Greyex woke slowly and stretched languidly. He was surprisingly comfortable, and a tension that had been building ever since he'd had to run was relaxed, if not completely gone. He blinked a few times in the morning light, rolled over, and realized he'd spent the night cuddling with the... the thing... the kobold! He was cuddling with the kobold he'd found.

He patted it a few times and then gave its skin an exploratory pinch. The kobold hissed softly, but didn't move.

"What was that for?" It's voice crackled sharply on its ts and hissed its esses. "What wasss that for?"

"I was checking how much more water you need. It's a lot, by the way." Greyex patted the scaly hide under his hand in what he hoped was a soothing way.

The kobold shifted a bit and hissed something indistinct. It was probably a question about water.

"We drank it all," he said plainly. "We'll have to go find more today."

The kobold tried valiantly to get to its feet. It even managed it for, oh, five seconds before it started to list to the side and Greyex had to catch the poor thing. He slung its arm over his shoulders and wrapped his own about its upper back to support it, and they wobbled off together at a painfully slow rate. If something came and tried to eat them, he was going to have to leave his new companion behind.

Rather than pursue that thought further, Greyex turned his attention to keeping them going away from the goblin village, the thing he'd seen, and the direction that had his companion tensing up if the turned toward it. When that got too easy to occupy his mind, he started to glance around for food, potential tools, water vines, or places that they could duck into to hide if something dangerous turned up.

Before long, that didn't take much effort, either, so he turned to conversation, rather than think about all the horrible ways he could still die out here.

"So," he said slowly, "what are you doing all alone, if kobolds are supposed to hunt in packs."

"Can't go back," it hissed. "Ran away. Going back - I would die."

"Same, same," Greyex nodded his head and guided them around a hole in the ground. "We go back the way I came, we're gonna die; we go back the way you came, we're gonna die. Got it."

They were silent for a while, then, because the ground had gone rocky and loose. Together, they struggled down the hill, and together, they struggled up the next one, in the only direction that didn't lead to a known danger, slipping and tripping and rising again. Greyex's knees were bloody by the time they reached the top, and his companion had only escaped the same condition by having a tougher skin.

At the top of the terrible mess of sharp rocks, there sat a boulder and a familiar looking plant. He leaned the kobold against the boulder and inspected the plant. The leaves, dark green and rubbery and shaped just right; the stems, correct; the smell, sweet and bitter, familiar. He pulled off a leaf and thoughtfully bit into it - it burst between his teeth, unpleasantly squishy like bad meat, and the bitter, filmy water inside flowed over his tongue while the stringy fibers within stuck to his teeth.

Yes, this was the water vine. He bit off a length and dragged it to his companion.

---

Taaku must have fallen asleep, because he woke up to water in his mouth and a sour smell in his nose. He drank the water. It was thick, and a bit stringy and chunky, like old blood, but water was water.

He opened his eyes. It was the goblin again, with what was probably the same plant. Plant water was... it wasn't as good as normal water, but water was water.

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Taaku took the vine and bit into it. It was weirdly tough, both like and unlike meat, and the smell was sour and off-putting. The plant water rushed out as he bit again and again, burning its way down his throat unpleasantly. It was a bit less wonderful than it had been the first time, but it was still so, so good. It was all gone before he knew it, and another chunk of water plant was held out.

He took it wordlessly and started biting again, while the goblin took the finished vine and did, uh, something to it that Taaku couldn't even begin to guess at. Goblin magic, maybe?

"You got a name?" it asked. "I can keep calling you 'kobold', but that seems rude."

"You're not going to use your weird goblin magic to put a spell on me if I tell it to you, are you?"

The goblin stared at him with its weird brown eyes with the off-putting round pupils.

"I don't know any magic," it lied.

Taaku did his best to reason through his options. He owed the goblin his life. That might be enough for it to put a spell on him anyway, and it might decide to put a curse on him if he refused it. On the other hand, it could put a stronger curse on him if he gave it his name.

...maybe it only knew plant magic.

"Taaku," he finally said.

"I'm Greyex," the goblin said. It went back to fiddling with plant bits.

Taaku bit more water plant and drank more plant water. Greyex twisted the thoroughly bitten vines around one another in a complicated pattern that Taaku couldn't hope to understand. It seemed to be building the plants up and into something; a shape was slowly emerging. His eyelids grew heavy, and Taaku distantly felt his half finished water plant fall from his talons. He was asleep before it had finished sliding to the ground.

---

Ssss-thump.

Greyex glanced to the side. The kobold - Taaku - had fallen asleep and dropped its water vine. He glanced to the other side. The vine he'd harvested was growing lush and thick, sprawled out over the ground in a mass of leaves and stems, sluggishly oozing its water from the torn parts where he'd taken bits of it.

"We can rest here," he decided out loud. "You sleep. I can sleep when I'm done."

It took most of the rest of the day to finish the basket he'd started, and a big part of that was fetching more grass to weave in across the vines to shore it up. He put some roots in, too, that came up with the grass, and it looked solid enough, but Greyex wouldn't know how actually good this basket was until it dried out. He put it down next to the - Taaku; he put it down next to Taaku anyway, then moved on to his next task before he could sleep.

He rehydrated. Pulled more water vine, made a nasty face at it, and drank more of the sour, bitter, chunky vine water. Foul, but harmless. Then he gathered up some stones and shoved them into a rough semicircle around where Taaku was asleep, edges touching the boulder they'd rested in the shade of, and set about making some "shelter".

He mostly gathered up grass and piled it up, sometimes over, sometimes under, but mostly on the stone circle he'd made. He also used some of the shorter chunks of gnawed on vine to loop things together and hold them in place. Over the course of the, to stretch the term, construction, he found enough bugs to fill up not only his bag but also the basket he'd made.

It took the rest of the day, and the finished product was still better than most goblin dwellings, which was to say that it would need a stiff wind to knock it over. Greyex put a few finishing touches on the temporary house - a few handfuls of moss there, a bit of urine here - and it was ready. He tucked the bag and basket away inside, bugs and all, and cut a few more lengths of vine with his teeth in case they got thirsty.

He climbed into the little shelter through a hole he'd left for that purpose, pulled the vines in after himself, and then patched the hole shut with more grass he'd left nearby for just that purpose. The result was a shaded, slightly stuffy but overall cozy, little space. Greyex lay down and put his head on Taaku, then fell asleep to the sound of someone else's heartbeat in his ear.

----

Meanwhile, back at the dungeon...

I'd been working on this stupid irrigation problem for an entire day. When I copied the watering system from the entrance, it made the ceiling wet and slippery, and the bats suffered for it, like the beginnings of a migraine. When I set the "rain" to materialize lower down, it clumped up and dropped a thick sheet of water on the entire room, scattering maggots and crushing flower petals. That didn't feel very good, either.

I attached the water source to the wall, and it flowed like a fountain... and flooded the floor before it made its way to the flower beds. With everything soaked, I needed to take a break before I lost it and did something I'd regret.

The worst part was that they all worked well in simulation. I hadn't been so frustrated since I died. It was going to feel so good when I finally figured it out.