Something was wrong.
Addie tried to further open her bleary eyes, straining to figure out what was so off about this morning. She tried to sit up, but it took more effort than normal as she struggled against her morning sleepiness. She moved through molasses, desperately trying to get up but only barely moving.
“Nettal!” Addie shouted, trying to get help. “Help! I can’t move!”
She couldn’t even turn her eyes and look to her right, to look at Nettal. Her muscles locked up, and she couldn’t turn her eyes away from the ceiling.
She lay on her back, stuck, unable to move, struggling against an unseen force.
With a surge and exhale of breath, Addie finally sat all the way up, her breathing coming heavily. Her eyes shot open– it was like the past few moments had been a dream, despite feeling like real life.
“Addie?” Nettal asked groggily, Addie able to see her cousin through her spatial sense, “Everything ok?”
“Did you hear me s-shouting earlier?” Addie asked with a stutter, her fingers shaking. She still couldn’t quite tell what had happened.
“No. I thought you just woke up?” Nettal said more as a question than a statement.
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands while she yawned.
Addie looked to her left and nearly shouted in surprise as her heart started accelerating further.
She put her hand on her chest as she tried to breathe naturally again. It was just the Mushroom Furrian and Head Warrior Furrian. They had just entered the building, the warrior still holding aside the doorcloth. The Mushroom Furrian began to walk toward Addie, the warrior right behind him.
After a few steps, the Mushroom Furrian stopped in front of Addie, while the Warrior Furrian mirrored the action to stop in front of Nettal, who was sitting upright on her furs.
Almost in unison, the Mushroom Furrian reached out to help Nettal up, and the Warrior Furrian did the same for Nettal. It definitely seemed odd that they would come in here and fetch like this.
The Mushroom Furrian smiled at Addie, so she hesitantly took his proffered hand. He gently helped her up, and then he started to lead her out of the tent.
Addie let go of his hand quickly to grab her poncho and put it on. He waited patiently for her, but the moment she had it properly over her head he reached out to hold her hand again.
Addie wanted to stop him, to tell him she and Nettal had plans to go exploring today, but she decided not to say anything yet. Maybe he needed her help for something really important.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the Warrior Furrian started leading Nettal in a different direction. That seemed odd to Addie because Nettal had already healed every single Furrian in the village. Surely they didn’t need her for anything right now?
Regardless, Addie had decided to see where he wanted to take her. Since she didn’t feel too great about the situation, she did have a good idea for how to keep Nettal safe.
“Squishy, can you go with Nettal for today? I have Ember if I get in danger, but Nettal can only heal people.”
“Your wish is my command, my lady.”
Squishy turned around to stop following Addie, and he immediately bolted in the opposite direction to meet up with Nettal. She was still within line of sight, so he caught up to her quickly.
The Mushroom Furrian barely reacted to Squishy leaving. Addie let out a breath of relief. She felt better now that Squishy could protect Nettal— just in case.
The Mushroom Furrian continued to guide Addie by the hand. Addie recognized the path by now. They were going to the village center again, the same place they ate dinner with everyone last night.
All of the women were working in the center again, most of them doing various tasks by the single stream running through the ruins: Laundry, dishes, that sort of thing.
The Mushroom Furrian led Addie to the three elder women from last night, and they greeted Addie with big smiles all around.
He lightly patted Addie on the back once before sauntering off with a wave. Addie idly waved back, but she quickly turned her attention to the elder women.
They chattered amongst each other for a moment, in that language Addie couldn’t understand. One of them walked forward and grabbed Addie’s hand (the Furrians had been doing that a lot lately). She pointed toward another pile of mushroom logs, this time with what looked like a cauldron filled with water and some type of cloth on the inside.
Without worrying too much about poisonous air since they seemed to already know about that, Addie threw a quick fireball to the pile and ignited it. Some of the other younger women took over after that, spreading the fire around to other piles where everyone could do laundry using the hot water.
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One of the elder women then led Addie by the hand into a building right beside the stream. She pushed aside the doorcloth, patted on a large pile of furs, and sat down on the fur-laden floor. With a smile, she patted the furs next to her, prompting Addie to sit down.
Addie did so and then looked at the elder curiously. Right after, the other two elders walked into the building as well, both of them carrying baskets filled with stuff. They also sat down, the three elders facing Addie in a semi-circle.
One of the elders pulled out a simple rock, pointed to it, and said something in that strange clicking hollering language they all used. It sounded really strange. They even clicked their tongues, kind of like Christena might do if she were scolding Addie.
“That’s just a rock,” Addie said plainly, still trying to understand what they wanted.
The elder in the middle quickly shook her head, ‘no’, and then she repeated the same exact clicking sound from before, “T’cha”, she said, clicking her tongue at the front of the word.
Oh, Addie was getting it. She had done this activity every single morning for almost her entire life. They were trying to teach her morning lessons!!! But it felt kind of off, almost like her dream from this morning– like she was forced to be here in a way that wasn’t normal.
“T’cha”, Addie repeated their word for ‘rock’.
The elders looked around the circle at one another, eyeing each other while communicating silently. The main elder shrugged, and then so did the other two.
“T’cha,” the elder repeated.
“T’cha,” Addie said, “Rock.”
That time the elders all nodded in seeming agreement.
The elder on the right pulled put the rock back in the basket in her lap, and pulled out a new object, this time just a simple mushroom.
“Cheewuh,” she said, almost saying ‘cheer’ but then adding one of their signature whoops to the end of the word.
“Mushroom,” Addie said. Then she quickly repeated it in their language, “Cheewuh.”
They repeated this for five more objects, after which they circled back around to ‘rock’. Addie remembered their word for rock just fine, and the other four words as well. It wasn’t a lot of vocab, and Addie had been doing vocab quizzes for as long as she could remember, so this was almost too simple for her.
But she really didn’t want to waste her time doing this right now. She and Nettal needed to find a way home, not learn Furrian all day. Regardless of the fact that Addie hated morning lessons, she actually couldn’t just stick around here learning. She felt an initial reaction of guilt; it had been ingrained in her mind for years that she couldn’t just skip morning lessons. Memories of Christena getting upset with her flashed through her mind.
However, it was precisely those memories of Christena that urged Addie to get up and figure out a way home. There were more important things for her to be doing than lessons with the Furrians. She needed to shake the misplaced guilt off and get to work. She and Nettal had been talking about exploring for a while now, and Addie guessed that the Furrians kept on trying to keep them busy so they wouldn’t have time to do so.
Before they could pull out another object from one of the baskets, Addie decided to stand up. It was hard for her to do so, and it made the guilt intensify, like she was skipping lessons and an adult would get mad at her later. But she held strong, reminding herself that this wasn’t the time for lessons.
“I really have to go. Nettal and I need to find a way home,” Addie pointed out the door.
The elder Furrians of course didn’t understand what she was saying, but it didn’t matter. She felt bad ditching the elders like this, but she had to.
“I really want to go home.” That’s all that needed to be said.
Addie turned on her heel and started walking out of the building. She heard one of the elders start whooping loudly, but when she turned her head, the middle Furrian was gripping the other’s shoulder, keeping her from standing.
Finally, Addie left the tent, feeling much like she had after finally waking up from the nightmare this morning. Addie could finally move.
She focused on her spatial sense, and used one of the abilities she hadn’t bothered with since her time in the forest. No matter how distant Squishy was, he would always ping on her spatial sense, even if she couldn’t see anything else that far away.
Addie sent out a message to Squishy as she ran in his direction, “Are you and Nettal doing alright?”
“Indeed, my lady. The Warrior Furrian is making his underlings spar each other, and then asking Nettal to heal them immediately after so they can continue without break. Nettal is growing frustrated; She thinks it is not right to injure oneself on purpose just because you have a healer nearby. I personally love the sparring, though.”
Addie turned a corner and kept running, huffing as she went. “You silly cat. We don’t have time for that, it’s time to go exploring. We’re going home.”
“The head warrior is quite insistent.”
Addie shook her head slightly. It didn’t matter how insistent the Warrior Furrian was. She and Nettal couldn’t stay.
Addie skidded to a stop as she finally made it to the building Squishy was in. She recognized it as the same building Nettal had been pulled into yesterday to heal the warriors.
She pulled aside the doorcloth and peeked her head into the building. No one was inside, and with a quick scan of her spatial sense, Addie realized they were actually in the clearing right behind the building. That was easily solved with a quick jaunt through Realmspace. After a few steps, Addie reappeared behind the building, popping back into reality practically on top of Nettal.
“Woah!” Nettal shouted as Addie windmilled her arms, trying not to fall onto Nettal.
With a sudden jerk, she managed to get her balance before taking a step back. “Why are you sitting on the ground!” Addie asked half-accusingly.
“Why are you trying to fall on me!” Nettal quipped right back.
“I wasn’t.” Something moved into Addie’s vision from the left, the Warrior Furrian was walking forward.
Further behind him, a few other Furrians were facing each other with weapons, but it looked like they had put their spar on pause.
“We need to get home,” Addie said.
“I think so too, but when I try to leave this guy blocks me from moving. I was trying to tell you through Squishy.”
Addie gave Squishy the stink eye. “You didn’t explain very well,” Addie scolded.
He drooped his cat-like ears. “I attempted to, but perhaps I need to be more direct...” His response trailed off.
“Whatever. Here, hold my hand. Let’s go.”
Nettal grabbed onto Addie’s hand, using it to help her stand up. She dusted off her poncho a bit, and then they started walking out of the clearing.
The Warrior Furrian shouted a deep rumbling word that reverberated through Addie’s chest. Both girls stopped as he walked directly into their path.