Someone is following me.
Other than the strange feeling of disconnection, the glade was spectacularly comfortable. While the Brightleaf had been a mixture of pants-shittingly terrifying stuff and beautiful scenery, Crystal’s little clearing was just… nice. I felt peace while past the circle of trees, as if I’d shed some invisible weight.
Naturally, I immediately became paranoid.
“Please tell me I didn’t walk into a fairy circle or anything else of the sort,” I growled, refusing to move past the threshold.
Though… I was already in. Whatever harm could be done had probably been achieved.
“Fairies keep mushroom circles.” Eternity’s voice was returning to its normal monotone. “Your flesh would’ve been stripped off your bones before you had a chance to complain.”
“Lovely.”
Crystal and Tusk had gone around the little hill and I followed, curious to see more of the place. The molerat had deflated to its normal size again and was now drunkenly stumbling in the gnark’s wake.
“Good, Tusk, good. I feed you. You sleep inside tonight. Earned it.”
I watched as Crystal emptied the last of a large sac of some kind of grains into a pile. Tusk dug into it with relish, though the portion size did not suggest he’d get his fill, even after Crystal shook out every last grain.
“We find more tomorrow, yes? More more.”
There was also some kind of chicken coop nestled against the side of the hill, and a couple patches of garden, overgrown with weeds. This was a farmstead, though just barely within the definition of one. Whatever food Crystal could grow out here couldn’t have been much to sustain herself and Tusk.
‘Were you out foraging?” I asked, still taking in the various other debris strewn about.
Crystal sneered at me as she trotted back towards the front of the hill. “Follow,” she demanded. “And wipe feet. Stinky, messy human no make mess in Crystal’s beautiful home.”
In a hole in the ground there lived a gnark. And her home was everything a hobbit’s was not.
Dark, dank, musty-smelling, and over-cluttered with junk. The stench hit me first when I leaned down to pass through the small wooden door, then the sight of a garbage dump compacted into a warren scarcely ten meters across. I almost tripped and fell down a set of uneven wooden stairs, and barely caught myself by grabbing hold of some pile of junk haphazardly stacked. I was upright for a moment, then the whole clutter unbalanced and I toppled to the hard packed-earth floor with an assortment of pans, pots, jugs and jars raining around me.
“Human! Don’t destroy Crystal’s beautiful home,” the gnark wailed as she started picking up her possessions, only to pile them exactly as they’d been.
“This place is a health hazard.” I rubbed at my shoulders and my aching side. I’d be sporting a fascinating collection of bruises and cuts come the next day.
“Human’s face is health hazard.” Crystal stopped, squinted up at me, then sniffed in annoyance. “What is health hazard? Can trade? Can eat?”
I finally slung off my backpack, opened it, and produced the promised jar of pickles. “This, for berries,” I said as Crystal tried to grab it out of my hands. “Lay off.”
It took some time for the gnark to find what she’d promised in all that garbage.
Well, I’m being unkind. Once I got used to the low light—there was a lamp burning in a corner, which let out a pale, sickly light—I could see that the place was organised after some impenetrable fashion. Jars with various things floating in various liquids lined one wall. And there was a cauldron atop a fire pit farther in the back, with even a little sprout of a chimney punching up through the ceiling.
Dried flowers were scattered about, and the smell wasn’t of decay or rot. It was just earth and plants and dust, nothing gross, but strong enough that it made me dizzy.
The home didn’t look great, sure, but it was indeed a home, well-cared for. Like its owner, it was damn ugly.
Crystal brought out a jar, took its cap of leaves and earth off, and rummaged inside its contents with her bare hand. “Here, stinky human.” She offered me a fistful of some dark-red berries, still dripping whatever pickling juice that was.
My imagination helpfully provided a floating green skull above my hand.
KLAUS: Eklil, sorry to bother you. You said to describe what Crystal gives me.
I turned the berries in my hand. They looked like raspberries, except that one end was pointy and white.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Please describe the fruit. They should be bright red and smell sour.
The whiff I took of the things had my eyes watering and my mouth puckering. I felt my nose constrict, as if I’d shoved a lemon up there and snorted the juice.
KLAUS: They smell very sour. Red, almost like blood, and they have a white dot on one end.
Crystal made to take the jar of pickles from me but I pulled it away. “Patience,” I said, narrowing my eyes in the same way she did. “Checking if you’re not lying.”
“Crystal is gnark princess, you filthy, breaking human. Crystal no lie!”
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“Crystal whacked me with a stick and tried to steal my pack.”
“But Crystal no lie!”
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: That sounds appropriate. Eat only a couple. Drink water after. Eat a couple more first thing in the morning. The spores should work their way out of your system.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: As snot. They will exit your body in the form of snot. Do not be alarmed when it happens.
Lovely. I handed over my jar and Crystal grabbed it greedily. I half-expected her to immediately dig into them but, to my surprise, she bounced past me with the jar under one gnarled arm. She opened the door and Tusk waddled in.
“Got food for you, Tusk,” Crystal cooed as the molerat rubbed itself against her side. “Look, pickles. Good pickles.” She dug one out and held it out for the molerat to eat from her palm. Then a couple more before closing the jar and setting it up on a earthen shelf. “We save for later. Yes, yes. For later.”
I ate the berries as instructed and blood burst out my nose as every cell in my face puckered up. The things weren’t sour. There was no word to describe how they tasted. I don’t think we had a way on earth of measuring how sour something could get, but if we had… this would’ve been the equivalent of pure capsaicin on the Scoville scale.
A sip of water didn’t do much to help, but it uncoiled my guts. Blood dripped off my upper lift and stained my hands as I tried to stop it. I was reasonably certain Eklil wouldn’t have lied to me, so I focused on breathing through my mouth as the taste began easing off, replaced with the metal tang of blood in the back of my throat.
“Most people on Oresstria have much stronger constitutions than yourself,” Eternity provided unhelpfully. “You will find many foods you cannot eat currently. For just this kind of reason.”
“Could’ve mentioned this before I ate the damn things.”
“You did not—”
“I did not ask. Yes, I know. I got the concept.” I snarled and licked the back of my hand just to get the sourness off my tongue. Which was a mistake, because I was now tasting mushroom spit. Lovely.
“Human is disgusting.” Crystal tutted as she set down her pack and slowly pulled aside the cauldron to add firewood into the pit. “Human bleed all over Crystal’s clean floor. Disgraceful. No manners for human. No manners at all.”
I was about to suggest something cruel related to manners and where she could stick them, but decided against it. Tusk had curled up on the floor next to my feet and was asleep, snoring noisily.
As a flame kindled to life beneath the cauldron, I pulled out another packet. It was wrapped in paper and my inventory had it marked as a flatbread sandwich with veggies. I opened the wrapping, broke the sandwich in two, and held out one half towards the gnark. She eyed it suspiciously for a moment, then snatched it out of my hand.
“You didn’t eat yet,” I said as if she’d demanded an explanation. “And I promised food for shelter.” For better or worse, the hole in the ground was shelter.
“Human owe more. Crystal saved human from tree fathers.”
I threw her another packed sandwich. “That’s all I can spare,” I said, and meant it. “Any more and I’ll be in trouble.”
Crystal stowed away this latest offering and went back to her cauldron, blowing into the fire. It slowly came alive and filled the cramped room with dancing shadows.
My attitude towards the gnark had improved somewhat now that I had eaten something and my nose wasn’t leaking blood anymore. Her seeing to Tusk before herself had gone a long way towards improving my disposition. And the molerat had risked itself to save me earlier. I felt I couldn’t be too unkind to either of them, not without feeling like a jerk.
“This is yours.” I handed back Crystal’s stick while I kept my sword stuck point-first into the floor. “I don’t really need a stick.”
“What human want?”
“Nothing. It’s yours. I’m giving it back.”
That got me a sneer and a suspicious look, but no thanks. It was just a stick, though Crystal seemed attached to it now that she had it back. I ate in silence as the gnark emptied out her pack and set about stowing away the various odd ends she’d collected. String. Fruit. Leaves. Roots and whole plants. Some more kind of berries and so nuts. Even a couple shiny stones.
Once done with all that, Crystal walked out a couple of times and came back carrying buckets of water with which she filled the cauldron. I took the time to see about my wound, suffering for the second time that day Ielup’s horrid gel. After applying it generously to all the scrapes and fresh cuts I’d accumulated, I was now sore and stinging all over.
At least I wasn’t bleeding anymore.
Still, I wasn’t sleepy and didn’t feel like I would be anytime soon. I could cram a couple more things into the day if I chose to.
I decided to see what else I could trade with Crystal. Maybe she had some stuff that could be useful, or maybe even some information. The gnark, for all her annoying faults, did not strike me as someone evil. Just… cooky.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked, showing her the crystal I’d grabbed from the tree father. “My inventory says it’s a verdant heart, but I don’t know what it’s for.” I could’ve asked Eternity, probably, but wanted to try and get some information from the gnark princess.
“Verdant heart is food,” Crystal answered as she picked several items off her selves from her jars and pots. “You trade? I trade you spiders for it.” And she proudly showed me a jar full of tiny, hairy, multi-legged black shapes that floated in some gelatinous mass. “Crystal caught them all. All fresh. Good good, yes?”
I pushed away the disgusting thing. Had my name been Fester Addams, maybe I would’ve been tempted. As was, I just wanted the information.
“You just… eat this?” I asked, hefting the crystal. “Straight up?”
“Stupid human. You no eat verdant heart. You make food with it.” She held out a hand. “Give give, I show.”
“If you throw this in the boiling pot, I will use you to fish it out,” I warned before handing it over.
“Humans always so distrustful. Shameful.” Crystal held the verdant heart in her palm, then picked up a tiny hammer from somewhere among her piles of refuse. She knocked at the end of the heart a few times until a tiny shard broke off.
The shard went into the pot and the water immediately turned syrupy yellow. I knew for a fact the gnark hadn’t yet added anything else but water in there.
“Here. Use spoon, human.”
“Is that safe?” I asked Eternity.
“The verdant heart? Yes. The spoon? I’m uncertain.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, then took a tentative sip of the broth.
It was bloody delicious! Aside from being piping hot, it was absolutely incredible-tasting, like some of the most high-class, fancy shit food I’d ever had at a restaurant. My eyebrows nearly escaped off my forehead as I took another spoon. All that flavour, from just a tiny fleck of the verdant heart?
Crystal grinned up at me. She’d picked up the spider jar again in one hand, while the other held the verdant heart.
“Human want trade?”
I laughed aloud. It was impossible not to, given the absurd offer. But, to her credit, she didn’t oppose it when I took back my item.
“I do want to trade,” I said as I reached for the little hammer. I started knocking around the crystal until I broke off about a suitable chunk off it. If the whole thing was about the size of my palm, then the piece I offered for trade was thumb-sized. “I’ll give you this if you tell me, and show me, how you stopped my skill. What kind of magic was that?”
I barely finished speaking that Crystal had already snatched the shard from my hand. She broke out into a little jig, dancing around me as she held her bounty in the air.
“Human so stupid. Human so stupid. Trade treasure for nothing.”
Tusk woke up with a startle and, seeing what was going on, joined Crystal in mocking me. They both pranced around my feet until I felt about ready to take back my offer. That, or whack them both with the flat of my blade.
“I teach you, stupid human,” Crystal finally said after she safely tucked away the reward. “I teach you energy mastery. It is simple. It is so simple a gnark child can do. Human so stupid.”
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