Explorer Garden-Blessing did the best she could to explain to the others what her intentions were. They were all so astonished that she had “suddenly” come to this conclusion, as if she hadn’t spent literal weeks thinking about it already!
“Your… enthusiasm is welcome, but I am not sure you have thought that declaration through.” Explorer Verdant-Trail hissed as it pulled itself out of the tub and closed the shutter on the water pipe. “We have only just met.”
“You may technically be meeting me for the first time, but I’ve been with you two as long as Chase has been! Longer, even, given the poor boy is only here half the time.” The crab’s snaps, taps and waves took every bit of coordination she could muster. She needed to make sure the emotion came across along with the words. They needed to know she was serious. “I’ve seen your beautiful home, I’ve learned about your fascinating work, and I’ve learned just how sorely missed Explorer Valiant-Claw is. I want to try and take up its role in its absence. I want to make a home for myself in the Highnests. I want to see as much of this world as I can in the time I have.”
“Really? Just like that?” An angry squeak sounded from the left of the tub as the bat laying there struggled onto its feet. Garden-Blessing had spotted the bat twice in the infirmary, once when it came to ask a physician something, and another time with Verdant-Trail to attend Eager-Horizon’s awakening. She hadn’t spoken to it, however, and it never paid her any mind. “One taste of mobility and you immediately go native? Am I the only actual human here? Or did you all just give up?”
“Hey!” Maggie shouted, leaping in front of the bat with a flap of her wings. “Back off, kid. You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about!”
“Oh, and you do? Last time I checked, humans didn’t fall in love with falcons!”
Maggie opened and closed her beak as words failed her, and Garden-Blessing could tell that things were about to get ugly. Before she could unleash her anger upon the bat, the crab stepped in, putting her armored body between the two.
“Knock it off, both of you!” Three loud claw snaps in sequence did a good job of silencing the arguing pair, albeit only briefly. Maggie had the sense to realize what she was doing. The bat, however, did not.
“No! I’m tired of just ignoring this! Why can’t any of you see just how insane you’ve been acting? Why am I the only one who realizes it? If we don’t get it together, we’re all going to- OW! HEY!”
Garden-Blessing had taken her smaller, more easily controlled claw and pinched the bat’s right ear, hoping to the heavens that she wasn’t putting enough pressure on it to cause any actual harm.
“Over here. You and me. Let’s talk.” It took all of her concentration to walk and control her grip at the same time, so her instructions ended up blunt and stilted as she tugged the bat away from the others.
“Let go of me, psycho!” The bat briefly resisted, but their small body and poor coordination failed to make any headway, so they were stumbling along after only a moment. “Okay, okay! I’m coming! Slow down!”
Once she reached the far end of the room, Garden-Blessing released the bat and positioned herself between them and the others. In a blurry corner of her bizarre panoramic vision, the crab spotted the shape she knew was Maggie moving to speak with the other Explorers, though she couldn’t tell what was being said.
“You seem to think that there is a problem in our little group,” she began, carefully angling both of her eyestalks to get a proper view of who she was talking to. Using just one to look at something, or both eyes being too close together, would leave the image flat and distorted, like she was looking at it on an old television. “Seeing as I’m effectively the newest person here, would you mind explaining it to me?”
“Sure. Okay. Might as well try before we all go back to pretending things are fine like we always do.” The bat took the opportunity to use the wall for support, allowing them to wrap their wings around themselves and give them a rest. “None of you have any common sense,” they sighed. “That’s the biggest part of the problem.”
“Oh?”
“We’re not like the animals here. We think differently, and we feel differently. The more we try to be like them, the sooner more of us are going to break.” They clenched their jaw, baring their teeth to express the next idea. “But all of you are going all out on it, and it’s not going to work. Just look where it got ‘Ink-Talon’ and ‘Quiet-Dream.’”
“Is something wrong with their names?” Garden-Blessing tilted her body a bit to ask the question, having noticed the disdain in the way their ears twitched as they expressed them.
“None of you should even have names!” The bat squealed, quickly reigning themselves in after they nearly toppled over in the process. “The only ones who aren’t messing up their brains doing it are Maggie and Chase, who don’t count.” They shook their head before continuing. “But the real issue is that the two of us who seemed to take charge around here have completely cracked!” They dramatically flared out one wing away from the wall.
“Go on.”
“The crow ditched us! He got one moment of freedom and flew off into the wilderness! He could have just surrendered!” The bat was trying to sound angry, but all the crab heard was hurt and betrayal. “And of course that was the last straw for the squirrel. The guy has barely left the library in the last two days, and he was clearly on the brink the whole time he’s been here. If we don’t get our acts together…”
“Then what?”
“Then one of us is going to get everyone else killed!” The bat screamed, their piercing shriek echoing in the mostly-empty room. If Maggie and the Explorers weren’t paying attention before, they almost certainly were now. “These ‘Guardians’ are just waiting for an excuse. I know they are. I can hear what they say to each other around corners and behind doors where most others can’t. The only reason Ink-Talon’s stunt wasn’t the death of us was because he had to defend himself. If more of us break under the strain of all of this, then-”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Garden-Blessing stepped forward and threw both of her “arms” around the bat, scooping them off the wall and pulling them into an embrace. She probably shouldn’t have done that, she didn’t have the control necessary to guarantee that she wouldn’t just painfully slam her limbs into them or squeeze them way too tight. Not to mention her hard carapace and complete lack of body heat didn’t exactly make a hug from her all that appealing. But old habits die hard. This bat clearly needed a hug, they needed someone to comfort them, and they needed someone to reassure them that things were going to be okay. A hug from Grandma Crab would just have to do.
“It’s okay. I’m here for you. We’re all here for you. We’ll get through this.” She put as much intention and emotion into the gesture as she could, ready to release the bat the moment they began to pull away or ask her to stop. They never did. Instead, they began to make an odd, staccato chittering sound.
It was a wordless expression, devoid of any higher thought or meaning. They were cries of sorrow, anger, despair, and frustration. The bat leaned on Garden-Blessing as they continued to sob in the only way they could, their wings falling awkwardly limp to their sides. All the crab could do was hold them tighter, providing as much stability as possible.
“You are going to be okay.”
She hoped it would be enough.
----------------------------------------
One hour, seventeen minutes, and forty-two seconds. Forty-three. Forty-four.
The bat had been laying in the corner of the bathhouse with Garden-Blessing for that long already, counting the passing moments being all they could do to keep from sinking deeper into the black, yawning abyss of despair that threatened to swallow them whole. Their wings ached from how they were laying on them, more a rumpled pile of membranes and bones than anything resembling a comfortable resting position. They didn’t care.
Forty-seven. Forty-eight. Forty-nine. Fifty.
The bathhouse door had opened and closed six times in the past hour, and only one set of footsteps had accompanied it each time, so they knew that the two of them weren’t alone in there. Even if Maggie, Verdant-Trail, and Eager-Horizon all left one by one, at least two more people would have entered, and only one of them could have left. It didn’t really matter, though. No one had said anything. There wasn’t anything to say. The bat began making that horrible chittering-sob noise again. Eighth time that hour. They hated it, but they also hated what they were feeling. Hated feelings got expressed with hated sounds.
Fifty-five. Fifty-six. Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight.
“Hey.”
The bat raised their head, the first deliberate movement they’d made in thirty-one minutes. It was Maggie, her tone and expression entirely unreadable between the bat’s Attunement and mental state.
“I wanted to apologize for getting on your case the way I did. You’re right that there’s been a lot we’ve just been ignoring, and while you were overly antagonistic about it, I’d be a hypocrite if I judged you for that.”
“Thank you.” The bat nodded their reply, only barely able to choke back their cries, much less make other noises.
“With that said…” Maggie glances back over her shoulder, drawing the bat’s gaze to the real reason that the door had been opening and closing so much. Seeker Sunny-Plume stood just behind Maggie, acknowledging the bat with a curt nod. Quiet-Dream was watching nervously from the far end of the room, with Black-Leap perched on his back like some sort of comical garden sculpture. Song was once more lounging in the tub like she’d never left, and even Swift-Paw had returned to the campus for the occasion, whatever that might have been. Verdant-Trail and Eager-Horizon hadn’t left either, with the lizard even having taken the opportunity to fall asleep on the cool tile floor.
“Are you going to hold a pity party to try and cheer me up?” The question came out in a barely audible squeak.
“Soooo, actually…” Maggie bobbed up and down on her feet for about 2.4 seconds as she considered her words. “I was thinking. We all have a lot we need to discuss if we want to ‘get our act together,’ as you put it. And most of it pertains to how we’re handling our personal issues and how our behavior might be impacting others. So I asked everyone if they would be willing to hold another ‘Support Group’ session, like we did on our first day here. We can have our newer arrivals acquaint themselves more formally with everyone else, then we can all air our grievances and hear everyone’s perspectives. Verdant-Trail even offered to take a power nap so that Chase can attend.”
“That’s a lovely idea, little bird!” Garden-Blessing spoke up for the first time since she had settled into the corner cradling the bat, shifting her carapace so that two of her legs could tap on the tile floor freely. “I was going to introduce myself to everyone one-by-one, but this certainly makes things easier!”
“So, you in?” Maggie awkwardly balanced on her left foot as she lifted and extended her right one forward. She threw a wing out for balance, but still would have fallen if Sunny-Plume hadn’t used one of its own wings to hold her upright. “Ink-Talon always made this look easy,” she grumbled, finally opening her foot for a hand-less handshake. “Smug bastard probably doesn’t know how much he’s being carried by the way his brain got rewired.”
“Probably not.” The bat unfolded their wings and rolled onto their feet, wincing as the bad resting posture finally came back to bite them in the form of painful tingles where his limbs had fallen asleep. “And yeah. Support Group Round Two sounds like the best solution we have right now. Thanks.” They extended their right wing, the less numb one, so that Maggie could grasp their little thumb-claw and move it up and down. “And… You too, Garden-Blessing. Thanks, and sorry.”
“Don’t mention it, little bat!” The crab snapped her claws, seemingly happy just to hear (or feel?) the noise. “We all just have to do what we can, when we can. No more, no less.”
“Then I hope you don’t mind me doing nothing,” they cracked a pathetic attempt at a toothy grin.
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a bright one! You just need to ask for help more often.”
The bat took a few steps forward and nearly bowled Maggie over as they tripped over their own wings.
“Like right now?” they hissed, having collapsed into a second, even more awkward pile of limbs.
“Like right now, yes. Climb on.” Garden-Blessing held out her larger claw as a ramp of sorts, and helped nudge the bat onto the smooth back of her shell, where they had just enough room to lounge comfortably.
As the pair made their way over to join the others, the bat was unable to stop themselves from counting each of the crab’s distinct, irregularly-timed footsteps (it took fifty eight steps to reach their spot in the circle). In spite of that, though, less dreary thoughts of the future started to trickle into their mind for the first time in a while. It was a feeling they weren’t used to feeling, even before ending up in this body:
Hope.