Write a story that begins at the end.

Tris stuck out a paw and pushed. Her mother’s body rocked against the pressure, but remained where it fell. Footsteps crashing through the underbrush made the small creature jerk her head around. Instinctively, she flattened tufted ears and sank down, blending into the loam and surrounding foliage until she was more mottled stone than living being. A sense of urgency and dread filled her. It made it hard to breathe as she gazed out into the ravaged forest with large eyes, the color of amethyst, and then reached out to Rella again.

“M-mother get up, please. Hurry.”

She nudged her mother experimentally as she stared hard, past scattered ferns and the trunks of fallen trees, down the path where they’d come. More footsteps filled the vicinity, as far as her ears could hear, bringing the interlopers with them. Flashes and bangs followed, explosions that shook the tree tops and even toppled some of them.

Rella continued to lay there, still. She didn’t speak. It confused Tris; one moment they had been running, her mother urging her forward faster and faster until she was certain the pads of her feet would ignite. The next moment, nothing. Her mother jerked to a stop and fell over.

“Mother, please,” she urged again. Her fearful tone sounded foreign in her own ears.

Footsteps drew closer. All around her, Tris felt the roaring from overhead as much as she heard it. There were screams, too, and terrified pleas. She tilted her head down and shoved it against the blue merle of her mother’s back. Wide back feet dug into the loam and Tris grunted as she pushed with everything she had. Her mother’s spine buckled and jostled, and she finally slipped a few inches into the underbrush.

It was Hunteg who found them as he broke through the clearing and skidded to a halt. He looked down on Tris with sorrow. “Come,” he said with urgency as his eyes trained on Rella’s fallen form. “There’s nothing you can do. We must go!” Tris protested with a surprised yelp, flailing as the old fox scooped her up and deposited her onto his back. She sat up, opposing thumbs making it possible for her to grasp his fur.  Her prehensile tail wrapped instinctively around his girth. She was making room to receive her mother, but the fox wasted no time. He looped back around and darted through the trees.

“No! Hunteg, don’t leave her!” Tris cried out. Staring back at her mother’s receding form tore at her heart.

“She’s gone.” Hunteg sprinted over a fallen log, mulching old leaves and scattering them underfoot as he landed.

“Gone?” She struggled against the urge to jump from him and flee, back toward her mother.

“Dead.” His tone went flat, “and we will be, too, if we don’t keep moving.”

“What do they want?”

“They’ve taken the forest, Tris. And the magic.”

“Gone,” she echoed.

“Yes,” he said.