The city was a nightmare rendered in concrete and strange lights. Where the true forest had been filled with life and growth, this place was dead stone and metal. Where the true forest had whispered with wind and birdsong, this place roared with mechanical sounds. The small folk huddled together in the shadows, overwhelmed and terrified.
But they had survived the forest, and the forest had taught them well. They would survive this too.
They moved through the urban landscape like ghosts, sticking to the shadows, avoiding the Tall Ones who passed by on their incomprehensible errands. They found green spaces—poor, tame imitations of the true forest, but at least they had grass and trees. They found water in artificial streams. They found food in the waste-places where Tall Ones discarded things, though it was poor fare compared to the land-prawns they knew.
And slowly, they began to adapt, using the skills the forest had taught them but applying them to this strange new environment. They made temporary shelters in the overgrown areas at the city's edges. They learned which places were safe and which should be avoided. They even found other creatures in need—a tiny black-and-white kitten, abandoned and alone, which they adopted into their family with the same generosity of spirit that had first led them to trust Pappy Jack.
But always, always, they yearned for the Wonderful Place and for Pappy Jack. Had he abandoned them? Had he forgotten them? The thought was painful beyond measure. They had trusted, and trust betrayed is the deepest wound the forest knows.
They didn't understand the complex machinations happening around them—the legal battles, the corporate conspiracies, the question of whether they were people or animals. Such concepts were beyond them. They knew only that they had been torn from safety and cast into danger, and that they must survive.
Days passed, and then weeks. They moved northward and westward, following some instinct that told them to get away from the densest concentrations of Tall Ones, to find places where the green world pushed back against the stone. They became legends in their own way—mysterious creatures glimpsed in the twilight, small figures that vanished when approached.
Then came the day when the very earth shook beneath them.