Squelch.

I can hear the sound of something splattering against Greenie's back. He'd turned back around and was walking faced forward, but seems like some of the goblins had followed behind us to make sure we were really leaving.

Was it blood!?

Did one of the goblins stab Greenie in the back with their spears?

Floating up in the air, I do a quick 180 like a skateboarder on a half-pipe and check over Greenie's shoulder.

Even before I'd confirmed the sight of what had hit Greenie in the back, Scent Detection was faster. It was poop. The goblins had swung poop at Greenie.

At least we were lucky it was the harder, dry pellet kind. The wet poop was expressly saved for the walls of the trees, coating the outside and insides of the entire area with fecal matter that had made it hard for me to breathe the whole time we were there.

It also answered some of the questions as to why Greenie acted the way he did. Goblin waste was an integral part of their culture.

The poop that stuck to Greenie's back crumbles off as Greenie keeps walking away. Once, he looks over his shoulder to the poop stuck there, and his shoulders sag.

Why are you sad, Greenie?

Sad, Master?

Sadness feels like this. I pick out and send the negative emotions that always simmered below the surface in my bird chest. Most of the time, I kept these emotions pressed down tightly. If I didn't, I would either lose control and forcefully be calmed down by some unseen force, or go with the new option 2. Option 2 being I go berserk.

Both were terrible because I didn't feel like myself. The calm that washed over me like a bucket of ice water over my head made my senses dull. It turned me cold and methodological. Going berserk could be a blessing in disguise, but losing control over your own body and not having the ability to choose the when, like it did previously with the rats, was terrifying.

In my old life, neither option was normal. The human way was when something happened, you learned to gradually deal with your emotion. Not turn it on or off, or turn it all the way up, like some kind of faulty stove.

It didn't seem normal. But then again, I'd lost track of what was normal the moment I'd woken up as a raven.

But that didn't mean that I wanted to lose my human side and embrace the new facets of me. A slow, searching progress it was, but I hoped to find a happy balance somewhere. Reconcile the old human Raven and the current monster Raven.

Picturing the memories that Ildrig's Gates had shown me, I pick out the feeling of sadness, tinged with the loneliness of not having a family like I did before.

And then I-

-push it to him. Nudge the emotion his way, so that he can understand what sadness was.

This sadness, Master?

Greenie looks down and pokes at his stomach. The string connecting us transmitted the sick feeling in his gut. So Greenie did have some prior knowledge on sadness. That feeling accompanied his sadness.

I feel this.

Yes, your stomach hurts when you see the thing-

I gesture to his back with my wing.

On your back.

Why?

Using his fingers to scrape off the poop from his back, Greenie crumbles it in his hand.

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This least precious.

Isn't that obvious? Who would consider any sort of things that you expunged from your body precious? Other than people like me that used pee to clean their stuff.

I use my wing-finger to scratch the top of my head in confusion. Without realizing it, I had my other wing bent and folded in the general vicinity of where a hip would be if I was a human. It was the classic pose of a confused person.

Then what's most precious, Greenie?

Guardian of goblins.

Hmm? Come again?

Because we were talking to each other in the thought link, we didn't speak to each other using any sort of language. It was more of a combination of picture, feeling, and intent.

When I transmitted poop to Greenie, the usual feelings of disgust and consideration of it as waste accompanied it.

But Thought Transmission was relaying Greenie's image of poop to me as a guardian.

Something that was an important part of everyday life, even in its abundance, necessary to survive. Much like water. Without water, no creatures would survive. To Greenie, poop carried that same aspect.

Guardian protects goblins.

Predators don't like.

Feeds fire.

I was right all along. Pushing down the urge to pat myself smugly on the back, I think about what Greenie's just said. The stench of the excrement served as a protection against the predators that the goblins had to live among.

The feeding fire part was new to me. Mental note to self: make sure to keep Greenie's poop somewhere safe.

I didn't know excrement could be used as fuel for a fire It may come in handy someday.

But poop was precious to the goblins. Weird, but I could respect that. Greenie was a bit strange though, compared to the other goblins I'd met so far.

He hadn't protested when I'd cleaned the cave. Other goblins would probably be upset, seeing me clean out their form of protection on their home. But I hadn't felt any emotion of the sort when we'd played our little game of soccer in the cave. In this case, Greenie's trust in me was greater than his own ingrained goblin culture. That revelation hit me hard.

How do you comfort a goblin when he is sad? I'm not sure, so I settle for awkwardly patting the back of his neck with my shiny new wing. I'll make sure to feed him plenty of food later when we got back to our cave.

So why was the poop on his back least precious?

Blinking my eyes at Greenie, I ask. What about this poop?

Too hard and dry to use. Unwanted.

Greenie lets the poop crumble off his fingers. The rational side of me couldn't help but think that Greenie had a bit of a dramatic streak in him. But the sympathetic part of me disagreed. Greenie had every right to be upset. It was probably the first time he was coming to terms with these feelings. When I first met him and established the link, he'd been much simpler in emotion and thought pattern. With each evolution, he was growing, his psyche becoming more complex.

Same me.

Greenie brushes off the last of the poop from his back and keeps walking, pushing aside the waving bushes. The smaller animals seem to keep a distance from us now, the salamanders creeping up the trees as we pass by. There was a sort of unseen strength-based ranking system here, I'd noticed. It was better for us the higher up we went.

It would mean we had more variety of food to choose from.

We were out of the thick growths of trees that covered up the sky. The larger gaps between each tree allowed more chunks of blue sky to peek through.

Greenie had gotten stronger, but since I hadn't seen any sort of GPS-like locating ability in his status, I would have to guide us before we spent the whole day wandering around. I was not going to wait for him and hope he got us back. The nice thing about Thought Transmission was I didn't have to raise my voice to make sure Greenie heard me. When I take flight off his shoulder, I don't turn around as I let him know what to do.

Wait here, Greenie.

Yes Master.

It doesn't take long for me to get out into the open sky and locate where we are. The goblin territory was around a 3 hours walk out past the lake, on the other side was where the rats had drowned.

From the lake to our cave, an hour and a half walk. Maybe even longer before Greenie's evolution. His legs were longer now, which saved on time spent traveling.

I make sure to appraise everything that we pass and have Greenie carry what I deemed important enough to take with us back to the cave. There was also testing we had to do. Finding out Greenie and I's new capabilities were at the top of the list. My father loved Sun Tzu's The Art of War. The strategic tactics he'd mention in passing were at the forefront of my mind. Know the enemy, and know thyself. That would have to be the first course of action.

We have a lot of work to do, Greenie.

Greenie responds with a confused jumble of emotions. With thick green arms too full with the various items I was making him carry, he pushes out his stomach, brows furrowed in what others would see as a menacing expression. Thanks to the pet bond we had, I knew what kind of look it really was.

Greenie hungry, Master.

Yep. Looks like I wasn't the only one. I'd been ignoring the hunger pangs that made my stomach clench. Evolution made me hungry, and after getting away from the goblins, my stomach was eager to remind me all too soon of that fact.

Don't worry, I'll make sure we eat too.

Cocking my head up into the sky like a dog would scent a treat, I close my eyes and focus.

There was a delicious scent in the air. Blood freshly spilled. Somewhere out there, our next meal was waiting. It would be a waste if we didn't go and enjoy the food, wouldn't it?