It had been such a long time since Pari had truly flown—Metal Man’s ship didn’t count; lacking the thrill of the open sky and the rush of the wind whipping through your hair, that was more like ‘floating quickly’ than flying—and she made sure to enjoy every moment of it. Her buzzfriend ride took her on a meandering tour of the trunkside, flying from one huge, violet flower to the next in furtherance of its nectar-collecting mission.
Once it had gotten its fill, it was time to return to the hive. They began to ascend, climbing altitude faster and faster while the tree’s great canopy of massive leaves grew closer and closer. Just how high up was the buzzfriend’s home? She was so much higher than where she’d left the others. Gabby-friend and Ruddy were always talking about how behind they all were. What about using buzzfriends to give them all rides up?
Pari’s body still tingled with the rush of the flower’s scents, though her debilitating giddiness had faded significantly since leaving the blossom. Though she was still covered from head to toe with both pollen and nectar, the smells were no longer as all-pervasive as they had been back there. The wind helped as well, clearing the aromas somewhat and with them, her mind—enough for her to remember that she needed to do something, and fast.
There remained one more reason that she liked buzzfriends: they talked with scents. Pari always felt a bond with creatures that she could talk to using her nose and candles. It was like a secret conversation that only she could hear, and one she could contribute to. By marking herself with what she now thought of as the “friend smell”, the buzzfriends never attacked her when she borrowed some honey from their hives. Each hive’s friend smell was a tad bit different from all the others, which meant she usually had to sniff around a buzzfriend or two—or even catch one if needed—before she could work out just what the scent was.
That would not be necessary this time, as she could smell the giant buzzfriend’s identifying odor beneath those of the flower’s. All she had to do now was copy it. This was easier said than done, given that she was currently adhered to the belly of a giant flying insect thousands of paces high in the sky, stuck in a tangle of hairs with her sack tied around her neck and shoulder. Still, time was running low. She needed to work and work quickly.
Luckily, this called for one of the simpler candle designs in her repertoire, the spray candle. From marking herself with special buzzfriend smells, to knocking out meanies, to covering hands and feet with special vine-grabbing juice, the spray candle showed its utility time and time again. She’d made so many over the years that she could probably make one in her sleep, so making one with only her left hand, largely blind as she rummaged through her sack by feel and intuition alone, wasn’t so hard.
First, she ran her fingers along the candle molds, looking for one of the several that she’d already lined with wax. Finding one, she pulled it out and held it in her teeth. Then, she began to search for the various needed ingredients, navigating by touch and pulling out things that felt right for identification sniffs when needed. The first thing she didn’t even need to sniff; after years of using it, she’d know the tacky, slightly sticky feeling of her propellant putty anywhere, even in her current semi-lucid state. Her fingers worked through muscle memory alone, lining the bottom and sides with the putty while leaving a space in the middle with her thumb for the rest of the ingredients. The rest took a little bit more effort, but largely involved staples of her kit—thinkler bark, powdered striped wiggle bug shell, and qillow seed, mostly. Each bit she pulled out, sniffed, and added to the mix. All that was left was a little Pari Special, then a quick stir with a finger, followed by inserting the wick and folding the wax around to seal the top. The end result wasn’t the prettiest work, but it would work just fine.
It was fortunate that she finished when she did, as just a few moments later, Pari heard the drone of her buzzfriend’s wings grow from a solo to a band to a chorus. The bright light of the outside air quickly faded to a muted brown, and the air became thick with the many scents of the buzzfriend hive. For a time, it seemed that her buzzfriend ride would be content to land on a wall, but soon, it climbed up over a lip and went horizontal a few moments later.
Pari began to squirm her way free, making sure to light the candle wick with a snap of her fingers as she did. A moment later, she popped out and fell the short drop to the hive chamber floor, giggling uncontrollably while landing awkwardly on her rear with her sack falling on top of her. Her candle chose that moment to spit out a torrent of yellow smoke, and Pari, between her awkward position, frantic laughter, and the dizziness from the fall, just barely managed to point it in her direction. The spray candle quickly gave out, and she let it fall from her grasp—or, perhaps she was simply too inebriated to hold onto it. Intoxicating happiness flowed through her as she watched the chaos of the buzzfriends all around her. They flew, crawled, buzzed, and even danced all over the walls, ceiling, and floor of the huge chamber wherein she lay, performing an invisibly coordinated ballet consisting of hundreds, all somehow moving about without ever getting in each other’s way.
This was so much fun! Life was so much fun!
The lighting within the hive was not exactly bright. Some light filtered through the hive’s thin but strong walls, leaving the interior in a state of perpetual semi-gloom. Even still, she couldn’t help but notice the shadow that fell over her. She looked up to find a buzzfriend looming over her. Its markings were different than most of the buzzfriends she’d seen so far, including the one which had taken her this far.
The buzzfriend waved its antennae around her, so Pari waved back. “Hello, buzzfriend!”
The buzzfriend responded by bending its head down and seizing Pari in its mandibles.
“Nya!?” she gasped in surprise, but while the buzzfriend held her firmly, it did not hurt her. Instead, it shuffled forward through the buzzing mass around it.
“Where are we going, buzzfriend?” she giggled, but it ignored her. They passed through one chamber, then another, then another still—none of which Pari would see well stuck between her buzzfriend’s jaws—until, at last, they entered somewhere new. Pari still couldn’t see much more than a sliver of the ceiling, but her nose told her that this area smelled somehow different from the other chambers. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but then again, she couldn’t put her fingers anywhere but against her sides right now.
Then, suddenly, she could. The buzzfriend’s mandible opened up and she found herself plopped down onto her back. Looking around, she found herself within a small, open space stuck into the side of the chamber, with the back wall behind her flat and shaped like a hexagon. Looking out, she realized that the whole chamber was filled with these hexagonal structures, each of them occupied by a wriggling white larva. It had put her with all the other children! So nice!
Pari spent some amount of time—how long, she couldn’t really say, not that she really cared, anyway—giggling and watching the kid buzzfriends wiggle and wriggle in their little homes. Though they were all twice her size or bigger, she thought they looked cute and silly squirming around like that. Still, as time passed, a half-remembered thought grew and grew in the back of her mind. Eventually, it grew large enough to push its way through the fog, whereupon Pari remembered and gasped.
She’d forgotten what she was supposed to be doing! She dug through her sack and pulled out some of her larger empty ingredient containers. Then, she began to fastidiously wipe and scrape every last bit of nectar and pollen off of her. Much of the sticky gunk had rubbed off, but enough of it remained adhered to her body, with a wealth of powdery pollen mixed in, for her to fill four whole containers. It also helped that so much had ended up in her many, many pockets.
Now that almost all of the glorious mixture had been sealed away in airtight containers, Pari’s head began to clear a bit. The scents still lingered on her body and would continue to do so until she took a proper bath, but she could handle it. The occasional whiff that left her momentarily woozy was a far cry from the sensory overload that she’d been adrift within for the last who-knew-how-many hours. She felt much more like her normal self, with all the good and bad that such a statement entailed.
Part of her already missed the all-pervasive happy vibes of the pollen-nectar combination, but she tried her best to pretend she couldn’t hear that part. She could return to that emotional realm later. Right now, she was in the middle of a giant buzzfriend hive! There was so much she wanted to do here. She wanted to explore, and see all the buzzfriends, and find some buzzfriend candle ingredients, and test out some more candle-making recipes using what she found, and—
Candles! She could make candles from the pollen nectar! The thought plowed into her mind like a rampaging jaglioth, batting away any competing ideas. None of the previously mentioned goals warranted consideration anymore; she was too busy thinking about just what the pollen-nectar combination might become with a dollop of what Sofie-sis sometimes referred to as “Pari magic”. Should she mist it? Smoke it? Her instincts said misting might provide an enhanced joy, which would be great, but burning and smoking it would do something far more transformative. What, exactly? She couldn’t say, and that excited her.
She had to hold her breath while dealing with the powerful stuff, lest she slip back into the happy too soon. Even then, it still wafted into her nostrils and nearly made her slip. She just managed to seal the top of the small candle before collapsing into a giggle fit that lasted a good few moments.
Satisfied, Pari studied her creation for a moment. Along with the pollen nectar and her “secret sauce”, the candle contained a dash of powdered midland-river snail shell. The fine shell powder was almost entirely non-reactant to other ingredients, so it wouldn’t interfere with the intended purpose of most candles, but it did have the useful trait of sucking out some of the good breath gas—Sofie-sis called it “oxygen”, but that name was stupid and clearly made up—when exposed to heat. This helped promote the incomplete burning that Pari desired for a proper smoke candle. Perhaps, later on, she’d try one without the shell just to see, but her nose told her that nothing special would come of it.
Unable to resist her curiosity, Pari set her newest creation on the floor in front of her and lit it. The flame ate away at the wick and wax with great speed, ducking inside the cylinder in the time it took her to take a deep breath. Then... nothing seemed to happen. She waited a moment for the expected smoke, then two. Just when she was ready to label this candle the greatest disappointment since that day Kozak’s had run out of meat pies, the entire container burst apart, releasing a wave of dark purple smoke that enveloped her before she could react.
Pari hacked and coughed as the smoke filled her lungs with tart yet floral fumes. She tried to stand up, but dizziness kept her in one place. The cloud faded quickly, however, and when she had finally rubbed the tears from her eyes, she was surprised to find herself somewhere else.
She stood in a simple wooden room. A large, steaming pot hung over a hearth to her left, the bubbling of its contents singing a steady duet with the crackle of the small fire beneath it. To her right stood a wall set with a large window made of clear glass, through which entered bright afternoon sunlight. A small meadow could be seen through the window, with the rainbow hues of a thick Kutrad forest beginning a few hundred paces further out.
Pari heard a door turning on its hinges behind her and spun around. A portal to the outside world stood wide open, rays of light pouring in and bathing the room in their warm glow. Standing in the middle of those beams, her golden hair and fur radiant, stood a woman.
Pari gasped and leapt forward. “Mother!” she cried.
“Pari-daughter!” Mother replied, squatting down to wrap her up in a warm embrace. She smiled her gorgeous smile as Pari purred up a storm into her chest. “Aw, did you miss me?”
“Yes!”
She chuckled. “I was only gone for a few hours, but I’m always delighted to see you, no matter how long it has been.”
Mother stood up, one hand grabbing a bag on the floor beside her filled with vegetables—a bag Pari had not noticed—and the other gently holding Pari’s hand. Together, they walked to the hearth and the bubbling cauldron.
“Pari-daughter, be a dear and go tell your father to bring in more wood, would you?”
Pari gasped. “Father too?!?”
“Of course, dear. He’s outside chopping wood. If you could—”
Pari didn’t hear what else was said, as she was too busy sprinting through the door and around the house, following the smell of sweat and broken wood. Sure enough, there stood a man with skin dark like night—just like hers—and hair even darker—just like hers. He wiped his sweaty brow as he glared at the pile of unbroken logs to his left, a much smaller pile of chopped wood to his right and an axe in his hand. His eyes lit up when he saw her and he grinned wide and bright.
“Pari-daughter!” he laughed. Dropping the axe, he quickly bent down, grabbed her by her sides, and scooped her up. Pari giggled as he swung her in a circle around him. “What brings you back here, my little dumpling?”
As soon as he set her down, Pari dashed forward and hugged Father tight, sniffing away. He smelled just as she remembered.
“Mother says Father needs to bring wood inside,” she told him after a moment.
“Well, I’d better get right on that. You should never keep a beautiful woman waiting.” He took a few steps, then paused. “Your brother went for a walk. Would you go find him and tell him dinner will be ready soon?”
Father nodded towards a path nearby that led into the woods—had that path always been there? She couldn’t remember, but she was too busy running down it to mind.
The path wound through the forest for a long while. Pari pretty quickly lost track of just how far she’d gone or where exactly she might be, but she didn’t really care. She passed all sorts of interesting-looking bugs, mushrooms, and other ingredients, but she pushed down the urge to stop and investigate. She could do that on the way back. Right now, she was going to see Brother!
Up the path, light bloomed in the semi-gloom, pulling her forward. She hurtled out of the forest and nearly tripped as the land suddenly sloped downward while she was still half-blind with her eyes adjusting to the change in brightness. Sliding to a halt, she took a moment to look around and reorient herself, truly taking in her surroundings for the first time since leaving Father. What she found left her breathless.
Picturesque fluffy white clouds floated across a beautiful azure sky. Flocks of long-winged migratory birds added speckles of other shades to the blue and white as they soared by, hundreds or thousands of paces above her. A little closer to the ground, two eagles glided circles through the sky, watching the dozens of colorful songbirds flit between the few small trees that grew beyond the forest’s treeline.
The sun came out from behind a cloud, its grand incandescence warming her face but forcing her gaze down towards the horizon. The view there was no less gorgeous. Extending off into the distance, rows and rows of towering mountains stabbed upward like gigantic rocky teeth trying to chew the sky. Grand forests covered the lower halves of each of them in a kaleidoscope of colors, with the rest left bald, almost like a crowd of old men dressed up for a festival. The clouds played there too, winding around the snow-white peaks like puffy white caterpillars.
Bridging the gap between Pari and the distant mountains was a series of picturesque rolling hills covered in long grass and the occasional grove or cluster of bushes. Herds of what looked to be some sort of elk roamed the hills, grazing on the abundant food. Everything appeared so idyllic it was almost hard to believe it was real.
Yet, not even all of that combined could compare to the hill she found herself standing atop. Never before had she seen such a massive wildflower meadow, nor one so dense! Everywhere she looked, a brilliant sea of vivid hues waving in the breeze filled her vision. Some of the plants she recognized, but most she had never seen before, and there were hundreds—no, thousands—of different varieties here for her to explore! How incredible!
Flowers weren’t all this place had to offer, as the hillside teemed with other life as well. Little lizards scurried up stems and across leaves. Hundreds of buzzfriends, diligent as ever, zipped from blossom to blossom. Dozens of flutterfriends, each different in size and wing pattern, joined in on the fun. And there, on a small patch of grass in the middle of it all, seemingly without a care in the world, lay a boy in his mid-teens with olive skin and short flaxen hair.
Too absorbed in watching the sky, Brother never noticed Pari until she pounced on top of him and wrapped him into a giggle-filled tackle-hug, eliciting a panicked “Whaaa-! Pari-sister!” from him.
Pari nuzzled her face into Brother’s shoulder and purred like no tomorrow, breathing in his familiar scent. Pari loved all her family with all of her heart, of course, but Brother was up there with Sofie-sis as one of the most special. She held vague memories of him being mean long ago, but those were overshadowed by the memories of the time after Father and Mother had disappeared. Brother had dedicated so much of his life to feeding her and protecting her. It was so nice to see how much he’d grown and filled out over the years, especially after that terrible span in the mines when he’d given her half his food every day so she didn’t starve. He looked... the way Brother was supposed to look after all their years apart—bigger, older, healthier, happier.
“What are you doing here, Pari-sister?” he finally asked, his voice lower and stronger than she remembered.
“Father says dinner is soon, so we need to go back,” she told him, still maintaining her viselike hold around his chest.
“Hmm, okay, I’ll head back in a little while. It’s too nice out here to leave just yet.”
“But Father said—”
“You know Father always thinks dinner is ready before Mother is actually ready. He does it every time and Mother scolds him every time. You’d think he’d learn by now, but I think he secretly likes it.”
“Why would Father like it?”
“...I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
Pari frowned. Sofie-sis always said the same thing. Why did older siblings always have to keep secrets like this?
“Come on,” he continues, leveraging her off him, “let’s relax here for a little longer. Together.”
“Okay!” Pari settled down in the grass beside him, thinking how nice it was that there was a spot of just grass for her to lay in; she would have hated to crush some of these glorious specimens. Settling in, she looked out upon the world around them. The slope of the hillside was perfect, just the right angle to let them see the sky, mountains, and hills without having to sit up or move their heads too much.
Neither of them spoke for a little while as the meadow’s ambiance settled over them like a soft, warm blanket. Pari hummed a playful tune she sometimes heard Arly-sis sing when drinking. A flutterfriend landed on her head before flying off again a few moments later.
“Sometimes, I like to see if I can find clouds that look like things I know,” Brother eventually said. He pointed at one. “What does that remind you of?”
Pari studied the subtly shifting, vaguely cylindrical white blob and gave the only answer she could. “Candle.”
Brother snorted. “Still crazy for candles, are you? Some things never change.”
“Pari makes candles all the time and they’re super cool and neat! Grandfather showed Pari how to make lots of extra fun candles!”
“Grandfather? There’s a Grandfather?”
“Mmhmm!”
“Since when? They told me that our grandparents died before the journey to Zrukhora.”
Pari still didn’t feel right telling most people about Grandfather even after he became known to others, but Brother was a different story. He was Family, so he could be trusted.
“Bazzalth-grandfather is super big and strong dragon! Grandfather raised Pari in Grandfather’s lair and showed Pari lots and lots of great, fun stuff!” she bragged.
“Oh, is that where you’ve been all this time?”
“No, then Pari went on big adventure all over world! Pari saw super dry place and lots of fields and super big green forest with super duper big giant tree in middle and big cities and big metal castle! Pari made lots of friends and even sisters and had lots of fun!”
“Wow, sounds like you’ve been busy. But, what’s this about sisters?”
“Sofie-sis is super nice and smart and sad a lot and saved Pari and is Pari’s sister now! Also, Arly-sis is also Pari’s sister and makes super neat illusions and is grumpy a lot! Pari can’t wait to tell Brother and Mother and Father about Bazzalth-grandfather and Sofie-sis and Arly-sis and Sammy-friend and Gabby-friend and... Cappy-friend... and...”
Experiencing a sudden and harrowing realization, Pari’s ramblings slowed, then ground to a halt.
“...and?” her brother prompted.
Pari didn’t answer. This realization troubled her greatly, but she struggled to put it into words. Unease filled her.
“Pari-sister, if you keep gripping your tail like that, you’ll hurt it,” Brother said.
Pari looked down to find that she’d brought her tail to her chest at some point and was currently wringing it with both hands. When had this started? She tried to let go, but her nerves got the better of her and she squeezed harder.
Brother rolled onto his side to face her. “Pari-sister, what’s wrong?”
Still, Pari said nothing.
After a few moments, he returned to his original position. The silence returned, but this time, it no longer felt warm and comforting. Brother seemed unwilling or uninterested in pushing her for answers, so together they listened to the sounds of the breeze and the buzzfriend and the chirps of the songbirds as Pari continued to fret, guilt building up pressure inside her like a bubbling tea kettle.
A good while later, she couldn’t take it anymore. “Pari...” she began, but a wave of shame brought forth by the words she was about to speak aloud stopped her cold.
Brother placed a hand on her arm and gave it a quick, reassuring rub. “It’s alright, don’t worry. You can tell me anything. That’s what brothers are for right?”
Still, Pari hesitated. He looked at her for some time, but Pari just held her tail in front of her and squeezed, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Pari...” she tried again, finding the words just as hard as before.
“Pari cannot... remember Brother’s name,” she confessed, her voice barely a whisper on the breeze. “Pari knows Bazzalth-grandfather’s name. Pari knows Sofie-sis’s name. Pari knows Arly-sis’s name and Sammy-friend’s name and Gabby-friend’s name and Cappy-friend’s name and lots more!”
The words were rushing out now, her voice rising, her body trembling, her lip quivering as she fought to hold herself together despite the pain that came from just acknowledging these words.
“But Pari... Pari does not know Brother’s name or Mother’s name or Father’s name! Brother, Mother, and Father are Pari’s Family, so why?! Why Pari not remember own Family’s names?! How Pari forget such important thing?! Why—”
A soft hand placed atop her head brought her words and thoughts to a screeching halt. Fingers scratched behind her ears and a delicate palm patted her gently. She reflexively pushed into the caress, memories returning unbidden of how he’d pat her just like this during the Bad Times when she’d felt sad and scared and alone. It was a simple action, but it conveyed its message in a way that words could never quite manage. Things were fine. Everything would turn out alright.
Pari sniffed and rubbed the growing wetness from her eyes, her emotions calming slowly but steadily.
“Names aren’t as important as you think, Pari-sister,” he eventually told her. “They’re just words. Labels. They change nothing about what lies underneath, and that’s what really matters, wouldn’t you say? It does not matter what you call me, because I am me, and I am your brother, and that will never change. Do you understand?”
“...Yeah,” she sniffed. “But... Pari still wants to know...”
“Well, I’m sure if you think about it long and hard, you’ll remember soon enough,” he told her with a wry smile. “But for now, I’m getting hungry. What about you?”
“Ah! Dinner!” Pari yelped, shooting to her feet.
Brother pushed himself up after her and together they ran back into the forest towards where Mother and Father waited. The path darkened as they went deeper and deeper. What started as a light mist in the air grew thicker and thicker as they went until Pari could barely see the forest floor. She felt a headache start to grow, and the world grew darker.
Pari stumbled.
“Pari-sister!” Brother called out. She could barely make him out, a vague silhouette in the fog.
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“Brother?” she called back, but her voice came out soft and weak. Her body felt tired and was growing progressively more so with each passing moment.
“Pari-sister! Erdi!” His voice sounded further away now, even though she hadn’t moved.
“Huh?” Her head was swimming, and she couldn’t concentrate properly.
Her ears just barely picked up his words now, but their message came in loud and clear. “Erdi is my name!”
Pari blinked, and the world around her was nothing but brown hexagons and the drone of buzzfriend wings.
Pari slowly pushed herself up from where she’d been splayed across the floor, soaking in a puddle of her own drool, and rubbed her eyes. Without even a moment of debate, she immediately went to her sack and began to make another candle. She needed to go back to Erdi-brother and... and Nimoni-mother and Trayon-father.
Yes... yes.
She could remember their names now, though she always used to call her parents “Mama” and “Papa” instead of their true names. But what mattered is that she remembered those names now, and with them, many other things. She remembered far more of her past than she had before. Starting the day of her first remembering, when she’d first met Sofie-sis and Arly-sis and the others, Pari had been able to remember many things, but those memories had all been the big things, painted in thick brush strokes. Now, it was like some painter had gone through her memories and added a bunch of details, as well as painting many more scenes. She could remember the happy meals together, the times they’d played in the park, the way her father would laugh after telling a terrible joke, or how her mother would braid Pari’s hair in the morning.
This gift of Erdi-brother’s was truly wonderful. That was why she had to go back, to say thank you. That, and to see them all some more.
The scents of the pollen nectar didn’t bother her much this time. Perhaps she was simply getting used to it? The reason didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was able to fashion a second candle into existence in record time. Eager to return, she sat down, placed the candle on the floor in front of her, and lit it.
A few moments later, smoke once again poured from the candle. Pari took a deep breath and began to cough heavily, just like before. Smoke filled her vision for several moments before it cleared enough to reveal... brown buzzfriend walls.
What? Why? How? Had she made the candle wrong? She didn’t think so; the smoke had smelled the same. So then, what had gone wrong?
Returning to her equipment, she began making the candle a third time, this time taking painstaking care to slowly craft it with an eye toward precision. She took a moment as she went to deeply sniff the pollen nectar this time. What she found confused her. Her nose told her that the sticky goop remained unchanged, as head-shakingly potent as it had ever been. And yet, the giddy rush and lightheadedness was nowhere to be found. If she trusted her nostrils when they said the flower’s product was the same as always—and she trusted her nostrils more than she trusted anything else—then that had to mean that the thing that had changed was her. But what did that mean?
Finishing her third candle, she tried once more to return to her family, but like last time, the smoke did nothing but make her cough. She remained within the buzzfriends’ home.
No.
No!
Why?!
This wasn’t fair! She still had so many things to say! So many questions to ask! It just wasn’t fair! She hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye!
Her emotions, already running high, approached a tipping point. Her eyes began to water, her breath quickened, and her throat grew tight. But, before the oncoming wave could crash upon her shore, something suddenly blocked most of the light, causing her to jump in fright.
Another huge buzzfriend poked its head into her little room, looking at her through the haze. Pari and it shared a moment of confusion before it vomited up a mound of pale yellow, translucent liquid. Having done whatever it was it had come here to do, it released itself from the wall, wings nearly blurring as it spun in place, then headed over to tend to a grub on the other side of the chamber. The smoke in the area thinned tremendously as the buzzfriend did this, and Pari noticed much of it getting sucked into the buzzfriend’s spiracles—the holes in a buzzfriend’s sides that they breathed from.
Pari approached the buzzfriend’s generous gift, having a good idea of what it was just from the look. She dipped a finger in and gave it a lick. Sure enough, it was honey—the best, most delicious honey she’d ever tasted by a gigantic margin. Acting quickly before the buzzfriend realized its mistake, she shoved as much of it as she could into some empty containers, then ate some more. The delectable flavor helped calm the storm of loss and disappointment inside, and she felt herself holding together—at least for now.
Unfortunately, her nose suggested that the honey, though surely made from the pollen nectar, held different properties. She would not get a good smoke from this at all. Instead, the incredibly complex scents suggested it would make the base of either an incredible lubricant or glue, she wasn’t sure which. She would have to be sure to try it out, but right now, she had more important things on her—
Something flashed by her, blocking the light again for just a fraction of a heartbeat, and a loud thump met her ears a moment later. Pari peeked over the edge and was greeted by the sight of a buzzfriend on its back on the floor, legs twitching but otherwise motionless. Pari wasn’t sure, but she thought it was the same buzzfriend who’d just gifted her the honey.
...was this because of her?
Her emotions remained in a state of semi-turmoil, but with the mind-altering effects of the pollen nectar no longer messing with her, Pari had regained perspective. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the hive. She didn’t know what had happened to her friends and Ruddy. She didn’t know what had just happened to the buzzfriend. She didn’t really have a plan or even a general idea of what she should be doing to deal with the situation she’d gotten herself in. For maybe the first time ever, Pari felt glad that neither Sofie-sis nor Arly-sis was here, as both of them would surely have scolded her. This was why Grandfather and Sofie-sis always said that lying was bad!
After a moment of painful consideration, Pari began to pack away her equipment. She wanted to see Erdi-brother and Nimoni-mother and Trayon-father again more than anything, but the way there didn’t work anymore. She could spend time figuring out why later. They were doing alright in their forest home. They would be okay without her.
She couldn’t say the same for her friends and Ruddy. Who knew how much trouble they’d gotten into without her there to help them? Gabby-friend was having a hard enough time even with her help!
At least, she could spend her time exploring. Maybe, she could find a way to get the buzzfriends to give them a ride to the top of the tree! She’d settle for a way out other than the hole in the bottom of the nest.
Climbing down ended up being easier than expected. All she had to do was hang over the edge and swing herself into the section below. The larva in each section didn’t even react to her arrival outside of the occasional twitch. She was pretty sure that they’d been more active when she first arrived, but she wasn’t going to question it now.
Once she made it to the floor of the chamber, Pari carefully approached the still-prone, still-twitching buzzfriend. Her worry abated somewhat when she heard it breathing steadily, but she still felt a little guilt over possibly causing it to fall from the air like that. She hoped the impact hadn’t broken anything, and was relieved when she couldn’t spot any notable damage. Perhaps the slight flex of the hive’s material had cushioned the blow?
Now that she was close enough, Pari realized something else. She surely must have been out of it, because the scent marking on this adult was different than what she’d marked herself with. The scent for larvae was different than that for adults, and while that difference was subtle, there was no way she should have missed it.
Quickly, she concocted a new scent candle and marked herself properly this time before any more buzzfriends could come and stick her back in her hole. Then, bidding the buzzfriend and the larvae goodbye, she left.
Now marked with the correct scent, Pari explored unbothered. Returning to the entrance hole, Pari realized that the world outside looked darker than when she’d arrived. She must have been in here for at least half a day. That explained why the light filtering through the hive seemed a tad more blue than it had when she’d first arrived. It also explained why most of the buzzfriends were so still right now. Even buzzfriends needed sleep!
Luckily for Pari, exploring didn’t turn out to be that hard. Yes, there were many chambers, and the way into them mostly involved climbing straight up, but the buzzfriends—the ones still awake, at least—showed the truth in their name by letting her hitch a ride on them as they moved around.
For the most part, Pari couldn’t make sense of the differences between one area and the next. A few chambers were clearly for buzzfriend children to grow, but the others seemed to just be honey storage. Maybe there were secret buzzfriend differences that she just couldn’t understand?
After several hours of fruitless searching, Pari was growing tired and frustrated. She had yet to find another exit, and now she was pretty sure she was lost as well. Just as she was about to give up and settle down to sleep, she heard what sounded like the drone of a buzzfriend’s wings off in the distance, only louder. The drone grew as other buzzfriends joined in, the sound quickly spreading as the sleeping buzzfriends around her suddenly woke up and joined in. It felt like the whole world was vibrating, and it took every ounce of concentration Pari had to grab hold of a nearby buzzfriend’s leg before it and the others scurried upward.
A veritable tide of buzzfriends flowed upward, her ride included, leaving Pari unable to do anything but hold on for dear life and wonder what was going on. They wound through chamber after chamber, until they arrived at one more that looked pretty much the same as all the others. There were a few differences here, though. One was the extra large buzzfriend perched on the far wall, with an abdomen significantly bigger, longer, and less round than the others. The other difference was the mass of buzzfriends swarming over something on the chamber’s floor. Pari gasped when her eyes caught a momentary glint of black crystal slicing into a buzzfriend before her view was blocked again by the swarm.
Oh, no! Her friends—plus Ruddy—and the buzzfriends were fighting! Friends weren’t supposed to fight!
Pari let go of her ride and fell to the floor. Avoiding the rush of buzzfriends as best she could, she scampered to a nearby corner, hoping that would help keep the buzzfriends from trampling her and her equipment. Crafting faster than she’d ever crafted in her lift, Pari made another adult buzzfriend scent-marking candle, tweaking the usual design slightly for maximum dispersal in minimum time. The moment it was complete, she pulled it from its mold, left her equipment where it was, and rushed into the fray.
For once, Pari’s diminished stature paid off, as she was able to run under the frenzied buzzfriends largely unimpeded. As soon as she was close enough, she lit the candle with a snap and rolled it as hard as she could beneath the chaotic, writhing mass. A moment later, the candle exploded, engulfing the area within thick yellow cloud.
Pari pressed forward, into the smoke. She couldn’t see, but she could still hear, and her ears told her several things. First, she heard coughing—not just from one set of lungs, but three. Second, the drone coming from the buzzfriends ahead of her seemed to have died down. Slowly, as she worked her way towards the center, she heard the drone start to recede, the end to the alarm moving outward from one buzzfriend to the next.
Then, she was through the tangle of buzzfriends and into the center. Through the thinning haze, she could make out her friends—and Ruddy—looking around and trying not to cough. Gabby-friend, in particular, was making a vicious and desperate face. Red mist leaked from gashes all over her body, but the pile of buzzfriend body parts suggested that she’d given far more than she’d received. Still, the way she held herself like she was standing through sheer force of will alone, told a story of their experiences since Pari had left.
Buzzfriends still surrounded the trio, even climbing up over each other to form a loose buzzfriend cage around them, but they had largely stopped moving. The ones closest, in particular, only waved their antennae around, feeling the scents in the air. Gabby-friend turned to a specific buzzfriend, taking a stance, seemingly having decided to take action.
“No! No hurt buzzfriends!” Pari cried out before things could get any worse.
Gabby’s head snapped around so fast that Pari was surprised she didn’t break her neck. Seeing Pari alive and unharmed, she rushed forward and grabbed Pari around the waist with one arm, lifting Pari off the ground and holding her against Gabby-friend’s hip.
“Alright, we’re getting out of here,” Gabby-friend said, her voice sounding as haggard as she looked. She leveraged her sword up onto her shoulder, ready to strike. “Where’s your stuff?!”
“No!” Pari squirmed and struggled, kicking and beating on her friend’s leg with her tiny fists. “No fighting! Buzzfriends not hurt Gabby-friend anymore!”
“Pari, what in the world are you talking about?” Gabby-friend sighed.
“Look!”
Sure enough, the buzzfriends, closest to them started to turn and leave, followed by the rest of them.
“...what.”
“Pari make friends and Ruddy smell like buzzfriends! Buzzfriends accept friends and Ruddy just like how buzzfriends accepted Pari!”
Gabby-friend stared at her, then at the buzzfriends busy returning to their normal routines, then back at her, an incredulous look growing on her face.
“...you’re serious,” she finally said. With a sigh, she let Pari down and rubbed her face. “They truly won’t attack us now?”
“Nuh-uh! Buzzfriends not attack. Buzzfriends help Pari! Even gave Pari honey!”
“How long do we have?”
Pari tilted her head questioningly.
“How long until whatever you did wears off and they attack us again?”
Pari shrugged. “Pari not sure. Long time. Pari can always make candle again, anyway.”
“...good enough, I guess.”
She turned to the others, who were still looking around, confused.
“Alright, let’s find a place to set up camp.”
Ruddy looked at her like she was crazy. “What? In here?”
“You heard Pari, didn’t you? They won’t attack us, so this is as good a place as any. Better, even. It’s indoors, flat, and we won’t have to worry about being attacked by anything else all the way in here. Besides, do you even have the energy to push any further?”
“Energy to push further? Are you joking?” Cappy-friend half laughed, half groaned. “I ran out of energy hours ago.”
Ruddy didn’t protest much more outside some low grumbling, and Pari led the three of them over to the corner where she’d left her stuff. Deciding this was as good a place as any, they removed their packs and set up camp. Their meal consisted of more of the bland, squishy rectangles, but this time, Pari shared some honey with the others and made it taste super delicious instead.
That didn’t stop the scolding, however.
“Pari, promise me that you will never do anything like that ever again,” Gabby-friend said after finishing her rectangle. Sitting back against one of the walls that made up the corner, her sword lying by her side, she gave Pari the most stern look that she could, which was not very stern.
“She’s right,” Ruddy said from where he lay nearby. His hands were covered in bandages, as was his left leg where he’d been slashed by a buzzfriend foot. It looked painful, but both he and Cappy-friend said their pain largely went away since eating the honey, which was neat. “Do you have any idea how far we had to climb today just to get here?”
Pari shook her head.
“It was...” He paused, thinking. “Bloodflower?”
“More than double what we usually manage in a full day, thanks in part to one crazed woman dragging us along and a handful of near-death experiences,” Cappy-friend helpfully chimed in.
“That’s right,” Ruddy continued with a nod. “By all rights, we shouldn’t be alive right now.”
Pari’s ears turned down and she grabbed her tail as she sank into the floor. They were right, of course. She’d let them all down.
“That’s not what I meant, you guys,” Gabby-friend told them, her face more stern towards them than towards her, for some reason. “We made it here in one piece, and that’s all that matters.” She turned back to Pari and her face softened again. “What I’m trying to say is that something terrible could have happened to you. You could have gotten seriously hurt, or worse.”
Pari didn’t know how to feel anymore. She’d been bad, but why wasn’t Gabby-friend mad about it? That wasn’t how it was supposed to work at all!
“Pari sorry,” she managed to say. This was good, right? It felt bad to be scolded—she would know. So, then... why did she feel so guilty? She sniffed, and her eyes began to feel wet.
Gabby-friend quickly pulled her into a side-embrace.
“Please don’t cry, sweetie! We all just care about you, alright? We want you to be safe, which is why you can’t go sliding down flowers and riding giant bees eight kilometers up in the air, you understand?”
Pari sniffed again and blinked away the tears. Gabby-friend begged her not to cry, so she would not cry. “Okay, Pari understands.”
“Good.”
The sound of a buzzfriend descending a nearby wall made the others jump. Had they not heard it coming?
“It’s too dark in here,” Ruddy complained. “Can’t we light the place up a bit? I’d like to see the killer bees coming before they’re on top of us.”
Ruddy couldn’t see the buzzfriends in this light?
“He’s got a point,” Gabby-friend conceded. “Pari, do you have any... you know... normal candles?”
Normal candles? What was she trying to say about her candles? They were perfectly normal! Still, Pari always felt nice when somebody asked her for candles. It combined two of her favorite things, making candles and making people happy, into one activity!
In this case, Pari figured what Gabby-friend was asking for with her very poorly worded request was a few boringcandles. However, she’d used up all her boringcandles that morning analyzing the slippery vine. She could make more with ease, of course, but she had a better idea. They wanted the area to be better lit? She’d show them that there were far better options and just boringcandles.
“Pari make bright candles for Gabby-friend!” she declared.
A lightcandle was exactly what it sounded like: a candle that made light through the creation of a very bright flame. It was one of the simpler and earliest candles she’d ever come up with, though it rarely got any use these days. In a jiffy, she had three new candles ready to go. Putting them around the camp, she lights each with a snap of flame. The chamber lit up like they were outside at midday.
“Ah, wow! That’s—that’s really bright!” Gabby-friend winces, squinting and holding a hand in front of her eyes.
Cappy-friend laughed a tired laugh. “Well, at least nothing will sneak up on us tonight.”
“But, won’t it be hard to sleep like this?” Gabby asked.
Ruddy snorted. “After what we went through today, I could fall asleep inside the sun itself.”
“Then, why don’t you just sleep and save us the commentary?” she shot back.
He sent an askew glance her way. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but we’re surrounded by giant, killer bees. I think I’ll wait a bit.”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “So, what were you up to, Pari?”
Pari grinned. “Pari flew around with buzzfriend, then came to hive, then made candles with buzzfriend children, then spent time with Family, then explored, then found friends and Ruddy!”
Gabby-friend went still.
“What do you mean you ‘spent time with your family’?”
“Pari visited family in wood and talked to them and had many hugs!”
“How?” Her voice was low but held an urgency that Pari had never heard before.
“With candle. Gabby-friend want—”
“Yes.”
“Okay!”
Pari pulled out her stuff and got to work, humming a happy tune. This would be a great test of a theory she had.
Ruddy cleared his throat. “Are you sure this is a—”
“Shut up,” Gabby-friend told him.
He did.
Not long after, Pari set her fourth Familycandle, as she’d decided to name it, on the floor between them. The three others looked at it, watching the flame burrow into the wax and disappear.
“So...” Ruddy began, “is it going to squirt at Gabriela, or—”
The candle erupted and smoke enveloped the four of them.
Pari coughed like always, this time with three other voices joining in. Yet, soon the others’ voices cut off, leaving only her. The smoke spread, growing thinner around her, and soon she found herself sitting near the prone forms of her friends and Ruddy.
She hummed again, glad she could do this for them after their bad day. They would enjoy the forest, and she was sure her Family would treat them well. It also suggested her theory was on the right track; it seemed that a Familycandle might only work on somebody once—for now. There was no way that Pari was going to let that be the end of things.
Just to make sure, Pari confirmed that they were all breathing. Once she was sure of that, she settled down to rest and wait. Her friends and Ruddy would mouth unintelligible things every so often, and sometimes a limb or two would let loose a heavy twitch, but that was about all they did.
Elsewhere in the chamber, buzzfriends stumbled and swayed, but did not fall over like the last one had. Being further away, they must have inhaled just a bit of the smoke, making them move as if drunk rather than fully passing out. Pari giggled as she watched the oh-so-serious and responsible buzzfriends stagger about like they'd spent the whole night partying.
So distracted was Pari by their insectoid antics that she didn't even see Ruddy's leg spasm and jerk until it was too late. She didn't even notice his heel kick the nearest lightcandle, sending it rolling towards the center of the chamber, until she saw a bumbling buzzfriend step right on it. Squashed like a juicy berry, the lightcandle’s fuel reservoir splashed all over the hive floor, covering a wide area. Before Pari could even register what had happened, the now-barely lit wick, in one last gasp of defiance, fell against the wet floor.
FWOOSH! Fire, blinding and hot, made Pari wince and turn away.
Uh oh.
The buzzfriend let out a startled hiss as twenty paces of dry, paper-like hive suddenly went up in flames around it. It stumbled back, retreating from the heat, and began to beat its wings toward the flames. A moment later, other buzzfriends joined in, creating a small windstorm to pummel the flames.
Oh, no!
“Stop, buzzfriends!” Pari cried. She understood now. They were trying to blow out the flames like Pari on her birthday! It was probably how buzzfriends usually dealt with fires when living in such a burnable house—create a great wind to stop it before it grew too large to put out. But these buzzfriends didn’t realize that this was no ordinary fire. Lightcandle fuel craved air. No amount of wind, no matter how strong, could put it out. Instead, the buzzfriends were only spreading the destruction.
Twenty paces of flames became thirty, then forty, then fifty before Pari could even think. More buzzfriends arrived, these fully sober, but they just joined in with the others.
“No! Stop!” Pari yelled, running and jumping and waving around to get their attention, but either they couldn’t hear her over the din of fire, wind, and buzzing wings, or they just didn’t feel like listening. She wracked her brain, trying to come up with a way to communicate her message through scent, but her understanding of buzzfriend communication was not yet so advanced.
Half the chamber was ablaze before the buzzfriends seemed to realize their strategy wasn’t working. Their backup plan seemed to be nothing short of mass panic. They rushed around, seemingly without purpose, running into each other, climbing over each other, and generally making a mess of things.
Pari wasn’t faring much better. She could feel the heat of the growing conflagration against her skin and see it getting closer to their camp with each passing moment. No matter what she tried, the others just would not come back from the forest! Pari tried yelling in their ears, shaking them, pinching them, kicking them, and even biting them, but nothing seemed to work.
What was she supposed to do?! It wasn’t like she could carry them or something, and leaving them here wasn’t an option either. Maybe she could stop the fire herself?
Thinking fast, Pari ran to her candle equipment and got to work. First, a mold, the largest size she had on hand. Then, a shell of Grandfather’s earwax, a bit on the thick side to make sure it held up to the pressure the candle would create. Next, the best expansion agent she had: ribbit pod juice. When burned, it produced bubbles that were more than fifty times larger in volume than the liquid source. That would provide more than enough pressure to spray out the mixture.
But in what form should the mixture emerge? A liquid might work, a sort of mist, maybe, but the fire would probably blow most of it away. It needed to be something more solid, but also thin enough that she could cover a large area with it. Yes, of course! A foam would be perfect! Into the mixture went two pinches of dried double-crested lizard blood. Combined with the ribbit pod juice, it would create a solid foam that would quickly harden after only a few moments of exposure to air. That meant it would stick around and not evaporate in the heat.
Still, none of that mattered if the foam just caught on fire. All of this was in service of the true star of the show: the fire-stopper. Pari didn’t have much in the way of fire-stoppers. Burning things was the fun part of candles, so why keep things that got in the way of that? But still, she did have something. Yrith sucker vine sap was a strange liquid that she’d found during her first adventure in Stragma. On its own, the sap was fairly boring, but when combined with certain sour things, it became something interesting and annoying: a cold, sparkly dust that not only refused to burn but seemed to eat heat. Luckily for her, she still had some stored in... why was the container so light?
Ripping the lid off, Pari stared in shock at the nearly empty container. Of the various container sizes, this was already one of the smallest—after all, why waste anything bigger on ingredients she never used?—and now only maybe a fifth of it was occupied by the thick, sticky sap. When had she used so much of this? No, that wasn’t important right now. What mattered now was that she couldn’t make enough fire-stopper with this to cover even a third of the floor. Maybe it didn’t even matter at this point. The fire had already spread up multiple walls and was working its way across the ceiling.
Still, she could keep the encroaching flames away from the camp. That would at least give her some more time to figure out how to wake up her friends and Ruddy. A few moments later, her candle was ready, and a moment after that, orange foam began to spray out of the candle’s top. Pari sprayed a circle around their camp, including the walls, creating a buffer of about twenty paces around them where the fire could not touch. Still, that did not mean they were safe—far from it.
Having been raised by a dragon, Pari knew full well what a lot of fire could do, and the inferno raging around them definitely qualified as “a lot”. Sweat poured down her body, and she was having trouble breathing—not even from the smoke, of which there wasn’t much, but just from breathing in air so hot. The roar of the flames assaulted her ears, and her nose was filled with the smells of combustion.
Pari went back to beating her friends and Ruddy, begging them to wake up. Yet, no matter what she tried, nothing seemed to work! It made her want to cry from the sheer frustration alone! Why wouldn’t they wake up? Especially Gabby-friend? She could wake up from anything, even death!
Wait... was that... was that it? But, to do that to a friend was just... bad! She’d have to be bad again, and look where it had gotten her so far! And yet, maybe this was the one time when being bad... was good?
Pari didn’t have time right now to ponder the profound questions her situation presented. Her current tactics weren’t working, so she decided to trust her gut.
A bangcandle would do the job, but it would also hit Cappy-friend and Ruddy; all three of the people off visiting her Family were far too heavy for Pari to move on her own. That meant she’d have to do things the hard way.
Fetching one of her Grandfather-bone knives, Pari knelt beside Gabby-friend’s head. Placing the tip of her knife against her friend’s throat, she took a deep breath—which only made her start to cough, impressing upon her all the more that she couldn’t hesitate anymore. She leaned in, and with as much force as her tiny body could manage, Pari stabbed the blade through. Gabby-friend’s whole body seized for a fraction of a moment, then went fully still, no longer even drawing breath.
Pari squeezed her tail as she watched the woman’s body remain still. Blood slowly leaked from around the handle, dripping down to the ground, but there was no sign of movement or that telltale crimson mist. How long was she supposed to wait? Shouldn’t there have been some sort of response by now?
“Gabby-friend, wake up!” she pleaded.
A rush of red burst into being, rushing like a torrent into Gabby-friend’s body. Her eyes flew open and she shot up into a sitting position, letting out a gasp for air so loud that Pari could hear it even over the roar of the fire. The handle—and only the handle—of Pari’s knife clattered to the floor.
“Pari, what...” Her question skidded to a halt as she noticed that the world around her was quite different than it had been when she’d left it. “...WHAT?!”
Looking around, she took in the inferno around them and the unmoving forms nearby, and she grew grim and serious.
“Pari, get your things.”
Pari didn’t need to be told twice. She threw her recently used equipment back into her sack, then paused. Her stock of pre-made candles was beginning to melt in the heat. If they had to run through the flames to get out, there was a chance one or more of them would catch fire as they went, and that would be bad for everybody. So, as much as it pained her to do so, she dumped out every complete candle she had and left them in the middle of the fire-free camp area. Then, she finished tying up her now half-full sack.
Meanwhile, her friend grabbed her half-deconstructed pack, tied her giant blade to the back of it with several loops of rope like she had every day they climbed, and put it on. Pulling Pari into a tight hug against her front, Gabby-friend tied the two of them together, making sure to tie Pari’s legs around her waist. Then, she stuck Pari’s sack of things against Pari’s back and tied it to them both with more rope, making a Pari sandwich.
“Hold on tight and don’t let go,” she told Pari. Grabbing the other two with one hand each, she roughly threw each of them over her shoulders, one arm holding each. Finally, she bent her legs.
Pari had never before experienced Gabby-friend when the woman was actually trying, and to say it was something she would never forget was putting it lightly. The initial leap felt almost like being struck, so intensely was the acceleration. Inertia slammed her downward and into her friend’s chest, knocking the wind out of her for a moment. And then, they were soaring upward and out towards the center of the chamber, flying without wings. They shot through the doorway in the center of the ceiling, the entranceway to the higher chamber wreathed in flames.
This place had become a firestorm as well, and there was nowhere to land that was not covered in flames. Scorching air rushed up from the hive below, swirling around like a mini-tornado as the flames spun higher and higher. Gabby-friend landed into a sprint, the flames licking at Pari’s rear.
She leapt again, and they sailed through an opening high on a wall into a third large room, which was also entirely ablaze. Just how far had this catastrophe spread? Was the entire hive burning?
With an ominous rumble, followed quickly by a loud series of cracks, a large section of nearby honeycomb wall broke apart and fell right towards them. Still, Gabby-friend was strong. Pulling the others down in front of her and squeezing Pari on both sides, she turned her back and let the debris fall over her, blocking it with her body. Spinning, she kicked the blazing honeycomb away, heaved the others back up onto her shoulders, and leapt back into action.
Leaning to the side, Pari was able to peek her head around Gabby’s torso. It gave her a perfect view to watch as they sped through burning room after burning room, then a perfect view as they leapt upwards one final time, emerging into the open night lit by the bright blue glow of the Mother Tree from above and the brighter orange blaze of a hive fully engulfed in flames. It gave her a perfect view of the hole they escaped through, a triangular hole sliced open by a long, sharp blade, and it let her watch as the bindings holding that blade tight to her pack loosened as the four of them flew through the air, the ropes having been burning since the flaming wall landed on them.
The buzzfriend’s hive hung from the side of a massive branch thick enough to hold several city blocks, and it was upon the slope of that branch that the four of them landed. Gabby-friend bent down to set the others down, and that was the final straw. With a snap, the final rope holding her sword to the rest of her broke, and the weapon fell away. Gabby-friend spun around just in time to watch it land hilt-first against the bark, bounce and spin, and drop towards the bonfire below. Piercing the top of the hive almost tip first, it embedded itself into what remained of the papery nest.
Then, as if they had been holding out just for this moment, her discarded candles went off. A cacophony of thunderous, overlapping kabooms rocked the hive, sending tremors even through the branch they stood on. The hive shook like a leaf on a tree during a windy day, let out a series of earsplitting cracks, and broke apart.
Pari and Gabby-friend stared in silence for several moments, dumbfounded, as the gigantic, roughly ovoid mass of fire and death which had been the buzzfriend’s home plummeted towards the earth all those thousands of paces below, taking the mighty blade with it. Her friend’s prized sword, the thing she kept with her at all times, even when it made things hard, was suddenly just... gone.
Pari Clansnarl began to cry.