The strange, fuzzy child, which Addie now noticed had hands for feet, slowly started opening its eyes. It whooped questioningly, once, then twice.
A small, fully grown fuzzy person started running out of one of the ruined buildings. Addie noticed something; all of the fuzzy people in this village looked like women. The woman ran as fast as she could, pushing through the gathered crowd to reach Nettal and the baby fuzzy person. Once she got there, Squishy took up a defensive stance in front of Addie, baring his teeth.
In response, the fuzzy woman looked at Squishy with dread in her eyes and her shoulders hunched. She walked more carefully after she spotted Squishy, but she fearfully walked past him anyway and got closer to the child Nettal was still healing. No, she got closer to her child, Addie realized. The mom spared Addie a sideways glance, but otherwise ignored her to continue closer to her child.
“There you go, you should be all healed up now,” Nettal said as she took her hand away from the child’s head.
Slowly, tentatively, the child began to sit up, and he toddled over to his mother with wide open arms. The mother reached out in response, and the two shared a hugging reunion.
Then, all of the other fuzzy people started whooping again, but this time the atmosphere was different: it almost seemed like they were cheering!
Rushing past Squishy, more and more of the fuzzy people started crowding around Addie and Nettal, all whooping and hollering. Addie felt awkward. She didn’t know what to do in this situation at all, and neither did Squishy. He relaxed though, realizing there likely wouldn’t be any attack.
They obviously didn’t speak her language, and yet they were all celebrating Nettal! They didn’t seem dangerous at all, but their whooping was loud enough that it still made Addie uncomfortable.
Finally, all of them quieted down. The reason became obvious soon enough, another one of those fuzzy people came out from around a corner. This one did not look like a woman, and he had some strange mushroom headdress on. It sort of reminded Addie of a crown, like the ones kings wore in her fairy tales, but it also was wider to look more like a sun hat. Addie quickly realized it was actually one of those blue mushroom caps, just dried and no longer glowing.
The fuzzy man easily parted the crowd as he drew closer to Addie and Nettal. Once he got right up to the two of them, he bent over. At first, Addie was confused, wondering why the fuzzy man was bending over as if to grab something from the floor. But then he finished kneeling down on the floor with his hands and head splayed out on the ground in line with his knees. He was bowing. A strange bow, nothing like Area Lords might do. But Addie recognized it all the same. Then, like a wave, the bow spread out across the crowd, each fuzzy person bowing as they saw the person next to them bow.
Now Addie really didn’t know what to do. If the emotions bleeding over from their bond were anything to go by, Squishy loved the attention, but Addie just continued feeling awkward over the whole thing. Had they never seen a healer before?
Squishy preened. “It is correct for these furry not-men to bow to us. I would bow to me too. We are glorious warriors.”
“I don’t think they are bowing because they think we are warriors, Squishy. They’re happy that Nettal healed that child over there.” Addie spoke telepathically through their bond. Squishy was never good at understanding social stuff.
“Are they bowing at us?” Nettal asked incredulously, one brow upturned.
“Bowing at you more like,” Addie responded.
Hearing the two girls talk, a few of the fuzzy people in the crowd started whooping again. Not many though, just one or two before the lead fuzzy person with the mushroom crown turned his head around and hissed at the crowd. That quieted everyone again instantly.
“Um,” Nettal started awkwardly, fidgeting. “You can all stand up now.”
No one moved.
“I don’t think they understand you,” Addie said, waving toward the crowd.
Addie heard some hushed cooing and chattering from the mother-son duo sitting on the ground next to Nettal. When she looked over, the mother had her baby in her lap, gently rocking forward and back.
Addie turned back to the crowd. “I can’t believe they’re still kneeling like that. It must be uncomfortable on the rocky ground.”
Nettal just sighed. “Ok! You all can stand up now.” Nettal called out to them, a bit louder.
After no one moved, she started walking closer to the crowd.
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“Squishy, go with her just in case,” Addie told him.
He quickly pattered over to catch up, and then he, Nettal, and Lotty all approached the crowd.
Nettal herself kneeled down next to the lead fuzzy person, the only one who didn’t look like a woman, and she gently helped pull him to his feet. He didn’t resist at all as Nettal gently ushered him up into a standing position.
Then, the lead fuzzy man whooped twice at the crowd, and they all began to hesitantly stand up.
All of them started crowding around Nettal, everyone seemed to be in a gentle rush to touch her. Addie watched as tons of the fuzzy people crowded around, all trying to gently brush Nettal’s head or shoulders.
Squishy let out a few loud barks, which Addie had never heard him make before which surprised her, and the crowd flinched back, a few of the fuzzy people cowering and whooping quietly.
“Shh, no it’s ok,” Nettal reassured Squishy. “I think they’re friendly.”
Then, to help calm down the crowd, Nettal started walking back closer to all of them. She turned on her magic, as evidenced by her brightly glowing green eyes. She waded through the crowd, trying to touch every single fuzzy person she could. In turn, each fuzzy person tried to touch her as well. Again, Addie watched as fuzzy hands gently brushed against Nettal’s head, hair, shoulders, or back. They were all slightly taller than Nettal, but it didn’t feel like they were towering over her either. As Nettal waded through the crowd, no one tried to stop her. They parted before her like corn weaving out of the way.
There were too many of them for Addie to make individual differences, but she did notice that the crowd as a whole stood straighter, their fur lustered more, and their muscles moved more smoothly as Nettal healed the crowd. What once had seemed like a weary worn down crowd of survivors, now looked more like a crowd of healthy thriving villagers to Addie. Everywhere Nettal moved, the fuzzy people perked up and became stronger— the crowd gaining vitality everywhere Nettal waded through.
Nettal didn’t stop until she had weaved through the entire crowd, Squishy still standing next to her protectively. Though, he was hard to spot since he was so little. Lotty had decided to wait outside the crowd.
Finally, Nettal came to rest. Her glowing eyes toned down to normal, and Addie saw her chest heave as she breathed deeply in exhaustion. Despite being tired, Nettal’s eyes were bright and satisfied. Then, Nettal collapsed.
All the nearest fuzzy people to her reacted faster than Addie thought possible, catching Nettal before she could hit the ground hard and hurt her head. The first few people who caught her began lifting her up into the air, and then the entire crowd pitched in. They gently passed her around the crowd toward the front— toward Addie. Finally, Nettal’s unconscious body reached the very front of the crowd and the man with the mushroom hat. He picked Nettal up last and walked the few steps needed to reach Addie. Carefully, tenderly, he placed Nettal down at Addie’s feet, guarding her head and only slowly lowering her head down very last: careful to not bonk her on the hard rocky cave floor.
Squishy quickly emerged from the feet of the crowd after that, moving back to Addie’s side.
“Huh.”
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Addie stood over the bed of furs Nettal slept on. Rather than being one big rug, there were a whole bunch of tiny little furs all piled together to form something bigger. Most of the furs looked to be from Rabbits. Lotty rested his tiny head right on Nettal’s gently moving chest, the rest of him also lying down horizontally from her.
They were in one of those ruined buildings; this one was quite small, just a single room. The roof was surprisingly intact, though the walls were starting to crumble in some places, and there was glowing moss spreading its roots throughout the whole structure and messing it up. At least the moss helped to light everything up.
A fuzzy hand passed through the doorway, pushing aside some kind of mushroom fiber woven cloth covering the entrance. Addie knew it must be mushroom fiber since the cloth was blue, though it wasn’t glowing since it was dead.
Addie recognized her; she was the mother whose son Nettal healed. In her other hand, she held a medium-sized dried-out mushroom cap in her palm. Addie quickly realized they had turned it into a bowl, since there was some kind of steaming broth in it. She paused at the doorway, glanced up at Addie’s eyes, and then quickly turned her head and eyes back down to the floor in a half-bow.
Addie already knew they couldn’t understand her words, so instead, she gently ushered the furry woman into the small house by holding her hand while leading her to Nettal’s bedside.
After reaching Nettal, the woman placed the broth bowl down on the ground beside the furs.
Addie's stomach rumbled, and she realized she was hungry too. She’d only had a few cubes of meat from a small game animal. That was maybe enough to qualify as breakfast, but now that it felt closer to lunchtime, Addie was starved.
The fuzzy woman heard Addie’s stomach, and she gave a genuine smile. Addie hadn’t known they did that until now.
The woman quickly left the small dwelling. Addie didn’t have to wait long for the woman to return with two bowls in her hands, this time with her son next to her also carrying a bowl. She quickly passed one bowl to Addie, and then she and her son placed the last two bowls on the ground.
Squishy and Lotty got up and walked over to sniff at their bowls.
Addie curiously glanced down at her own bowl. It didn’t come with a spoon, so Addie guessed she’d have to slurp it instead. She brought it close to her face and took a big sniff. It didn’t smell like much, not too different than trying to smell water.
She tentatively slurped a bit of the liquid. Mushroom soup, why wasn’t she surprised? It wasn’t prepared well at all. It didn’t have any salt, and the broth didn’t have any herbs or seasoning. It was just chunks of mushroom in water basically. Despite all that, Addie was starving, and the soup was warm. She ate all of it pretty fast, burning her tongue slightly in the process. That would bother her tomorrow, she just knew.
After they all finished eating, the woman-son duo picked up the empty bowls, only leaving Nettal’s untouched bowl still in the building, and then they promptly left.
Just after they left, the fiber cloth doorway fluttering as it dropped, Addie heard some whooping in the distance. This whooping felt slightly different than before, so Addie peeked her head around the doorway to figure out why.
Not too far away out in the distance, a whole troop of fuzzy men was walking back to the ruins, and their whooping was much deeper than what she heard from the women earlier. They were carrying sharp pointy spears. The males were coming back.
Addie hoped Nettal would wake up soon.