Gympie wasn’t in the best of positions. The gods that dumped him here had been silent over the past week and Gympie has been trying to get himself situated. But this land was weird and foreign. There were things here that were unlike anything back home. They weren’t plants, they weren’t even fungi, they were something else entirely.
A few days back, while he had been trying to settle down, a deep green scaled creature that stood head and shoulders taller than him tried to take a bite from his host. Luckily the knife he had gotten came in handy and he had learned that these things were full of some strange red liquid and that they didn’t do very well after they lost all that much of it. He assumed it must have been similar to his sap or chlorophyll.
He had felt like he could make it after that, but then he met something else. This thing was smaller than the previous thing he had seen and so he had underestimated it. That was a mistake, as the thing had sharp claws and teeth and had easily ripped a hole in his body, though had apparently hated the feeling of biting him as they didn’t try to continue the attack and instead ran away trying to hack up the skin, sap, and needles that they had gotten a mouthful of.
While he had been laying there trying to figure out how he was supposed to defend his plant with such a wound something changed. Something had seen his struggle and had come to his aid, they looked sort of like the creature that had attacked him, but they were bipedal and had a sort of spark in their eyes that the thing that attacked him lacked. He didn’t understand what they were, but they tried to help him up, he waved his arms trying to convey that that was a bad idea. Not even the few other dryads on his island dared to touch him and risk getting an armful of needles and he didn’t want pain to be these peoples first impression of him.
So, with difficulty, he stood by himself. Unfortunately, he couldn’t carry his host any farther in this condition. So, he was left with the difficult situation of deciding whether to go with these creatures and perhaps getting some aid but having to leave his host behind or missing out on this chance but being around to help his host if something tries to harm it.
Speaking of his host, he had never actually seen his host happier than when they came here, the heat and humidity seemed to really liven it up, not to mention the higher CO2 concentration in the air and thicker magic. His host was practically glowing with health despite all the stress Gympie himself has had to go through in the past week.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
He was still in the midst of deciding, but these people were waiting for him, he had to choose quickly. They started moving and he limped after them, he could run back here if something happened and if it was a big threat he would have people to help. This would have been a much easier choice if he could have asked someone to grab his host to carry it for him but again, his and his host’s needles got in the way of asking for help.
He followed them a short distance grateful that they weren’t too far away from his host. His new friends walked him to a stone by the river and motioned for him to climb up. With hesitance he did so, though he did not like taking his feet from the soil. The group gathered around him, staring and pointing, hissing and grunting, yipping and growling. They made many noises, but he understood none of them. They seemed just as curious about him as he was about them.
A larger one slithered out from the tree barking at the group that had gathered around him while glaring at him. But perhaps that was a normal facial expression on these people, he didn’t actually know if his expression meant anything. The crowd around him dispersed, he tried to step down from the rock but was hissed at by the big one, so he stopped and instead sat down on the boulder.
Someone must have gotten permission to approach him as a hunched over person came over, relying on a big stick for movement. Their tail was dragging behind them which only stood out because every other one there seemed intent on keeping their tail raised from the earth. The hunched figure let out a series of grunts and waved their stick over his head in a circular fashion before bending down with some effort and scooping up a big glob of mud from the riverbank. Before he could say another word, they thrust the mud into the hole in his abdomen.
The mud was cool against his still dripping sap and felt nice, but he very much doubted it would help him at all, in fact it was very likely to slow down the healing process. He tried to protest as they smoothed another glob of mud over his wounds getting dangerously close to some of his needles in the process but luckily not getting any lodged beneath their scales. But just as much as he didn’t understand them, they didn’t understand a word of what he said either, and so it was useless as he couldn’t even pull their arm back without giving them an unpleasant amount of needles.
After his “treatment” he tried to get up off the rock again, but the hunched over figure simply hissed at him, poking him with the muddy end of their walking stick. They made a motion for him to lie down. He wasn’t being alerted by his host that there was a threat so with some trepidation he laid down on the big rock soaking in the sun.
If his host was in danger he would leave, but for now he settled down watching as the people who took him in milled about the water or climbed trees. It would have been somewhat peaceful, if it wasn’t for what seemed to be the boss of the place’s continued glaring.