When Eli stood, he realized that Mist-Beneath was short for a troll. Only about six-and-a-half feet tall, though part of that was being hunched with age.

She led him from the chamber, through a tunnel with smooth stone walls and into a ... barracks of sorts. There were sixteen beds, eight along either wall, and a round stone table. A strange loom stood in one corner, near a mossy flower garden and a weird rack of polished stones.

And more importantly, another bubbling stew that filled the room with a deliciously meaty aroma.

Oh, and also three trolls. Small. About Eli's height, though broader in the chest and longer in the arm than he was. They all looked pretty much the same, with stubby horns and yellowish third-eyes, though each had different patterns on their scaly green hide: the first had dark blotches, the second had yellow stripes, and the third had black freckles.

"This is Five," Mist-Beneath told them. "He is your brother now."

"He looks weak," the one with yellow stripes rumbled.

"Indeed he does," the old troll said. "Yet he's the only one of you who has any chance of saving our mountain and our families."

"I'm Lichen," the one with dark blotches said. "She's Yellow, and she's Fleck."

"Because of my flecks," the one with freckles said, tapping her arm with a claw. "That's why. And Lichen has patches that look like lichen and Yellow is--"

"He gets it," Lichen told her. "Um. He? She? It? Humans all look the same."

"Yeah, weak," Yellow grumbled.

"You've never seen a human!" Fleck laughed at Lichen. "How do you know how they look?"

"I've heard the stories."

"He," Eli said. "I'm male. So you two are female and you're male?"

"Obviously," Yellow said.

"How am I even understanding you?" Eli looked to Mist-Beneath. "How do I speak trollish?"

"Humans spend years learning to speak human, but we're first-born understanding trollish." She touched her scaled throat. "And we learn to speak not long after. Because humans use magic but we are magic. Your blood speaks trollish."

"Well, that's convenient," he said.

"How old do you think your sisters and brother are?" she asked.

"Twelve years? Fourteen?"

"Six years."

"I'm still five!" Fleck said.

Eli gaped at the young trolls. "They're bigger than I am."

"We age differently. More like your ... little horses?"

"Hounds?"

She nodded. "And I presume hounds are born speaking houndish."

"Uh, I'm not sure that's how that works."

"Mm. Well, now you must relax, and prepare. All of you." She turned to leave, then paused to add over her shoulder: "Oh, and eat your fill. There's plenty more."

"Who wants a bowl?" Eli asked, crossing to the cauldron. They might've been young adult trolls, but they still felt like kids to him.

All of them--even sour Yellow--accepted a bowl, and they stood around the table and ate while Fleck nattered about her favorite caverns. Endlessly. Enthusiastically. But sweetly, too.

When she finally paused for breath, he asked, "So what's this rite?"

Lichen said, "Meemaw Mist doesn't like us to talk about it until it starts."

"Meemaw?" he asked. "That's what you call her?"

"Yes," Yellow said.

"O-kay," he said, and ate another bowl of stew.

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After the meal, Lichen crossed to the rack of polished stones, which he tapped to make sweet, ethereal music. Yellow glowered at Eli then squatted at the loom, weaving smoothly despite her thick fingers. And Fleck squirmed and fussed and watched Eli with wide troll-eyes, until he finally met her curious gaze.

"So humans live above-ground all the time?" she asked. "Doesn't the sun scare you? It's always watching. So creepy! Have you ever tasted cloud? Why are you so smooth and squooshly like grubs? How come you're trying to kill us? Do you really abandon your dead into holes to rot? So creepy! Why are birds? What does a rainbow sound like?"

"We don't abandon the dead, we bury them which is--" He shook his head. "And rainbows don't make sounds and--and clouds taste like honey smells."

"But if you bury them the dead can't help you anymore! And that's just silly about rainbows, I heard they're colorful, and everyone knows that colors are plenty noisy, and humans don't even have honey."

"Sure they do," he said. "From termites. Wait. That's not the Iolian word. I don't know it in Trollish. Little flying insects with stingers that gather nectar from flowers."

"You just said the word! Termites. Honey comes from termites. We raise them in nests but they don't fly or sting. They gather nectardust from melantrite."

Termite-honey? Except the image in Eli's mind was only vaguely termite-ish. So apparently his new language skill substituted the closest concept? "Right," he said. "Okay. Uh, Mist-Beneath said we should prepare. What does that mean?"

"Well, we don't need to prepare. We're tough. Yellow is toughest but she's grumpiest, too. Then Lichen then me, then you. You're the un-toughest but you can't help that, you're stuck in a human body like a furry-headed worm. You barely even have claws. So you--and me, I guess--we should probably prepare a little."

"Right. How?"

"By play-fighting," Fleck told him. "To get stronger."

"The childbirth rite involves fighting?"

"Stonechild rite," she said. "And yeah, it--"

"Fleck, hush," Lichen warned.

"I can tell him that much!"

"But that's all."

"Fine!" She squinted at Eli. "So, yeah. It involves fighting. Wanna practice?"

"Sure," he said.

He followed her to a section of the floor marked off with a circle of rocks. When he stepped inside, Lichen played a chord that sounded ominous to Eli. For good reason. Even little Fleck must've outweighed Eli by a hundred pounds. Or more, considering he'd starved for weeks.

"How about I get a weapon?" he asked. "In place of claws."

"You're silly," she said. "Ready? First the greeting ..."

She turned her head to show him her left horn, then did the same with her right horn. He copied the motions and she hooted and lumbered at him.

He slipped to the side, then circled around. She might've been five times stronger, and equipped with vicious natural weapons, but he was at least as fast as she was--maybe faster. And he felt himself moving more smoothly than he had in his militia spars. He was stronger than ever despite being thirty pounds underweight.

He reveled in the sensation. His body loose and ready and--

Fleck spun and charged and he slipped sideways, just out of reach of her long arms. She grumbled and lunged again, faster. One of her claws opened a slash across his ribcage, but when she followed with another swipe he pivoted away.

"Stop dancing!"

"Why would I, when I have such a pretty partner?"

Lichen laughed and played a few romantic notes and Fleck bared her horrible teeth in the troll-equivalent of sticking out her tongue and charged him again.

He chuckled, the slice across his ribs already half-healed, and dodged again, leading her in a circular chase around the sparring area. When he figured she'd gotten used to his movements, and was lulled into lowering her guard, he changed strategies.

The next time she lunged he sidestepped then darted toward her.

He spun to his side, bent to maximize the force--long-ago militia lessons rising in his mind--and kicked at the side of her knee with his heel. Go for the joints.

The kick landed hard. Hard enough to snap an unarmored human's knee, but Fleck didn't even wince. Instead, pain blazed in Eli's foot and ankle like he'd kicked a boulder. He swore and hopped an awkward retreat, unable to put any weight on that leg.

So Fleck hooted again charged him--and that time she caught him.

He heard his bones break: his collarbone, his shoulder joint, his upper arm, all shattered. He howled and dropped to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut as agony flashed red in the darkness behind his eyelids.

"Oopsies," Fleck said.

"See?" Yellow said. "Weak."

"You'll be better in a minute or ten," Fleck assured him.

"He heals slow," Lichen said, as his scaly paw touched Eli's good arm. "Let's get you to bed, Five."

"By the Dreamer's bedpan," Eli gasped. "That hurts."

"Brittle like mica," Yellow said.

"Yellow like snow," Eli told her, through gritted teeth.

She snarled but didn't understand the insult, so just turned back to the loom as Lichen settled Eli on his bed. The pain brought tears to his eyes, and he was afraid to look at the wound. But he already felt things ... changing. Bones shifting inside. Healing, at least a little.

And even better: numbing.

He healed incredibly fast for a human. Still, an injury that his 'denmates' could fully repair in a minute or ten took Eli a full day. Resting, eating. Eating, eating. Watching them spar and weave and play music--and sing, which was oddly melodic despite those gravelly voices. Melodic and sometimes mournful.

"What's that one about?" he asked, when they finished a song.

"The end of the trolls," Lichen told him, while Flake said, "The last troll in the valley."

"I, uh ..." Eli looked at the empty bunks. "It's only four of us for the stonechild rite?"

"Yes," Lichen said."

"In the old days, it would've been sixteen?"

"Old days?" Yellow rumbled. "Five years ago it would've been sixteen. This new human chief, he's killing us all."

"Then why don't you fight like ... more than one at a time?"

Lichen cleared his throat. "Meemaw Mist will tell you after the rite."

"When's it going to start?" Eli asked, rolling his mostly-healed shoulder.

"As soon as you're better."

"I'm better."

Yellow snorted. "Better than a newborn newt? Maybe. Better than a rock-rabbit? Maybe. Half as good as real troll? Not even close."

"You're not wrong," Eli told her. "But wait a second, let me think ... what else aren't you? Oh, that's right--you aren't the only one of us who has any chance of saving the mountain."