fading from his tail and underbelly like the sunset into night. His body was dulling it to conserve the energy it burnt, vital to keeping him alive through his injuries. He watched with intent blue eyes the same color as the borealis still shifting above him. The earth around him smelled like soil and pine needles and metal.

Once more, the fox made the effort to push himself back onto his feet, trying to ignore the sharp, constant pain in his ribcage and limbs. Immediately, he crumpled back to the ground, head landing in a patch of moss and narrowly avoiding a rock. One ear folded uncomfortably against the forest floor while a few pine needles tried to take up residence in his mouth. Come on, Helgi. Not here. Not now.

He had to get up. He had to keep going. A being that was used to cruising across the Northern lights couldn’t just lie down like this. It was unheard of! Yes, he rested atop high mountain peaks during the day and perched on the towers of human ruins, but touch dirt? Put his paws on soil? He hadn’t done that since he was a kit. Nobody he knew had. Down here, under the tree cover, there was no room to take off into the sky again – everyone knew that. Already vulnerable to terrestrial threats such as wolves and bears, not to mention injured and quite possibly bleeding out… Helgi figured he might as well close his eyes and review every single one of his regrets right then and there. What kind of flowers did he want at his funeral? Not that it would matter. He knew his people wouldn’t find him here.

“What do you think it was?” a voice sounded within the woods, somewhere in the trees beyond his sight. Young and feminine, lilted with a faraway accent he didn’t recognize.

“A shooting star, probably,” replied a male voice in a calm monotone. “I don’t think anything else would fall across the sky like that. It has to be a meteorite of some kind.”

“Well, until we find it, it’s technically a UFO,” a third voice chimed in, also feminine in nature. The owner sounded more than a little exhausted.

“A UFO?” the first two choroused, joined by a fourth.

“… Nevermind.”

The shapes that made it through the trees froze Helgi’s blood in place. A young woman in a pure white folk dress was the first to emerge, golden hair cascading around her shoulders and green eyes glittering in the night. Another Troll, of course, but not like one Helgi had ever seen before. Antlers adorned her head like a crown, swooping in regal shapes like branches. She was followed by a much smaller shape, this one with darker skin and shaggy black hair. The red cap indicated that the little one was a Gnome, though Helgi hadn’t the slightest clue what they were doing outside of a Gnome settlement. Didn’t they usually come in groups like little pack animals?

If this was her pack, it was certainly a very mismatched one.

The last two kicked Helgi’s heart back into frantic beats, both terrifying to him in their own unique way. The better of the two looked like he’d been dredged up from a lake, with soggy-looking dark hair that was tangled with pond weeds and two yellow eyes like unwavering fireflies. His tail, large and strong and shimmering with scales, swayed slowly behind him.

Behind him.

Behind him.

That shape made him want to run. Run away and never come back. Just keep running forever. That shape, with its blue eyes and long blonde hair, was undeniably human.

All Helgi could do was bare his teeth in his fiercest snarl. Straining his body, he just barely managed to shout “GO AWAY!”

His voice was ripped and tattered like curtains after a run-in with a cat, but he did what he could to make it work. Even though it dragged all of his breath away and made his sides scream again in pain more searing than the sun, it was worth every loss. The four shapes startled back with varying noises of surprise, and that bought Helgi all the time he needed to gather his bearings and force himself to his paws with shaky limbs. The little fox bristled like the frightened animal he was.

The spell was broken by the smallest one, whose head shot up like a hunting dog’s when she smelled the blood pooling from Helgi’s injuries. To his dismay, she recovered the quickest and shot towards him across the moss, clambering too close for comfort until she was only about a yard away from the fox’s battered body. “What the hell happened to you?” she inquired in much the same tone as a child, eyes flicking over Helgi’s numerous wounds from behind the curtain of her bangs

“Astrid, don’t scare him,” the monotone voice from before warned gently, coming from the boy with the glowing eyes. “What’s going on?”

Helgi flattened his ears. They were bigger than him. They were coming closer. They were-

“Hey, give them space!” snapped the human with the blonde hair, pushing back the other two. “Never crowd an injured person. What is wrong with you two?!”

Helgi had never actually seen a human so close before. In the flickering blue light his body cast, he could see the lines of concern written on their face, so different and yet so similar to his.

Was this safe?

Surely, since this human was traveling and interacting in a friendly, familiar way with three other Trolls, they had to be less of a threat than Helgi had originally estimated. When they produced a roll of bandages from their bag and knelt beside him, he gave up his weak struggle and let his body slump back to the forest floor, gasping for air through the agony.

“Hold still,” the strange human spoke firmly. “I am going to bandage you up. Then you can worry about running away or biting me or whatever the hell it is that frightened Trolls do.”

Through blurry vision, Helgi could see the one in the white dress make her way forward as well. Her face contorted into an expression of sympathetic horror when she saw the details of his wounds. “Yeesh,” he heard her mutter softly. “I thought you little sky foxes never came down to Earth.”

“Probably fell,” the fish-boy replied, looming over the human’s shoulder. “Wounds from the branches, maybe.”

Helgi gritted his teeth at the two. “Crashed…” he forced out despite the pain, earning a soft grumble from the human who was carefully brushing the fur away from his open flesh. “I crashed… I’ve come down, but never this far… or fast.”

“Hold still,” the blonde human reminded him. His wounds stung when some kind of antibacterial spray was spritzed into them, but he heeded the command and suppressed the urge to flinch or cry out. Careful, steady hands applied gauze to the injury, wrapped tightly to his body by bandages and medical tape. Gently adjusting the dressing in place, Helgi sat still and listened to the flowing conversation between them and their compani

“I didn’t know you were so good at medical stuff, Esko,” the smallest of the four mused, coming around to look at Helgi’s weakened form with curious eyes.

“Eh, it’s just the result of textbooks and having a doctor for a parent,” Esko replied. “I’ve never actually tended to a wound that grave, just read about it. We should find someplace with an actual medic. Can any of you carry them?”

Carefully, on shaky paws, the fallen fox struggled to his feet again. “No,” he rasped, “I don’t… need… carrying. I can… I can walk.”

As if to prove a point, he stumbled a few steps forward, nearly bumping into the Gnome who had been standing there staring at him. Turning his head up to the stars, it really hit him just how small and weak he was in the moment. He could only gaze forlornly at the sky and try to catch his breath.

Come on, Helgi. Be polite.

“I’m… very sorry to impose on all of you,” Helgi began, swinging his head to look at the four strangers. “My name is Helgi. Please, in return for your aid, let me guide you. I know the way to the mountains – at least by flight. I can try to help until I’m healed.”

The young woman with the antlers smiled at him. “Awh, that’s very kind of you.You don’t have to worry though, we don’t need any payment. I-”

“The mountains,” Esko spoke sharply, cutting the woman off. “What’s in the mountains?”

Finally, something Helgi felt confident in. He knew lots about the mountains, having danced in the skies above them numerous times. “The mountains are the safest way to travel away from here by land. You don’t have to climb them fully, just stick close to them and keep going until you’re ready to break away from them. They’re teeming with life, lots of hunting and foraging opportunities, not to mention a few settlements.”

Esko narrowed his eyes, but nodded his acknowledgement anyhow. “Human or Troll?” he inquired, looking like he was being offered food that he suspected of being poisoned.

“Troll,” Helgi replied, giving his tail an experimental swish before attempting to take a few steps forwards. His teeth bared in a pained grimace as his body protested the shaky movement. When the lady with antlers picked him up, he didn’t bother to struggle or complain.

“Settlements of any kind will be risky,” the boy with the fish tail pointed out. “A human settlement would kill me, Astrid, and Greta. A Troll settlement would kill Esko. Did none of you think about that?”

The antlered girl paused. “Finner, we have to at least try. We can avoid the settlements, but if the mountains are the safest way to travel, we should go that way.”

Finner narrowed his eyes, but said nothing, instead moving to adjust his perpetually drenched-looking ponytail. Next to him, Esko took a deep breath.

“Thank you, Helgi. I’ll take your offer,” the blonde boy announced quietly after a moment. “Truly, I appreciate the assistance.”

“You’re welcome. It’s the least I could do.”

With that, they turned to make for the mountains.