B 2 C 10: ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Lao tends to my bruises and frets over me before the family prepares to bed down. “Sweet child, when you went skyward, I didn’t know what to do, then our Teuila leapt after you, and I was certain you were saved. But then the both of you didn’t return immediately, what was I to think? Heavens forbid something happen to either of you. Do try to be more careful, please?” I try to maintain composure with Lao fretting, assuring her that we’ll do our best to be safe. She’s seen us together, she saw the whole fight with Octorochi, mostly. She knows how powerful Teuila is, the strongest among us. That thought sends shivers down my spine. I know, consciously, that Teulia would never hurt us. The panic from The Event still pokes and prods at me, a pressure that builds under the surface.
Our cuddle pile is one of the most wonderful things in existence. We frequently had a fair bit of distance between various cliques within our family. There were times when we’d be so spread out, and sprawled out, that at best we could touch a fingertip to a tail tip. Not tonight. Tonight we’re celebrating, and I think we all feel closer than ever. Mata even drags the Mana twins to lay against Agwai’s side, opposite Lao. We’re basically shoulder to shoulder, or chest to shoulder, in a loose circle. Lu however has decided that Teuila, Lil, and myself are all pillows. She’s sprawled over the top of us. Sugar and Spice make up the far side of my inner circle, where the full circle meets the Mana twins.
We drift off to sleep, some of us still chattering excitedly about the party, and the day’s events, others so exhausted we pass out almost immediately. I of course am in the latter category, so I’m not certain what gets chatted about.
When I awaken, I first notice that Mata has scooched himself and the Mana twins to the far side of the room sometime during the night. Like I said before, he mostly doesn’t avoid me, mostly. I roll my eyes and try to pick up my last train of thought.
If I were truly, permanently terrified of Teuila, there’s no way I could have, or would have, relinquished so much of my own power. Let alone done so to grant her full control of her own. Equating it to my memories, it would be like a blaster superhero giving up a lot of the sustainability of their blasts, to grant a speedster hero even greater speed. I guess that’s pretty much exactly what happened. Again, I have vague concepts of things like superheroes, definitions of the words, and even archetypes, but my memory says they’re fake, that they don’t exist. Why is so much of my memory wrong? Teuila is obviously ridiculously fast, with several secondary and tertiary powers. I may as well call her a speedster, like Red Lightning or something. Copper Bolt? Because her hair is a reddish copper, and she streaks from the sky like a bolt of lightning, crashing down.
I’m getting completely sidetracked, it’s time to head out. I check that we’ve got adequate provisions in my inventory, and that my inner circle are really truly okay with joining me to do this. Lao must see my expression change from pondersome to resolute. She sighs, wipes down my face momentarily and pats my head. “Alright, if you must. But only if you continue to brighten the world, and our world. Please promise me that?”
“That’s the goal Lao. As many of us as possible, as happy and as safe together as possible. Some day, maybe I’ll figure out what the red eyes mean.” I shudder, panting, grasping my chest as I remind myself of certain hostile creatures I’ve encountered. Lao strokes my back momentarily as I ride out the panic.
I want to explore, to map out the region, rather than just following the river up and down again, so I find the largest contiguous piece of bark I can easily remove. I take one of the charcoal sticks I saved that wasn’t pretty enough for Spice so that I can begin sketching a rough estimate of the distances between the various biomes.
“Alright my loveliest of buddies, pals, amigos, my dearest and brightest, I want to test our sense of direction, and find out more of what’s inland as we head towards the beaver dam.”
“Uh, about that Reggie. Um, you see.” Lu plays with her index fingers, avoiding eye contact and talking out the side of her mouth.
Teuila interrupts, “Yeah, the butts don’t want to ever see your face again. Something about, you saved them, they saved you, even Steven and no need to muddy the water, or something like that. There were lots of euphemisms and water puns that even I barely got, and I’m an otter. What kind of gadabouts out-water-pun an otter?”
My jaw drops, my nose crinkles, and I stare, incredulously, somewhat angrily. “What, what, what the everliving fudge! I thought, y’know, maybe we could get to like one another, and maybe have like, trade relations or something, like be two settlements with a big treaty or something.”
“Not everybody has to like you, my dweebus.” Te tries to console me. I think. That might have just been a statement of fact.
“I, I know that. I didn’t mean, I don’t think everyone likes me. Lord knows Mata mostly hates my guts. The only reason he’s nice to me is because of, well, it doesn’t matter why.” My three closest friends exchange a look that says they all know I saved him while I was checked out from reality, but I still won’t spill his secret out loud. I notice their glances, but continue, “I guess, well, are they even at least willing to be cordial with our settlement if I’m affiliated with it at all? I’m not asking us to be called Reggie village or anything like that. We’re the Shellcracker Pond tribe. I, I just, I don’t want to be the reason that keeps my family from moving into the brightest possible future.” My lip quivers and I turn away. I mutter, “Lao’s our leader, along with Ag anyway, I’m just some dingus who goes places and gets in trouble.”
My friends usher me further away from camp before they start to explain. Teuila starts off, “So, look, chappy mcbusterpants, they don’t want anything to do with you, but they’re mostly okay with us. We visit once in a while. Since their lumber just respawns, they don’t care if we take some. Thing is, you saved a lot of them. But the ones with the most say from both factions? They saved themselves. They don’t see you as anything more than trouble, at best. At worst, they think you’re a violent bullying thug. They’re slightly at each other’s throats, and both of them blame you for them not being at peace. It’s about the only thing they can agree on these days. The ones that rose to leadership under the, well, bad thing, think they still deserve most of the leadership of the colony. The others wholeheartedly disagree, saying they deserve no power at all.”
I try to digest what Teuila is saying. I know that a significant portion of the MCF lived in the south wing, we saw them during our escort on the way to the grand hall. So, the most important MCF beavers were there, and they got out by themselves, without me. Of course they wouldn’t feel any kindness for me, they never met me. They only know that I didn’t stop their dam from getting destroyed. The sane faction didn’t even give me a long enough chance to fix things. If I had had a night of sleep, or just another day, or even a couple of hours, the flood could have been avoided.
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Te also comments on my train of thought, “They’d also probably not enjoy you calling one of them, the sane faction, and the other group the MCF. Not that they really have group names for the divide, there’s just these beavers, and those beavers.” I grimace, but also chuckle slightly at the fact that it might tick off whoever’s in charge.
No, bad Reggie, no making things worse. I start to mutter, trying to math out how to approach the situation. “Okay, so, I don’t want to disturb our canopy too much, the shade is part of what makes this place so idyllic, peaceful, and gorgeous, but I need an absolute boatload of lumber, like my entire inventory capacity worth for my plans. I know you three don’t have the same capacity as me, so I wouldn’t ask you to take dozens of trips for me. Hm, I need to expand the pond as well, hopefully increase the fish spawn, as well as contain possible Vampguppy outbreaks.” I visualize my muttering forming words that travel around my head, like some sort of green haired nerdy protagonist in a school. That’s a weird visual, since my hair is mostly reddish.
I think I’ve got it! “Lil, up in Fire Biome, did you have any sort of frequent hunting grounds? Things that respawn fairly quickly. Especially one where you couldn’t keep up and fight everything off all the time? I think I remember reading about you not wanting to tangle with big packs of things.”
Lil nods, answering in their usual chipper manner, “Yup yup! cragbeasts and lavultures are kinda nasty, even if their main abilities don’t do much to me, mine won’t work on them either.” Lil is insinuating that they breathe fire, or maybe lava. I’d really rather not mess with vultures that spew lava from the sky though. Still, as long as we all have Valkyrie gear, the shield seemed to be able to handle a smattering of lava.
I pull out the copy of the shield I used to block a splash of lava. There’s some slight pitting, but it seems otherwise unharmed. I even have the lava that splashed on it in my inventory in the form of cooled iron. Woah, wait, melted iron? Ugh, I need to not get sidetracked. We can come back to metallurgy later. Lil said the bags were rare, but not impossible, so maybe Lil saw some inventory expansion bags drop at one point, but wasn’t able to claim them due to the dangerous location they were in.
Lil nods at me while coasting along our shared wavelength, feeling my train of thought. I grin at Lil as I exclaim, “That settles it, for the first leg of the journey buddy, you’re our leader! You take us to the biggest, quickest spawning area of hostiles in Fire Biome, and we’ll get your inventory capacity maxed out, as well as mine to whatever my new cap is. Once we do that, then we explore south along the jungle, sweep down to the beaver dam, pick up as much lumber as we can carry, and finally return for a while to improve our home.”
I glance between Luni and Teuila. I can sense Lil is in, no matter what, but I need to ask, “So, from what Lil describes, what we’re about to do is going to be grueling. Quite possibly nonstop combat for days on end. We might only be able to leave by fleeing, and we should probably only flee when we’re completely finished, because it might be hard to get back in a rhythm afterwards. Teuila, I know you can handle yourself the best out of all of us, but even still, this is dangerous, and you don’t need to do this with me. I’ll love and respect you no matter what you choose. Luni, likewise I’ll love and respect you no matter what, you don’t have to join us in this.”
Te is about to answer snarkily, when Lu shyly interrupts. “Um, soooo, I forgot to mention one thing. The beavers in the, you called them the MCF, they have Lao’s, Ag’s, Mata’s, and the twins’ Valkyrie equipment. Also, uh, you’re all going to literally die if I don’t come along.” I think it’s safe to say the rest of us are stunned at Lu’s assertion, as we all turn our gaze to her. Lu shrinks from our combined gazes, blushing profusely. Curses, that’s right, I only got the wicker basket with Teuila’s and my equipment out of there on that horrid day, I still have the waste of space in my inventory. I want to vent my frustrations, but I’m trying to show Luni patience.
The three of us side eye one another as we wait patiently. Lu however seems unwilling to offer up any more information without prompting, so I prompt, “Luni, would you possibly at all be willing to elucidate us on why? I don’t mistrust you, if you have a feeling, or know something we don’t, I think we’d just like a little explanation, is all.”
Luni puts on her extroverted face, or her brave pants if you will. She starts, “Okay, I can’t tell you why or how I know, but I can promise you I do absolutely know. I also promise you that I will be okay with you three to protect me, so you don’t have to worry. I’m coming, there’s nothing more I can say about it.” Her voice starts to waiver ever so slightly at the end. By the end, she’s playing with her index fingers again.
I can only guess that Luni will do something like magnifying our thermal resistance at a key moment, keeping Teuila and myself alive. Keeping us alive will keep Lil alive. Without us Lil might get locked in a bloody stalemate with an endless wave of hostile spawning creatures. Lil’s primary ability is their fire, without much else in the way of offense. Lil’s defenses are also a smidge on the vulnerable side as Lilagnewt. So yeah, Lil facing off against a ton of beasts that are immune to Lil’s fire sounds like bad news.
I’m still worried a bit about Lu though, the requisite secrecy, the flips between her shy and extroverted personalities. I don’t want to be pushing her too hard. I feel like, if she has to keep secrets to be able to use her magic, that we’re abusing her by putting her in that situation. I’m afraid we’ll hurt her, or change her somehow.
Lu interrupts my train of thought, “You won’t, it’s okay. I can choose. It’s not abuse when it’s my choice. Lil, Reggie said you’re the leader for this trip, so, um, maybe, could we possibly please get going, please? If that’s okay?” Lu swaps from extroverted to introverted mid sentence, and it’s mind-boggling. I trust her though. Quite literally with our lives.
Lil takes the cue however and starts bounding forward. Lil suddenly swaps forms to Lilagnewt mid leap, and begins soaring northwest towards the caves along the cliff face. I smile as I watch Lil spiral and swoop back and forth, guiding us and returning. On one pass, Lil swoops low enough that Luni leaps atop their back. The two make an incredible pair. I can only smile at them as Teuila and I jog along behind them.
Teuila, bored of jogging, exclaims, “Oh sod this.” I see a bright flash, then suddenly I’m jogging alongside Te in her Valkyrie form. She scoops me up and races Lil to the cliff face. Teuila’s able to leap horizontally as quickly as she is vertically. I thought we moved dozens of meters in a single bound, but we must be moving nearly a kilometer every single leap when we’ve got a straight enough path between trees. We arrive in mere minutes. I’m not even sure if it was plural minutes, or if it was something like a minute and a half. Valkyrie can do in minutes what it takes me days to accomplish. Teuila’s base form can do in minutes what it takes me hours to accomplish. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being impressed with my Te.
I vaguely find myself wondering where Teuila learned the term ‘sod this.’ I’m a tiny bit embarrassed that I’m being cradled in her arms right now. We wait, with Te standing around holding me in her arms for quite a while as Lil catches up. I’m comfortable enough that it doesn’t bother me more than the mild embarrassment.