B 2 C 25: LUMBERJACKING HITS A SNAG
After cuddling and napping for a while, my inner circle gets up to help Lao with any preparations she needs. Out of all the family members, Mata and I are the only ones that can’t approach Lucky without him growling at us. I suppose that’s another reason we have to make sure Laomati never gets the idea to try to have Lucky come rescue us.
Lao actually indicates she has everything taken care of, almost mysteriously, but she simply shoos my inner circle away as she goes about whatever her plans are. Lucky can actually transform down an evolutionary stage, though he doesn’t do much save walk between the house and the pond. He occasionally laps up large quantities of water. Lucky seems to be caught somewhere between bored, waiting for something, and unused to his own body. Lucky’s current form is that of a large blue sphere with a thick blue sideswept mohawk, lupine ears, and a tail that’s more reptilian than mammalian, and tiny little draconic foreclaws. Thankfully, at this size, he at least fits in the house.
When given a chance, I try to pass out the ornate bags that grant inventory magic even from a capacity of zero or below. Luni had collected two while she was my anchor, Teuila had collected one, and I passed her one while she slept. In the end, Teuila, Luni, Lao, and Agwai end up with positive inventory magic capacity, with only one bag left. I offer it to Mataalii who takes it huffily and stalks away. His capacity remains at zero, at least it’s not negative one. He doesn’t even stick around to let me explain that he might be able to raise it through various means, or that he might be able to find another ornate bag while fishing.
The party and its announcement are a simple affair. Apparently it’s reminiscent of the egg-picking ceremony that the Shellcrackers once shared with the Rocksmashers at their beach so long ago. Lao splits us into two half families, Lao and my inner circle on one side, Agwai, Mata, and both pairs of twins on the other side. Lao then chooses Lucky, then Agwai chooses Olioli. Then as an added measure, Lao approaches Agwai with a silk kerchief that I’d given her, and she binds one of her hands to Agwai’s at the wrist, signifying a unified family.
When that’s done, we each pick a family member, or pair of partners, from the opposite side of the family, and dance, rotating partners until we’ve danced with them all. Mataalii avoids having to dance with Luni, Lil, or myself, he stalks off after dancing with Lao and Teuila. Lucky doesn’t so much dance, as bounce near Lao with whichever partner she’s picked. Similarly, Olioli doesn’t dance so much as chew on whichever partner they’ve got for any given dance. Luni of course provides the music with her harp looping as she enjoys dancing with the rest of us.
My inner circle and I spend the better part of a week leading our idyllic, blissful, peaceful lives with the family. My inner circle finally regain our telepathic bonds near the end of the week, and we slowly rebuild our mentally constructed grassy hill, and its apple tree for shade. As Teuila guessed, Luni and I have gotten extraordinarily close over the last week or two. Te bonds deeper with Lil, mostly as they share their exuberance for flying. They both lament that they can’t manifest their forms anymore, and that when they try, they only get a creamy gray umbral silhouette for a short time. It feels like umbral energy is a weaker power source for our abilities, so we’ve got to build back much of what we’ve lost. Thankfully we have magical equipment, and Teuila’s ridiculous fighting prowess to protect us should we actually find ourselves in danger.
But tensions rise between Mata and myself. His resentment radiates, and I pause to think about what he actually said before the first party.
He was stammering, so when he said “Maybe, just something, to, y’know, something cool, like, yeah, cool kids, ‘n’ stuff. To make me, like, you, you know. Sh’up.” the “you, you know” part didn’t mean he was saying he wanted to be like me. He was trying to say that I know what he wants. Power, things that are cool in his eyes. There’s this unbreachable divide between us, and I can’t mend it. Mat’s not enjoying our idle life together, so come the end of a week, my inner circle and I excuse ourselves quickly.
I just want to be on the road, out of that situation, to hopefully give Mataalii some time to cool down, and maybe enjoy life at the pond. I hope whatever he’s going through will finally be over some day, but, knowing how trauma affects myself, I doubt it will ever be that simple. Every time I try to puzzle out what might have changed during our trip to Fire Biome though, Luni steers my thoughts away from it. Her persistence lets me know that something in the future needs me to be unsure of Mata’s true motivations.
We leave northwest to the cliffs to set out directly south from there. It’s fairly easy carving a swath south through the jungle, even a few miles west of the river, as I try to map out more of our domain.
At the moment, we’ve run into an odd creature, or maybe a plant. It looks like vines, or tentacles, like that’s the entirety of its composition, except for its massive fanged maw. This creature’s appearance does my trauma no favors, I’m sure I won’t be able to handle vines for a while without picturing them growing fanged maws. Teuila easily, deftly, dodges this thing’s massive tentacle swipes and thrusts. One of its larger tendrils causes a ripple in the ground, a mini earthquake every time it strikes. Lu, Lil and I often end up stumbling as a result of that strike. Teuila continues to plug away at the tendril beast, its name is apparently Cigarette. What a weird name. As she gets close to its main body however, it expels gas from its mouth that looks supremely deadly, so I beg Teuila to back off while I do something a bit risky.
Focusing my breathing, and my thermokinesis, I imagine launching a sharp, ice-wind-laced fireball towards the center of the beast for about a third of my mana. Sadly one of its tentacles happens to swing in the path of the fireball, just in time. The tentacle is severed at the point of impact, and smolders slightly, but it doesn’t consume the entire beast, or disperse the gas. Still, as I’ve said several times in my life when using new powers, proof of concept.
“Teuila, as soon as this next attack disperses the cloud, you need to be on the way down with your best drop-stab. K? Be careful, there’ll be some blowback.” I look to Teuila as I call out for confirmation, and she nods affirmatively.
I sit lotus style for just an instant, so that I don’t knock myself out with what I’m about to do. I lean forward as far as I can, til I’m almost laying prone over my own legs. Trying to slow my heart and calm my breathing, I exhale as smoothly as I can, picturing a fireball worth the remaining two thirds of my mana, save for the small fraction I’ve just regenerated. The concussive force released as I launch a nova the size of Lilagnewt’s form nearly bowls me over backwards, instead it sinks my arse and hips into the ground where I’ve planted them. The flame rockets into Cigarette’s various flailing limbs, but thankfully none are massive enough to block the entire burst. Eventually the fire makes contact with the cloud of gas, igniting it. Cigarette lets loose a shrill roar as its own breath knocks it for a loop.
I glance around trying to spot Teuila’s ascent, trying to see where she’ll be attacking from, but she’s already driving a spear into Cigarette’s skull, if it has a skull. Thankfully, that finishes the creature, initiating its derezzing, leaving us with a few items. Hm, remembering that the tougher creatures we fight tend to always leave magic items, I ask my party what the cragbeast queen dropped.
Between Cigarette and the queen, we’ve got a quarterstaff, a cloak, a pair of gloves, a tiny leather pouch with a drawstring, a clay jug, and some goggles that look like they’d fit Lil better than any of us. There’s also an insane amount of gemstones and possibly some jewelry, from the whole cragbeast warren.
I kind of want to see what Lil looks like in the cloak, so I have them put it, and the goggles on. No magic seems to happen save for the size readjustment, and its ability to stay in place on Lil’s body. The goggles even disappear from Lil’s face.
Lil grumbles, “Great, the one magic item that might fit me, and it doesn’t do anything fun.”
Teuila angrily quips back, “Hey Dragbutt, show a little gratitude, we all look out for each other, right?” She approaches Lil looking like she’s going to give Lil a playful whack before asking, “Wait, why are there two of you?”
Luni and I glance at Lil, we only see one of Lil, so I worriedly ask Teuila, “Te, are you okay? Do you see two of either of us?”
Teuila rubs her eyes and glances between us before answering, “Nope, just two of the little Dragbutt, you two are fine. Sorry to worry everyone, sorry if I sounded angry Lil, c’mere cutie patootie.” Lil leaps into Te’s arms at the request. Suddenly Te exclaims, “Hey, now there’s only one of you.”
Scratching my chin, I try to imagine myself angry enough to want to hit Lil. It’s a really difficult thing to imagine. Eventually I pretend Lil somehow gets Mata’s personality, and I’m able to feel a bit of rage for my best buddy. Suddenly I see two Lils, both out of focus and slightly translucent. Rattling my skull to lose the angry thoughts, I go back to thinking of all the love I hold for Lil, and they return to one being.
Grinning, I exclaim, “Got it, the cloak, it has some sort of illusion, or displacement effect to ward off hostility. Somehow it senses who might mean its bearer harm, even if only jokingly, and then projects Lil slightly split, to make it harder to strike them. That’s pretty awesome for Lil, since they can’t wear the Valkyrie equipment. I hate it whenever they take a big hit that we could block if it were coming at us.”
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Lil excitedly chases their own tail to get a better look at the cloak upon their back now that they’re happy with its magical effect. Lil sounds gleeful as they ramble, “Wooooahh. Really, I get to keep this one? You don’t want one of the girls to have it?”
I chuckle as I pick Lil up for a hug, assuring them, “It’s yours Lil buddy. Even Lu can wear a shield, I’ve been worried about your soft scales for so long. It’s worse now with our forms on the fritz.”
We all surround Lil for a group hug before I continue puzzling out the other equipment. I attach one of Octorochi’s serpent fangs to the end of the new quarterstaff, it seems virtually built for it. On the other side, I hand one of the newer Vampguppy fangs. I essentially create a double-ended spear. I hand this to Teuila, so we don’t need to keep bringing out copies of Gae Buidhe. I don’t want that spear out in the world any more than absolutely necessary.
When Te takes hold of the quarterstaff, her eyes flare with new comprehension and additional senses, akin to when I shared one of my danger wraps with Mat. Te exclaims, “Wow, it’s like, it’s like I can feel everything around me for a few dozen feet, as if I were tracing my paws on everything. This is what you sense with your wraps? It’s amazing, it’s a whole new way to experience the world.”
Teuila excitedly scampers around, into and out of range of various trees and other objects, merely to feel them enter her sensory range.
Lu pulls me into private thinkspace, giggling, “Hehe, don’t tell her, but my harp gives me more or less the same feedback any time I pluck a string, it’s like echolocation. Give her some time to enjoy it and get used to it though, it’s good to see her having fun. I can’t tell you how sad I was for her when you were gone for so long. I missed my big sis’s smile for so, so long.” While she has me for at least a thousand seconds, Lu pulls me to our tree to snuggle in hypertime.
I blink away a few tears as Luni calls Te her big sister and admits how much she longed for Teuila to smile while I was trapped in my own mind. Leaning over, I kiss Lu’s brow and rest against her.
I try thinking about the rest of the equipment, the gloves look like they’d be an adorable addition to Luni’s ensemble. The pouch and the jug are a bit mysterious. I can almost guarantee that at least one of them somehow refills itself, or has infinite of something. Possibly both. There’s a bit of genre savviness bleeding over from my messed up mysterious memories.
Snuggling her, I quietly advise Luni, “Lu, go ahead and take the gloves back in meatspace, and the pouch, I think Lil should take the jug.”
Still, Luni pulls my arms around her and twines her legs around my left leg in our telepathic thinkspace. We stay snuggled close for nearly a quarter of an hour, as barely a second passes in real time. I’m not sure why Lu is treating me so well, why she takes me aside for private time into deeper thinkspace. Especially when she’s so close to Lil, and has had so many more years of life with Lil in thinkspace.
Lu gives me the tiniest punch in the shoulder, “That’s why you goon. We’ve got catching up to do. I’ve told you time and time again, you’re my hero, always have been, always will be. And I love you. Plus, plus, there’s, um.” She adopts what I’ll call the Shellcracker shyness expression, that of her index fingertips tapping against each other as she avoids eye contact and speaks from the side of her mouth. She continues, “There’s a thing, but um. I want us to be close, for when I can finally tell you. Um, I, I, I don’t want you to think I’m springing it on you. I want you to like me, and, and, and trust me. I will never, never ever, ever ever, if I can help it, lie to you. Um, please, you believe me, please, don’t you?”
My heart wrenches for this beautiful young woman trying so hard to earn and build my trust when she already has it. I barely manage to answer with the breath caught in my mental throat, “Of, of course I trust you, I believe you. The three of you are everything to me, I can’t imagine anything that you could say would ever drive me away or shatter that trust.” I gulp, since I do know one or two things someone could do to break my trust, and hurt me deeply.
Luni knows which thoughts I fear from gulping. She looks aghast, “I’d, I’d never! Never ever! I, I know how much that hurt you. But, but still. Someday, it’ll finally be the right time, and you won’t believe me anyway. Maybe. I’m, um, pretty sure. At least it’s pretty highly possible, I think?” Lu seems to lose her nerve partway through puzzling out the future, and I wish I could assuage her fears.
Suddenly Luni floods a mixture of emotion into our private thinkspace, and I’m kicked back to reality, only a second having passed. There was such a wide range of emotion in that flood, I don’t know how to parse it. I look towards Luni with an ache in my heart. She gives me a furtive smile.
Teuila’s new senses pick up the hesitation in Lu’s smile, and she stands between the two of us, sussing us out. Te can sense the sadness in each of us across our wavelengths, but also our body language is now plain as day even with her eyes closed. Te starts to huffily ask, “What did you, no, you, no which one of you, argh, who hurt who here? Who do I beat up?”
Lu and I both chuckle as we rush to embrace Teuila from either side, tackling her to the ground as she once did to me with Luni’s help. Lil happens to provide cushioning once again, and we sound a round of laughter. We pin her from each side, snuggling on opposite sides of Teuila.
Te objects, “Hey, hey no fair using my own tactics against me punkbutts. Goobers, come awwwwwn. D’awe, I can’t stay mad at you guys, fine, you win.”
When Te says we win, Luni does what I should probably name the Shellcracker squee. That closed-eyed wide-smile with the elongated single laugh of “Heee.”
Luni takes the gloves and pouch as I’d requested, she makes sure Lil snags the jug to Lil’s inventory. When Lu equips the gloves, she calls out, “Ooo, handy! Te! Te! Jump me up there and drop me! Please?”
Teuila’s expression at Lu goes from incredulity to disdain to eye rolling, but she caves in and leaps Lu towards a tree. Along the bark of the tree, Teuila carefully drops Luni. Lu reaches out and grips the bark of the tree with a perfect climber’s hold, even though the handholds don’t look deep enough. Luni then shimmies up and down a few feet before finally climbing down. Lu lets loose a Shellcracker squee, and most of the rest of us join her.
If that might one day save her from a fall, I’m all the more glad for it. Or if it might help her rescue one of us who are trapped up somewhere higher that she wouldn’t normally reach. After all, she’s not just some damsel in distress, she’s an adventurer too. I always call Teuila the most powerful, but Luni might actually be the most powerful among us. It’s hard to gauge with all her secrets.
Eventually we continue south, and when we’re a few miles northwest of the pyramid, the ground begins to rumble as something large lopes through the jungle. Crashing into view is a beautiful sight, Luna. Just how far does Luna range on a given day? Luna knocks everyone aside individually, then she nuzzles Luni, before coming over to flop atop me.
Having the air knocked from me twice in a few seconds, I gasp out, “Hooof, I’m so glad my ribs are mostly healed.”
Luna lifts her head momentarily, and I’d swear she wears an apologetic expression,if a beak could make one. She then drops her head back down atop my torso anyway. I chuckle and pull some fish out of my inventory for Luna to eat, and the whole family recovers from their various dazes from being knocked around.
Luni telepathically calls out with worry, “There’s something really wrong at the dam. Luna can’t talk exactly, but she’s really worried about something. We should hurry!”
It’s never simple, is it? Sighing, I hug Luna’s neck for a moment, and as I’m about to shove her off to start rushing towards the dam, she instead picks us up one by one to set us upon her back. Her forearms, like her neck, are remarkably flexible. It feels like she might be part owl or something. I wonder if we have that in common? Me with my magnetic sense of direction, her with her beak and twisty neck.
Luna takes off at a lope, skirting past the pyramid in short time, ending at the cabin. She paws at one of its faces, then shoulder slams it loudly for attention.
The beavers that exit the domicile glare at me with hateful ferocity and aim their spears my way. Luna interposes herself between them and myself, but I don’t want her getting hurt over something this stupid. I hold my hands up as a sign of peace, hop down, and walk back the way we came while the rest of my party sorts this out.
Finally, after quite some time sitting alone against a tree, my family, Luna included, catch up with me, and catch me up on the situation.
Luni explains as quickly as possible, “So, um, the MCF as you called them. They’re lording it over everyone else that they have the Valkyrie equipment, it makes them too strong, too dangerous for anyone to stand against. They want more of it for their most dominant members, so that no one can challenge their leadership. They’re planning to force the, sane faction as you called them, to march ahead, and help capture our family to ransom them for more of our equipment.”
My blood boils as I think of these ungrateful slimeballs daring to come up with such a plan. Then I almost pity them. Lucky could take down hundreds of beavers without breaking a sweat, though he might get a bit hurt by the ones in Valkyrie gear. Especially if they’ve found that stupid copy of that gorram deadly spear, Gae Buidhe. I can’t let it come to that anyway, since they’re putting the innocent ones in danger first. I want to kill them, I want to kill the leadership that came up with this idea. I want to destroy the ones that stole our equipment and used it to lord it up over others. I can’t see a path to peace here. They’ll always know where to come to get more of the equipment, and one day they might succeed in kidnapping my family.
Lu tries to calm me but I can’t hear her as my brain rages, racing through plan after plan, trying to find one that ends in peace. At what point is it okay to be the final arbiter of when it’s okay to kill someone? If there are irreconcilable differences where they actually threaten your lives, is that good enough? If you know it’s coming, and preemptively strike, is that still self defense? My muscles ache as I quake with fury.
I came here to peacefully request some lumber, not start or finish a war. Now it looks like if I want lumber, I’ll have to jack it while securing a few objectives along the way. Lu finally is able to reach me through the hostile mire of bubbling thoughts.
All Lu can say though is, “Sometimes, you have to do what you think is right. You do the best you can, everything you can, even when you hit a snag.”