Brackish Footprints A Pathways Alliance Short Story

Brackish Footprints is a short story set in the world of *The Pathways Alliance*, a post-apocalyptic saga where animals and humans form interspecies alliances to resist the lingering threats of a fractured world. The protagonists, River and Silver, are intelligent raccoons—larger than their ancestors and gifted with telepathic abilities due to radiation exposure generations ago. In the wake of a limited nuclear exchange and environmental collapse, certain humans and creatures absorbed gamma radiation and. were twisted by it, becoming what some call the "fey"—beings like the gamma ghouls that now stalk the woods. River and Silver are scouts, warriors, and guardians of fragile peace, working to protect what remains and to plant seeds of a better future.

Brackish Footprints

A Pathways Alliance Short Story

The Ballad of Pathways Alliance

In forest shade where moonlight spills,

two warriors walked through whispering hills.

Each sought to build perception;

to see through all deception.

They walked the edge where silence bites,

and faced the dark with borrowed light.

With scars they earned and hearts still kind,

they carried the notes that calmed the mind.

When the whistle sang, the ghouls stood still;

when gamma ghouls fell, they both felt ill.

Yet Greentail sent a song so vast and wide,

each warrior’s heart could hurt; yet survive.

Brackish Footprints

They had stepped off the trail hours ago, following the scent of late-season berries and the hush of water. The stream they found was shallow but clean, winding through soft moss and tree roots that remembered rain.

Okay, Silver said, stretching. We’ve named everything we can hear. Your turn—scent game. They were playing telepathically, passing the time.

River grunted. You’re changing the rules.

I’m expanding the tradition.

The two identified robins, redbirds, bullfrogs, and a red-tailed hawk above them, enjoying the woodlands of the chill of early winter.

Suddenly, River froze, and Silver beside him began to reach out harder to sense the air. River tasted the storm and felt the many tones it carried before he saw it. There was something wrong with the taste of the air.

It rolled across his tongue like bitter copper swallowed too fast. The air carried not just cold, but a warning—sharp and metallic. He paused on a narrow ridge of pine-rooted soil just above the glen, his whiskers twitching in the wind.

Behind him, Silver waited. Taller by a half-head and broader through the shoulders, she carried more weight in both frame and silence. Her eyes were glacial grey; her ringed tail, twice-scarred from past missions. She adjusted her Kevlar leg guards with a twitch and sniffed once.

Smell that? River murmured. His fur stood on end—so much fur tucked under Kevlar breastplates and fleece-lined boots. Human clothing, scavenged from the Everything store.

Silver inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. Winter storm. But… something under it. Like… She hesitated. Algae in iron water. Rotting copper pipes.

River nodded. Brackish. Sour.

They were deep in the upland woods, where the land dipped into gullies, and spruce and hemlock blotted out the sky. Branches creaked in the wind, some dusted with frost. The forest smelled of cold bark, old leaves, and sleeping roots. Wind rushed through the high canopy, carrying bursts of snow dust and dry needles. Leaves crackled underfoot from last month’s fall, and icicles hung like knives from the undersides of broken limbs.

Scavenged from between mossy outcrops and fern beds, dried peppermint sprigs were tucked into leather pouches around their necks. River untied his and rubbed a bit of the herb between his fingers, then beneath his snout. The sharp mint sliced through forest and decay, clearing the way for subtler scents—a trick they’d learned from red foxes.

There was a pause before Silver moved again—a narrowing of her eyes that River recognized. He’d seen it once before, the day they lost Tarn in Hollow Run. They never spoke of it, but grief clung like lichen between missions—soft and stubborn.

Earlier that morning, they’d stepped off the main trail—a narrow footpath used by scouts and message runners—to forage. Berries still clung to frost-kissed bushes in the hollow, stubborn and sweet beneath winter’s bite. A cold, fast-moving stream wove through the glen, lined with flat stones and slippery moss. Tiny edible creatures—snails, stream crawlers, fat-tailed newts—slid between the rocks. The raccoons had caught and dried two silver-finned fish for later. River had noticed scratch marks on a nearby tree—not fresh, but human-made. That had made him cautious.

They were on a mission: locate and map the last known haunt of gamma ghouls in the eastern sectors. Rumors spread at sanctuary nodes—hobgoblins pressed into service, children taken, strange sonic patterns disrupting telepathy. River and Silver had to confirm it. And survive it.

A half hour later, River found the tracks.

He crouched low, brushing aside pine needles. Human-style shoes—not boots, not work-worn. Synthetic. Light tread, deep center—like the walker bore down too hard with each step.

He tasted the edge of a print. Bitter. Unnatural. His tongue curled back.

Gamma, he said.

Silver was already scanning the pattern. Three. One veered east—lighter, faster. Maybe a scout. Two went toward the shelter.

They walked on, swiftly now, twin shadows slipping between tree trunks and granite shelves. River kept his short sword across his back, one hand on his slingshot. Silver carried a slingshot with steel shot also, found in the old store, and the tin whistle on a cord around her neck; molded from new pewter and tuned to B minor. One note from it had stalled a demon last summer. Three seconds. Precious seconds.

Through the trees, the lean-to emerged. A sagging remnant of some pre-apocalypse camp—nylon cord, aluminum siding, soaked with rot.

River hissed and crouched.

Silver joined him. The sour’s stronger. Not alone.

They waited. Watched.

Then—movement. Two shapes within. Not human, not now. Too tall. Limbs elongated. Torsos rippling beneath shredded khaki. Skin like rotted wood soaked in oil. Eyes glowing dull red-orange.

Gamma ghouls.

One—the taller—tilted its head and muttered. A low, grinding voice, like gravel in a leather sack.

River signaled: pull back.

Too late.

The demon leapt.

River stepped back, slingshot raised. He fired. The steel shot struck clavicle—not lethal, but enough.

Silver blew the whistle.

The B minor tone slashed the air. The ghoul convulsed, limbs jerking in discord.

River drew his sword and charged.

The second demon tore through the wall like parchment. Shorter, bulkier. Jaw unhinged sideways. Claws like black bone.

It lunged. River slashed, scoring ichor.

The first demon recovered. It growled—no, spoke. A syllable that made River’s skull vibrate.

Shiranel.

He didn’t know the meaning. But it stuck.

River roared back—no words, just force. Sword into ribs. Blood steamed.

Silver blew again: high-low-high. The second demon froze. Three seconds. Enough.

River stabbed it at its collar bone and at the base of its neck. The body sagged.

But the first wasn’t done. It rushed at River who lost his balance, breath gone.

He drew a deep breath, then rose. Charged. Sword to spine.

The demon howled. Dropped. Silver’s shot pierced its eye.

Silence.

Only wind. Blood. Peppermint.

They stood panting. Ears twitching. Whistle trembling.

Too close, River said.

Silver nodded. But we learned.

River used a twig to extract black tissue from a shattered bone, irradiated, unhealthy marrow. Maybe at the next sanctuary, something could be learned from it. “Sonic interference. Gamma exposure. Humanoid mimicry.” He wanted to memorize the skills of the ghouls to pass on at council.

Silver drew a map on birchbark. “Three traveled. One’s still out there.”

“The storm’s close,” River said. “We head south. Get this to the Council Circle.”

Silver glanced at the bodies. “They’ll send more.”

River looked at his sword. “Let them. Next time, we’re ready.”

She pulled two shovels from their gear. They dug quickly. Buried the ghouls. Then, from their seed satchels, they planted peppermint and lavender over the grave and lean-to—masking the scent.

As they worked, River spoke softly. “We bury what we fight so it doesn’t return in us.”

Silver knelt and pressed a paw to the mound. “Mercy isn’t weakness. It’s what keeps us clean.”

They knelt, ears lowered.

In silence, a thought rose from them, faint and firm:

GreenTail of the sky paths. These ones are broken. Let their rage dissolve. Guard their bones, and ours. Lead us forward.

GreenTail, as their god was known to them, seemed to answer. They felt a calm, a deep peace come over them.

Then they vanished into the trees, carrying only seeds, notes, and one more page of memory.

They would share it at the next sanctuary.

Because River and Silver were more than scouts. They were teachers. Not yet elders—but already carrying mindfire from one circle to the next.

They vanished into the woods. Peppermint and snow in their wake.

---

River sat by the stream, paws in water. They never had a chance.

Silver placed a paw on his. I keep telling myself it was necessary, she said. But I don’t know if that makes it right.

She held the whistle. Not tin—Ember Jack had forged it from safe pewter.

River, tired, picked up a cedarwood branch and drew his whittling blade.

You’re not making spoons again, are you?

No. Thinking of a whistle.

---

That night, they made camp, ate a quick meal, then climbed to an old nest high in the trees.

River rolled onto his back, paw brushing a faint scar.

Silver saw. Let silence stretch.

Then, gently: “Thinking of Tarn?”

River nodded. “Yeah.”

The old hawk with the torn wing. The dry riverbed voice. Overwatch when the coast burned. Saved them twice. Fell the third.

“He always aimed too low,” River murmured.

“He always aimed too true.”

They lay still. The forest pressed in on the mates, not with fear, but memory.

“He’d have liked this place,” River said. “Would’ve complained the trees were too close. Then landed on the biggest one and refused to leave.”

Silver laughed—not playful, but the kind that chases grief for a while.

“We keep going because of him,” she said. “Because of all of them.”

“And because of us.”

Every scar had been earned. Tarn wasn’t the only name under their fur. But tonight, he was the one they remembered. And remembering was enough.

Silver nudged him. “You know, there’s that tattooist near the willow farm.”

River cracked an eye. “Tattooist?”

“Sanctuary down trail. Human. Still has her old ink kit. Works on anyone with skin—or skin-adjacent.”

“Let me guess. You want a tree on your hip.”

“A vine. Around the scar. Make me look mysterious.”

“You already look mysterious. I’d get flames. Big ones. Across my chest.”

“Flames?”

“Sexy flames.”

Silver laughed so hard a squirrel dropped something nearby.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll go together. Ink up the war wounds. Make ourselves look dangerous and irresistible.”

“Already do,” River murmured.

They slept like beings who had done what they didn’t want to do—but had no choice.

And far beyond that dark, something stirred.

A sound. Not voice. Not thought.

Music.

The song of the Pathways Alliance stirred once more.