Michael laid down on the cool grass as the sun shined down on him, his bare feet in the river's water and his previous T-shirt, that he changed from, sat on his lap. He put one hand on his chest feeling his heart pound and burn harshly against his sternum. "Woh-... I know you might have a hard time with your condition, but I feel like if you touch me one more time, I might actually die..." The young man groaned as actual concern for his health finally kicked in.

"I- I am really sorry! Please don't die!" She croaked from a distance, the pink little amphoran now seriously focusing on not getting close or touching Michael.

"Well... I am lucky with my liver, which might be in shambles after this, but if I can maybe sweat some of it and pass this through my system... I should... hopefully be well, but if my knowledge of the human body is correct, which is not great, I will hopefully be ok" Michael said reassuringly with a smile, but it was a fake front. 'God... please let it be fine, my biology lessons are the last fucking thing I remember right now...' He thought to himself as he unzipped his backpack which laid next to him and pulled out his gloves. "Well, until I cool off a bit to not have my heart burst from walking back, do me a favour, Woh. Remember the special gloves I mentioned? Just take a seat on one of them and I will check to see if there's any traces of your poison passing through them, I should be able to do so without touching it." He sat putting down one of the gloves.

Woh looked curiously at the glove as she did a small leap, grabbed it by one of the fingers and then dragged it back and proceeded to sit on the palm of it. "You are really hoping this works as you think it does. I- am curious, kero. Why?" She asked tilting her head as she looked with both big eyes at the rash covered pink human.

Michael stood up on his elbows and looked about, seeing Azhul slightly in the distance keeping watch around and knowing Gharna took the dozen and a few fish and made her way back to town, as for those she and Azhul caught to not go bad, he sighed knowing he had a moment of privacy.

"I do not wish to call anyone a liar, but... I know when someone lies to themselves. I do it too at times." He said as he then laid back down.

"I lie to myself? Hmm... I do play pretend sometimes that I am bigger than I actually am, but I don't really lie." She said as she let out a confused croak.

"I don't think forgetting you are poisonous is something easy to do, just like how it is hard to forget how to breath." Michael said looking towards Woh with the corner of his eye. 'Although... I did have friends who tricked me into breathing manually, but I don't think I want to inflict that panick on anyone here.' He thought to himself with a slight inner chuckle. "Might it be that... you just find it hard to admit it? You seem like such a friendly person, but I could see how such a condition could make it hard to make friends and how admitting you have to deal with it can make you wish to deny it and maybe wish it so hard, you genuinely make yourself forget about it. I know I would do such a thing, if I had to deal with it."

The little amphoran keept quiet, her long legs bunched up to her tiny chest as she hugged them, she began looking down at the dirt as her little hands seemed to grasp tightly at the material of her baggy pantaloons.

"That is why I want the gloves to work, because, although eventually they will wear out and possibly break apart, until they do, we could use them so you can enjoy some hu-... uhm... person to person physical interaction?"

At this point Woh looked up towards him. "Y- you're not wrong... I do genuinely forget about it, but... accidents when I used to be a little toad didn't help it. When I realized you were a person and that I touched you... I panicked inside, but... then... I felt so happy when I saw you were ok... ish? Because then it means there might be more people that might not be affected by my poison... then it means I can have friends who I can hug and shake hands with a-and play one of those clapping hands games I always saw the others play back home..." Woh said with small squeaks and croaks. "Shaking hands with tiny branches and playing hand clapping games with yourself is not fun..." Woh added letting out a frustrated kero sound.

"Well... I will try my best to come up with something to help with that. I wish I could promise it will happen, but... I do not wish to lie about something I lack knowledge to know how to do." The human said looking at her with a meek smile.

Woh sniffled and wiped her eyes as she looked at him. "W-well... thank you regardless. The thought of it... makes me happy, even if you might not be able to do it."

"How about we change the subject. Would you like me to tell you exactly how to make Vurms come up to you?" Michael said with a wide grin, which got as a response an excited squeak from Woh, who began to intently listen to simplified explanations about how to make worms surface from the dirt.

++++

Azhul kept an eye open upon the wooded forest before her, she would stretch and groan while using her Halberd for support. 'Well... Gharna is on her way home with the food and she said she will be talking with Urla as well about what we learned... and here I am... making sure nothing eats our vagabond guest while we wait for his heart to calm down.' The sow thought to herself as she kept lazily looking at the treeline, slowly. but with careful attention.

'It is so hard to believe all he says, but... I have seen many a lie and nobody can say things with such a conviction and not mean them. So he is either silver tongued akin to the Vixin-kin or worse, he is speaking the truth. Gods... if I know our Den mother she will most likely be skeptical about it, I would too if I didn't witness his reactions as he spoke and if I didn't see the unusual things he does, makes and carries... Do I still doubt it? Hmm...' Azhul would ponder as she had this one way conversation with herself. 'Sigh... it is still a damn shame I haven't gotten a chance to see our hooman acquaintance on a hunt. Oh, Hunt Father let us be able to do that soon, chasing something to death sounds crazy, yet... an interestingly attractive idea.' Realizing how she worded her thoughts Azhul would light punch her own cheeks. "The style of hunting! Not the weird pink Apillian like man. The style of hunting!" She actually mumbled to herself as she shook her head.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

As the large Tuskir woman would be stuck in this little chant of hers, her attention had broken apart, although only momentarily, as she tried to get rid of this accidentally worded thought from her mind, huffing annoyed at herself. Still, this moment of hesitation would prove long enough for mistakes to happen.

Immediately Azhul's ear twitched, her sudden inner embarrasment coming to a full stop as her form immediately shifted in an alert position halberd pointed forward. "Who is there?! By the Hunt Father's will show yourself!" Despite her clear show of alertness and confidence, she was given in return a dagger thrown at her, which she adeptly swatted out of the air with her halberd.

The thrown dagger fell into the dirt, accompanied by the echo of a cackling laughter. 'Hay-yens!' Azhul thought as she huffed angrily. She would attempt to back up, but now the figures decided to show themselves, one in the front of her, a new dagger ready to be thrown and a second one she didn't notice before on her flank.

As Azhul stared at it, she immediately noticed behind it, Michael and Woh who were still by the river side and a Hay-yen sneaking up on them on all four limbs. Her eyes widened as she let out the loudest meanest squeal she could "MICHAEL! WOH! BEHIND YOU! HAY-YEN!"

++++

"So you are saying that Vurms, where you are from, can feel the ground shake and feel the water making the ground wet when it rains so... because they need to keep wet to live they come above ground?" Woh said simply as after listening to Michael's over simplified lecture on earth worms.

"Yes and because I kept noticing things being similar here to where I am from, i thought I would give it a try. Which... I am really glad it worked, because if it didn't I would have really felt like an idiot stomping about some watery mud.

"How did hoomans figure out they do this?" Woh asked confused as she looked at Michael.

"Well... I am not certain, but my best bet is someone really smart most likely observed them for a really long time to figure it out OR we happened to learn about it by accident." The young man said truthfully. "Only reason I know is because someone thought me about it from books when I was younger."

"Wait-... someone spent time just watching Vurms to see what they do? Pffft- I bet they felt silly at first when they did nothing but frolick in dirt and then really happy it wasn't a waste of time." Woh said as she giggled and laughed with loud croaks.

"When you say it like that it does sound stupid, but you can't argue with res-" As Michael was about to finish his sentence he then heard Azhul screaming from the distance. "MICHAEL! WOH! BEHIND YOU! HAY-YEN!" The young man quickly stared about and around 30 feet away from him, there it was, the Hay-yen kin he heard at times about.

It was large and hyena like, about as big as Tuskir, possibly bigger if not for the huge hunch it had. This creature's forward limbs were longer, but clearly based on the digits they were supposed to be useful as both arms and front legs. The fur on this beastial creature was a dusty kakhi color with dark brown spots, its head had a dark brown hair pulled in some braids with beads and its body was adorned in leather and chainmail.

That was all Michael could notice in the moment as the creature then turned to a maniacal laughter fueled run and then it leapt straight at him, maw wide open, showing rows of sharp teeth.

In the panick of the moment, as Michael was seated, he did the only thing that went through his head as this Hay-yen was aiming to bite into his forearm. He decided in the panick of the moment to give it a full course meal instead. The young man fell back on his own to avoid being slammed into the dirt and at the same time to give himself space to punch with his fist, right in the Hay-yen's open maw, shoving his arm as far up to the shoulder as he could. The moment his fist felt the wet throat of the beast making contact, the momentum did the whole work, shoving the human's fist deeper in as the hyena like opponent landed on him.

It immediately reared back as it began holding onto its throat, its jaw flinched wide open before it could even bite down properly, giving the human only small puncture wounds that would lightly bleed on his upper arm, where the sharp points of its teeth slightly snagged the skin. The beastly opponent then began coughing and gagging and just as quickly it was on its knees puking on the grass.

Michael with only a moment to act, feeling his heart, which barely calmed down before, start to burn and pump blood quickly again, as if someone overclocked it, he reached over to the roll of fishing line he had out still and he began wrapping part of it around his right hand in a few layers and holding the plastic shell of the roll in his left. 'Oh fuck that worked! To the american guy I read about making a grizzly puke mid mawling, thank you.' Michael tought. He could feel his bladder had slightly let loose for a moment when the Hay-yen was jumping on him a few moments ago.

The young man then jumped on the Hay-yen's back getting the fishing wire under its maw and using it as an impromptu garrote. He pulled as hard as he could, feeling the wire digging into the flesh of his right hand as he had his legs wrapped around the Hay-yen and he leaned back. "Woh! RUN! Get to safety! F-find Gharna! HNNGH!" He yelled out as he strained his body to tighten the fishing line as much as he could.

The small amphoran who was shell shocked for a moment, squeaked scared as she began hopping away quickly.

The mid strangling Hay-yen strained to look back towards the running Woh and while it was trying to hold its breath, it immediately reached for a dagger and lifted it about to throw the implement at her. At that moment it could feel breath return to it as the wire went slack, which made it hesitate and flinch for a moment in confusion of the tension suddenly missing.

"H-HEY! YOU FURRED F-FUCKER! You are fighting me!" Michael yelled out with a tremble and despite knowing it wouldn't understand, he didn't care, all he needed was to distract it. He grabbed a handful of its hair and he pulled back the creature's head just enough to see it's yellow eyes staring back angrily at him. "Yeah- yeah! Keep your eyes on me! I will give you something to stare at!" He growled as he then took his free hand and he shoved his thumb into its eye, making the beast let out a pained yelled laughter.

The Hay-yen bleeding from one eye, threw itself the ground slamming Michael into the grass under it as he held onto its hair and eye socket. 'GAH! Gotta hold on. Gotta hold on.' Is all Michael could keep thinking to himself as he felt fear creep up into his mind, when the dirt smacked the back of his head and spine, still... seeing Woh dissapear into the tree line, gave him a sense of relief.