This time, now that he wasn't completely empty, he stayed somewhat sentient as he dug in. Valencia had reappeared at some point during his first bowl, now unarmored. A black shirt with a picture of a buff lioness flexing, with a flaming fist, had replaced it, along with blue jeans. The shirt, he noticed, was torn at the sleeves, putting her arm muscles on display. Her really nice arm muscles, he had to add. She still looked sooty and tired, but she devoured the stew like him. Unlike him, she was apparently helping Meri tell the day's events to miss Larue. The rhino wound up standing behind Meri and fretting over the little dragoness as she ate.
"Aw, mama, I'm okay!" Meri protested.
“Yeah, real convincing, sis.” Maisie’s eyes were fake, but she could definitely still roll’em.
"Yes, don’t 'aw, mama' me." miss Larue scolded, though she hugged her anyway. "You can bet you're not leaving our sight for a while, young lady."
"Aww…"
“Yeah, so I found Meri just as she was running out of the wildfire. So I dove down to grab her, but she grabs my shirt and tells me we have to go back for her friend!” She looked at Timothy with respect. “Timothy here stayed behind to distract the ‘cage so Meri could run for it.” Miss Larue looked moved to tears, and thanked him profusely, even hugging him again. It wasn’t any more expected, or any less chest-bubblingly pleasant.
“And, that’s not even all! You wanna talk ballsy? So we find the wolf and get flying, and the poor guy’s barely livin’. But the Volt—Uh, don’t say it’s name, call it the Fae Eater, it didn’t take when I flattened it, and it starts chasing us into the air!” The way V described it, it’d been a great adventure rather’n a scrabble to stay alive. “Well, it’s shooting tons of lightning at me, and even I can’t dodge all that lightning! The monster has me in its sights, and Timothy yells for me to roll over. And you know what the shrimp does? He puts up a shield so tough it takes a direct hit that woulda out me in the ground, and then in the ground. This guy’s got the stuff, ma.”
The slime looked at him with some respect, then. “You must be the real thing, if V’s tooting your horn and not her own.” The dragoness stuck her tongue out at her.
“W-well, it was the thing to do, y’know? Valencia saved my life’n all.” Sheesh, she was really talking him up. Still, it wasn’t that unpleasant. Especially when both Meri and her mama were looking at him like… well, like he wasn’t just a mangy halfbreed. He hid a small smile behind a sip of tea.
“And… you said you lived in the Deepshadow, dear?” Larue released him, looking him over with concern. It registered faintly that she was already using past tense. Ouch. “I didn’t think anyone could live there.”
“Well, it’s not easy. Or, um, it wasn’t.” He winced. “The drought and all.”
Miss Larue asked a lot of questions about how he kept fed, about his life alone, and about his health in such a dangerous place. At first he thought she was just worried about where her poor kid had been. But she was clearly fretting over him, too.
"…And I have a small garden, where I grow potion herbs and some vegetables." Timothy explained over his third bowl of stew. "It doesn't grow as much as I'd like, though, so a lot of my larder comes from foraging all over the woods."
"Alone with the monsters?" Larue fretted. "Even in the dead of winter?"
"Well, um… I get by more or less okay." The rhino didn't seem to agree, flitting over behind him for another hug. Timothy was embarrassed to admit he leaned in and melted a little, like a snowbank only getting sun on one side. Don’t get used to it, don’t get used to it…
Just then, the door opened again. Timothy flinched, hands trying to fly into a casting stance, but nobody else reacted. "We're back." A woman's tired voice came.
“Mom!” V got up so fast her chair went skidding. Timothy let out a sigh of relief, though he still bit his lip at the thought of another new person. The woman who walked in looked like an older Valencia. She was a little leaner and a bit more wiry rather than Valencia’s sheer bulk, but she still looked mighty. She wore similar armor to her daughter’s, but her stole (the kind you wore over ceremonial robes, not the evening dress kind) was blue with gold-colored glyphs, marking her as someone In Charge. She was flanked by a brow-furrowed Mat.
“Honey!” Miss Larue rushed over to her wife, and swept her up in a relieved kiss. When they parted, the relieved smile on both their faces made him smile. “Are you okay?”
“No worries, Rue, V. Mat’s seen to me.” The dragoness scanned the room, looking over her children, before her gaze fell on Timothy. “And you must be the witch.” Timothy gulped as she looked him over. Then, she nodded to him, and tossed off a casual salute. She was ignoring the brand, too!? “Thank you for your help today. I’ve heard good things.” Timothy glanced at Mat, who winked at him from behind his mom. Well, that explained that. “Don’t worry, Mat didn’t fluff you up too much. All he hadda say was ‘This guy took a lightning bolt for my daughters’ to get you in my good books.”
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“Oh. Well, thanks, ma’am. Boss. Captain?”
“Sheriff, actually, but I’m off the clock.” She shrugged. “You can just call me Kate if you want. Or Sheriff Ashborne if you wanna point me out and not my wife.” With that, she shot him a quick smile before rounding on Meri. “And you…” she hugged her youngest fiercely. “We’ll have to talk more later, kiddo, but for now, I’m just gonna be happy you’re safe.” Meri sniffled. “…You’re totally grounded though.”
The exhausted captain kissed her wife and hugged her other children before slumping into a chair. While she spoke to miss Larue and Meri, Timothy suddenly had a thought. He turned to Valencia and said, “So wait— all three of you are half-dragons, um, too?”
“I said you were one of us, right?” V winked. “What’d you think I meant?” Timothy stuck his tongue out at her.
“I thought it was just, like, dragons and dragons and stuff.” The wolf said. “I didn’t think there were a lot of… us.”
“There ain’t, really.” V bit off a hunk of bread and continued through a mouthful. “Mom’s a speranz, an’ most of those tend to marry, like, within the community if they can. But she kinda fell head over heels for Mama during the whole nightmare siege thing.”
“Meri mentioned that.” Timothy said as she swallowed. “…What’s a Speranz, though?”
“Y’don’t know?” V asked, eyebrows raised. After he shook his head, she said “Well, you are Streneli, right? I guess it kinda makes sense. Basically, after the war, the bigwigs of both Rosan and the old country—uh, Sarro-dur—got together and started a bunch of cultural projects to try and make sure we wouldn’t just wind up fighting again in a few years. One of’em was basically that a buncha dragons and kindre would move into the other country, get everyone used to each other’n stuff. They called’em Speranzes.”
“Oh, I see. Now that you mention it, I think I mighta heard about that as a kid…”
“Prolly. It was kinda a big deal, y’know?”
“But…” Timothy scratched his head. “If you’re like me, shouldn’t you, like, look like kindre…?”
“Oh, that?” V shrugged. “Half-dragons take after the mom that, like, carried them. Mama carried all 3 of us, so we’re kinblood dragons. Your Kindre mom musta carried you, cuz you’re a dragonblood kindre. Either way, we’re all halfies.”
"That brand is gonna draw some unwanted attention, however." Kate returned her attention to Timothy. "It already has, actually."
Timothy swallowed hard. "…The chief, right?"
"The mayor, yeah." The captain scowled. "She's pissed. She blames Meri and you for the wildfire and the attack. She wants you in particular for questioning."
The food was suddenly like sand in his mouth. He set down his spoon with affected calm. “I-I see.” He really hated that his voice was shaky. “Am I under arrest, then…?”
“What? Like hell.” Kate said casually, catching him off guard. “You saved both my girls tonight. I’m pretty confident you’re not some mad arsonist-slash-summoner-slash-master actor.”Something about the way she said that got a snort of laughter from him. She smiled. “That said, I do need some answers about tonight. I have a town to reassure after all.” A notepad tugged itself free from her pocket to land in her hand. “So, would you mind helping Meri tell the story one more time?”
Timothy glanced at Meri, who gave him a determined nod. “Okay, then.”
“Alright, then.” She flashed him a small smile. “Just about today, mind. If I don’t know about it, I don’t gotta tell her, y’see?” Timothy chuckled, despite himself.
And so they told her. Kate didn’t pry about the brand, so he figured that would wait for another time. At some point V pulled out a notepad of her own and started scrawling something, too. It took a long time, and he felt like he'd lived through the day again by the time he was done, but it was done. V clapped his back as he finished.
"Okay, thanks." Kate said. "Man, you both had a real bad day. Y’have my sympathy.”
“Thank you.”
Valencia chewed on her pencil. “So like… Locke can be as pissed as she wants, but there’s no crime here. Right?”
Kate frowned. “Nothing concrete, but she might try to get Meri and Timothy for kiting.”
“Kiting?” Timothy asked.
“Assaulting someone by luring monsters their way.” Maisie answered. “It ain’t common. But, well…” she frowned.
"Nobody's going to go along with that." V protested.
“A forest got burned down tonight. It was an accident, but people are gonna ask questions.” Kate shook her head. “I’m not too worried, legally speaking. Still…”
Meri looked distraught, and at some point in the story Larue had pulled her into her lap. "I-I didn't mean it…"
And Kate sighed, looking sadly at her daughter. "I know, kiddo, I know. Y’couldn’t have known this would happen.”
“The Fae Eater is unpredictable.” Timothy said softly. “It’s mad, and its idea of fun involves destroying as much as it can. Meri was just in its way tonight.” It wanted me. “And what with the drought, this was gonna happen at some point.”
“It could have gone a lot worse, though. Nobody got badly hurt— except you, of course, Timothy— and all that really happened here in town was property damage from the missed bolts.” Mat was pensive, taking slow drinks of his tea. "Meri lives here, and the first thing we teach kids to do when there’s trouble is run for the walls. She was out of bounds, but that’s not a crime.”
"Yeah." And a ghost of a smile flicked across Kate's face. "I'm proud that you two managed to deal with that critter pretty good even before I got there. Nice work." Her gaze fell on Timothy. "You too, Timothy. I respect a mage who can keep their cool under fire."
"Mmm." Timothy picked at his food. Guilt made everything less appetizing. “Practice makes perfect, I guess.”
“Pssh. This guy. Don’t worry, you ain’t gonna get locked up.” The captain said. “You’ll have to talk to Locke sooner or later, but you won’t get any trouble from my people. I’ve got what I need from you.”
Valencia looked at Timothy, and then to Mat. “So, we were thinking, given that he saved Meri’s life and all…”
“Mat filled me in. Yes, he can stay here.” Kate happily leaned back in her seat. “It’ll really piss off Locke.”
Eh, he’d take it.