NOVEL NEXT B 2 C 9: An Unexpected Acquaintance
B 2 C 9: An Unexpected Acquaintance
Agwai continues to play on, a bit cluelessly, truly enjoying their jam session. I usher everyone else back a bit, motioning to remain peaceful, but at the ready. I don’t want to have to kill our neighbors if I can help it.
The smaller one approaches our party, I say smaller, but the creature’s still as large as, or larger than Lil in their Lilagnewt form. I wait with bated breath as I pull my thunder stick from my inventory. I’m hoping that if all else fails, I can scare this neighbor away without killing them. Maybe if they go back to their nest with news of us being annoying, but not dangerous, the rest of their family won’t invade as revenge.
The creature hisses at me as I try to interpose myself between it and Agwai. Agwai finally notices it due to the loud hiss, and tumbles backwards, away from the drums. Ag sits on the ground, a bit bewildered, before getting back up, and returning to the drums. I’m about to direct Ag to leave, when Agwai plays a simple series of beats.
The creature taps one foot to the beats in response. I stare on, mildly flabbergasted. The creature knocks me aside with several legs, and heads to the drums. Agwai plays a short set of beats, and the creature mimics the same beats on another drum. Agwai ups the complexity, and the many legged beast follows along, perfectly mimicking Ag. Agwai continues to jam more and more complexly, and this eight-legged, seven-eyed being follows along perfectly. What’s more, it starts to compose its own rhythms, challenging Agwai to repeat them.
The whole situation reminds me of, hm, banjos that duel, or perhaps some sort of drum-off. I try to approach to check on Ag, but the creature turns to hiss loudly at me. It hisses so loudly it actually floors me, literally, I end up sliding backwards a few inches on my posterior. The larger one begins to approach as the smaller one gets back to drumming.
Oh, the large one was much farther away than I thought. Large doesn’t describe this entity in the slightest. She’s absolutely massive, enormous, towering over all of us by far. She’s at least as large as our house. I stupidly, jokingly say, “So uh, I guess you’re wondering why I gathered you all here, today.” This nets me a hiss from both the smaller one, and the larger one. The larger one’s hiss scoots me several inches across the dance floor from sheer force. Based on their morphology, I think they’re both adults, and the smaller one is male.
Ag asks, “Reggie, dear child, what did you do to make them so mad?”
“I was trying not to kill them when they were chasing me, so I was a bit hasty, and accidentally ruined a bunch of their webs, I even still have some in my inventory. Oh, oh no.” Yep Reggie, you complete buffoon. It wasn’t just webbing that I claimed, it was, yeah, these need to go back, right now. Way to go, me. Well, at least I didn’t have to hurt any of them. I produce the webbing that I stumbled into, and place it on some spare lumber.
The larger one flicks a single leg at me and sends me flying into a tree, a tree where there happens to be a bunch of Valkyrie equipment that was hastily discarded. Equipment that is now about to impale me, including a very, very deadly spear. At least it looks like the larger one is satisfied with the webbing on the log. She appears to be heading back north to the cliff face.
I gulp what I fear will be one of my last breaths, unable to control my descent. The tip of Gae Buidhe glints just below me. Suddenly, I’m knocked sideways through the air by a glowing, leaping form, and the equipment simultaneously disappears.
“Oh, uh, hi Te.” I barely manage to state, as Teuila had to have sent herself rocketing skyward as Valkyrie to intercept me. Once we impacted, she wanted to make sure neither of us could still land on Gae Buidhe, so she dropped her Valkyrie form. Now we’re both plummeting through the air. My terror isn’t from the current fall though, it is of course from being held by my Teuila. The Event is still fresh in my mind, so I quiver in her arms.
Our fall is neither as controlled a descent as Te can manage as Valkyrie, nor is it as deadly as a fall from this height would normally be. Somehow Teuila’s bond with gravity still manifests even in her base form. I seem to have lost hold of my thunder staff when Te rammed into me. It impacts the ground somewhere in the jungle below us, sounding a loud crack of thunder. I’ll need to scour the jungle for that later. Teuila’s trying to angle our descent into a glide which does reduce our downward velocity a bit more.
Not enough to save us from a very crunchy paired impact with the ground however. We both bounce and skid several feet, racking up plentiful bruises. We had to have glided hundreds of meters away from the party. If it weren’t for the groove we gouged into the ground with our faces, I might not know the way back home. Well, thankfully Teuila still has her pouch with the compass orb, and I’ve got my sense of direction, but still, I was knocked flying one way, then knocked perpendicularly another way while in midair. All in all, it was very disorienting.
I regret not being in armor when that giant arach-whatever flung me away. I’m pretty sure it broke or bruised a couple of my ribs, and Teuila’s lunge smashed a few more. The ground decided to take pity on my ribs and just grind my face, elbows, and knees to a pulp. Still, I’ve had worse landings. Literally. Turning to Teuila, trying to take my mind off the pain, I ask, “So, what do you think of the party so far?”
Te’s look of incredulity is all she really needs, but she still asks, “Seriously? You want to ask that right now? You goofdingusbugbodbagoob.” I try to keep a straight face while listening to her response, but I can’t help it as she makes up another endearing insult. I end up cracking up with laughter, Te joins me, even though we’re both clutching our torsos in pain.
We help one another up, and lean on each others’ shoulders, each saying ow, more and more frequently as we amble back home. Honestly, I think that sharing this pained walk with Te, after she risked her life in two forms, to save me, is massively helping with my fear. Teuila’s Vampguppy cloak looks fairly totaled though, I feel pretty bad about that.
Te, spying my thoughts, casually absolves me, “Don’t worry about it, deebledoomer I still love it, I’ll put it back where I was hiding it, and I’ll just start wearing some of those dozens of feather cloaks we’ve got saved up. Yeah?” She socks me lightly in the shoulder. I laugh in response, but also wince in pain from the playful punch.
“I suppose that works. Thank you for saving me Te. I don’t know what I would have done, I wasn’t thinking fast enough to react. Like usual, I thought I was for sure a goner, before thinking about how to get out of the situation. I can’t help it, my first thought is always resignation or self sacrifice, then I start thinking about other solutions if I have time.” I apologize, rambling about my thought processes when in danger.
“I know, I know. You’re poot-for-brains on the spot, but give you a few seconds and you can be a genius. Sometimes. Anyway, those on the spot reactions have saved more than one of us, on more than one occasion. I can’t ask you to change that. I wouldn’t. I don’t want to know what might happen one day if you decide to hold off on reacting until you can plan. It might already be too late when you do. You’re my scaredypunkyputz, and I’ll just have to be satisfied with that, for now.” Te tries to bring me in for a hug, but both of us suffer loud cracks in our muscles. We laugh slightly as we both wince in pain.
A glorious sight glides into view, Luni riding atop Lil. Lil’s spouting the occasional short ranged fireball to light up the sky beneath the canopy as they fly vaguely in our direction. Te and I wave to Lu and Lil, Lu waves back holding a staff. It looks like they found my thunder stick first. As we reunite, we all have a laughing fit about the events that transpired so far.
Sugar and Spice both happened to evolve, Lao went wild opening gifts, Agwai jammed obliviously while we had uninvited guests, then one of those guests jammed along with Ag while another guest sent me flying. I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting any of that to happen tonight.
When we make it back to the party the octo-peds both seem to be gone. One of the drums is missing too, I’m glad I made two full sets. I start to apologize to Lu, “Lu, I’m sorry, looks like one of the drums is missing, I think they probably took it. It’s my fault.” I receive a bunch of limbs in my face for my efforts. Lu leaps at me for a hug. I barely manage to catch her, but the pain in my torso is too much and we end up toppling over anyway.
“It’s um, it’s okay, I told them they could have it silly. I, I hope that’s okay, I hope you aren’t disappointed. I um, don’t want you to be disappointed in me.” Luni sits on my waist, straddling me, she puts her index fingertips together and plays with them. While looking away she speaks shyly out the side of her mouth, with a vague pout playing across her lips.
Teuila hauls Luni off of me, and vaguely chews Lu out in a loving manner, “Of course Reggie isn’t disappointed in you, drama queen, they thought you were disappointed in them, ya booger. Can’t you see how beat up they are right now though? Awe come on, don’t give me that face. Come here you.” Te brings Lu in for a tight hug, then noogies her lightly as I resume standing. We all finish meeting up with the rest of the family together. I think that’s enough excitement for one evening. I’m pooped, ready for bed. I think we all are, as we head into our home, as a full family for the first time since I’ve been back from near-catatonia.