The leafy dancer’s reappearance took Sue aback, but she appreciated it greatly. Her wide eyes soon gave way to a giddy smile as she spotted another peach-like fruit in their hands.
Barring Solstice and Sundance, they were the closest to her height out of everyone she’d met so far. Still a few inches shorter, though; the pink bloom that sprouted out from their forehead was at Sue’s eye level. They immediately tried to make up for the height disparity, standing on the tips of their yellow feet once they’d locked eyes with her, to her amusement.
Nuh-uh, I’m the taller one.
Sue’s attempt to replicate that motion with her one functional leg accomplished nothing except briefly losing her balance. She didn’t end up needing it, but the stranger’s wordless readiness to help when it looked like she was about to trip was deeply appreciated. “Oh, sure! Thank you!” she beamed.
To her surprise and chagrin, though, her words took the stranger aback much more than her near-fall. They backed up a couple of paces as they gathered enough composure to speak again, enthusiasm giving way to worry. “Y-you talk?”
Sue blinked at the nervous question, suddenly very unsure about what was going on. “Yeah! I-I don’t know the language, but Sundance is helping translate me.” Her remark had the dancer look at the vixen in question with uncertainty.
She had no more idea of the reason behind the sudden shift in mood than her pupil, speaking up shortly after, “Is everything alright, Lilly?”
“I—” the freshly christened plant lady began before faltering and looking away.
Sue had no idea where either Lilly’s willingness to help or her anxiety had come from, but she wanted to help all the same. She reached out and put as confident of a smile as she was capable of as she greeted, “It’s very nice to meet you, Lilly! Thank you for the fruits earlier.”
Despite Sue having little confidence in her gesture accomplishing much beyond confusing Lilly further, her reaction turned out to be markedly positive. The dancer’s stress waned as she took a step closer—and misinterpreted the Forest Guardian’s gesture as an invitation for an awkward hug, accepting it eagerly. Her leafy body was smooth, warm, and firm in its embrace. The absence of a heartbeat was a bit odd, but between it all being immensely pleasant and equally flustering, it was the last thing Sue was focused on.
“N-Nice meet you too,” Lilly muttered. “I... I think you not talk, a-and... not care me not talk good.”
Even with Sundance’s translation, Lilly turned out to be trickier to understand than expected. The most likely reason—her not knowing Moonview’s language well—made Sue’s expression light up with a warm, empathetic smile. “Oh, it’s absolutely okay, I’m still learning the language too!” Contrary to what she hoped for, though, her reassurance fell completely flat.
Lilly felt even more uncertain afterwards, twitching as if to withdraw herself from the hug before reconsidering and attempting to explain again. “No no, I—I know language, I understand. But... words, using words, very hard. F-for me. I sorry.”
Sue blinked, confused. As much as she wanted to reassure Lilly that everything was alright—and it was—she couldn’t say she wasn’t curious about what exactly did she mean by words being ‘hard for her’. Still, it was a curiosity best left for some other time. “Wh-why are you sorry? You’ve done nothing wrong! You still were really nice to me earlier and now with the fruits and all.”
To her relief, Lilly’s head and thoughts alike perked up at her reassurance. A few more firm nods did away at any remaining doubt in the flower girl’s mind, her joyous relief expressed with another, much tighter hug—almost too tight, in fact, the flimsy leaf arms putting out stunning amounts of force as they wrapped around Sue.
They almost crushed her breath out of her lungs before Lilly realized she’s gone too hard and eased out, thinking about apologizing for a moment before deciding to enact it with a much gentler hug instead. Sue didn’t mind one bit, gently patting her back all the while.
Hopefully that’s not an inappropriate area…
“Sorry! Just—happy you not care me not talk good,” Lilly beamed, fidgeting with her arms.
“It’s all good, phew. I sure wasn’t expecting you to be this strong!” Sue remarked, making the plant girl break into whistly giggling.
Lilly let go of the Forest Guardian and lifted her arms as if to flex them—only for the elongated leaves to remain completely flat throughout. She then followed up on her absence of a flex by throwing the fruit up and repeating her glowing arm slice technique from earlier. With the treat split in twain, she carefully snatched both halves from the air and offered them to Sue and Joy, balancing herself on the tip of one foot during this entire process. “Yes! Very strong! I help farm! Want see?”
Yes, yes I really do.
Both recipients of Lilly’s gifts expressed their approvals with firm nods. Joy’s more limited perspective was quickly fixed with the dancer picking her up as if she weighed nothing and turning towards the mixed use farmland. Before Sue could get concerned about Joy getting scared, the metal girl’s own reaction was a more positive kind of surprise that then faded into fascination as she used her newfound vantage point for all it was worth, taking all the sights in.
Lilly was much too eager to show off to even think of stopping—though that didn’t mean she didn’t wait for Sue to finish her march to the nearest unharvested tree. She stalled for time by running, spinning, and dancing circles around the Forest Guardian, much to her own and even Joy’s amusement. Throws were quickly discarded as an option, though, the whine of fear that went through the metal girl at being tossed in the air clear enough for Lilly to get the message. “Sorry! Here is, need clean this tree now.”
The cart next to the tree in question answered where Sue and Joy’s recent gift had come from; a handful of the not-peaches peeking out from underneath a mound of yellow spotted fruit—the same fruit that Lilly had to harvest another tree’s worth of now. It looked like such a daunting task that Sue almost wanted to offer some token help, just so that she wouldn’t have to watch the dancer sweat her leaves off for two hours.
Thankfully, Lilly was privy to a secret farming trick that helped immensely with her task—namely, kicking the tree’s trunk very, very hard.
A single strike was enough to separate her target from most of its spoils, even visibly shaking the surrounding soil; the tree itself only staying intact through what Sue had to assume was the sheer force of Lilly’s will.
She sure eats her broccoli, hah. Or maybe she is half broccoli, who knows with the weird plant-like fauna here.
Regardless of what kind of Superpower had fueled Lilly’s kick, her job wasn’t done yet. Fruit in the dirt wasn’t any more useful than fruit on a branch, after all. Lilly was about to dive into more of her showoff before remembering she was currently holding a toddler, slowing herself enough to first gracefully lower Joy onto the ground, pat her head a couple times, and then get into it.
Yellow feet and green arms were little more than a blur as Lilly tossed each individual fruit off the ground and into the cart, sparing no effort to show off her dexterity throughout, mixing in spins, cartwheels, backflips, and even a few more splits just for the hell of it. Her demonstration had it all, just as many feats of physical agility as it had glances in Sue’s direction to keep track of her live reaction.
A reaction that, despite having started out dumbfounded at all the sudden motion, had quickly turned into cheers and encouragement. Lilly’s dance routine pushed her ever closer to victory over a hearty pile of inanimate fruit with each step, and Sue couldn’t get enough of it.
Goodness, she’s graceful. And… kinda pretty…
Once the fallen fruit had been gathered up, Lilly’s focus shifted towards the few stragglers that still held on for dear life to their branches. A few quick hops up the tree later, the dancer had made it to the largest branch. All she needed to address each straggling fruit were the daintiest of stomps on their branches; a stomp said branches only barely survived—or didn’t on a couple of occasions, making Lilly freeze self-consciously each time. Thankfully, even the embarrassment at having damaged the tree didn’t survive the sight of Sue’s warm enthusiasm, sparking the dancer back to action each time.
As Lilly wrapped her performance up, Sue reminded herself that, despite the child sitting beside her and the not-child pulling off anime moves before her having taken the entirety of her attention, they weren’t alone in here. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed what the two older women were up to.
Solstice was acting responsibly, chatting with a couple of villagers Sue remembered seeing around Moonview over the past several days, but of whom she knew very little about. A large, white, cotton-like sphere with something small and greenish hanging from its side, and a blue amphibian her size with orange gills and black fins.
Meanwhile, Sundance stood just a few feet away, munching on a freshly nabbed yellow fruit, clearly no less enthralled by Lilly’s demonstration than its intended recipient was.
With the last of the fruits placed in the cart, it was time to wrap up the show. Sue’s focus returned to the dancer right as she finished climbing to the top of the tree, stopping for the first time in minutes as she spread her arms wide and closed her eyes. And then, she jumped, hitting no less than four front flips in one leap before capping it off with yet another split.
The easiest 10 in my life.
All she needed to convey that fact was a large piece of paper, a charcoal stick, and an hour to explain the decimal number system—or just words. “That was awesome!”
Much to Sue’s astonishment, Lilly took her glowing review very, very literally.
The dancer closed her eyes as her upper half became shrouded in a pale white glow, much more intense than any magic Sue had seen so far, filling her mind with worry. But then, as abruptly as it began, it was over, suddenly leaving Lilly weaker and panting quietly.
“L-Lilly, are you alright?” Sue asked, worried, catching the attention of both the question’s recipient and Sundance.
The former picked herself up in one swift motion and dashed over to Sue—but not before nabbing one of the freshly harvested fruits to snack on. The bite that followed revealed her mouth to be in the usual spot, just small and very, very well hidden. “Yeah!” she beamed. “You like?”
“I—It was amazing!” Sue nodded, wide eyed. “I-I could keep on watching for ages, but what was that glow?”
“Synthesis,” Sundance answered. Lilly agreed empathically, internally thanking the vixen for freeing her from having to explain how it worked. Instead, she pointed out at the half-figurative fruits of her effort, dozens of tiny, whitish buds that covered the freshly harvested branches.
Some of them Sue swore she could see grow in real time. “Wait, are these—are these already flower buds?” she asked, stunned.
The vixen nodded. “Yep. Some coaxing and nutrients, and trees don’t mind flowering again one bit. Am I understanding it right, Lilly?”
“Yeah, now they grow fruit again. More fruit to pick up in week. Everyone hungry, we need food!” Lilly elaborated, the time scales involved taking Sue aback.
She was too much of a city girl to know whether that was how normal trees functioned back in her world. If it was, though, then Moonview had managed to solve world hunger by just telling trees to flower again with some applied pretty plant lady magic—and the implications of that fact hit her right away. “D-does that mean you have as much food as you want?” she asked, somewhere between stunned and awestruck.
“Pretty much,” Sundance confirmed.
“Hehe. You not see that before?” Lilly asked, and Sue could only shake her head in confusion. A downward glance revealed Joy to be similarly stupefied by Lilly’s feat of magic, making her giggle. “I understand you not see Joy, you very small! But you not too...”
It was only then, after an entire performance, that Lilly finally realized that she forgot to ask the nice not-mute-after-all Forest Guardian for her name.
The firefox sage barked out a chuckle as she cut through the confusion, walking over to the rest of the group. “Her name is Sue, Lilly.”
Figure it’s only fair for us both to fluster each other without even knowing the other’s name.
“Sue!” Lilly whistled, overjoyed. “Good know, nice name. Sue, you not see that before?”
“No, I haven’t,” Sue gasped, a smile refusing to wash away from her face, “that’s—that’s amazing! How did you all figure that out?”
Lilly tilted her head. “Figure what? Synthesis?”
“I-I think so! Does it make the trees bloom again like that?”
Both Lilly and Sundance were confused by the unclear wording of Sue’s question. Thankfully, the latter had ways of overcoming that uncertainty and wasted no time in putting them to good use. The Forest Guardian blinked a couple times as her thoughts were examined, the hangup soon revealing itself to the vixen. “Oh, I see what Sue was getting at,” Sundance said. “Berry trees bloom multiple times throughout the year on their own Sue, and Synthesis just helps speed that process up. Did I get that right, Lilly?”
“Yeah! With not, one moon in warm, never in cold. With, one week in warm, one moon in cold. Help many, help more with good ground. And—hi Bluegrass!” Lilly greeted, snagging Sue’s attention over to the more palatable of the duo she’d seen recently.
The leafy green-cream snake was smiling brightly at the dancer, slithering in a small circle from all the giddiness on his mind. “Hiiii!”
“How day go?” Lilly asked.
“Excellent! I’m almost done with that field you gave me!” Bluegrass explained. His voice was simultaneously too old to be boyish, and too young to be truly grown up, sliding around the teen halfway point as it raised and occasionally broke.
Reporting on his progress only excited him further, much to Lilly’s enthusiasm. “Remember take time!” she reminded. “No hurry, now learning. On break?”
Bluegrass shook his head. “No, better! Copper got the idea to bring everyone some frozen juice, Mrs. Snowdrop froze it for us! We’ve got a whole—” he trailed off as he glanced to the side, finding the large pot he and his friend had spent the last half hour dragging along with themselves missing. He was stumped, slithering in a circle as he looked around for where it could’ve gone.
And then; he finally spotted it, half emptied and being slowly dragged behind the freshly cleared tree by the one and only pink scorpion bat themself. “Copper, what are you doing,” Bluegrass yelled. “Come on!”
Wasting no more time, the snake slithered over to the flying scorpion, the hisses, clicks and growls that followed untranslated. Before Sue could feel thankful towards the snake or angry at the bat, footsteps coming from behind her made her turn around—just in time for Solstice and the small group she had been talking with to make their way over in response to Lilly’s waving.
The ‘cotton ball’ moniker Sue had used earlier turned out to be only partially true. Sure, they were partly a cotton sphere the size of a beach ball with a bunch of small seeds scattered in it, but with the greenish extension containing their eyes and mouth, it was probably their ‘true’ body. Suppose that made their white fluff their… hair?
Step aside, Thistle, your pastel wizard hat has some serious competition for the title of the weirdest ‘hair’ in this world.
“Is something the matter, Lilly?” the cotton ball asked, their voice ancient, unusually dry for a plant, and very patient.
They closed their eyes as they listened to the flower girl’s response. “Mr. Equinox, I tell Sue about how we grow here, and how you help make good ground. And you too High Tide!”
The blue quadruped responded to the followup with a dry chuckle, shaking their head. “I only help with irrigation, sweetie,” they clarified, voice croaky and slightly feminine. “No less important, of course, but soil quality is all Equinox. Though… irrigation is our greatest concern right now.”
“How long do you think until we’ll have to expand our waterways, High Tide?” Solstice asked.
Her question had the blue amphibian firmly shake her head and look pensively at the increasingly pitiful stream that sated the farm’s thirst. “Just expanding it won’t do anything. We’ll need to move the farms way downstream sooner or later. We’re pushing the limits of our spring, and could stand to shrink the land we use right now to leave us with more room to spare, just in case.”
That wasn’t an answer Solstice would’ve liked to hear, but it was a truthful one all the same. It left the Mayor in a thoughtful mood as the cotton ball chimed in, “Taking a closer look at the individual varieties we are cultivating will certainly prove helpful. I can think of at least three crops whose bulk inevitably circles around to the compost pile. Doing away with those and the thirstiest ones should be sufficient to bring us back to safety for the time being, no?”
High Tide shook her head. “At the moment, yes, but if we keep growing at our current rate, we’ll need another effort like that in just a couple of years, and I sure don’t see it getting any easier then. We need a long-term plan.”
“We ought to ensure that any such plan is considerate enough,” Equinox reminded. “Even if we are capable of reaching far downstream, it is far from unlikely we inadvertently end up rubbing shoulders with someone less than pleased about our arrival there. Or, more likely, that we underestimate the scope of such an endeavor in one aspect or another.”
Solstice largely remained quiet, taking in the information one bit at a time and trying to work through its implications. Eventually, she admitted internal defeat with a sigh. “We can bring it up at the Elders’ Council. You’re right, High Tide, we need a plan; only so long we can keep doing things the way the founders did a thousand Moons ago.”
“Thankfully, we still have time aplenty before it gets dire,” High Tide sighed, looking over the neighbouring field, “but best get that done while we can do so calmly.”
“Indubitably,” Equinox acknowledged. “I would rather avoid straining the soil any further than we already are, and more land will help with that concern as well.”
As the trio mentally reset following the discussion about steering Moonview away from a possible ecological crisis, they realized they’ve had an audience for the last few moments. Most everyone else around was staring at them blankly except for Lilly, the dancer chiming in with her own question soon after. “Mrs. High Tide! How far down river to more water?”
The blue one took a moment to parse the exact intent of Lilly’s question before sighing quietly. This was the hitch of the whole thing, wasn’t it? “Last time I swam over to scout—our stream joins the larger river a couple days of march away. At that point, it’d be less of ‘our’ farm and more so its whole separate settlement that provides us with food. Hard to solve...”
“Which is why more voices will help a lot!” Solstice chimed in, eager to change topics. “Thank you for your expertise, Equinox, High Tide.”
The cotton ball bowed so deeply they almost flipped over. “You are most welcome, Solstice~.”
“Eeyup. We can figure it out, even if the transition will be rough—we’ve survived worse. Oh, Lilly, is that the girl Soot has been teasing you the whole day about?” the blue frog asked, abruptly drawing the attention back to Sue and snapping her out of passively taking in the informed discussion around her.
Both Sue and Lilly suddenly exploded in bright embarrassment, the latter speaking up in her own defense soon after, “I not know what you mean—”
“Yessss you do~!” a rustling, creaky voice jutted in, sending an icy chill down Sue’s spine as she turned around. The speaker turned out to be the same pumpkin-bodied being Sue had seen earlier a few times. The glowing holes in the lower half of its body still resembled a face, and its orange hair being prehensile was still weird, but she was too stunned and embarrassed to care.
More relevant to the exchange at hand, they were giggling mischievously, making Lilly shout, “Soot! Why you sneak!?”
Soot cackled, “Because it’sss very funny to watch your reactionssss~.”
Their voice sounded ethereal, not unlike Hazel’s in that regard. Though, as opposed to that grump of a ghost, they felt much more lighthearted in their teasing, even if they were no less effective at flustering her target.
Lilly grumble-whistled angrily as she searched for words. As appreciated as it felt to be used as someone to tease another person about and not as a direct receiver of teasing, Sue didn’t want to leave her to dry in here. She patted the dancer’s shoulder for reassurance; the gesture appreciated right away.
“Adorable~,” Soot swooned. “Though I can’t imagine work isss the best sssspot for a date~.”
Lilly shouted, “NOT DATE!” in the least convincing way imaginable. Sue wasn’t faring any better, entirely unsure what to do at the realization of being on a date, no matter how obvious it was in hindsight.
“Denial won’t get you far Lillssss~,” the pumpkin teased on.
“SH-SHUT!” Lilly leered at them wide-eyed.
“No~!” Soot leaned in, hovering in the air until their smirk was mere inches away from Lilly’s flustered expression. “I’d sssay you two head off and enjoy the evening together~.”
“B-but, harvest—”
“Oh Lillssss, you really thought I wasss gonna be a wingghost for you just to have you sssslump away with the harvest all evening?” the pumpkin smirked. “You go have fun with your crush, I’ll take care of thisss~.”
“SHE NOT—” Lilly shouted, not having it in her to finish the sentence on account of being unable to put words to such an obvious lie. Meanwhile, Sue was still stuck in a mental bluescreen, her expression completely blank.
“You’re good at many thingssss Lillssss, but a liar you’re not~. Off you go now, ya dummiesssss~,” Soot insisted, almost shoving Lilly out of the scene themselves.
As respectable a job of not laughing out loud at the exchange before them as Solstice and especially Sundance were doing, Soot’s last reply broke the dam for both of them. Embarrassment flooded Sue’s mind despite how good-spirited their amusement was, leaving her to try gathering words—only to fail miserably every time.
Thankfully, Lilly was there, snapping them out of their shared mental freeze. She picked the giggling Joy up into one arm and grabbed Sue’s hand with the other one, the firm yank away from the snickering pumpkin getting her crush to move. The rest of their makeshift band were right behind them as they all headed… Duck knows where.
It took both Lilly and Sue a few minutes to calm down enough to process anything but their own embarrassment. The intermittent chuckles coming from the duo of older women trailing them didn’t help either—and neither did the fact that Sue’s hand was being held by someone actively crushing on her.
And the worst part… I don’t think I mind one bit.
“I-is that true, Lilly?” Sue mumbled, eventually. Lilly didn’t have to speak up for her answer to be crystal clear to Sue’s sight and sixth sense alike. Bright red fluster grew on her cheek, her step flinched, her grip on Sue’s hand waned, her head looked away as if struck. Understandable as her reaction was, it was the polar opposite of what Sue wanted to happen. “Oh, it’s all good Lilly, promise! I—”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
It was much too early to say how much Sue earnestly shared Lilly’s feelings on the matter. But, if nothing else, she was really eager to find that out. She held the leafy dancer’s hand as firmly as she could while hobbling along beside her. “I think it’s really sweet of you.” Good Duck, did Sue never think she’d get to say these words one day, especially to a creature that looked like much more of a plant than an animal, if it was any of the latter at all. “A-and, I’m down for a date!”
Lilly’s reaction was instantaneous, and almost strong enough to topple Sue over—but only almost. Her forceful hug had her press her white face into Sue’s shoulder, the yellow petals around her neck tickling the Forest Guardian as Sue’s and Joy’s brain played catchup. The toothy girl suddenly found herself hugging her big friend once more—and, just like Sue, didn’t mind that arrangement one bit. Lilly mumbled, “Th-thank, thank, thank...” audibly sighing in relief.
Since when were plants allowed to be so cute, Duckdammit!?
Sue’s giggles made Lilly squirm as she tried responding in a more affectionate way. She gently patted around the gorgeous bloom on the plant girl’s head, its aroma growing more pleasant by the moment. Her magical touch to the back of Lilly’s head and neck proved super effective, at least if her leafy body gradually relaxing was any sign. “It’s my pleasure Lilly. F-first time anything like that happened to me, hah...”
“What! Not believe,” Lilly insisted, the conviction in her voice taking Sue aback.
She had no idea why that would be such an unbelievable thing to say, asking, “Why not?”
“You nice! To sister, to me, to Joy most! You brave, help Spark. Morning I-I think have not chance i-if you can speak,” Lilly admitted.
...oh man.
As soon as Sue thought she was getting a grip on her own fluster, it was yanked out right from underneath her. Lilly’s compliment left her mumbling for a few moments before trying to steer the topic away from herself. “You really owe Soot one, eh?”
Joy found the quip especially amusing, her dry laughter soon spreading to the other two. Even Lilly’s grumbling had to give way to amusement at Sue’s point and Joy’s reaction as she sighed. “Yes, yes... they right. I thank them tomorrow.”
Feeling Lilly’s hand in hers brought a smile to Sue’s face as the two resumed their march. Neither of them was sure where they were heading as they marched on through Moonview’s outskirts—
“Lilly, where are you going?”
—and if not for Sundance’s intervention, they would’ve likely kept going like this for hours. The vixen’s words finally made Lilly pause and take a look around her surroundings, before admitting the obvious. “Uh. Not know. Sorry.”
Sundance’s lungs wouldn’t be spared any reprieve today, would they?
She broke into a bellowing laughter for Duck-knows-which time today, appreciating the antics so, so much more than all the dark gloom of yesterday. She laid her paws on both dummies’ shoulders as she caught up with them. “Well! High time we head over for drinks; the sun’s about to start setting. And since Sue will take her time—mind running ahead and grabbing seats for us all, Lilly? It’ll be a while before we get there.”
A part of Sue wanted to object to that, less so because of being blamed for the group’s slowness, and more so because it meant Lilly would be somewhere else until they caught up with her. Lilly felt much the same, but with the important addition of having a chance to prove her worth and do something nice for Sue. The dancer didn’t care about having a seat, but Sue sure looked like she’d need it. “Okay!”
Before Sue—or Joy—could get a word in edgewise, the dancer was already on her way, the toothy girl still in her arms. Sue’s free hand involuntarily reached out after her, only to droop as Lilly turned the corner. A few more of Sundance’s warm pets snapped her out of any funk that threatened to start building. Her smirk, however, only embarrassed Sue further. “How did it go again? ‘Don’t swing that way?’”
Sue’s low grumble brought not a small amount of amusement to Sundance and Solstice alike, the latter only now having caught up with the rest of the group.
The older Forest Guardian took the initiative and pulled her pupil into a gentle side hug, the gesture as tingly as it was comforting. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed, Sue! These things can take a while and a good few opportunities to really solidify. I didn’t even know I could have a thing for boys until I met Jasper.”
Even if that wasn’t how Sue thought Solstice’s words were gonna go, they raised a fair point all the same. She was very aware of her utter absence of serious romantic opportunities back in her home world; she could stand to give herself some slack.
On a second thought, it’s not like these were just her own thoughts that left her all flustered. “I—I think I’m more embarrassed because you two k-keep ribbing us...” she mumbled.
“...can you blame us?”
No, Sundance, I can’t. Doesn’t mean it’s any less embarrassing.
The unspoken response sent a wave of amusement through the psychic trio as they got going. Sue wasn’t excluded from the giggling, helping greatly to keep her embarrassment down as the group gradually calmed down. The next few moments were spent in well-needed silence as everyone caught their breath and composed themselves again; the two older psychics wordlessly agreeing to lay off any further teasing for now.
After all, some interesting questions got raised earlier.
“^So, you’ve got me curious now, Sue,” Sundance began. “Do fruit trees not bloom several times a year where you’re from?^”
The change in subject to something much more grounded helped Sue maintain her composure, not-monstrous butterflies vacating her stomach as stirring thoughts replaced them. She couldn’t honestly say she knew anything about the non-digital world with absolute, 100% certainty, but she had a good-enough intuition, and hoped it would suffice for now. “Yeah, as far as I know all plants only bloom once a year i-in my world.”
The vixen lifted her eyebrow. “^Don’t your people have any invention or process to help with their growth?^”
“There are fertilizers, but they only help with yields, and not with how fast the plants grow,” Sue admitted, immediately sensing the cogs turning inside both psychics’ minds.
“^If one harvest a year is all you get, you likely need a ton of farmland and storage...^” Solstice mumbled.
Sue nodded, “Mhm. I was really surprised by how small your farm was before you explained that part to me. I-I don’t think that would’ve been enough to feed a village ten times smaller than Moonview in my world.”
Her remark had the two natives of this world glance at each other before looking back at Sue, Sundance being the first to raise the obvious question. “^How... big are the farms in your world?^”
What’s the size of England again?
“From horizon to horizon, they’re big enough to take up most of the space in farming areas,” Sue explained as if it was the most normal fact in the world.
Her answer only resulted in further confusion, as a massive question was suddenly brought to light in a very stark way. Solstice blurted it loud out in dumbfounded shock, “^J-just how big is your world, Sue?^”
Sue blinked, taken aback. “I—what do you mean?”
“^How massive is your town to necessitate having such vast swaths of land dedicated to just growing crops?^” Sundance clarified.
“It’s not just a town, it’s everywhere!”
“^What!?^” both psychics blurted out. It was hard to say which of the three was the most confused at the way the discussion devolved. Sue tried her absolute hardest to think through just what was so confusing to grasp for these two intelligent women—and then the realization hit her across the head.
To them, ‘society’ was Moonview and a handful of other, equally small, distant towns.
To her, ‘society’ was the entire planet.
“Okay, I think I know what the misunderstanding is,” Sue began, taking a very deep breath. “My-my people, humans, they aren’t just in like, one area of the world, or a handful of towns. They’re everywhere; we live on our entire planet. Every land mass has peo—humans living on it, and controlling all of it.”
Every surprising revelation either of them had about the other’s world was dwarfed by Sue’s admission to such a comical degree that neither Solstice nor Sundance had any idea how to respond.
For a few tense moments, Sue feared that she’d managed to brick their minds with that simple but astonishing revelation. Sundance was the first to show any signs of life afterwards, her dumbstruck gaze slowly looking down at the grassy dirt of the path they were now blocking. The increasingly orange light of the sunset illuminated the vixen’s expression as her mind tried to comprehend all the implications of what she’d just heard, eventually muttering out, “^How—how many. Of your people.^”
Sue slunk off to the side to clear the path, her answer as clear to state as it was utterly impossible to comprehend in full. “A-almost eight billion.”
“^E-eight... thousand... thousand... thousand...^”
Every single word of that estimation represented a leap in a population’s sophistication that was nigh impossible to comprehend for those whose lives revolved around the scale of the previous ones.
Just as a few animals sharing a burrow was a massive step up from a solitary existence in almost every way, so would their Moonview completely blow the minds of said burrowful of critters, so would the complexities and intricacies of a city of several million go way beyond what anyone living here could imagine.
And the full extent of Sue’s civilization was another leap in scale up from that, still.
Each of those jumps represented profound changes to every single aspect of the lives of their inhabitants and the exponential increase of complexity of most of them. Hunting on one’s lonesome, versus stockpiling food as a group, versus division of labor with dedicated farmers and cooks. Further up, specialized distribution networks purely for moving food from mind-bendingly vast fields to hungry mouths.
And then, at the largest scale, an intricate tapestry of a planet-spanning trade network, one which reduces months of the year to numbers on a spreadsheet and climate limitations of the most popular crops to footnotes whose significance evaporates with the existence of global shipping.
Such complexity was quite literally incomprehensible to a singular mind. No person could ever be said to grasp the sheer vastness of a planet-spanning population like that in earnest; mortal minds weren’t made for that.
And yet, for a brief instant, Sundance almost accomplished that feat.
Her mind’s eye stared at what felt like infinity for one enlightening moment before it too had to back down with a pounding headache. In just a few moments, her stunned silence gave way to woofed grumbling and trying to rub away the aching with her paws. “^I have... so many questions,^” she muttered, out of breath.
Sue almost felt rude for laughing at Sundance’s admission—but only almost; she sure wouldn’t say no to some comeuppance. The vixen was much too stunned to even acknowledge the soft laughter.
Before she could put words to any of her questions, though, Solstice cut her off. Her mind might’ve given up in imagining Sue’s world at around a million souls, but that didn’t mean she was blind to implications of the once-human’s supposedly global civilization. “^W-what about other peoples?^” she asked. “^Do they live together with your people everywhere?^”
That’s gonna be a… touchy one to explain.
The truth that followed was far less incomprehensible than it was simply unimaginable—“Th-there aren’t any other people, no other... thinking people. It’s just humans.”
“^Thinking as in...?^” Sundance butted in, hoping that either she or Sue were just misunderstanding something.
Sue sighed. “Thinking as in consciousness. Every other species in my world isn’t conscious, they’re just... animals.”
Hearing words like that from anyone else in Moonview would’ve been easily classified as hate speech. The belief that only one’s own kin ever had sentience or morals was not an uncommon one in the wild, and many newcomers had to consciously unlearn that way of thinking. Sue clearly had no problems with treating other species as equals—which only made such a blunt assertion hit even harder.
Was her world truly as nightmarish as she was painting it to be?
Solstice asked, aghast, “^Do you kn-know for sure?^” Her words felt less like an honest inquiry and more like a plea for such a vulgar fact to be merely a limitation of Sue’s kin.
“I—no, I don’t think so,” Sue admitted. “We aren’t psychics, there aren’t any psychics in our world. But no other species seem to be capable of communication or building settlements like we are, and we’ve been trying to figure out if any of them are close to our intelligence for a while. From what I remember, only one or two species come even slightly close.”
It wasn’t certainty, no, but it was as close as Sue could get in the heat of the moment. Sundance and Solstice very carefully crammed the unpleasant fact into their minds in such a way that it only touched ‘Sue’s world’, the worries about that way of thinking infecting any other part of her mind making the Forest Guardian shudder.
“^I-I have no idea how to imagine a world like that,^” Solstice whispered, leaning on a nearby building. “^Back when I—when I grew up with my clan, that attitude was everywhere, but even those that expressed it didn’t really believe in it, it was just too easily disproved by stepping out of the borders of our settlement and looking around for even just a few moments. Or, at least I hope they didn’t really believe in it. To hear it’s the prevailing attitude in your world, Sue, and that it even could be correct is... depressing.^”
My world isn’t depr—
…
Actually, no, scratch that, it absolutely is, but not because humans are the only sentient species! There are so many other, much more valid reasons for it to be depressing!
“I... can’t say I agree, even if I do prefer the diversity here.”
The sobering subject didn’t do any of the trio any good to think about for longer. They all resumed their march as Sundance came up with a much more intellectually stimulating question, as opposed to more depression fodder. “^To bring up something less... morbid to think about. How does housing work in your world? Where do these eight… billions of people sleep?^”
A question like that didn’t have any singular answer, but it didn’t need to in order to work well as a distraction. Both Sue and Solstice got to thinking, even if the latter only kept coming up with super-sized versions of buildings in Moonview.
Sue explained, “It really depends, but for cities with millions of people, it’s mostly apartment buildings. Like this one over here, just stacked on top of itself.” She accompanied her explanation by pointing a finger at a nearby rectangular stone building, unlike the one Solstice’s dwelling rested on.
The elaboration helped, but it still left many details unspoken. “^I imagine these ‘apartment’ buildings also have staircases to enable movement from one floor to another?^” Sundance inquired. “^How many floors are we talking about? Two? Even three?^”
Hell, even two would be a vast improvement in many suburban areas…
“Mostly elevators, but stairs are used everywhere, too. And no, many more than two or three,” Sue chuckled. “The one I grew up in was eight floors, but there are many that are even bigger, like fifteen or even twenty.”
To her own annoyance, Sundance had a much harder time grasping how a building of that size would look compared to the incomparably more intricate tapestry of Sue’s world as a whole. She stopped abruptly and horizontally outstretched one finger from each paw. One ended up where the building Sue used as a reference touched the ground, and the other at its roof, both from her perspective. Then, she moved the upper finger by the same distance that had initially separated it from the lower one to visualize another floor being added.
And then another, and another, and another.
The vixen’s eyes went wide as her head craned upwards. She had run out of reach less than a dozen floors in, and by the time she was done visualizing even twenty floors, she was staring almost directly straight up. “^What the fuck,^” she muttered, more stunned than Sue had ever seen her. “^How?^”
Sue chuckled, “Do you get why we have dedicated building inspectors now?”
“^Dedicated what?^” Solstice blinked, hearing that term for the first time.
“^I think I’m beginning to understand now, yeah...^” Sundance trailed off, deaf to her friend’s question. It took her a good while to shake that particular strand of confusion off. Her attempt at imagining the sheer amount of raw material and stresses involved failed entirely, forcing her to admit internal defeat with a slump.
The older Forest Guardian’s curiosity wasn’t about to let itself be forgotten, though. “^What did you mean by ‘building inspectors’?^”
“Oh,” Sue perked up, “they’re just people that check on buildings that are being built and make sure they’re safe and won’t fal—AH!”
Before Sue could continue pretending to understand the field of structural engineering enough to comment on what went into building safety, her feeble balance was yanked out from underneath her. Solstice’s intervention kept her on her legs for long enough for the younger Forest Guardian to finish stabilizing herself, heart hammering in her chest at being startled so hard.
The entire trio tried to figure out what had just happened—and found their suspect in a piece of wood sticking out of the wall they had just passed by, now decorated with a shred of Forest Guardian dress, helplessly fluttering in the evening breeze.
“^You alright, Sue?^” Solstice asked, concerned.
“Yes, yes. It’s j-just annoying.”
“^Sounds like you could use a trim then,^” the Mayor chuckled before she looked down, her eyes going wide. “^Oh good Moon, you really need a trim. I hadn’t realized how roughed up your dress was until now.^”
A glance downwards revealed said dress to be in a miserable state, even barring the two larger holes. Its edges were tattered and stained with dirt, almost dirty enough to cross the line into the territory of disgusting. Sue dearly hoped that nobody else had been paying much attention to it either, Lilly most of all.
Though… Solstice’s wording took her aback a bit. “T-trim?” She asked. “Like with scissors?”
Solstice blinked before shaking her head. “^What? No, just a simple flint knife. I have one made just for this at my tent that I could grab for you. Though, if we’re doing that, you’ll need to wash them first. The rest of you won’t hurt to be a bit cleaner, either~.^”
Sue wasn’t sure whether to take offense at Solstice’s words. She tried to sniff herself, not picking up on anything particularly offensive. Though, considering her crutch arm was sticky to the touch despite her not remembering sweating at any point during her stay here, she figured she really should shower, anyway. “Fine, fine,” she sighed. “Wh-where are the showers here?”
“^Showers? Unsure what those are, but I’m sure our baths can fill the same purpose. Can you take her over there while I grab the knife, Sundance?^” Solstice asked.
The vixen nodded. “^Sure thing. Let’s all meet at the table Lilly grabbed for us.^” Solstice nodded and dashed off towards the quickly creeping sunset, leaving Sue with just Sundance and a stern-sounding remark that followed, “^Just don’t drag me into the water with yourself Sue.^”
Can’t imagine a fire-aligned creature enjoying being splashed with water much…
“W-would that hurt you?” Sue asked, concerned.
“^Oh no, no,^” the vixen reassured, “^it’s just unpleasant; I prefer sand baths when possible. Annoyingly, a good, clean sand like that is hard to find around here...^”
The proximity to Sundance’s bodily warmth made for a pleasant sensation throughout their evening stroll. It’d likely still take a while before they’d get there, giving Sue more time to work through some of her own remaining conundrums about this world—starting with the one that has been persistently evading being answered for a few days now. “So, Sundance... what is evolution?”
The surprised stare the vixen gave her pupil might have been nothing compared to the ones in response to the borderline mind-shattering realizations from earlier, but it was still more shock than Sundance usually showed. She needed a moment to sort her thoughts out, eventually answering with her own question. “^...I’m less surprised about you simply not knowing about evolution, and more so about that being the case despite your language having that word. If you wouldn’t mind answering, what does your kind of ‘evolution’ mean, Sue?^”
Sue was less annoyed at her question being deftly dodged yet again, and more flustered about her tattered and woefully lacking knowledge of biology being suddenly brought into the spotlight. She hoped against all hope that despite all her C+’s and B-’s, she still understood the topic enough to give a competent answer.
“So, um... you have a population of a certain species, and it reproduces with variations. And then, like, the environment will prefer some variations over others, so when... Actually, think of a species of birds that feed on nuts. And they migrate to a different place with different nuts, which are harder to break. Then the ones that ended up with bigger beaks by chance will be able t-to break the harder nuts easier. They’ll be more likely to survive and reproduce, a-and eventually the population will be almost entirely bigger beaks.”
This has to be the most bastardized version of Darwin’s Finches ever uttered, good Duck.
Regardless of how scuffed her explanation was, Sue hoped it would prove sufficient—especially since it was the only concrete example of Darwinian Evolution she could recall.
Fortunately, it seemed like that was indeed the case. Sundance continued to guide them towards the baths as she chewed on Sue’s idea, scritching her snout and nodding at nothing in particular. “^Hmm... and then if, say, their environment were to change in such a way that the access to pyrokinesis would prove advantageous, that population would then eventually gain the Fire typing?^”
If not for them taking up a hefty part of a narrow, yet busy path, Sue would’ve stopped on the spot and asked the vixen to explain all that again, but slowly. Instead, she just hoped that Sundance’s smarts had her figure out the gist, even if her chosen example was completely incomprehensible. “I... think so?”
“^I see. Now that I think about it, I’ve heard of a similarly sounding idea before, however only as a tale. Supposedly, there was once a long-lived dragon that lived in a small valley. And, when they thought back at the end of their centuries-long life, they realized that none of the other species looked the same like they used to when they were younger, despite them having never overtly changed. Interesting to hear that there’s some merit to that tale. What’s the limit of a... population change like that? Also, here we are.^”
As Sue mulled over Sundance’s question, their destination finally came to sight, taking her aback with how luxurious it looked.
A handful of hot tubs stood on a large, elevated platform, all but one of them empty, and, judging by the vapor emanating from it, soothingly warm. The sight was alluring enough to make her overlook the pretty large practical obstacle of her ever getting in or out of these tubs in her current state, between her nonexistent athletic skill and having to use a crutch—not to mention the cast on her leg.
Before Sue could take another step towards the warm bliss, she found herself gently, yet firmly, held back by Sundance’s mental grip. The orange sheen that surrounded her body was just as warm as she imagined the hot tub’s water to be, making for a perfectly acceptable substitute.
For the approximate four seconds that it lasted.
“Not there~,” Sundance chided. “Don’t have time to soak like that. And even if we did, you’d have to clean yourself the normal way first, anyway.”
Despair filled Sue’s mind at the realization that there wouldn’t be any warm baths in her immediate future—and then faded moments later, replaced with an annoyed, but understanding sigh.
The large, flat, slightly submerged basin reminded Sue of a vastly oversized shower tray. It was large enough to force anyone stepping through it to clean their feet in the half an inch of standing water that filled it. Any excess that arose was drained off into a short, tiled channel that then led into a small, partially underground structure off to the side, the occasional sputters of smoke and vapor alike that escaped through its roof giving Sue a decent idea of what went on in there.
Sundance shivered with her entire body after stepping into the shallow water, distracting Sue away from any further observations and making her giggle. And then again, this time in response to the vixen’s eye roll. To spare herself any further embarrassment, Sundance pointed to where Sue was supposed to go, the display rather modest.
A bowl of water sat on top of a small table at the basin’s edge, one of many. Around it laid a modest wooden pitcher, a thankfully clean hand towel, and… a bar of soap, worn down to the size of a finger. “Here. Water, soap, a rag, you hopefully know the drill,” Sundance instructed. “If not, then my opinion of your entire species is gonna change drastically. Do you want me to help hold you in place so that you can use both hands for this?”
“Um, sure, that’d help.”
“No problem.” Sundance reassured, before her telekinesis grabbed Sue. The warm sensation grasping her—though only her lower half this time—sent a shudder through the Forest Guardian’s body.
Even once she got used to it, though she needed a good while afterwards to psych herself into actually letting go of the crutch to free both of her hands. For better or worse, the tool had become a de facto part of her. The realization that she would be cleaning herself in front of everyone further delayed her getting started. The vestiges of modesty had to be forcefully and painfully beaten out of her mind with how woefully inapplicable they were here.
For all I know, ‘nudity’ as a concept doesn’t even exist here.
Once Sue was done bashing through these mental blocks, the actual process of cleaning herself was similar to what she was used to, if much, much more rustic. Two more very sensitive spots on her body didn’t help either, even lukewarm water cold enough to make her flinch when it splashed against her horns.
With her cleaning underway, Sue could go back to the curious topic from earlier as she looked towards Sundance, the vixen leaning on one of the hot tubs. “A-as to your question—no, there aren’t limits like that, that’s the point. With enough time and changes, the new population will become its own species.”
“^I see...^” Sundance nodded deeply. “^Many incremental changes that eventually result in a different species. That’s... fascinating. Hold on, wouldn’t that entail that all living creatures are related to some extent?^”
“I-it does imply exactly that, from what I know.”
Now that was a deep revelation.
The abject absurdity of everything it implied gave Sundance a pause as she looked around the cleaning area. Her thoughts eventually settled on the green-yellow frog restocking the emptied bowls and replacing dirtied towels with freshly steamed ones.
The sheer magnitude of differences between herself and them was almost unthinkable—aside from a roughly bipedal body shape and a matching number of limbs, they had almost nothing in common anatomically. That she and them were related in some extremely distant, bizarre way was almost too absurd of an idea to consider. And yet, that was exactly what the simple theory that Sue had described implied.
Either way, something to ponder on later.
After filing the mystery under the category of ‘meditation fodder’, Sundance got back to Sue. “^Fascinating. All that from just slight changes?^”
Sue nodded, elaborating, “Yep! Slight changes until you have a new species th-that can’t reproduce with the old one.^” Her words achieved… mixed success as far as clearing things up, though.
The initial point made Sundance think some more, only for the remark at the end to send her eyebrow way, way up. “^Why wouldn’t they? Reproduce, I mean.^”
“...because they’re different species?” Sue reminded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Sundance stared, uncertain. “^And? Nobody I could’ve possibly had Spark with was of my kin, and yet she’s just fine.^”
“Wh-What!?” Sue stared, wide-eyed.
“^What?^”
The part of the discussion that the onlookers could overhear made them look at the two in confusion, the blank stares Sue and Sundance were giving each other enough to make a few people laugh. Eventually, the Forest Guardian mumbled, “B-but, that’s not how species work!”
“^Why not?^” the vixen asked, baffled.
Sue didn’t have an answer.
Both because she didn’t know enough about biology to earnestly argue her position, and because the definition of ‘species’ she was familiar with forbade crossbreeding by definition. No, not even crossbreeding—Spark wasn’t some hybrid, she absolutely looked like a juvenile form of Sundance’s species. How that was possible despite the vixen having apparently had her with someone of a different species, Sue didn’t know—
…
...
Each time Sue brushed over that thought, she risked her spurious imagination finally giving up and attempting to visualize how that process might have looked like, to the immediate and long-lasting despair of the rest of her mind.
Best to just drop that whole train of thought and not tempt Fate any more.
Sue gave up with a sigh. “I-I don’t know. Alright, I told you what my evolution is like. What about yours?”
Sundance’s confusion only grew at her pupil’s sudden subject change. The vixen came perilously close to accidentally uncovering the reason behind that shift, but eventually just went along with her. “^Well~. Here, ‘evolution’ is a part of most creatures’ lives. It’s the name for the process of changing from one form to another.^”
That sounded... coherent enough, making Sue think of insect metamorphosis. Though, of course, there was no way something exactly like that applied towards non-insect species. Sue’s arms lathered her midriff on autopilot as she asked for elaboration—“By ‘change form’, you mean… metamorphosis?”
The unfamiliar word had Sundance immediately pick through her mind to find the corresponding imagery. Her paw tapped on the tub’s edge as she analyzed it, eventually shaking her head. “^Not wholly unlike it, but very different in how it happens, it’s much more... abrupt.^”
“Like what? One moment Spark looks like she does now, and the next like you?” Sue chuckled.
“^There’s a form in between hers and mine, and the process is more in the range of tens of seconds as opposed to an instant, but… essentially, yes. She’ll feel ill and weak in the days leading up to it, and once it happens, there’ll be a lot of bright, white light, and by the end, she’ll look different altogether and be completely wiped. And then the same thing will happen again in forty seasons or so.^”
That was not what Sue expected to hear. “A-and she’ll look the same the entire way through that period?”
“^Not exactly. She’ll grow a fair bit over the years, but yes, the same in the broad strokes—^”
*whiiiiistle!*
The piercing, drawn out call had both Sue and Sundance look over towards the nearby buildings, the sight of Lilly bringing a brief smile to both—at least, before it soured for the latter at the realization of what the dancer was doing. The few seconds that followed felt stretched in time as she leaped through the air toward the one occupied hot tub, curling up into a cannonball. Jumping from a nearby roof gave her a ton of potential energy—
All of which was transferred into the water as she impacted its surface.
Sue couldn’t even say this was the largest pool splash she’d seen in her life, Lilly’s short stature nowhere near sufficient to claim that title. It certainly was the most sudden, though—the loud noise startled everyone within earshot, and the actual splash wasn’t far behind. She might have only gotten hit by a few stray drops on her cheek, but Sundance wasn’t anywhere near this lucky. Most of her head and right arm got soaked; the mental grip holding Sue upright briefly wavered in response, but thankfully held in the end.
For a few moments, there was only silence as Lilly scrambled to stand back upright. Her whistled laughter was music to Sue’s ears; music that was abruptly cut off after the flower girl’s harrowing realization—the green head poking out of the hot tub she’d just landed in was not, in fact, Sue’s.
Lilly’s body language shrunk as the head’s owner slowly opened their eyes to examine what had just happened. Water dripped from their yellow, curved beak, their expression frozen as they stared at her, the dancer only able to mumble out,
“...sorry.”