THUMP! Suddenly, she was awake again with her blood hammering in her ears and the remnants of a dream fading quickly. There was a chill fading from the air around her. She briefly remembered the tall thing standing over her and the fur thing holding her down. She looked down and the fur thing was still on top of her.
A sudden sound to her right had her trying to turn her head and see what it was. The tall thing was back and she could see that it had something under its arm. The tall thing squatted down and started messing with a strangely glowing hole in a tree trunk.
It put several small things on the roots of the tree that seemed far too flat somehow. It then picked up a long stick and poked it into the glowing hole and something amazing happened. The dull glow that seemed like the earliest part of dawn got brighter and there were moving leaves of pure sunlight dancing briefly over the dark soil in the hole. It briefly lit the whole area around the tall thing before they went away.
The tall thing then began to sing like a bird but much longer and more soothing sounds. It was mesmerizing. It picked up several small pieces of branches and twigs and flicked them into the glow hole before grabbing one of the thing it had set down a moment earlier. It set several of the bigger things in the hole then. A moment later, there was a popping sound like when the tree had fallen over under her and her blood began hammering again as she expected the whole tree above the glow hole to begin falling on her.
The next thing she knew, the dancing leaves of sun where back in the glow hole and it was brighter. She could see the tall thing clearly in silhouette. She could also see where she was a lot clearer now. The thing she thought was a tree trunk with a glowing hole at its base wasn’t even made of a tree. Or at least not one she knew of. There were lumps of what looked like different colors of dirt that made the thing up with another color of dirt between all the cracks.
To the side of the tall thing was a broad flat thing that looked like the stack of logs from when those creatures were stacking them in the stream of water. The stack was all very well fitted together with no cracks she could see but it was still very dark. The stack of logs rose to her right till it met something else. This looked like a bunch of branched to her before but now she could tell they were strange. The branches above her were all straight and flat.
She then noticed the area between the branches had big leaves flattened between them. She could barely make it out in the dancing light from the glow hole. The light from the dancing flames wasn’t bright enough to see clearly. “Flames? When did I know the word for part of the sun?”
The noise of her talking to herself made the tall thing turn and look at her. She met the gaze of those eyes and despite her initial freeze of panic, she still felt safe somehow. It was weird to be this close to something that big and still feel safe but the thing could have eaten her earlier and didn’t. The tall thing also seemed to have a gentle grace about it that just made her feel safe.
It stood up and she realized that it had stopped singing the song from before. Now it began making noises at her that she thought were another song at first but then she heard all the breaks in rhythm and thought it might be speaking. She cocked her furry round ears at it and listened, even if she couldn’t understand.
The thing kept talking even though she didn’t respond. Its tone was always calm and soothing even as it went around the small area inside the stacks of logs and did things. It moved over to the glow hole again carrying a big thing shaped like a nut and colored like dirt. It then picked up a thing made of flat branch pieces and poured water out of it into the big nut.
A moment later it came over to her and was carrying a small hollowed out branch piece. When it set the branch piece next to her, she heard the swish of water in it and realized how thirsty she was. She began struggling to get to the water but the fur thing was too heavy.
Gently and with great care, the tall thing reached down and lifted the fur thing off of her. She managed to right herself on her hands and knees and crawled over the soft ground thing over to the water and began drinking gratefully. She dunked her face in as far as it would go and kept drinking. She would have kept going but thew tall thing lifted the branch with water from under her.
She held on as long as she could but was too weak to keep her hold for long. she fell back to the soft mound of not quite dirt thing under her. She wanted to protest but then the tall thing reached a hand down to grab her.
On a certain level, she was calm and felt safe around the tall thing. This, however, was beyond what she could stay calm about and she began to scream and back away. the sudden noise must have caused the tall thing to panic too because it stepped back and dropped the water branch. Suddenly, before she could react, the tall thing had grabbed her, flipped her around, lifted the fur thing, put her back under it, and let go. It was so fast, graceful, and gentle that she didn’t even have time to react.
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With her safely stashed back beneath the heavy fur thing, the tall thing stepped back and started singing again in a gentle soft voice. It was trying to soothe her she realized. It then went over to the right past the glow hole and stood next to something made of branches.
The angle she was at now, while still stuck beneath the heavy fur thing let her see the tall thing and what it was doing. The tall thing was using a rock on some kind of root but it stopped for a moment. It turned to the big nut thing beside the glow hole and in a swift practiced motion, it moved the nut-like thing over the flames. It then grabbed the pile of things that it had scraped loose from the root and dropped them into the nut-like thing.
It pulled up several other things that looked like either chunks of dirt or roots and mashed them into pieces with the rock. After all of the pile was in small pieces, it grabbed the pile and dumped them in also. Next, the tall thing grabbed several strands of some kind of weeds and grasses and tore them into pieces before tossing them in after the rest.
She couldn’t figure out what the tall thing was doing but it was mesmerizing. It had clearly done this before and had a purpose to what it was doing. She couldn’t figure out what that purpose was though. The tall thing then picked up a long strait stick with a flat dip on the end and stuck the flattened end into the top of the nut-looking thing.
After spinning the stick around for a while the tall thing started singing a different song. The new song sounded more upbeat and had more chirpy sounds than the last one. While it sat next to the flame spinning the stick it grabbed more chunks of the broken limbs that it brought in earlier and shoved a couple into the flame.
It wasn’t long till she could smell something that she had never smelled before. This was a smell unlike anything she had ever even dreamed might exist! It made her wonder if that was the purpose of everything the tall thing was doing. The smell was great but she wished she could have some nuts. Why was she thinking of food now?
After a while longer, the smell got a lot stronger and she was getting hungrier. She was curious why this strange smell was making her hungry but she just watched in fascination. The tall thing finally stood and reached over to grab something too low for her to see and threw that into the nut-thing. With the tall thing not in front of it, she could see something coming out of the top of the nut-looking thing. It looked a little like the snow that always floats in the sky.
The tall thing sat down in front of the glow hole again and went back to spinning the stick. After a while, it stood up and pulled the stick out before bringing it up to its mouth. First, it blew on the end of the stick a few times. Then it bit the end of the stick. Weird! It seemed to like it though since its ears began bobbing up and down.
It then put the stick back in the nut-like thing and grabbed some kind of rock or mound of dirt from the side. It then pulled the stick back out and tapped it on the side of the rock. Had to be a rock because it wasn’t soft like dirt. It did that a few times before getting a smaller version of the long stick with a flat end and putting it in the rock, making her realize it was hollow.
It sat the first rock aside and then did that last few steps a second time. Once it had the second rock set aside, it grabbed a small skin looking thing and grabbed the nut looking thing off of the flame and set it to the side. The almost snow colored thing stayed above the nut-like thing even though she could barely see either the nut thing or the stick sitting in it.
The tall thing then brought one of the rocks over and upon closer inspection, it wasn’t made of stone. It was round and flattened but was definitely made of wood and there was a little of the snow-colored stuff coming from the top. The tall thing sat on the soft mound of not-dirt and it sunk a bit on the right side. She was worried it might fall on her but the tall thing was sitting up straight.
It then pulled the shorter stick with a flat end out of the round, wood thing and there was something on it. The tall thing brought it up to its mouth and blew on it a few times. She thought it was going to eat it again but instead it held it down to her. She tried to back away but she couldn’t.
She wasn’t convinced that this was food until the tall thing took the stick back and bit the stuff off of it. It then dipped the stick back into the wood hollow and brought it to its mouth again. Again it blew on it a few times before holding it down to her. She sniffed of the end of the stick and thought she would pass out from the delight of the scent. This didn’t smell like any normal food but it was food.
She inched her head close and licked the stick. The taste was better than the smell! She had never been so amazed in her life! Even the change from those first nuts to the harder ones hadn’t been this different in taste. The tall thing pulled up the heavy fur thing and let her get at the stick better. She didn’t know what the thing was but she liked it a lot better all of a sudden.
Kaori just smiled at the heartwarming scene of the young elven woman feeding a porridge to the emaciated scuirringen girl. She had watched with trepidation these past three days as the shaman girl of the former seaside village had found her and nursed her back to health. The girl had matured a lot over the past few years into a kind young woman. This was where Kaori had meant for the little furball to head in the first place. She would have arrived a lot sooner if she would have just gone instead of stopping for extended periods of time.