On the tenth day after the four met, Toby went to pick some fruit with Lily.

“Nice weather today.” Toby tried to get some kind of conversation going, but it didn't go well.

“Yes, the weather is nice.” Lily’s answer was as dry as paint three months after being put on a wall.

“Yeah, haha,” Toby let out an awkward laugh as he returned to searching for fruit to bring back. He wanted to spend some time with the two children to get to know them. He already got pretty close with Lukas, so he wanted to get to know Lily too.

Sadly, all his efforts were met with a wall. Toby thought he could use his appearance to break that wall, like how Lily actively hugged him when they first met. But it didn’t work.

Toby thought Lily was someone easy to get close to, but she wasn’t. She didn’t talk much, and she kept things to herself most of the time.

System, help. How do I talk to a teenage girl?

[Turtle System is not equipped with conversation-supporting functions.]

No dice, huh? Toby hung his head.

Just then, he smelled the change in the air. He looked up and saw a storm was forming out of nowhere. It has been like this since he got here. According to Gramp, the weather in this forest changed dramatically because it lay on the edge of the Star Islands Zone and the Howling Sea. Here, the Water and Air Elements shifted and changed rapidly in a matter of seconds, causing rain and storms to form without warning.

“It looks like there will be a storm soon, Lily. We should get back.” Toby called out to the girl.

Lily looked down at the vine basket she created; it was half full of fruit and enough for all of them to have one each. “You can go back first. I’ll gather some more fruit.” She replied while heading further inside the forest.

Sighing at the stubbornness of the girl, Toby floated beside her.

After some time together, Toby noticed the girl tended to only return to the cabin after she got enough food to make sure everyone could eat their full. Even when the sky turned dark and it was dangerous to be going around the forest.

When Toby and Grillion noticed that, Grillion said he would get more food, and Lily just needed to get enough fruit for desserts. She protested at first, but when Grillion brought enough food back for them to store and eat for days, she relented.

They ran out of fruit in their storage, so Toby volunteered to get some more with Lily. He wanted to make sure she didn’t stay alone outside after sunset.

“Where are we heading?” He asked.

“There’s an Aerindôr fruit tree further ahead. I want to gather some of it for us.”

“Air in door fruit? That's a weird name, but ok. Is it tasty?”

"No! Not air in door. A-rin-droo. The Elf named this fruit based on its characteristics. And it tastes like freshly baked bread dipped in hot fish soup. It’s good.”

“That’s new. Can’t wait to try that.”

“It’s a kind of fruit that only ripes during a storm when Water and Air Elements are high like this. Other times when Water and Air Elements are low, they are covered inside a bark-like cacoon that the tree uses to store nutrients and Elements inside.”

“Sounds dope. Why does it need to do that?”

“To form the fruit, the Aerindôr tree must gather enough Water Element to create and store juicy water inside it. To move that huge amount of Water Element, the tree needed to use Air Element. Normally, the tree only needs enough water to survive by gathering water from underground. But it’s not enough to bear fruit.”

This is good. We are making progress. Maybe I can ask something else. Toby thought.

“You seem to know a lot about trees and fruits, Lily.”

“I like to study about nature since it helps me with my Path.”

“Your Path?” Toby pretended to not know. He wanted to confirm his theory.

“Yes, you might not know this, but I’m a Nature Herald. Knowing basic knowledge about nature is one of the simplest conditions for me.”

Ok, that confirms it. Not everyone has [Insight] like me.

“That’s nice. Is that why you are living in this forest?” Toby spoke without thinking.

Toby, you fucking idiot. Lukas said Lily pulled him and ran away into this forest to hide from those might-be bandits. Toby slapped his forehead. He peaked toward Lily. She didn’t say anything. She just stared ahead.

“Lily, look. I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me to…”

“Shhhh,” Lily put her index finger on her lips and signaled Toby to be quiet. Once Toby stopped talking, she pointed at one of the trees to her right. Toby followed her finger and looked at the tree. But he saw nothing wrong with it.

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“Try sending a pulse of Mana out and see,” Lily told Toby.

Doing just that, Toby followed his instinct and guidance from the System to send a wave of paper-thin Mana toward the tree. Once the Mana wave hit the tree, it shivered like a person when a gust of cold wind hit. When the Mana wave bounced back, Toby sensed the wave as he opened his eyes wide.

It wasn’t a tree. It was a group of short, tube-shaped monsters with balk-like skin and long, wide, green hairs woven into what looked like giant coconut leaves. They stacked like some kind of fucked-up hive. When Toby’s Mana wave hit them, they started to wiggle and crawl on top of each other, making the ‘tree’ body shift and turn like someone poured oil inside a fish tank and then stirred it.

Just when Toby thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

Eyes. Multiple glowing white eyes opened on the ‘tree’ trunk. All those eyes were staring at Toby.

Shiver ran down his spine as one of them broke up from the hive and flew toward him. It looked even creepier since there was no sunlight and thunder kept ringing in the sky. That thing with its glowing eyes flew like it was drunk. Backward and forward, forward then backward again. Toby thought he should take advantage of this, took Lily, and ran away. Yet the thing suddenly appeared before his eyes before he could even blink.

This shook Toby and prompted him to shoot back as his muscles tensed up and readied for a fight.

Lily giggled at the poor turtle’s silliness.

Toby looked at Lily, then at the thing in front of him. He squinted his eyes and scanned it with his Mana again.

“A firefly?” Toby tilted his head.

Lily came closer to the thing and raised her index finger. The thing landed on Lily’s finger and turned off its light. It was a firefly but with an extremely large pair of wings, and its belly wasn’t the source of light like those from Earth, but rather its wings. There were silver eye patterns on its butterfly-like brown wings. The light came from those eye patterns.

“They are Gleamed-Eyed Fireflies,” Lily explained. “Their main source of food is the Aerindôr tree.”

After saying that, she walked toward the firefly’s hive and waved her hands. A green light spread out like a gentle water wave scattered the fireflies. Reacting to the light, those fireflies flew toward the sky while the silver light on their wings flickered like stars on a clear winter night. The sea of stars flew toward the sky and stuck onto the canopy, creating a fake starry night.

“It’s beautiful,” Toby exclaimed as he watched what can only exist in fantasy unfold before his eyes.

Lily, too, looked at the fake starry night with a rare smile. It was the second time Toby saw her smile.

She turned back toward the Aerindôr tree and said, “We need to hurry and take some fruits before they gather around the tree again.”

Just when Lily took the first step forward, lighting struck down, tearing through the canopy and the fake starry night toward the Aerindôr tree, diving the world in white light, followed by red and orange from the burning tree.

“Fuck,” Toby jumped. “That scares me.”

“Noooooooo.” Lily screamed

Snapping his head toward Lily, Toby saw how different she was from before as she was blocking her ears and crouching down. The confident youth he saw was gone in an instant. In her place, a terrified, screaming child.

“Noooooo. Stop. Make it stop.” Lily continued to scream.

“Lily.” Toby shot toward her and hugged her head. “Lily, listen to me. It’s ok. It’s just lighting from the storm. It can’t hurt you.”

Not listening to him, Lily continued to shield herself from the outside as she screamed.

To make things worse, it was starting to rain. In barely a blink, it was raining cats and dogs. Everything in sight was soon drowned in a white curtain made from raindrops. Despite that, even the roaring sound of thunder and the smashing sound of rain hitting the earth couldn’t drown out the pained wail of a girl.

We can’t stay here. Toby quickly used [Floating Water Platform] and created a temporary shelter above their head. A water platform tripled its normal size combined.

"I'm going to lift you now, Lily. Don’t move,” Toby said as he picked Lily up with [Magic Hand] and dashed back to the cabin.

With how heavy the rain was, Toby wasn’t even sure he was going in the right direction. Knowing so, he had to move regardless. He couldn’t let Lily stay there in the middle of nowhere. The more he flew, the more the stranger his surroundings got. Thinking he might get lost at this point, Toby stopped and looked around.

Luckily, he spotted dry ground. It was under a giant tree with a trunk as big as a skyscraper and roots that looked like the giant anaconda from those 90s movies. Some of the tree branches stabbed the ground like make-shift pillars. When lighting hit that tree, those branches acted like lighting rods and let the lighting move through them into the ground, keeping the tree safe.

Toby flew toward that tree and placed Lily down. She was still shivering as she buried her face in her knees.

Looking around, Toby spotted two rock pieces he could use to start a fire. He gathered the leaves and dry tree branches - not a lot of them - and tried to start a fire to warm them up. Using rocks to create fire was not as easy as they made it look in those movies and survival reality shows as Toby failed repeatedly to the point he cursed ten generations of the rock’s ancestors.

While Toby was being a monkey, Lily flicked her wrist, and a fire burst up from the pile of dry leaves and tree branches Toby gathered. They finally had some warmth in this rain.

Toby turned his head toward Lily when she started the fire. “How are you feeling?”

“…Shameful.” She answered with a voice that sounded like she was lying in bed after finishing a triathlon.

Toby picked up some fruit from Lily’s basket and gave it to her. “Here, have some.” Seeing that she didn’t react, Toby took a bite and said in an overly dramatic tone.

“Oh no, it's such a shame that this oh-so-delicious fruit was rejected by this kind and caring girl. Whatever shall I do with these fruits? Oh no, I think I need to eat it all since they will get spoiled if we let it out in the rain like this. Oh no, such a shame.”

“…Don’t eat it all. It's for Lukas and Grillion too.”

Toby floated himself and the basket in front of Lily. “If you don’t come out of your shell, I’m gonna eat it all.”

Lily looked up at Toby with a glare, but her gaze changed to one of surprise as Toby took an Aerindôr out of the basket. “Tada.” He said it like he just did some kind of magic trick.

“It’s ok. I pick it up from the ground.” Toby said something that was not okay.

“…Thank you,” Lily said as she stared at the fruit in her hands.

“You’re welcome. There are only two, though. One for you, one for me. Since Lukas and Gramp didn’t risk their lives for these fruits. I’d say, this should be our little secret.” Toby said before biting into the fruit.

But unlike what Lily said, the fruit didn’t taste like freshly baked bread at all. If anything, it tasted like rotten egg.

Toby spat out what he was eating and yelled, “What the hell.”

Lily burst out laughing. She put the Aerindôr fruit down and told Toby, “It only tastes good if you pluck it from the branches. If it had already fallen to the ground, then it was either too ripe or it was rejected by the tree for carrying too much Water Element, causing the fruit to rot from the inside out.”

Toby looked at Lily begrudgingly, “You could have told me.”

“I’m sorry.” She giggled. “And… Thank you.”

Looking at the fragile yet strong girl, Toby couldn’t help but remember the person who once meant the world to him. “You’re welcome.”

Gazing at the rain, Toby thought this kind of life wasn’t so bad.