Welp, I didn’t save any lives today. I didn’t even find out where those sheep bodies went. I didn’t gain any Experience, either…because apparently slaying a corpse that had technically already been slain didn’t count for that. I lost a couple of Bayce’s Spells, and I even lost Chora’s trust—and that hurt, whether or not the loss was temporary.

One concretely good thing came from all of this: I acquired several flytrap vines, which could be used for a handy cantrip.

Man, if any of those magically reanimated plants had been smart enough to use the one selling point of flytraps (i.e. the mouth that is the trap), we all might’ve been in trouble.

Probably not, though. I guessed that when it came to small fry like that, enormous amounts of stronger small fry had a way of evening the odds.

Which brought me to where I was now! Heidschi, Logy and I—surrounded by nine sheep, plus a sprinkling of krigries who seemed to be present just to prove to us all that Logy had participated and this was what she had brought about—were sitting around a stump and beginning, haltingly, to talk.

Heidschi had brought out a tea set, using the stump as our table. Logy in her humanoid form was staring at it with something like indignation, but I was ready to use my paws and stop her from interfering, if necessary. Her tea was awful, and she should get tips from this shepherd I bet was a master.

And the tea smelled good! Heidschi brought out several sachets of leaves for us to examine and choose from. The hospitality of Vencian humans toward random and potentially violent strangers was really something else. This selection was also to die for! Probably. I still had yet to try proper tea, and the concept of drinking hot leaf water still confused me.

I wanted to Inventorize things just to get a brief idea of their names and flavors, but…that’d be rude.

“This one you’re smelling has pomegranate.”

…Oh yeah, and Heidschi was clearly happy to narrate.

As I smelled all the various teas, Logy sat there near-motionless. Naturally Heidschi had done a brief self-introduction, and we had both thanked her for helping us out, but when the shepherd asked where she came from, the insect queen not only hadn’t said anything, but hadn’t gestured, or blinked. Only stared. It was pretty disconcerting, so much so that I swore she was actively and purposefully everything in her power to make a bad first impression—aside from killing allies.

But once I made my tentative tea selection (chamomile and mint), Logy sent me a message at last.

I don’t want to do this

That really ticked me off. It was so easy! Look, I even had the spirit board in front of her. Not me! Heidschi wouldn’t mind if she spoke like that. Nobody minded!

She sensed I was angry. Instead of getting angry back, getting determined, puffing herself up, the way I wanted…she shrank back.

Um? I’d never seen her do that before.

Her whole body drew inward. She hunched over and lowered her head. In somebody else this might be a “sorry,” but from her, it seemed like surrender and defeat.

Okay, um…she was trying to escape the situation. To me it felt like escaping responsibility. But clearly she was…nervous?

I guessed I could show her mercy for that. I relaxed too, and Logy took this as a cue to un-Morph into her natural state. The butterfly landed on the edge of the stump. At least she wasn’t flying away.

You did tell me you’d show me how to do things. You still need to. I’m lost

Well, you’re acting like there’s a blueprint…

It didn’t seem that hard to me, being nice and polite to others. She might get it if she watched me—but on second thought, I’d at least seen mammals having tender moments on and off throughout every single one of my lives. Why can’t Logy have, like, a few hours?

Finally, I turned to Heidschi and succumbed to my lot in life: explanation. I told them select details about how Logy was a mysterious young lady who didn’t really mean any harm, who had sensed a great evil threatening the Wood.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

The way Heidschi responded made it all seem very simple. “Then that’s just what we need,” they said, pouring three cups for two mouths. “All the humans in the Wood and living around it are in a tizzy about it. We still haven’t sorted it out. But you two…”

“TAIPHA AND LOGY”

“Taipha and Logy, you seem as if you have a lot to share.”

It couldn’t be helped! It couldn’t be stopped! My exposition continued. But saying it all with the smell of some admittedly interesting plants made the process more enjoyable. Now I told Heidschi that a friend and I had met DeGalle in the Kaugs, and that another had visited Outlast during a big meeting.

“What we just encountered might tie it all together,” Heidschi said, the drama of their words punctuated by the sounds of nine sheep lapping up bowls of flower-flavored water. “I was just in Outlast too, so I’ve heard things… Dangerous beings underground, vines that match the wounds on the dead hunter…” They blinked, sorting through the stories in their head. “Or maybe certain parts don’t connect. Nothing was stopping time back there. As far as we know. And the death in the park might have been by anyone.”

The shepherd had made a good effort, though. The more I heard, the more I wanted to make like Chora and help out on this latest journey the Outlasters were planning. “IN TWO DAYS,” I said, remembering things Chora had said lately, “LOTS OF PEOPLE R GOING NORTHEAST?”

Heidschi nodded. “And with a vengeance. If they’d thought this was an ordinary death in the wild, they wouldn’t be so eager and…incensed.” They shifted, and took a long sip. “Sometimes this has happened and done nothing but set off a cycle of revenge. More people die, less and less is accomplished. But…I’m thinking about joining them.”

They looked down, pointedly, at the dirt around us which, not far away, had explode with vines. Even now, the dirt in the clearing we’d used as a battleground was ripped up in criss-crossing fissures.

“…LOGY,” I said. “CAN YOU PLEASE GO DOWN IN THE HOLES THE VINES MADE AND SURVEY THINGS?”

Her response was immediate.

Yes

I haven’t explored all of the underground yet

I want to. It’s just so dangerous

My eyes widened. Yeah, Logy knew way more about this than she had let on. And to be fair, the subject probably hadn’t come up…

Pieces were coming together for me. There was a very high chance that the vine stuff threatening villagers in these woods was something very vast, very deep… Connected to a big root network? Something that could stretch both east and west? And maaaybe reach the Kaugs, and the woodland center, and produce rusty time stones? Well, there was a chance that I was just reaching. But we needed guesses that were a little bit wild, didn’t we?

Logy climbed onto the edge of her teacup and stuck a butterfly proboscis into the drink. We watched, both of us no doubt wondering if the water level was actually changing. It wasn’t like we could see it. But I supposed that the fact she was doing this at all was a step forward. It is, after all, an unspoken rule that you ought to try the food and drink offered to you as a guest, unless there’s a good chance you might be hurt or murdered.

Then she sent me a message—

I’ll do that

—and flew.

The waning daylight caught her wings as she curved up over the treetops.

Maybe I should be treating her less like royalty and more like a dog.

Which was to say, in a catty way, that maybe she would turn out to be loyal.

For the time being, my conversation with Heidschi shifted to things about each other. I tried to shift the focus to the shepherd, both because I couldn’t speak as voluminously and because I was more eager to learn than I was to share. Heidschi didn’t have many non-sheep companions out here, which was both a blessing and a curse.

“But I love the sheep. I’d have to, to be doing this in the first place. I shear them, clean them, resolve disputes, I’m a forager, veterinarian, midwife…”

They always had a smile in their voice. A person I’d expected to be reclusive and quiet had turned out to be thrilled to speak.

“WHAT DO THE SHEEP DO FOR U?” I asked. Was that the wrong question? “I MEAN BESIDES BE UR FRIENDS!”

“Hm… Some would say they provide a reliable flow of capital in the form of wool.,” they said. They giggled, and their voice fell like they were sharing a secret. “They keep me employed. They keep my parents from worrying about me! Some would say that. I myself might even say that. But really they allow me to travel, just about wherever I want, without ever being alone. And I get a lot of free time.”

This had been a long and complicated day, but Heidschi had made it sweeter, even if this tea tasted disgusting to my cat form and catgirl form alike. I left the shepherd that evening without feeling bitter, without worrying about how the night might end up.

I wondered what Logy might scrounge up. Most of all, I wondered what great things might happen tomorrow night, since I’d invited Heidschi over to the cabin.

Fine, so it wasn’t my cabin, but I couldn’t imagine Reed hating Heidschi on sight! Chora would probably be okay with it too once some hours had passed—right? Then again, it wasn’t her house either. And with Heidschi yawning the way they had toward the end of our meeting, I didn’t feel right about trying to drag them to Reed’s door just to get an okay. We were decently far north from the place, and most humans had sad legs. Plus, the two of us really wanted to meet again. You don’t get many chances to connect with a wanderer who has no cell phone.

I circled back and headed south, back home.