The Ink-worm swished its tail once, spraying tiny droplets of ink, which seemed to dissolve into nothing before ever hitting the ground. Where they landed, tiny shoots of green started to sprout, twisting and twining up through the grass.

"Great!" Jump-touch said enthusiastically, "I like your tail very much!"

It was difficult to speak without context, but she was making it work, even if her vocabulary was extremely limited due to the fact she was hiding in a bush.

The jewelled face turned towards her, sweeping now, looking around the clearing for the intruder in their space, and she averted her eyes.

"I'm just a bird, I don't want to hurt you!" She was getting into it now. "Will you talk to me?"

She had wanted to ask if she could have some of the ink from his tail, but she couldn't find the right wording without resorting to signs. It would probably be better to ask that later, anyway, when they were on better terms.

The Ink-worm paused, tilting, thinking, and then it opened its mouth, and hissed!

Jump-touch hunched down, squinting through the vegetation.

It was language, she was fairly sure of it, and the itching on the back of her neck was confirming it, but she had no idea what it had said.

It hadn't been a greeting, she was pretty sure of that, but it hadn't the right tone as to be a warning. Curiosity maybe, a question?

A question felt right. If she-

"Help speak?" she asked in Other, having to improvise due to her position. Barks and growls only.

The Ink-worm hissed again, lower and longer this time.

"No speak."

That was progress, but... She wasn't sure if it was saying it couldn't speak, or if it was saying it wouldn't speak. The tail was swishing side to side now in agitation, spraying droplets of black ink across the area.

They didn't impact when they landed, instead seeming to sink into whatever they hit, making the greenery greener and causing the copper to bubble and melt.

"Leave?" she asked, switching back to Given Tongue and moving to another bush as she did, trying not to cut herself on the few sharp leaves that were left.

"No leave," the swishing of the brush got desperate for a moment, before stilling all of a sudden, the creature freezing in place. "Speak. Write?"

"Alright."

****

Yaris found her a time later, sitting at the base of the Ink-worm, gesturing at a cleared spot on the ground. Jump-touch didn't even notice her at first, so engrossed was she in the conversation.

Over the past few hours, the two of them had worked out a rudimentary system of communication. It was a mix of gestures, Other, the archaic dialect of Given Tongue the Ink-worm spoke; which she hadn't even known was a thing, and picture-writing.

The writing was very large, from Jump-touch's point of view, and very small from the worm's, but they were making it work.

The monster froze as they both finally noticed Yaris in the bushes, and their tail rose as she showed her face, a long hiss warning of an impending attack.

"It's okay," Jump-touch told them, and there was a moment of tension, like a string held taught, before they slowly backed down. "It's alright, she's a friend."

She had to take a moment to reconfigure her brain back to Resper.

At some point in the process, she'd had to turn the boon off, and she was fairly sure now that she wasn't ever going to switch it back on. It kept getting in the way, trying to translate things that didn't require translating. Latching onto new words, still only half-concept, and making them come out in the wrong language.

"I'll be later," she said to Yaris, still half-concentrating on the ground in front of her, "you go, wait, thank you."

She knew it was garbled as she said it, but she didn't have the brainpower right now to do better. "Goodbye."

Yaris stared at her for a long moment, said something that caused Ink-worm to hiss menacingly, and then backed rapidly away again. Good, they'd talk later.

"Why'd you come up here?" She asked them, some time later. "Shouldn't you live further down?"

"Driven out," Ink-worm had told her. "Driven out by a -large thing- Unfriendly."

"Alone. Tired."

They were always alone, they told her. They had always been alone. Their creator, gone for so long that even the memory of their face was a blur, their name lost to time. No kobolds had ever come here, to try and speak with them. No other monsters had ever opened up a dialogue.

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They were always alone.

There was an element of longing in their words, a yearning for somebody long, long forgotten, and it made her chest hurt if she thought about it too much. Would the kobolds forget her like this, one day, if she never came home? Would they keep living their long, long lives, as she faded from memory?

Ink-worm had tilted their head when she had said maybe she could find the name of their creator. Perhaps even an image, or a painting, a description?

They had looked so lost and confused at her offer, that she hadn't had the heart to make it again.

Sometimes it was best to leave old wounds alone.

****

Jump-touch placed the two glass jars of Ink carefully on the shelf in her Heart. She was a little afraid of them, and it felt safer to do the job by hand.

She hadn't been in here for more than a moment since that day at the Stone, and the difference was interesting.

It had been empty then, just her, sitting in an empty room, her token and book looking so small lying on the floor.

Now it was crammed with stuff. Bags, boxes supplies. Food to last them another week, bedding, cookware, and all the things you'd like to take on a camping trip but could never justify the weight of.

She really needed to work out how to make this place bigger. How to add another room, or two, or three.

She stared around at the chaos. There was a large space in the middle of the room, where the crate had been, covered in a thick rug, because Shrike had complained the floor was cold. Then around the edges of the room were the shelves, the bags, boxes and chaos, all scattered somewhat haphazardly, because why tidy up, when you can summon anything with a thought?

Plus, every time Shrike was in here, he rearranged things, and she had to put them back in their proper places afterwards.

Outside, the crate was under the care of Ink-worm, who had curled around it protectively until she got back.

They were nice, she mused as she made sure the jars were safely ensconced on the lowest shelf. Lonely and old, so very, very old, but nice in a slow, animal kind of way.

She touched the glass of the jar one last time, before straightening up. They had labelled the jars together, with scraps from the Master's Sash, the long scroll they wore wrapped around themselves in memory of their creator. It was the one, lone memory they had left.

They would have gotten along well with Sweep-claw, and she wished she could introduce the two.

Well? Why can't I? I just need to find a dungeon entrance under the Mountain, right?

It was a thought for the future. For now, she had directed them to the grove of silver apples. They had tried one of the two she had kept and had liked the taste, and they would be safe there, she hoped. Not even the blue slimes would be strong enough to drive them away.

She looked around the area one last time, before realising her breath was starting to fog into ice.

It was time to leave.

They touched their foreheads together carefully, the gem cool against her skin, and then that was that. They went their separate ways. Jump-touch back to her pack of humans, Ink-worm to the apple grove.

She would introduce them to Sweep-claw, she told herself. It was gonna be great.

****

She walked back into camp some time later, finding the others arranged around the large pit they'd dug, back when prospects had looked different.

Yaris stood up as she approached, spear in a hand which had been empty only a moment before.

She paused, and then shook her head, shaking out her empty hands. "You came back?"

There was disbelief in her voice. "We didn't think you'd come back."

"Of course? You thought I wouldn't?" Jump-touch wandered over to inspect the pit. They'd upgraded it while she'd been away, filling it with spiky branches and copper leaves. It would probably hurt if she fell in there.

"She-he-they're gone now, I somethinged them to the apples. Sent? Yeah, I sent them to apples."

Ink-worm had spent a long time showing her how their tail worked, moving around the clearing and touching the end to different things. The ink wouldn't damage her if it touched her, but it would stain, as she had found out with the addition of a new blue-black patch on her shoulder. Its true purpose was to dissolve away the copper, and to promote new growth.

It could be made to hurt, to boil and sting anywhere it touched, and to eat through metal shields and weapons, but that wasn't its default state. Ink-worm was one of the First, and they were a guardian, they kept the dungeon alive.

By morning, the grove they'd been lying in would be shoulder-high in greenery, and that greenery would spread for the next few days, consuming an area of the jungle four or five Ink-worms long.

That didn't seem that much, but over time, it added up. A wave of green left behind them, wherever they travelled.

"You sent it to apples?" Eim frowned, "I don't get it."

He looked to the others, who shrugged too.

"No boon," she hissed, "it's something something my brain, bad."

They knew this, they'd work it out.

She waved a hand at him, backing off from the pit and mentally rummaging through her Heart for any food that wasn't meat. Sending herself there had felt fine, but sending the crate back had almost sent her to her knees, and her brain still felt fuzzy from hunger even an hour later.

"He-them give-gave me uh," she waved her hands more, "wet-write?"

There was some discussion on this, and then: "Ink?" offered Shrike.

She thought about it as she chewed through a handful of dried fruit.

"Yes, two of them."

"Apples though?" Eim interrupted. "You mean you gave it the last two silver apples?"

They had been testing the levels of cold and air the apples could tolerate before they started to rot, or had been intending to at least.

"Gave them-him one," she nodded. "They go to apples now. Live safe."

She was, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, enjoying butchering their language. She could do better, she just didn't feel like doing so.

"Wait." From Yaris, ah, she got it! "Wait wait wait- You sent it to the orchard?"

"Orchard, yes, that's the word!" She had been trying to come up with it for most of her journey back. Orchard. She tried to jam it into the itchy part at the back of her brain. Orchard.

"Why!"

"She-They needed a home."

The others stared at her.

"So you sent it to live in the apple grove?"

She frowned. Yaris sounded upset, and her sword was in her hand again for some reason.

Was that bad? It was a days walk or so from the Spur, so they could all visit, but it wasn't so close that they would get in trouble. It was a worm, and understood the dungeon in a way she didn't; couldn't even. They had assured her they could always go and hide in the narrow passages or below the ground, if anyone came to fight it.

Okay, it meant that apples might be harder to get for other humans, but they tasted bad anyway. It was no big loss.

"Ink makes trees grow?" she said finally. "I don't see the problem?"

Oh, she did know there were problems, but she was getting into this whole human thing. Lies, feigning ignorance, pretending you didn't see something you did, the other four did it all the time. So if she did it on occasion too, what was the harm?

"Of course there's problems!" Yaris had noticed the sword and put it away again, "what if..."

Jump-touch zoned her out, chewing on her dried fruit. She could hedge a little, as a treat. She just had to associate it with Resper. A mixed-up language for a mixed-up people.