Lee sipped from a wooden bowl. The liquid was still lukewarm, but more than satisfying for her. The hardy soup went down nicely and was surprisingly tasty for being cooked up in the middle of the woods. She wasn’t sure if the great taste was from her being half starved, or the talents of the cook. She bet on the former.

Lee was refreshed. After a sufficient time of crying into Shellorn’s shoulder, she offered for them to bathe in the river. Shellorn had already been planning on bathing there that day, and with the mess Lee had made of herself by rolling around in the mud, she needed it. The water was cold, but surprisingly refreshing. Lee could feel the dirt and grime wash away from both her physical and mental state. She thought it would be uncomfortable bathing with another girl, but it wasn’t. Actually, she felt more comfortable with Shellorn next to her. After the cathartic bath, they went back to the shack and began devouring the breakfast Shellorn had prepared earlier that morning before Lee had run off.

The bowl was almost flipped fully upside down while Lee was pushing the remaining food into her small mouth. She heard Shellorn giggle next to her. She brought the bowl down and gave a sheepish smile.

“You don’t, perchance, have more?”

“Of course,” Shellorn said, taking her bowl and heading outside.

Lee felt bad asking for more. Usually she wouldn’t take more than she could give back and Shellorn had already let her sleep here for the night, but she felt comfortable with Shellorn. Even with only knowing her for a single night, she had a feeling of closeness with her she hadn’t felt with anyone else before.

I can’t just take. I have to pay her back. Somehow…

Shellorn came back with a steaming bowl. She had been done eating herself a while ago, this was Lee’s fourth serving. She purposely slowed herself down, finally allowing time for Shellorn to ask a question.

“I don’t want to pry, but how’d you end up in the middle of the forest? Not many venture this far in and you don’t seem the most prepared, no offense.”

Lee’s memories flashed back to the prison she was in. Specifically, to the guard she had encountered. She obviously wasn’t anywhere close to home, elves didn’t exist in real life. She had also tossed her comforting thought of this all being a dream to the side so, where was she? How’d she get here? What is her standing here? She was obviously a prisoner, so she should probably keep that to herself. She decided not to directly lie, but to leave out the details about escaping some sort of prison.

“I- I don’t really remember to be honest. I just kind of remember following that dog, but even those memories are a bit foggy.” She thought back to their journey and how much she was too fatigued to remember. Almost as if she had to jump between large gaps in her memories.

“Hmm, so where're you from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“Uh,” She looked into her half eaten bowl, “No.”

“Interesting.” Shellorn stood up, “Well, there’s nothing to worry about. You got me to take care of you.” She pointed at herself with a smirk.

“Oh, I can’t take advantage of you anymore. You’ve already been so kind.”

“I insist,” Shellorn smiled, “It's what friends do for each other.”

Friends?

Lee looked at Shellorn. Her smile radiated with friendliness. There was no sarcasm detected.

Lee didn’t have friends. The closest thing she had to friends were her brother’s friends.

Have we even known each other long enough?

She had said maybe one hundred words to this girl, but she had already boldly proclaimed their friendship.

Is this how you make friends?

Shellorn’s brown eyes gleamed with compassion, or eye. The right one was covered by her eyepatch. Seeing this, she couldn’t help but to smile back at her.

“Thank you so much, Shellorn.”

She continued to sip from her bowl, pacing herself now. Down on the table they were eating on were some papers shoved in the corner to make room for their bowls. The paper was thick and yellow with rough edges. Black ink danced across the page. Lee couldn’t read it.

Without thinking she asked, “What language is that?”

“You don’t know Klahnbodia?”

“No…” Said Lee, cautiously.

“Well you sure speak it well.” Shellorn giggled. “You must’ve hit your head really hard.”

What does that mean? Lee raised a hand to her head. Oh!

“Uh, yea.” Lee rubbed her head, “Now that you mention it, my head does hurt quite a bit.”

She needed to be more cautious. This is obviously a different world, revealing her naivety so easily could be dangerous.

“It’s not unheard of for people to trip and fall while hiking. Must’ve been a pretty serious fall. I wonder if you were climbing a tree? I’ve fallen off my fair share. Although, forgetting how to read a language is… you know… a bit odd.”

Lee winced.

Shellorn stood up. “How’s this for a plan? You stay here with me for a couple days and see if any memories come back. If not, I’m heading back to town in a couple of days. You could join me and we can see if any memories come back then.”

“Uh, well.”

Go into town? I’m an escaped convict.

“Shellorn.”

She was reaching for a bow and quiver hung on the wall, but turned back to Lee.

“There isn’t, or aren’t any elves around here. Are there?”

Shellorn scrunched her nose, “The nearest elf is a hundred miles east in the Jisogdon Empire. Why? Did you see one?”

“Oh, um no. Just forget I asked.”

She shrugged, slinging her quiver around her shoulder and jostling some arrows in it.

“I’m going to try and nab some dinner. You can just stay and hang out with the dog. Make sure to give it plenty of pats on the head and scratches.” Shellorn eyes gleamed whenever she spoke about the black furball.

“Where’s the dog anyways?”

She hadn’t seen the dog since eating. It wasn’t in the shack with them.

“I gave him his meal outside.”

Lee frowned, remembering the torture that dog had put her through.

“I know, it's so cruel making it eat outside” Shellorn opened the door, “He’s so cute, but I didn’t want him making a mess with his food in here.”

The dog walked in, bumping into Shellorn’s leg and then walked up to Lee.

“Alright, I’ll be back later.”

“Wait.” Lee stood up.

“Hmm?”

“I- I don’t want to sit around and do nothing. I want to help you, like you’re helping me.”

“In that case,” Shellorn rubbed her chin for a second, “You can gather up some firewood. Oh, and maybe take the large bucket outside and fill it in the river.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“You got it.” Her voice was rejuvenated, strong and confident once again.

“Just don’t hit your head and forget how to get back here, OK?” Shellorn let out a cute giggle, and then walked out of the shack.

###

Lee was tired, although her fatigue was more satisfying now. The type of satisfaction one gets from a productive day at work. To the best of her abilities, she stacked firewood up to the height of her small chest. She also attempted to refill the water bucket. It came up to her knees and was quite wide. It probably held around fifty gallons, she could probably even curl up and fit into it quite snugly. Carrying it over to the river was a hassle but doable. The problem arose once water was filled to its brim. The weight was immense to go along with its bulky and cumbersome size. She wished she could’ve coerced the dog to help somehow, but it had been an observer the whole day. It took her the rest of her day sliding the bucket back on the grass and dirt. She had tried to be careful, but most of it had spilled out by the time she made it back. She slumped over leaning on the rickety shack.

“How does Shellorn do this?”

Despite her best efforts, almost half of the bucket's contents had disappeared on the trip.

The sky above was slowly turning into a crimson red. That along with the luscious trees in the foreground made her smile.

“This isn’t so bad… Hey! Stop that!”

With her being distracted by her serenity of the forest, the dog had taken the opportunity to start lapping the water up with it’s pink tongue.

“Ew. Gross. I’ll get you a bowl, just wait.”

With a slight shove from Lee, the dog stepped back and looked up at her resignedly.

She grabbed a bowl from inside the shack, scooped up some water and placed it in front of the dog. Of course now it wasn’t interested in drinking, staring up at her as if expecting something else.

“Nice job with the water.”

Shellorn was back, carrying three rabbit corpses.

Lee looked down at the water bucket. Although she once again didn’t sense any sarcasm in Shellorn’s voice, she was still embarrassed about how much had spilled out.

“It’s getting late, I’ll start cooking these up.”

“You must be quite good with a bow if you were able to hit all three of those.”

Lee used a bow once in gym class at school. She had a hard enough time hitting a large stationary target from twenty feet. She couldn’t imagine trying to hit small moving targets such as rabbits.

“Uh… yea I guess. Wanna help me cook? It’ll be fun!”

“Sure.”

Behind the shack was a small fire pit with a rack hovering over it. Shellorn skillfully separated the rabbit hide from the meat, hanging the hide on pegs sticking out from the shack. Her movement signified that she was doing this without thought. She then skewered the larger pieces of meat, laying them over top of the fire.

“Those will take a bit. Can you fill this pot with some water? I’m going to put the smaller pieces in there and boil a bit of stew.”

“Of course,” Lee grabbed the pot and made haste to the water out front. She had been asked to help with the cooking, but just sat there and watched Shellorn do all the work. She was glad to finally be of any help.

Lee came back with the pot filled. Shellorn thanked her, and then placed it next to the skewers of meat. She diced up the smaller chunks of meat a bit more with a small knife and put them in the water. She then put in some sort of soft looking herbs from a pouch on her hip, sprinkling them in with the meat.

She then looked up at Lee and smiled.

“Uh, did I do something wrong?” Lee said, confused.

“No, you’re just fun to be around.”

But I haven’t done anything? And she isn’t being sarcastic.

She was now questioning her social skills. There was no way that a girl could be this genuinely kind and nice to her, but Shellorn’s smile seemed completely genuine. Every observation Lee could make led to that conclusion, so why was she questioning its legitimacy?

“Hey!” Shellorn sprung out of her deep squat with a little hop, “I have an idea, I’ll teach you how to read. Maybe some memories will kick back in.”

“You’re already doing so much for me, there’s no need.”

“C’mon Leelee, I haven’t read my poetry to anybody and I’ve really wanted to. This is the perfect opportunity, get two birds stoned at once!”

That’s not the saying… And did she just call me Leelee?

Lee had never been given a nickname before, but she didn’t want her first to be “Leelee”. Plus, she wasn’t sure if they’ve known each other long enough to be friends, let alone call each other by nicknames. Why was Shellorn doing all this for her, of all people? A stranger. Was there an ulterior motive?

She caught herself in thought, staring blankly at Shellorn for too long. She needed to answer.

“Uh, yea. That’s very generous of you.”

“Heehee, this’ll be fun!”

Shellorn skipped off to the other side of the shack. Even when her feet came back to the earth after each bound, the only sounds Lee heard were her giggles and the front door opening.

That really is impressive.

###

Sitting in front of Lee were ink strokes she had never seen before. They were gorgeous in their own right. She would probably hang such artwork in her own home. With this already overwhelming amount of ink in front of her, Shellorn was rattling off information faster than an auctioneer.

“So this upward stroke that curls on top, that makes a ‘woo’ sound. It kind of looks like a tree blowing in the wind. That’s how my mom taught me when I was little. Oh! This one looks like a cute kitty…”

The barrage of information did overwhelm Lee a bit, but she surprised herself. She caught on pretty quickly. Since they both spoke the same language phonetically, the writing corresponded with what Lee knew. The difference comes from the characters substituting in for different sounds.

Lee and Shellorn had finished their rabbit legs and rabbit stew. She was now staring intrinsically at a piece of parchment.

“Hmm… Does this one say ‘The forest caresses my thoughts. Intertwining them throughout the branches. Creating a suh-’ Oh, ‘Creating a sanctuary where I can peacefully roam.”

Shellorn abruptly stood up from her seat.

“Holy crap!”

“Wha- what happened!”

“You’re amazing! The only thing you got wrong was the word ‘caresses,’ it was supposed to be ‘contains,’ but caresses sounds much better!”

It did take me like ten minutes.

Lee looked to her left. She had been scribbling down notes. She made sure not to use her own language, so she put down characters from this language next to a picture that would help her remember the sound it made. Taking precautions like these would have to become a norm for her. She still needed to decipher each sentence like code, but it was now manageable and she had only been practicing over dinner.

“At this rate!” Shellorn pumped her fist, “You’ll get back your memories in no time!”

Lee gave a sheepish smile.

I wonder if I really did lose my memories?

She shook her head. The memories she had of her whole life were all intact. Growing up, going from one trailer to the next. Sitting by herself at lunch, going to school, being picked on by her brother and his friends, all those memories were much too real and painful to be fabricated.

Lee sipped the last of her stew. Her body was plastered against the hard wood chair. Her mental and physical exhaustion had fully hit her. She looked over to Shellorn, who was almost vibrating with energy.

Wait, wasn’t her eyepatch on her other eye before?

It was now on her left eye.

Lee was going to ask about it, but let the question go.

“Ok, I’m going to clean up. You wanna bring the dog in?”

Oh yea, that demon.

Although Lee had fully recovered physically from the traumatic journey from the prison to the shack, her mental scars of the dog practically torturing her along the journey were still intact.

Lee went outside to find the dog lapping up water from the bucket she had worked so hard to bring back from the river.

“Shellorn, do you have a lid or something? The dog won’t stop drinking our water.”

“Don’t worry about it, I don’t mind!”

Gross.

Lee called the dog in. It came obediently, but bumped into her leg, throwing her balance a bit.

“You did that on purpose!”

“Woof.”

Lee clicked her tongue, ignoring the pest. Her job was done, the dog was inside the shack. She looked over to her right. At some point during the day, Shellorn had made time to slap together another bed. Her bed was in the corner opposite of the table. Even though the last corner was open space, Shellorn had placed Lee’s bed directly next to her own. Lee didn’t think too much of it. She fell onto the bed with a nice thud. It felt just as comfortable as the night before. The dog curled up in the corner closest to her, keeping its eyes on her.

“You’re oddly not trained, but trained at the same time, aren’t you?”

The dog gave a small grunt.

Shellorn came back into the shack. She quickly blew out the candles on the table and slipped into her bed beside Lee.

Lee tugged at her torn sweatshirt. Although the bed was comfortable, her clothes were torn, dirty and frayed. They scratched against her soft skin. Now that her focus wasn’t on anything else, she couldn’t stop thinking about how uncomfortable they were.

“Don’t worry.”

She looked over to Shellorn right beside her.

“We’ll head into town in a couple of days. I’ll get you some more comfortable clothes. Hopefully some without so many holes and tears.” she giggled.

“Well, I don’t really have any money.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Shellorn closed her eye, smiling.

Lee propped herself up from the bed, “No! I can’t keep taking advantage of you! You’re way too kind!” she caught her tongue. Her emotions slipped out.

Shellorn didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t even show any reaction to Lee’s outburst. Her smile just grew a tiny bit more.

“Like I said earlier, it’s what friends do. Plus, I know a place where we can get stuff for cheap.”

Lee, composing herself, laid back down.

“Uh, how cheap?”

“Super cheap. So cheap, they call it the Shellorn Discount, hehehe.”

Lee frowned, “Shellorn, you aren’t talking about stealing, are you?

Shellorn playfully shoved Lee’s shoulder, “Nooo… Well technically yes, but it’s my parents place. And the stuff we’ll be taking is mine anyways. We won’t be stealing… This time, teeheehee.”

Lee couldn’t help herself from letting out a small laugh.

“Alright, sounds good to me, but I don’t condone actual thievery. Goodnight Shellorn.”

“Goodnight Leelee.”

“Don’t call me Leelee.” Lee said under her breath, not loud enough to hear. Even still, her smile didn’t waver.

In the depths of a forest, two girls drifted asleep with content smiles and full stomachs. They even had a watchdog. It wasn’t much, but the shack gave them a place where they could both feel comfortable. That alone was enough for them.