The old Abb made his way down the slope and began poking the dead beast with his stick. "Well...that's new."

He turned and looked to me, then Tok. "The frogs it is made out of are from my world, but I've never heard of anything like this."

I looked the thing over. "It reminds me of something from a horror movie, but..." I looked the thing over again. "In real life, it's big, it's dangerous, but it's just not put together all that well."

Rill began walking around the thing. "It's like they wanted to make a big frog out of a bunch of regular frogs, and when the big frog just didn't work, they began sticking bits on to make it work. It really wasn't much of a danger."

The looks being given to her by the four lizard people who had gotten hurt in the fight made it clear her opinion wasn't that widely shared.

Abb Olta perked up. "At least this solves the meat issue." He glanced up at the various looks everyone gave him. "Oh, no, no, no. Not this." He waved his stick at the corpse. "The regular frogs, good eating on them and better for us instead of just trying to live on fruit and nuts."

I nodded in agreement before realizing I had no clue what he was talking about. "What fruit and nuts?"

He seemed surprised and then lifted his stick up to point at the surrounding woods.

After looking back and forth from the trees to the Abb without any sign of him giving me a explanation anytime soon, I headed up to the trees. A moment later the three girls caught up with me.

It turned out I wasn't seeing the trees because of the forest

As Tok had described it, we were looking at the same ten trees over and over again, not the same ten types of trees, but identical copies of the same ten trees, all planted in a grid. And all of them bearing fruit and nuts.

Cherries, apples, pears, what I guessed was plums, peaches, and then some more I didn't recognize. Along with walnuts, what looked like acorns, but not, and some spiky looking things. Surprisingly Chloe identified one of the two mystery fruit trees and the two nuts. "Those are red mulberry." she said as she pointed over to the tree with red berries. "that's a chestnut," The spiky one. " and a pine tree. I got no clue what that last one is, but I'll let you try it and we'll see what happens." Those last ones one looked kind of spiky on one end with a different texture from the rest of the fruits skin between the spiky bits.

"Well they're mixed in with a bunch of other stuff from earth, and everything else is edible." I pulled one off weird fruits from the tree, and after a moment held it up in front of the Zadora. The dog sniffed at it for a moment before gentry taking it with her mouth and then beginning to toss it up in air the and pushing it around with her nose.

"Very helpful dog." I wasn't hungry enough to try it myself, at least not right now, but I picked a little big of everything else to try. Chloe explained things to Tok. "My grandpa knew all kind of plants, he taught me a lot before he passed. Some of it I remember. I'm just shocked you didn't notice any of the trees having fruit on them on your way here yesterday."

Tok sighed. "I grew up in space, I've never even been down on my own home world, how am I supposed to know what your fruit looks like?".

We headed back toward the church. Along the way I discovered we had gotten the cherry tree with the sour ones you baked with, not the ones you could snack on. Upfront Rill was waiting for us and gestured for us to follow her.

Oh, that's what happened to all the bodies.

Chloe and Tok must have spent a good portion of the night carrying all the former zombie's bodies over into a pile in the graveyard. Abb Olti sat on top of a tombstone nearby. As we arrived he looked at me, then at the corpses, then back at me. I felt a little defensive. "Well I don't know which grave they each came from, and it doesn't seen right to just dump them in random graves."

The Abb tilted his head at me as Chloe whispered, loudly, "I think he want to know why we have a bunch of dead people at all."

Oh.

"They crawled out of their graves in the first hour we got here. I think it's because we have a lot of stories about the world ending with the dead, not so much comeing back to life, as just getting up and attacking people. And since we pretended like that was something that could happen, for whatever reason, it did."

The Abb nodded his head. "Like the dark sprits that had been imprisoned below the earth becoming true." he nodded to himself then pointed his stick in my direction. "But it is disrespectful to leave them out like this, if you will not take the time to entomb them, then what did you plan to do after stacking them in one spot?"

He gave the pile a concerned look. "I hope you aren't just going to let them sit there, the children will try to play with the bones."

I decided to dig out the toys from Room C as soon as I could, or better yet get someone else to do it. "No, I was going to burn them, but there aren't any fallen branches in the the trees." I looked around. "I think I'm going to do a walk around and see just what all came through with us and if it's anything I can burn."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I tried to pass my keys to Chloe only to realized she or Tok must have still had them. "Chloe, can you lead some of the lizard people downstairs and let them get some blankets and toys for the kids."

She nodded as Rill spoke up " Verco, or Bluestones for our clan." She gave me a hard glare. "Or should I be calling you mammal people."

"Sorry. Is Verco the whole race, like humans for us?"

She nodded. "Verco on the earth, Blerf in the sea, and Crek in the air. The three races of the Ever light." She predicted what I was thinking. "All reptiles, yes. No smart mammal."

She followed along with me a Tok as I headed back behind the Church.

The tool shed, which by it size I had always though might have originally been something else, had come through. As had the back street and even some portions of the front yard of the houses behind and across the street from the church, before the area that had been brought here began to tapper until it ended just pass the dollar store.

Near where the tapering began, some tree, which Chloe might have been able to tell me which kind, had left half it's roots behind and had ended up toppling into the street.

Unlike the fruit forest I could hear a few birds chirping away, which reminded me I had heard a few doves that morning as well. Tok looked at the tree. "This looks like more then enough to burn the dead, but it's a bit much to move."

I headed back to the shed. "No problem...and Chloe still has my keys." I shook my head at myself and went looking for her as Rill starting talking about using some of the wood to cook up some frogs. I hoped she didn't mean the same fire as the funeral pyre.

I found Chloe, with the dog glued to her elbow, with a few of the...Verco, down in room C, with what I had assumed to be both the females and males eagerly looking through everything with many questions for Chloe. The children had settled in with some crayons and coloring books which they eagerly had began coloring in the areas around the pictures in order to make various wildly colored patterns.

Oh well, what ever works for them.

Chloe gave me a raised eyebrow as I walked over to her. "Can I get my keys back? I need to get into the shed."

She dug them out and handed them over. "Can you take the dog with you, maybe feed her something. She won't leave me alone."

I looked at Zadora, the pooch looked back with her ears perked up. "Food? Water? Whatcha want girl?"

One of those got her tail wagging so I headed into the basement kitchen, dug around in the bags the girl hadn't unpacked since none of it needed to be refrigerated, and poured out some dog food into one of the two tiny dog bowls, before filling the other as well. Then filling one of the bigger bowls, which had been in the kitchen when I got here, up with water.

The pup was downing the food at I left. I didn't feel like waiting for her to finish and she didn't seem all that hostile to the Verco anymore. Chloe would just have to deal with the dog if or when the pup went looking for her.

In fact I'm pretty sure Zadora had decided she was Chloe's dog now anyways.

Top side, I unlocked the shed's double doors, set my shield by them, and started striping off the armor. "Give me a second, I can't work in this." From there I considered keeping my hammer with me, but traded it in for the moment for the Machete after tying the sheath to my belt.

Then I loaded up the wheelbarrow with the chainsaw, gas, oil, limb cutter, hedge trimmer, and a very old wood axe whose axe head, as I had hoped, no longer wobbled due to the upgrade.

"I think we got everything useful, but we should take turns keeping a eye out while the other two work." Rill shrugged as Tok nodded absentmindedly, her eyes focused on the chainsaw.

Less then a minute after firing the thing up, Tok began tapping me on the shoulder until I shut it down and she asked "Please, the noise and smoke, let me fix it."

I handed it over, but did tell her "I think that's how it's supposed to work, but here you go."

Fixing it seemed to involve opening the whole thing up with tools made out of blue light, tearing out half the insides and etching symbols in various spots until she was satisficed with everything and put it back together.

She then held it out and the chain began moving with a humming noise. No pulling the starting cord, no exhaust, it just seemed to start working because she wanted it too.

"Magic." I watched her take her turn cutting the wood. Even running on magic, the green wood was taking a lot of work to cut it. A few more Bluestone clan people showed up and began carrying off the wood. In the distance I could see Chloe, with Zadora in tow, leading some of the others toward the dollar store.

We had finished getting most of the limbs and roots off when one of the kids called us in for lunch.

Several folding tables, a variety of chairs and two of the pews that had ended up in the basement at some point in the past. All together they made up a dining area in the main activity room. Bowls of fruit, pitchers of water, crackers, cheese, and a few variety of canned were set out for a filling if not balanced meal.

I got some ice for me and Tok, then got sent back for some for Chloe as well. "Please and thank you." The Verco it turned out, did not like their drinks chilled. Or cheese as the ones who forced it down to prove something found out a few hours later.

Lactose intolerant, but the cracker were a big hit with all of them. They were used to yeast free flat bread, and the crackers at least didn't make send anyone to the toilets all night.

By late afternoon, which apparently was when the sky began to turn from green to blue, we had cut up most of bigger branches and roots, leaving a pile of the smaller branches, leaves, and the main trunk and it's major branches.

The Abb had been busy.

Each of the bodies had been laid out neatly and separately on the wood, even if closely packed, and the whole thing had been set up on the remains of the road to the far end of the graveyard from the church.

"To preserve the soil from the heat." He explained.

Chloe looked at the pyre and nudge me. "You should say something."

I looked around. "Me?"

She sighed. "I know you're not really a priest, but you live here. You took responsibility for the place, and them." Then she nudged me again.

The Abb looked at me expectantly.

Well..."These people had been laid to rest on these grounds many years ago... and then, someone decided to turn their remains into something else. We don't give these bodies to the flames to laid them to rest, they have long since gone on to their rewards or damnations. We let what they left behind be cleaned by flames out of respect for them, and those had done right by them who had their efforts... undone."

I bowed my head. "Rest in peace. Amen."

Chloe echoed me after a moment, with Tok a moment behind. The Verco instead said their own words for the dead. "Your time is done."

I fetched the gas can and the shovel to get the fire going. One of the older members of the Bluestone clan produced a flint and striker and lit up the pyre.

The smoke from the green wood drove most everyone else off, but I stood a vigil. It just seemed the right thing to do. The Abb was the last to abandon me. "Well spoken. I would not mind you speaking when it is my turn. Which hopefully will not be soon."

A few hours later the first of those draw in by the pillar of smoke began to wander in.