The Park had to choose who would starve. So do You.

The oaks let go all at once that autumn, more acorns than the park had seen in a lifetime. The chipmunks read the fall for what it was and went to work. The jays came down out of a clear sky, ate where they stood, and let the rest lie.

Then the ground went bare, the cold came early, and a bird named Javlin, who had never gathered a nut in his life, stood up in front of a hungry flock and told them whose fault it was. He was charming. He was certain. And what he said went down easy on an empty stomach.

The story runs straight until the night the park has to decide. Then it stops and hands the decision to you. Take one trail and follow it all the way down. Each one ends somewhere different, and each one ends with a bill.

Rewritten, and Now It Branches

I first published Friend or Foe in 2015 as a single, straight-line story. This edition rebuilds it from the ground up. The book now runs one path until the night the park has to decide, then stops and hands the choice to the reader. Three trails run out of that night, each written to its own end. The branching structure carries the whole point of the book. The park can't agree on what it is seeing, and neither, in the end, can you.

How the Interactive Structure Works

Friend or Foe reads straight through to the night the park has to decide. At that point, the book branches, and you choose which trail to follow. Each trail runs its own separate chapters to its own separate ending. One holds what was made. One takes what was made. One is forced open by the winter itself. You can follow one and close the book, or go back and walk the others to see what changed. Nobody gets out of any of them clean.

Why a Fable, and Why Animals

A fable puts hard questions inside small creatures so you can look at them straight. Nobody reads about a chipmunk and a jay and gets defensive on behalf of their side, because a chipmunk has no side. The park isn't a stand-in for any one place or moment. It's a park, with a hard winter coming and not enough put by, and animals who have to decide what they owe one another and what they're willing to take.

That distance is what lets a fable do its job. You can watch Javlin talk a frightened flock into something ugly and see exactly how it's done, because it's a bird doing it to birds, and nothing is asking you to defend anyone. By the time you notice how familiar it feels, you have already followed it to the end of a trail.

Friend or Foe is a fable in the old sense: a plain story about animals that turns out to be about us. It doesn't tell you what to conclude. It hands you the choice the park faced and lets you find out what you would have done.

The Park and Who Lives In It

The Park

An old, well-worked place that runs on the labor of the animals who read the seasons and prepare. It's not named, and it's not any one place. A hard winter is coming, and there isn't enough put by. What the park becomes depends on which trail you take.

Mitch

A seasoned chipmunk who reads the mast year for what it is and spends the autumn preparing for the winter. He offers to teach the jays, twice, and spends the rest of the story living with what happens when an offer is refused.

Javlin

A jay who has never gathered a nut in his life. When the flock goes hungry, he does not find them food. He finds them someone to blame, and he's good at it. He's the most charming and most dangerous voice in the park.

Tamias

A young chipmunk, three winters old, who takes in an orphaned kit and does what the winter demands of her family.

The Flock

Bright, loud, glad to be alive, and easy to move. What the flock becomes depends on which trail you take.

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