They're surrounded by trees. 

The trees are...not normal trees. They're twisty and odd-shaped and look like something out of a modern art painting that's trying a bit too hard to be edgy, and some of them have vines covering the trunks that look a bit more mobile than vines really ought to be. It's dim in the shadow of the leaves and something feels wrong.

In the distance, something rustles in the underbrush. 

Her attention snaps in that direction, and she listens intently for a repeat of the noise. Does it sound like a person?

Not particularly – it has the sort-of-randomness nature of an animal moving, and then the noise stops. Unclear if it's because the maker of the noise stopped moving, or is just moving more stealthily. 

Good. She tears her dress off and--

--changes, running in the direction of the sound. 

In which case she's going to run straight into the source of the earlier sound. 

The creature looks sort of like a cross between a snake and a greyhound. Soot-black skin, swallowing the dim light, but still giving the impression of scales rather than fur. Its neck is too long and its arrowhead-shaped head is wrong and its yellow pupil-less eyes are glowing, it lunges at her with its long narrow muzzle opening to show rows of needle-sharp, thumb-length teeth–

--and since it can't actually see her, there is nothing to stop it from lunging straight into her open mouth, which slams shut with a crunch. 

Several more of the creatures start to appear from the undergrowth and then slink back into unseen positions. They seem to be smart enough to notice that whatever just happened to their compatriot, it could happen to them as well. 

You know what else can happen to them? Invisible tentacles. 

She assumes that they work on a sufficiently non-eldritch body plan that snapping their necks kills them. 

They're pretty defenceless against invisible tentacles, though a few of them do start to react despite having no way of seeing her – but not fast enough. Snapping their necks does, in fact, work very effectively to kill them. 

Awesome. 

Once all of them are dead or fled, she picks up all the dead ones and carries them back to Wilbur.

"...What are these?" 

"Dunno," she says, changing back to her smaller shape once the creatures are in a reasonable pile and pulling on her dress. "They don't taste great, but they're made of meat and they're not people. --I guess I don't know that for sure but they don't have clothes or paint or anything and they were acting like pack predators, not like a tribe, there's not really any reason to think they would be. Anyway, we can't afford to be picky." 

"You're not wrong," he sighs, and tears a leg off one of the creatures and starts munching it. Doesn't taste great. Oh well. He starts looking around for wood that would make good kindling. 

It's a little harder than expected, because some of the things that look like dead branches on the ground try to attack him when he reaches for them, or run away, but if he's persistent then he'll eventually be able to gather a reasonable pile of wood, both kindling and larger pieces. 

He acquires any scratches from things in the attacking category and is muttering under his breath by the time he has a reasonable campfire setup. With rocks placed around the outside for fire safety. Do any rocklike things attack him. 

These particular rocks, at least, seem inert. Something insect-like but considerably larger than any reason insect bursts out from under a disturbed rock at one point and goes for his face. There are also some creepy white wormlike things with mouths that open and sing in children's voices, but they otherwise leave him alone. 

He falls backwards in startlement when the insect-thing comes at him and hits it out of the air, then squashes it. 

...He's...going to reciprocate the leaving-alone...voices like that should not emerge from worms. 

Once the campfire is appropriately guarded from stray sparks he takes out his flint and steel and attempts to get a fire going. 

He's going to need particularly flammable tinder, the branches won't catch from a spark, but one of them has papery bark that can be peeled off and ought to do the trick.

Papery bark! Papery is a good adjective for tinder to have. 

Once the fire is going, Lucy holds the dead creature Wilbur tore a leg off in the fire. Maybe it will taste better cooked. 

It does not, in fact, particularly taste better cooked. 

However, there are some fat-looking birds rustling around in the tree above them which might be more palatable? 

Surprise tentacle yoink?

Yoinked! 

The bird has disconcerting rows of teeth inside its beak, and its claws have opposable thumbs, but it does not show any indication of being sentient and, while a lot of the apparent plumpness is feathers, it does have a decent amount of flesh in there. 

Neat. She snaps its neck cleanly, pulls the feathers off, and roasts it. 

While it's roasting she inspects the feathers. 

The feathers change colour to match whatever surface they're on, but this stops happening within a few minutes and they settle on a neutral sort of grey-brown. 

Aw. Oh well. 

When the bird is done cooking she tears off a drumstick, hands the rest to Wilbur, and takes a crunchy bite out of the drumstick, bone and all 

It tastes weird but not bad, per se. There are probably more of them around in the trees, if either of them is still hungry. 

She ate like a whole herd of wild boar before they found the cultists or she'd've eaten all the predator-creatures straight off. 

And between a leg of predator-creature and all-but-a-drumstick of bird Wilbur is good for now, being much much smaller than his sister. 

Wilbur settles down to watch the fire. 

While Lucy, who is much more difficult to hurt, takes off to do some scouting and see what if anything she can find out about this place they've been sent. 

It does not get less creepy on further exploration. Hanging from a very large old-looking tree are vines that open worm-like mouths and try to eat her (without much success). At one point she runs into a creature sort of like a lion, but larger and with unnaturally long teeth. It looks at her from the top of a rock, seems to decide she's not worth bothering, and then turns partially invisible and creeps away. 

That is definitely a good choice for the lion. 

What's the highest up she can get? 

The rock is pretty tall, but her best bet is probably going to be one of the trees. The really tall ones don't have any branches until thirty feet up, though. 

This is a problem she is capable of solving with tentacles. 

Then, if she can reach the very top of the tree, she'll see a forest that stretches out for quite a ways on either side, rolling hills of it with occasional breaks where trees have fallen. There isn't that much light left but the dying sunset comes from what's presumably the west. In the opposite direction, there's eventually a shadowy break in the trees that might be a river. Even further that way, the horizon might be something other than forest, but really it's getting too dark to tell.

Hmm. 

She returns to her brother and reports on what she's found. He has to sleep almost like a human, so he turns in not long after sunset. Lucy pulls a book out of the bookbag she had been carrying when they ran into the cultists and left with her brother while she did things like "kill bizarre back hunters" and "go exploring" and reads by firelight, keeping an ear open for anything that might want to disturb them in the night. 

Some unfortunate bearlike creature does emerge and try to take her down with its claws about an hour before dawn; other than that the night is uneventful. 

So unfortunate for the bearlike creature. How does it taste? 

Pretty good, actually! It's got lots of meat and fat on its bones, and the meat tastes almost normal. The bearlike creature does have feathers mixed in with its fur, which is a bit weird, but eh. 

What are these feathers like?

They're large and sturdy, a dull colour that blends with the fur, but come off surprisingly easily, and turn out to have sharp barbed bases; it looks suspiciously like perhaps the bear-creature can fling them if provoked. They don't do anything problematic to her now that it's dead, though. 

Ha, neat. She collects these feathers as well and before long has the hide off the bear and the bear divided into several sections, each small enough to cook on their little campfire.

Wilbur wakes to the scent of roasting meat and the sight of his sister contently sucking blood off her tentacles.

"Goodmorning. I see we received visitors in the night."

"Just the one. It was this huge bear."

"Same difference." Om nom bear breakfast.

Some sort of foxlike creature with a long tongue that has teeth on the end tries to steal some of the meat fast enough that they don't notice, but other than that they're left unmolested. 

Lucy notices the foxalike but not soon enough that it's worth the effort to chase it. 

She sets up a crude frame for curing the bear hide on and, after a moment's reflection, checks to see if the pack-things have hides that ought to be worth saving.

The hides have a somewhat disgusting rubbery texture under the scales, and half a day later they're starting to really stink. 

That'd be a no, then. 

She disrobes and turns into her large form and eats another few. She can't exactly get food poisoning, after all.

Assuming nothing unexpected happens, the two of them will spend the rest of the day working on the bear skin, trying to work out some kind of primitive shelter, ideally portable, and fending off further wild animal attacks.

The day is uneventful; there are a few more animal attacks, but then quiet, maybe the local wildlife is learning. 

Towards the evening, though, an awful smell starts to drift in on the wind. It's not coming from the remaining dead snake-greyhound-things. 

...Yeah she is going to go investigate that. In Large And Invisible mode.

A few hundred yards away, slowly lumbering through the undergrowth, she'll find an incredibly hideous animal. It's the colour of vomit, its toadlike face jammed without the junction of a neck onto a lizard-body, with a dull frill running unevenly down its spine. Its open mouth, full of half-rotted teeth, continually leaks greenish slime which leaves a glistening trail on the ground. 

It blinks stupidly at her. Smelling like something that died several months ago and has been sitting in the sun that entire time. 

Great. 

Those half-rotted teeth are definitely not herbivore teeth. She doesn't suppose if she sort of tries to gently shoo it it will shoo.

It walks at her. Slowly. Still blinking stupidly and tilting its wide ugly head to one side, then the other. It looks confused. And like it's not especially planning to stop, and probably wants to eat her. (Good luck). 

Well, She Tried. 

She bites its head off. It probably tastes even worse than the pack-hunters but fortunately she is not a kind of thing that throws up. 

...It tastes a level of bad that it's sort of hard to believe exists, and the body keeps sort of incompetently trying to walk for a while before it finally keels over, but it does, eventually, seem to be properly dead. 

Wow this tastes gross. She makes herself swallow it anyway. She will not kill something and then just let it go to waste. 

She can still only make herself take another couple of bites from various places on the creature's body (in case any part of it tastes less vile than the rest) before deciding that really, she doesn't have to eat the whole thing now. 

She also pries a handful of bones from various places she bit through, mostly a handful of ribs and some vertebrae. Just because she isn't letting it go to waste doesn't mean she needs to eat the whole thing, and bone is useful for stuff. 

She takes her prizes and then hurries off to the campsite to chase the taste out of her mouth with roast bear. 

Meanwhile, still half a mile distant, a party of six (well, four people, taking turns walking versus riding double on the two sentient magic horses) is slowly following the basilisk's trail. 

A tall slender man with long white hair, wearing robes that blend in with the foliage, is walking ahead right now, and freezes dead. "What." Pause. "Moondance. Everyone. Come see this." 

"This" is an extremely dismembered basilisk corpse. 

The head is missing entirely; there are what could plausibly be enormous toothmarks defining the edge of the stump. Even more obvious are the enormous yet unmistakable bites gouged out of various locations on the creature's body. The one on the side of the creature's torso and the one on the creature's hind leg are especially messy, as though someone or something had reached in and yanked the bones out. 

"...Gods, and I thought they smelled bad on the outside." A white-haired woman slips down from the white stallion she's riding, and attempts to cover her mouth and nose with her sleeve. "Gah. Van, ke'chara, maybe don't come any closer. Let's try to at least get upwind, shall we?" 

"...Look, everyone," a younger man who also has waist-length white hair points out. "There's a trail that keeps going." It...doesn't look like the basilisk's trail. It looks like it was made by something a hell of a lot bigger. "Um, should we..." 

It takes the group a while to decide whether it's safe to follow, but they eventually do, carefully and while working in concert to hold a shield of magical energies all around them. 

What they eventually find is a campsite. 

The contents of the campsite are: 

1) A campfire 

2) Some kind of makeshift tent composed of basilisk ribs and bearhide 

3) A small pile of dead wyrsa 

4) A young woman with the locally-ubiquitous elsewhere-uncommon white hair, holding a single basilisk vertebra. As they watch, she brings it to her mouth, and shaves off a curling fragment against her teeth. She makes a pleased noise and adds it to a string of feathers and other such curls. 

She doesn't seem to have noticed them. 

Freeze. Orient. A silent conversation happens via shielded Mindspeech.

Starwind, as the most experienced combat mage, reaches out very cautiously to probe the area – and the woman in particular – with his mage-senses, while all four of them ready themselves for an instantaneous response. 

Well, she is magic. Not a kind of magic he would have ever seen before, though. There is at least one other source of her weird magic, though, inside the tent. 

Her magic is deeply weird. It doesn't operate along any kind of channel, like human Gifts do. She simply is it, as much as she is flesh and blood. Possibly more. 

When she doesn't respond, there's another brief Mindspeech conference, and then Starwind steps forward, while the other three hang back and ready every shield they can bear to fling over him if needed. 

He clears his throat.

She startles, dropping the end of the string with the needle attached to it that she had been using to add another feather. She sees him, pales, looks down at the tooth-scraped vertebra, tries to hide it behind her, realizes this is a stupid idea and puts it down where it had been again. She stands up and dusts off her dress and says something in a completely unfamiliar language and nervous tone of voice. 

"I apologize, but I cannot understand you," Starwind says in Tayledras. She looks foreign. What kind of foreign is hard to tell. 

He glances at Savil, who steps forward and starts attempting basic greetings in every single tongue she can think of. She's only fluent in four languages but she's got the "basic greetings" part down for over a dozen. 

Why do these people also have white hair???

She shakes her head apologetically. Can't understand a one. Not surprising, she only speaks English and some Aklo, and if these people spoke Aklo she would have different questions. 

Eventually Savil, very tentatively, lifts a hand to warn her that something is about to happen and then tries reaching out with a Mindtouch. :Hello?:

:Hi???:

Her mental "voice" is strange, like someone shouting from above water to someone underneath it. It is, though--if perhaps only barely--intelligible. 

Savil grins, partly from pride at establishing sort-of-communication and partly just from relief and suppressed nerves, communication happened and the response wasn't hostile! 

Mindspeech isn't actually language-independent, unfortunately – a concept like 'hello' is easy to convey, more complex concepts are harder without shared words – but it's a hell of a lot better than shouting spoken words at the stranger. 

:I am sorry to interrupt: she sends. (Always a good idea to be polite, to a stranger who might have a beast at her beck and call that just ate a basilisk.) :We were following the basilisk's trail. Do you...know anything...about that?: She gestures vaguely back in the direction they came.

She debates internally before deciding that given what they've already seen and all the white hair and everything she's not going to get away with pretending to be a normal girl. 

:It was a carnivore and it was headed towards our campsite. I tried to shoo it but that didn't work. So I killed it. I wasn't gonna just leave it to rot! I could only stomach so much at a time, it tasted awful, but I was gonna come back. I eat what I kill.:

Savil squints, it's effortful to grab onto the gist when she has to dig at concepts instead of shared words and there's the weird underwater effect, but she can follow. Well, aside from the part where that's completely insane and impossible and surely the simplest explanation is a failure of translation. 

:Basilisks are nearly impossible to kill: she sends. :Resistant to magic–: and then she breaks off, because the girl might look human but she really obviously isn't. :What, er, species are you?: 

:I'm, um, half human. The kind of thing my father is can't fully exist within the kind of reality humans live in. Please don't try to kill me.:

Leave aside the really confusing aside. Savil lifts both hands. :Of course I'm not going to kill you. I have no intent to harm you. Simply questions: Some sort of bizarre halfbreed with...something extraplanar? ...doesn't actually make sense but it's not any less believable or bizarre than 'dead basilisk with bites taken out.

:How did you come here?: she sends. :You are in Tayledras territory: 

:We ran into some cultists and they sent us here. I don't know what Tayledras means but everything is so weird here, there are worms that sing really disturbingly and vines that try to bite and the predators taste so bad. Well, the pack-things and the basilisk do. The bear was fine. People are usually scared of me when they know what I am and people respond to fear with violence a lot. I'm good at not dying and at running away but I hate when people look at me like that...:

The fourth two-legged person in their party, a much younger dark-haired teen boy, has been hovering back with one hand on his white mare's neck. At this, though, he creeps forward. 

:Savil: he sends, privately. :We aren't going to hurt her, right?:

The strange girl is...honestly pretty terrifying, or at least should be, but Vanyel is not always good at being scared of the things that he ought to be scared of. (He's scared of plenty of other things instead). And 'people are usually scared of me when they know what I am' makes his chest clench. 

:I hope not: Savil sends back, privately as well, before returning to the girl.

:We have no violent intent: she sends. Cultists...sent them here...? A Gate, perhaps? But any of the four mages would have sensed it, gods, Vanyel would have felt a Gate from fifty miles off, and their camp doesn't look like they've been here long. There are an awful lot of pieces of this situation that make no sense. Anyway, if the girl is some half-human hybrid with an extraplanar entity – which might explain her incredibly weird magical aura and Mindspeech – then that isn't her fault. And she doesn't seem inclined to violence at this point. Self-defence, sure. 

If I could've eaten a basilisk the first time one came at me, I'd have done it too, she thinks. It's unfortunate, the Tayledras try not to kill the ugly bastards because they're in fact pretty key to the ecosystem, but a stranger Gated or otherwise dumped here by enemies wouldn't have known that. 

:My name is Savil: she sends. :This is Vanyel, and the other two are Starwind and Moondance. We are on our way out of the Pelagirs, to, er, a less weird land. If you would like to accompany us, this isn't a particularly good place for you to be for various reasons: 

:I would love to be not here. We were going to look for civilization once we had our bearings a little better anyway. Oh, but I should finish the pack-things and the basilisk first, it would be bad to leave them uneaten and they'd be hard to transport. Especially with normal people who feel a normal amount of revolted by horrible smells.:

Savil gets a slightly nauseated look, which she tries to hide. :Er, yes. Actually, basilisks are among the only creatures that eat dead wyrsa, they're...pretty toxic...good idea not to leave them lying around...: If the girl being the spawn of some extraplanar horror means she can eat godforsaken wyrsa corpses, might as well make use of that fact. 

:Also - we? Do you have a travel companion?: There is the same weird magic sensed inside the tent, but it's weird enough that Savil can't tell if it's a person or just some sort of artifact, and she hasn't tried to Look deeper. Probing too obviously seems discourteous and that seems ill-advised, right now. 

:Um--yes. My brother. He's more human than I am mostly so he has to sleep most nights. Uh, but he doesn't look more human than me right now because I can shapeshift and he can't. He looks a lot more human than the shape I killed the basilisk with.:

:You can shapeshift?: Savil manages to keep most of the shock out of her mindvoice. :And, of course, your brother is welcome to travel with us as well: She thinks she's slightly getting the hang of the girl's strange Mindspeech – it's still a struggle to catch everything, what with the language barrier, but if she concentrates hard she gets most of it. 

:We ought to teach you the local language while we travel: she adds as an afterthought. :Most people in the land we're headed to can't talk this way: 

:That would be good. People are even more scared of things they can't talk to. And yes, I can't leave bite marks that big with this mouth.:

Vanyel, still hovering behind Savil, chokes down a laugh. Not actually funny, he tells himself firmly.

:We can wait as long as you need to pack up: Savil sends. :Oh – what are your names?: 

:I'm Lucy and he's Wilbur. Um, I can carry more in the other shape, we've got this bearhide and these bones, I could probably take the other bones out of the basilisk first, they're not vile when you char the flesh off and then there's less to eat...does anyone have a use for super-tough bone?:

The younger of the robed white-haired men steps back out into the clearing; it seems like there's no danger here after all. :I must say, I have never considered whether basilisk bone had a use. Likely, yes: 

:You can have it if you want, I woulda found a use for it but as long as someone's using it it's fine.:

:Er, do you have a policy of using every part of something you kill?: Vanyel sends, curiously, before he can stop himself.

:I have a policy of eating everything I don't use. Back home there are people who kill stuff just for sport and take home enough to make a trophy and leave the rest to rot. It's bad. Animals aren't like people but they still suffer and die and I hate it when things die pointlessly.:

Vanyel blinks hard. That's...really sweet, actually...and it's stupid that it makes him want to burst into tears. 

:That's good of you: he manages finally. :It is bad when things die pointlessly: 

:Yeah. So I'll eat the wyrsa and then I'll debone the basilisk and--actually is there any other part of the basilisk that could be useful besides just the bones? The hide seemed pretty tough...:

Moondance scrunches up his face. :It seems harder to remove the odour, but indeed, it may be of use. We might as well try keeping it: 

:I'd try scrubbing it but I only vaguely know where a river is and I'd rather not scrub it in a river anyway, think what that would do to the poor fish. I can always eat it later if destinking it doesn't work I guess...um, I have to take my clothes off to change shape if I don't want them ruined. Could the boys turn around please?:

Vanyel turns pink and quickly turns his back. The others follow suite.

Including Savil, not that she's at all bothered by nudity, she spends a lot of time in k'Treva Vale after all, but she's concerned that she'll yelp or look grossed out by the transformation if it catches her off guard and she doesn't want to be rude. 

:Okay, I'm done! And, um, invisible, I forgot to mention that part. It just works that way. But I can pick stuff up to give a sort of broad outline of where I am?:

She picks up all her feathers and some sticks and rocks and stuff and holds them close to her body. She's...big. Very big. Literally-outgrew-her-house-when-she-was-sixteen-and-that-was-two-years-ago-now big. About the size of a barn, but much rounder. 

Goodness. Savil...does not swear out loud or in Mindspeech, though behind her shields a creative stream of curse-words is happening. 

:That works: she sends, calmly. :We...ought to be able to avoid bumping you, if we give you some, er, personal space: How is she holding all of those things at once, that would take more than a reasonable number of hands. Savil doesn't ask. It might be rude. :And your brother?: she sends instead. 

:Um, he's not as strong as me so he can't help much with the basilisk. But I can wake him up if you want to explain things while I do that.: One by one, the wyrsa raise into the air and then disappear into the area demarcated by feathers and sticks and rocks. In between there are chewing and crunching noises. :As long as he has all this clothes and his coat on he mostly looks like a human but bigger.:

:Er, if he needs more rest that's fine, we're not in a huge hurry or anything:

:He has to sleep sometime but he doesn't need quite as much sleep as a normal human so I wouldn't for no reason but if there's a reason it should probably be okay.:

Savil thinks for a moment. :Hmm. There's a more secure place to camp: very convenient that Starwind and Moondance know the area so well, :but it's far enough that to reach it before dark we ought to leave soon. Er, unless the two of you can move much faster than a human on foot: She had been assuming their new travel companions would slow them down. Actually that's not at all obvious. 

:I can! And I can carry him.:

:Ah. And we can travel quickly if the Companions carry us double. It's no hurry, then. We can either depart later or make an early camp tonight: 

She's still trying to contain the general overwhelming level of confusion.

:I hafta eat the rest of the basilisk but I could run back here from a farther-off campsite while everyone else is asleep,: Lucy muses. 

:...I would prefer to leave here sooner rather than later: Savil admits. :The smell here is, er, rather distressing: 

:Okay.: 

The bearskin of the makeshift tent rustles as she reaches in to shake her brother awake.

"Hnnn...?"

"Some people found us and they caught me doing not-human stuff and they know what I am but they're not scared or violent and they said they'd take us to civilization but they're moving farther tonight so we're moving now." 

"Oh. Alright." 

He crawls out of the tent and stands up. 

His most notable feature is the fact that upright, he stands about ten feet tall. 

Much, much less obvious, but still apparent if you know what to look for, is the fact that even under the concealing drape of his long, bulky overcoat, his legs don't move quite right. 

Lucy quickly gathers her feathers and their books and stuffs the books back in the book bag and wraps it and the feathers in the bearskin and then with a different set of tentacles picks up the bones. Her brother she places on top of herself so that he can grip the bases of some tentacles and ride instead of just being carried. 

:Ready!:

It's all a pretty disconcerting sight, but Savil's seen a lot in her forty-ish years as a Herald, she can keep her face impassive. :All right, let's go: She mounts her Companion, lets Starwind hop up behind her, while Vanyel and Moondance get up on Yfandes. :Er, if you've got questions, you can ask them along the way: 

:How come you three have white hair? I do 'cause I wanted to look like Mom and she was an albino.:

Interesting. :I assumed yours was white from magic: Savil sends. :That's the reason for us – mages who use node-energy go white in a few years. Vanyel here is a mage as well but he's new at it so it hasn't happened yet: 

:No. I know some magic and I guess what I am is probably magic and admittedly my teacher's hair is also white but my hair's because of my mother and hers was white all her life and my teacher's was too I think. I guess I didn't ask. Grandfather's hair was white but I think that's just 'cause he was old. Wilbur's hair isn't white though.:

:So you can make your hair whatever color you want?: Vanyel interjects. :That's neat:  He seems to be warming up to the two new people, and is noticeably less tense. 

:Um, not now, not exactly. I mean, I could, but--not casually. I was born with this big form--I mean I wasn't this big when I was born, I was baby-sized when I was born, but I was this same shape--and I made my smaller shape, and I can go between the two, and I can mix them a little, but I'd have to make a whole new shape to make my hair a different color. And it'd take a while. And I don't need another human shape as much as I needed the one.:

:Oh. I see: He's not at all sure that he does. 

:So where are the two of you from originally?: Savil sends. 

:Dunwich, Massachusetts.:

:I haven't heard of anywhere called that: Savil admits. :The place we're going is called Valdemar – have you heard of it?:

:No. But our education wasn't normal. We couldn't go to normal school 'cause we grew so fast and people couldn't know I existed, so Mom and Grandfather taught us, but they didn't have that many books, and the books they did have, a lot of them were about magic and other things most people don't know. So probably there's lots of places we haven't heard of.:

:That sounds stressful: Vanyel sends. :That people couldn't know you existed: Although maybe that isn't a topic she wants to talk about and it's rude to bring up and he should change the subject – that's probably how he would feel about it. :Er, can you do magic then? Aside from the shapeshifting, I mean: 

:Oh! Yeah. I learned some from the books and then when we left home and I learned to turn human-shaped we met someone else who knew about those kinds of things, and he was just human but he knew a lot of magic, and he taught us. Magic mostly but also mundane medicine. For humans. We don't get sick and it's good because no one would know how to treat us.:

:That would be awkward: Savil agrees, keeping her poise even though all of this is weird weird weird. :What sort of mundane medicine? Most of our medicine is magical, except for herbs and things:

:Well, there's herbs,: she agrees, :and how to disinfect a wound, and how to do surgery if the situation is bad enough to warrant it and how to tell if it is. And blood transfusions, and how to breathe into someone's mouth if their lungs have stopped, and how to set broken limbs, and what shock is and how to treat it, and how you hafta be careful when you're warming up someone who's got hypothermia because if you raise their temperature too fast it can do more damage.:

Savil is blinking faster and faster trying to keep up. :Whoa: she sends finally. 

Moondance sticks his head out from behind Vanyel, who he's holding onto to stay on Yfandes back. :What, exactly, is a 'blood transfusion'? I am a Healer myself and I have never heard of that: 

:So! People--human people, I mean--have blood that comes in different kinds. And if somebody has lost a lot of blood, then you can take blood out of someone healthy who has the same kind, and put it in them. If it's a different kind it can just make things worse.:

He looks amazed. :Can you really? How do you take the blood out and put it back in without getting it dirty?: 

:Umm. Do you have syringes?:

Based on Moondance's baffled look, evidently not!

:So, you take a glass tube, and on one end you put a cap that has a hollow needle, and on the other end you put a cap that has a plunger, and then you can fill it with medicine and stick it in someone's arm and put the medicine directly in their blood, or you can draw their blood to do tests on or to put in other people:

Moondance is starting to look cross-eyed. :I have about a thousand questions but maybe later, once I can write it down: He chuckles. :We have been rather hogging the floor here. Do you have questions for us?: 

:Um. Yes. Probably. Uh. Does everyone know about magic here? Even in places that don't have weird animals and turn your hair white?:

A smile. :Most places, yes. Though our world has different kinds of Gifts that can touch magic in different ways, and not all of them are known in all places. For example, I am a Healing-Adept – my type of Gift is not known in Valdemar, our destination. And Valdemar knows of Mindhealers, which my people do not have: He frowns. :I know of places that shun the use of magic – our sister people, the Shin'a'in, are one such – but they still know of its existence. Is this different in your homeland?: 

:Yeah. Most people don't know magic exists, and a lot of people are scared of it when they find out. That's part of why I expected you to be scared of me although the fact that I'm big and can kill a basilisk was a lot of it. Even people like my teacher, who's completely human, have to hide.:

Vanyel shivers. :That doesn't sound like a nice place for, er, someone like you to live: 

:It wasn't great. I couldn't interact with any people besides my family until I was eighteen and figured out how to shapeshift.: Pause. :What did you mean by Gifts?:

:I don't know how it is where you're from: Vanyel starts, :but in this world, you usually need something called a Gift in order to use magic at all. Mage-gift is a general way of using magic, but there are also specific Mind-Gifts – like Mindspeech, which is how all of us are talking to you: He grins. :It's really useful for that! Since we don't speak the same language. I mean, it's still not that easy to understand you but I'm getting more used to it. Are you finding us easier to understand too with practice?:

:Yeah. I don't think we have anything like that though. Everything I know of is either stuff like my shapeshifting, or stuff like what I learned from Teacher and books, and anyone can learn that stuff. I think. I guess I dunno if people here can.:

:Really? That is different. It's not like that here: 

They ride in thoughtful silence for a while. 

Eventually, after some uneasy pondering: :So, if there was a kind of magic that people found extra-scary at home, but could help a lot of people, you guys would probably be fine with it, right?:

:...Probably, yes: A considering look. :Not everyone in Valdemar would be, necessarily, but they might not be comfortable with everything I can do, either. The four of us aren't likely to be put off though. I'm rather curious now?: 

:Um. I know how to raise the dead.:

Both Companions stop dead. All four of the riders look shocked; Vanyel in particular has a frozen, trapped-animal look. 

Savil nudges her stallion closer and reaches for Vanyel's hand. :Wh...at?: she sends, slowly. 

:My teacher taught me. It was his ancestor, or a group that his ancestor had been in, that developed the technique. They weren't actually good people and they mostly used it for things like bringing back rich people to torture the locations of their hidden wealth out of them. But eventually the ancestor was killed by an angry mob. And my teacher found his notes a long time later, after his fiancee was killed. He hunted down rumors until he found them, and he brought her back. They left his hometown so people wouldn't realize, and they can't help that many people because people would scream about evil animated corpses if they knew, but when they found us they taught us. So I know how. And we're really good at it, because the invocation invokes Yog-Sothoth and Yog-Sothoth is our non-human parent.:

Savil swallows. 

:W-why: her mindvoice isn't very steady at first, :why would I be mad? I can see how that could help a lot of people – that part is wonderful. And I can see why you couldn't speak of it, back home. I'm...not sure that you ought speak of it to most people here, either. But of course I'm not mad. Just...absorbing it: She looks pretty shaken. And Vanyel is still stiff and silent and unmoving. 

:You, um, it's not that there's a why, exactly, it's just, lots of people would be mad, and I, sometimes people are reasonable but only to a point. I'm--I'm glad you're not mad but you looked kind of, upset or something.:

:No, of course I'm not upset: Savil seems to realize how obviously false a claim this is. :...I mean, I'm not upset with you. It, um, the subject brings up a sore spot for a few of us: 

:Oh. I--whoever it is--was--is--will be? I'm sorry. I, um. I'm not good at...social finesse.:

Savil gets tangled up in the was-is-will-be and just blinks helplessly at her. :I'm sorry, what?: 

:Sorry for your loss?:

That's a lot more comprehensible. :Your, er, condolences are accepted: She takes a breath, lets it out. :Let's keep heading for the campsite, we're not too far: 

:If I think of anything else really big to say I'll wait to say it until we're not in motion.:

They ride in awkward silence for a while and then Moondance gamely starts asking Lucy more questions about medicine in her world.

Sometimes she can give enthusiastic non-jargony answers and sometimes the answer is "there's equipment for that and I don't know how it works" and sometimes the answer is "there's equipment for that and I don't know how to recreate it but I can replicate its function with magic" and sometimes the answer is "I don't know."

Vanyel doesn't say another word for the rest of the journey, but Savil and even Starwind break in occasionally, and three or four hours later they reach the better campsite. There's a river, and a nice dry cave nearby with the remains of a fire-pit hinting it's been used for a camp before. The adults take down the Companions' saddlebags and start unpacking and setting up while Vanyel sits against the wall of the cave and hugs his knees to his chest. 

Lucy shifts back to human form and puts her dress back on behind some trees. 

She hesitates, nibbling her lip, then goes to find Vanyel. 

:I can leave if you want. But sometimes it helps to talk.:

He doesn't say anything or even look at her, but he doesn't tell her to go away either. 

...She sits down beside him. 

:When I was thirteen, my grandfather died. He had helped raise us with as much love and care as Mom did, and we were all grieving. But it wasn't just sad. It was trouble. The people he had been buying cows from to feed me didn't trust Wilbur, and the food dwindled. I got hungrier. There's a reason I'm so gung-ho about eating things like wyrsa and basilisk even besides not wanting to waste lives, and it's what happened as a result. Having it get harder to think when you're really hungry is normal, so I've been led to believe. So I didn't think about it much, at the time. But when a human gets so hungry they can't think at all they just pass out. It turns out...I don't. I just stop--understanding what people are, and why you never ever eat them. That's the only time it ever, ever happened. After I lost Mom that way, I've never let it get anywhere near there again.:

Vanyel doesn't move, or say anything. He doesn't look horrified though. Or disturbed, or scared of her. 

A little after she finishes, he starts crying. He still doesn't move at all, or show any indication that he wants her to leave. Just...cries, almost in silence. 

She hugs her knees. She doesn't cry like he's crying, but tears roll down her cheeks. 

Eventually, he stops crying, sniffles, dabs at his eyes with his sleeve. :S-sorry: Even his mindvoice is shaky. 

:You never have to apologize to me for crying. Some things just aren't okay. And there's no virtue in pretending they are.

He looks up at her, wide-open startled eyes, like - like she understands, like there's something hanging in the air between them that only the two of them can see, it's not a happy light in his eyes but it is there...

...and then he bursts into tears again and curls up in a tiny ball, shaking. 

She definitely wants to hug him and she has no idea if that's in any way a good idea. 

...

She calls softly to her brother in English, low enough to not interrupt the crying but loud enough for her brother's hearing to catch. 

...Sure, okay. 

He goes to find Savil. 

Savil comes over with Wilbur a minute or so later. She looks very concerned when she sees Vanyel, but not in a way that suggests she's upset with either of them about it. 

:What is it?: she sends, excluding Vanyel from the Mindspeech link. 

:Uh. I just wanted to know if he was a hugs person. He looks like he needs one but.:

Quiet sigh. :You know, I'm never sure. Sometimes yes, sometimes he runs away if you try. If he hasn't run off already, though, he doesn't mind you being here: A surprised half-smile. :Means he trusts you a fair bit, which is interesting: 

:...I told him about the time I accidentally killed someone because I didn't know things about how I worked.:

That earns her a startled look, then a slow nod. :...Actually, knowing Van, I could see that being surprisingly - not comforting, wrong word, but...might help him feel like you understand. Like you could understand: She swipes at her nose, irritably. :I don't know, I'm no good at talking about these things: 

She sits down, and sort of leans sideways until her shoulder just touches Vanyel's, and waits. Eventually he pulls closer to her, and she puts her arm around his shoulders. 

:The someone was my mom. I love her. I miss her. I haven't been able to bring her back because the resurrection magic needs someone's ashes and she--there wasn't even that much left. Maybe I'll find another way someday. I hope so. But meanwhile I miss her.:

:...I'm sorry: Savil blinks. :That's awful. I'm sorry: This seems to be approximately her entire repertoire for comforting words. 

:It was six years ago, now. I'm mostly okay. But the fact that she's dead is not and never will be. I'm going to figure out a way to fix it someday. But even if I couldn't, I--some things aren't acceptable. And a lot of people accept them anyway because they can't change them.But that's not more virtuous. I wouldn't be a bad person for not being one of them.:

Savil takes a while to parse that. 

Then she closes her eyes. :No. I agree. Some things aren't acceptable. And it's not more virtuous to try to accept them anyway: She squeezes Vanyel more tightly.

:Someday everyone who ever existed is gonna get to be okay. And maybe I can't pull that off but I'm never going to stop trying.:

Savil is not going cry she is definitely not going to cry, nope nope. 

:That's...brave of you: she manages. 

:I dunno if it is. I don't like people being dead and/or not okay. Trying to make the world the way you want it to be isn't bravery, is it, it's just sense. Things don't happen without people making them that way, so you have to pursue what you want. Besides, it's not like I have much to be scared of. Besides people hating me, I mean, but that's not really more likely if I try to help them, is it? ...It's not, right?:

:...I mean, it's all a matter of how you define it, isn't it?: Savil sends, looking softly into the distance. :Way I see it, sure, it's sense, but...it can still be hard, right? It can still be decades of working, and – and sometimes people hating you, and having to go back in again and again and again, even when it's the last thing you want to do. I don't know. Maybe you're...more straightforward inside than me, but I care about Valdemar and it's still a struggle to get out of bed some days. And to me courage is doing it anyway: 

:Okay, that's fair. But I want it enough. I know I do.: 

:Also, since I don't have to sleep more than a few hours a month, I get to skip the getting out of bed in the morning step, I bet that helps.:

:Goodness. I'm jealous. And–: Savil reaches out to touch her shoulder, :I believe you. I can see it in you: 

This is the point at which Vanyel uncurls slightly and lifts his head. 

:Lucy, how–:  He swallows, scrubs at his face. :How does...it work...the bringing back the dead? Do you think. There's any chance. It would work here in this world?: He sounds like he can't actually bring himself to believe that it could possibly work, here, or that she's telling the truth, or - there's something in the way, like a locked door that he can only rattle but can't quite open. 

:I think so! I mean I don't see why it wouldn't. You take a body and render it to ash, or if they're already cremated you take the ash, and then you do some complicated magic chemistry--alchemy--to it, and it turns colors, and then you say an incantation and the ash turns into smoke and the smoke turns into an alive person. Who is naked, so it's best to have clothes on hand.:

He turns away, hiding his face in Savil's tunic. :So if there wasn't any kind of remains then it wouldn't work: Utter lack of surprise, nothing but resignation there. 

:...Yes. But it's kind of hard to not have any remains at all and I can cheat pretty hard. Did the person you're sad about get eaten too? I could try something to track down whatever ate them, maybe I could use its remains, that wouldn't normally work but I cheat SO HARD.:

Vanyel makes a startled choking sound and then hides his face again. 

:Not, um, eaten: Savil clarifies. :Kind of...vaporized. Turned into, er, a very large fireball. Magic thing: 

:Oh.: Thoughtful pause. :That sounds harder but I can probably work with that. How big an explosion? Is anyone going to be perturbed if I wander around the affected area bleeding ichor on exploded stuff?:

Savil starts to reflexively shake her head, that doesn't sound like it would go over at all, but...then she stops, and looks down at Vanyel huddled in her arms, and looks back at Lucy. 

:I don't know: she sends, and raises her chin, :but we can ask. Although, um, this happened nine months ago now. It'll have grown over some. Initial explosion hit an area about a mile across in total, I think. Should be easy to find, it'll be the part that's all black glass underneath. Forest fire around it didn't burn nearly as hot: 

:Ooh, what if I just dug up the black glass, probably I could work with that.:

:Maybe. Though it probably isn't, um, mostly him, I imagine it'd be the dirt and rocks that were underneath. And...er, there's some wyrsa in there. Is that a problem?: 

:I don't even have to cheat to deal with that! There are explicit steps in the process for distilling the essential materials out of a cruft of soil and stuff! It sort of assumes there's a higher corpse-to-cruft ratio than I think we have here but I can just adjust for that no problem.:

:Huh. Good to know: Savil falls silent. 

Vanyel lifts his head again, and...reaches out, vaguely, in a gesture that's hinting in the general direction of 'hug'?

! 

Hug.

It is possible that Lucy had huggability in mind while designing this form. She is soft and her hair is cooperative enough to not get in his face particularly and there are no weird bony bits sticking into places they shouldn't. 

It's a good hug! Possibly a lot of the goodness of it is related to the hugger's claim that she can maybe– no don't think about the thing, the hope almost makes it feel less safe, but Vanyel hugs her anyway.

It does not, actually, make him cry any less. 

She does not mind at all. Sometimes you just need a good cry. Sometimes a good cry isn't enough, but it can't hurt. 

Eventually, Vanyel manages to run out of crying, and is just limp and exhausted and breathing unsteadily in her arms.  

Savil tugs at his shoulder. :Van, ke'chara, you should eat something and then try to get some sleep: They originally made camp well before sundown, but it's dark out now. Starwind and Moondance are sitting by a small campfire outside the mouth of the cave.

Food is very important even when your hunger isn't a danger to anyone but yourself. Lucy will super cooperate with Savil in getting some food into Vanyel. 

Vanyel is very halfhearted on the food matter. "I'm not hungry." Instead he tries to head straight for the bedrolls that Savil managed to lay out before Wilbur interrupted her. 

:Eat. My doctor teacher also taught me that sometimes we're not hungry even when we really need food. You won't do yourself or anyone else any favors by going without.: Do they have anything extra calorie dense? She'd have saved some of the bear fat if she knew this would happen...

Savil brings him jerky and dried fruit and cheese and travel-bread. Some of it's dense, sure, but still requires enough chewing to be a lot of effort to get the nourishment. 

:Do you want me to do some hunting tonight? If I had something freshly-killed I could soften some of that by re-cooking it in fat and then it would be even-more calorie dense,: Lucy suggests to Savil. :I'll be up all night anyway.:

:...If you really don't need the sleep and you've got the time after taking care of the basilisk, then yes, it would be useful: Savil admits. :We hunt sometimes to re-supply but it tends to require detours. Er, most species here aren't good for humans to eat, but I'll show you some that are: She attempts to send some images from her memories – there are some fat flying-squirrel-type animals, and some deer-like things, and a few others. 

:I slept just last week. Sometimes it's convenient being me. Alright, I'll see how much time I have after I've dealt with the basilisk.:

Vanyel shoves down the rest of the bread and cheese, and flops down on his bedroll. :Don't go yet?: he sends, a bit plaintively. 

:Okay. I can stay until you're asleep if you want.:

Vanyel nods and then closes his eyes. 

Savil pulls the blanket properly over him, and strokes his hair. :He doesn't usually warm up to people this quickly: she sends privately to Lucy. :Took him months to be this comfortable with ME. And I'm family – though, uh, that probably hurt rather than helped in this case: 

:Bad home life?:

:Yes. Definitely. My brother – well, we've never gotten along. Honestly he thought most of what Van was, wasn't good enough, but he especially couldn't tolerate his falling in love with a boy: She scowls. :He'll be lucky if I speak to him at all in the next ten years: 

:Oh dear. Even if I couldn't meet other people, everyone I grew up with loved me. It's awful when people don't get that. Is the boy the dead person?:

:Yes. They were...: She chews her lip. :Do you have lifebonds, where you're from?:

:No. What's that?:

Oh no now she has to explain it. Deep breath. :It's a...sort of magical link between two people. We don't know why they happen – Starwind and Moondance's people believe it's when the gods meddle. But it's a very deep bond. It's devastating to lose a lifebonded partner. As far as we know, Van is the first person ever to have survived it for this long. And he really didn't want to, at the beginning: She swipes at her eyes. :It's...been a really, really hard last nine months. And I don't know that it would ever get easier for him: 

:Oh NO. I'll do whatever it takes. Uh, I won't hurt people. Not hurt them hurt them. But if I have to sneak into the explosion place under cover of night and steal all the glass--if I have to invent a dozen new spells--I'll fix it.:

Savil...looks like she has no idea how to respond. 

Finally, after a long pause, she just reaches out and takes Lucy's hand and grips it hard. :Thank you: She glances down at Vanyel. :I think he's asleep. You can go: 

:Okay.: 

She goes behind a tree and strips and changes, then gallops back in the direction of the basilisk. 

It still tastes utterly terrible. But she can distract herself by puzzling out how to get all the bones out and preserve more rather than less of the structural integrity of the hide. And it's easier to stand the amount of uch from slurping flesh off a bone than from just taking a great big bite. 

This takes her a few hours, but it's still well shy of dawn when she finishes. She collects the hide and the bones and heads back to the new campsite, keeping an eye out for any of the creatures Savil mentioned as human-edible. 

If her sense of smell is good enough, she might find a nest of the squirrel-creatures, asleep in the crook of a tree. 

Oh nooooo they're so little and asleep. ...She decides to keep looking. 

Eventually she startles a deer-looking animal into bolting out of a bush. 

She's faster. 

She snaps its neck and then makes her way swiftly and quietly the rest of the way back to camp. 

It's still dark with just a faint pearly glow on the horizon, and the humans are all fast asleep, but one of the white horses rises gracefully when she arrives. 

:Lucy: A voice in her mind that feels somehow different from the humans' Mindspeech, brighter and giving the impression of flashing blue light and ringing steel. :I wanted to thank you. For what you said - did - want to do, for my Chosen: 

:Whoah you're a person??? Is the other horse a person too? Sorry! I didn't mean to ignore you.:

A chuckle in her mind, bizarrely reminiscent of roasting chestnuts. :Please, it’s all right. We generally don’t talk directly to people other than our Heralds. But...: she hesitates, :well, I do a lot of things I’m not really meant to. Especially where Vanyel is concerned:

The care and love and concern she feels for Vanyel is incredibly loud in her mindvoice. 

:I like him. He's good. I want him to not have to be so sad.:

:...So do I: Large blue eyes stare into hers. :So, so badly: 

She tosses her head. :You know, what Savil said is true. He seems to like you. And it’s not often he trusts people at all, much less within a day. I don’t know what to make of it:

:Maybe it's because I told him about how I accidentally killed my mom.:

:Huh: Yfandes just seems bemused at first, then ponderously nods. :I...could see it. Sometimes he doesn't want comfort, and it's hard to know what to do. But...that might do it. Knowing that you can understand what it's like to lose something irreplaceable: She steps delicately closer, nudges her muzzle against Lucy's shoulder. :And, I'm sorry: 

:I'm not ongoingly always sad about it. I miss her but it doesn't hurt as much. But it's not okay and I won't pretend it is.: Lucy tentatively pets Yfandes' mane with a tentacle. 

Yfandes likes being petted! A lot! She prances closer and turns her head so Lucy can reach her mane more easily. 

Oooh pet pet pet. Lucy can give so many pets. Having lots of prehensile tentacles is good for that. 

:What other kinds of people are there that don't look like humans? I assume if basilisks or wyrsa were that someone would have told me...:

:No! Basilisks are, well, they barely have minds. Wyrsa are smarter, enough to be dangerous, but still only around as clever as a dog – do you have dogs in your world? Anyway, there are other races that are as smart as people. Hertasi are one, they look like this: Yfandes sends over a mental images, a lizard-like creature standing on its hind legs, obvious intelligence in its beady dark eyes. :They live with the Tayledras, Starwind and Moondance's people. Hmm. There are also dyheli: an image of a deer-like creature with a high domed forehead and front-facing eyes, :they live in the Pelagirs so we may see some. And tervardi: something that looks like a large, delicate bird, :though we probably won't see them. That's all the species I know of. There may be more I haven't: 

:Okay. I probably won't run into any you've never even heard of. I'm really glad I didn't accidentally kill a dyheli before you guys found us. Oh, and yes, we have dogs.:

The sun is just barely up now, and the humans start to stir. Moondance is the first one awake – he carefully disentangles himself from Starwind without waking him, stretches, and wanders over. :Bright the day: 

By this time, Lucy has shifted back to human form. 

:Hi! I cleaned all the bones, and I put the hide somewhere downwind. Thank you for finding me before I accidentally killed a dyheli.:

He blinks at her. :...Oh, I see, did Yfandes tell you about the dyheli?: A smile. :I am also glad that we found you. For many reasons, now: He glimpses the dead deer-creature. :Oh! Did you have a successful hunt? I did not know you were planning one: 

Nod. :Vanyel was having trouble eating so I said I would hunt something so I could re-cook the tough food in fat so it would be softer and more energy-dense. I didn't know Yfandes and Kellan were people but Yfandes came to talk to me and I wanted to know what else was people but not human-shaped so I wouldn't kill anyone by accident.:

:How good of you! Convincing our young one to eat is a neverending trial: He glances around. :Would you like to cook it now, or tonight? We will likely not break camp for another several candlemarks: 

:Now's fine. I would have done it during the night except Wilbur has our flint and steel and I didn't wanna wake anyone.:

:Oh! You needs not wait – I might relight the fire for you with my magic: He looks around. :Though we are short on firewood: 

:Oh! I can fix that!: She runs off into the trees and comes back a few minutes later with an array of fallen branches. :I assumed you guys would have some way to light a fire but I didn't know if it would be magic or more flint.:

Moondance smiles brightly at her, arranges some of the branches, and then gestures at the firepit and they burst into flames. :There: 

She claps her hands together, delighted. :Ee! That looks so cool.:

Moondance chuckles. :Magic is. I made a very similar noise, when I cast fire for the first time: He sits down on a rock. 

Savil is the next awake; again, she's careful not to wake Vanyel, sleeping beside her. She moves stiffly, one hand on her lower back. :Bright the day, Moondance, Lucy: 

:Wind to thy wings, sister: Moondance answers, rising and giving her a one-armed hug. 

:Hi!: Lucy says, looking up from where she's supervising jerky and dried fruit softening in a pot of bubbling not-deer fat. :I found a not-deer. And met Yfandes. She's sweet, I like her.:

Savil grins. :She is, isn't she? Oh - do you want to meet my Kellan?: The white stallion is now ambling over after drinking his fill from the river. 

:I'd love to!:

:Pleased to meet you, Lucy: Kellan is both less cuddly and less chatty than Yfandes, but does seem genuinely pleased to meet her.

Starwind is up shortly later, and then Vanyel sits up and yawns and drags himself out of his bedroll, and stumbles over still wearing the blanket. :Morning: he sends, looking at his feet. :I'm sorry about yesterday: 

:Huh? Sorry about what? I told you you never need to apologize to me for crying and I meant it:

Vanyel nods and smiles weakly and then accepts the tea Savil gives him and sits down with his arms around his knees. 

Lucy fishes a piece of fruit out of the boiling oil with her bare hand and blows on it to cool it down.

Vanyel is staring into space and so doesn't see her doing it, but the others look a mixture of impressed and discomfited. 

Once the fruit is cool enough for comfortable human consumption she offers it to Vanyel. 

He gives it a dubious look but puts it in his mouth and chews it. :...Huh, that's sort of good:

:You were having trouble eating so I thought something easier to chew and denser in energy would be good!:

He looks surprised and a bit uncomfortable, but nods. :Thank you:

:I was thinking: Savil starts, joining Vanyel on the log where he's sitting. :If we're going to, er, do this - we should detour by the Frelennye lands on our way back. It's not that far out of our way, but we maybe do want to head slightly further east. Also, we should start teaching you Valdemaran. Most people aren't Mindspeakers:

Vanyel flinches at the name but mostly keeps his composure. 

Lucy is very very pleased about being helpful. 

:Okay! I think I'm pretty good at languages but it's hard to tell, I haven't tried to learn any since I was little. How do we do this?:

:I had to learn Latin at one point. I think the early stage usually involves lists of vocabulary words and conjugating irregular verbs.:

Savil chuckles. "My Rethwellani tutor had us do the same! I think we can do it better. Since we can speak this way, how do you think it'd work if we started repeating everything in Valdemaran as well? Bit more natural." (She repeats the foreign words in Mindspeech as well.)

:Okay! And whenever I want to say something I've learned how to I will.:

"Sounds good!" 

They finish eating (Vanyel manages to get down a reasonable amount of Lucy's new meal idea), and pack up, and look at Starwind's map. "I think we want to keep following the river? And we should be out of the Pelagirs in another couple weeks, then we'll make much better time." 

"Sounds good!" 

You might think that her voice would sound less chipper-young-woman in the giant basilisk-eating body, but no. 

They start moving. The Companions are pretty fast, even carrying two people each, but the dense trees still get in their way. 

Lucy is if anything capable of being even faster than the Companions, but the trees also hinder her more. If she tires at all, though, she doesn't say. 

They travel until nearly dusk and camp along the river again that night. The next days - weeks - fall into a similar routine. Long days on the road, conversation when they have the energy for it, stopping sometimes to hunt, various campsites. Once, fighting off more wyrsa. The forest is still weird but gradually less so. 

Sometimes Vanyel is animated enough to ask Lucy and Wilbur questions about their world. Sometimes he's silent and withdrawn, and a few times they delay breaking camp because he refuses to get out of his bedroll. 

Just under a fortnight later, they reach the official border with Valdemar. It's not very visually obvious; still forest, albeit mostly a normal one at this point. Starwind and Moondance will part ways with them here and head back to their own people. 

Lucy eats the wyrsa and answers Vanyel's questions enthusiastically and takes his silences in stride and re-cooks more tough travel rations in oil. 

When they reach the border, she asks, "Are there guards? Should I look human?"

Savil laughs. "Hells, no! If we were coming in on a major road from somewhere like Hardorn, sure. But this is really far out in the border region. Though there's a higher chance we'll run into hunters in the woods, but Van or I ought to sense them coming. Once we hit the road in a day or two, probably you do need to look human." 

"Do borders in your world have guards everywhere?" Vanyel asks curiously. 

"I don't know if it's everywhere but there are guards who want to know what you're bringing in and out of the country so they can assign import and export taxes."

Vanyel has never heard of the concept of import and export taxes, and is fascinated and wants to hear more. 

Lucy doesn't know that much about them, but the basic idea is that governments sometimes tax foreign products to encourage people to buy domestic products so there will be more jobs in the country. Also there's this thing called an "embargo" where you tax stuff from one foreign country in particular so they can't sell as much because you're not on friendly terms with them. 

How odd! Most people in Valdemar can't afford to buy foreign products at all, Vanyel explains. It costs so much just to transport them in, merchants have to charge much higher prices. Jewelry and cloth and pottery come in from Rethwellan and other neighbouring countries, and spices from Seejay, but only wealthy people can afford to buy them. Is it not like that in her world? 

Well, she thinks it's usually, like, food and raw materials and stuff, more often than anything else? But spices and stuff aren't that expensive anymore--she thinks it's because of advances in ship technology. 

Vanyel seems eager to keep asking her questions about shipping technology, and whatever questions those questions lead to, until they stop for lunch.

They don't run into any people, but there are deer – normal deer, not dyheli and definitely not weird Pelagirs changelings. 

She'll kill deer for venison if they need it but otherwise she'll leave them alone. Or just watch them. 

"Deer are pretty."

They're good on rations for now - they're about to hit inhabited areas, where they can buy much tastier food. 

"I think so too," Vanyel agrees. "My father used to make us all go on hunts, but I always hated having to kill them." 

"I don't mind hunting as long as nothing goes to waste, but it's never fun. I mean, it's a lot more fun than being even a little hungry, but I'd rather eat cows than deer."

"Mmm." Vanyel seems to be running out of stamina for talking. 

That's alright. Lucy's plenty capable of occupying herself with other things, like watching animals quietly, or talking to her brother, or practicing the language, or reading the books that came through with them.

Before the end of the day, they reach their first smallholders' farm. Savil rides up to greet the farmers, and then waves to let the others know that they're invited in. 

Wilbur approaches slowly in case someone decides to take exception to his height. 

...Lucy isn't being deliberate like Wilbur is, but she's still a little nervous. 

The couple who greets them seem a bit...startled...but Savil and Vanyel are in Heraldic uniforms, with Companions right there, if they're calm about it then it's got to be fine and it would be terrible to be rude to a Herald's guest. It does present some issues in terms of his fitting into their tiny cottage. But it's beautiful summer weather, so they can sit outdoors while supper is prepared. 

The couple has four children between the ages of four and ten, who appear one by one. They're shy at first, but the Companions are familiar and exciting and bring them out of their shell, and after that they start showing interest in Lucy and Wilbur. 

"How did you get so big?" the six-year-old boy asks Wilbur. "Mama says if I eat my greens and my meat I'll grow up big and strong. Is that what you did?" 

"If you eat your greens and meat you'll grow up big and strong, but not this big. I'm just like this. Sometimes people are born a little different and something weird happens, like growing up very very big or not very big at all or having funny patches of color on their skin."

"Oh." The boy tilts his head to the side and thinks about that for a while. 

His older sister turns to Lucy. "Your hair is pretty. Can I touch it?" 

"Sure!"

The girl plays with it, eventually starts putting some in a braid. "...Your hair's white but you're not old at all," she says. "Why is it white?" 

"Well, my mother's hair was white, too, and she wasn't old. I think it's just one of those things, like Wilbur being big."

"I wish my hair was white," the girl says sadly. (It's a dull earthy brown, the same as her entire family.) "It looks so nice and shiny in the sun." 

"I think your hair looks very nice. There are things you can get hair with your texture to do that are much harder when your hair is as smooth as mine."

"Ooh, ooh, like what? Are they pretty? Mama will braid my hair sometimes but I think it looks boring." 

"Does she do a normal three-stranded plait?"

"Yes," the oldest girl answers for her, showing her own single braid hanging down her back. "I thought that's what a plait was. Are there other kinds?" 

"Yeah! Want me to show you?"

"Me first me first!" the younger sister says, jumping up and down. 

Her littler brothers look jealous. (Their hair is cropped at ear-length). 

Lucy has to go slow and concentrate some--it turns out this hairstyle is significantly harder with only two hands--but she can still answer questions during if there are any.

Then the older sister wants it too, and Vanyel plays with the younger two boys, who are kind of bored of hairstyling by now. He seems to like children.

By the time she's done, supper is ready. The meal is almost certainly not one that the farmers can afford to eat every day; they're pulling out their best for the visiting Heralds. (The children are delighted). There's fresh bread, and butter and soft cheese and berry-jam to go with it, and then creamy soup, and greens drizzled with honey, and a whole roasted chicken. The mother offers weak homebrewed barley-ale to the Heralds and to Lucy and Wilbur. 

...Lucy has no idea what affect alcohol is likely to have on her, but...well, it's basically a weak neurotoxin, and it's not like any other toxins have any effect on her? She will accept. 

Yeah, sure.

They eat and drink and Vanyel eats way more than usual with much less fuss. Savil drinks quite a lot of the ale, until her cheeks are pink and she starts regaling the little ones with (both censored and embellished) stories of her adventures as a Herald. 

Lucy, true to her predictions, does not get even a little bit tipsy from the amount of ale she drinks. 

The food is delicious, though, and she's effusive in her praises of it. 

It's dark by the time they're done, and time to retire to bed. The couple is apologetic; their cottage only has two rooms, the parents sleep in one of them and the littles sleep all together in a straw-ticking mattress in a sort of attic-loft. Maybe the two ladies can have the couple's bed, and the boy can have the loft? The family can sleep out in the barn for a night. But they don't have a bed big enough for Wilbur, and are worried he's going to be terribly offended about having to sleep out in the barn too. 

"We," Savil says firmly, "absolutely do not need to take over your beds. In fact, we can all sleep out in the barn. Us Heralds like to be near our Companions." :Lucy, does that suit you all right?:

:Hay is soft!:

"Mama Mama but we want to sleep in the barn!" The children seem to think this sounds like great fun. 

:I haven't interacted with a child since Wilbur when we were little but it turns out they're great.:

The parents are eventually persuaded that a sleepover in the barn is acceptable, and the children run off giggling and grinning to collect their blankets and bring them over. The barn smells very strongly of the chickens and milch-cow that the family owns, but it's roomy and warm and has some open space to bed down. 

Lucy and Wilbur didn't even hate the Wyrsa stink that much, the barn smells fine. 

Lucy will cheerfully tell the children stories from her world for later than their parents would probably be happy about but eventually has to insist they sleep and pretend to do the same. 

...It's nice, being curled up in human form somewhere cozy surrounded by people who like her. 

They're woken early, unfortunately. The chickens don't see any reason to change their routine based on the visiting humans, and they're loud. 

Vanyel stays in his bedroll for a while looking grumpy about this fact but eventually drags himself up with a resigned look. 

:Does this world have coffee?: Lucy asks Savil. 

Savil has no idea what she’s talking about. Some people find that tea helps them wake up? But the party doesn’t have any real tea with them, and the farmers certainly don’t, it’s usually bought from Rethwellani merchants because the growing climate there is better for it.

:Oh yeah the trade thing. Um, coffee is sort of like tea, only much stronger, and instead of leaves it's beans and you roast and grind them first. But if tea is expensive you probably don't have coffee even if it's anywhere.:

That seems plausible to Savil. 

Breakfast is good, though, leftover bread from supper and jam again and pease-porridge with cream. Then they might as well make an early start on their journey. There's a dirt track that goes from the smallholders' land to the nearest actual road, since they do sometimes go sell some of their cheese in the market at the nearest town so they can buy other goods. That ought to make their journey go faster. 

Once they reach the road, Savil thinks it's about a day's journey to the Frelennye lands. Maybe two more days total, if they're lucky. 

Oh good! It turns out Lucy bounces when she is excited. 

The children aren't sure what she's so excited about but they're going to be excited along with her! Bounce bounce bounce. They wave until the party is out of sight. 

Vanyel, it turns out, does not cope well with sleep deprivation. He's having a terrible day. He actually keeps it pretty under control during the morning, he's more withdrawn than usual but occasionally participates in the conversation. 

About a candlemark after their hasty stop for lunch, though, Savil says something innocuous-seeming and he bursts into tears. The Companions stop moving. Savil seems unsure what to do.  

Lucy is pretty sure she knows what to do! The thing is hug him and let him cry on her. 

Then Vanyel is going to cry on her for a while. 

Eventually he calms down a bit and wants to complain. In Mindspeech because talking is hard when one is still kind of crying. :I hate everything. I hate traveling, I hate sleeping in weird uncomfortable places, I don't want to have to talk to any more strangers, I want to be HOME: 

:Man, you know, that is so valid, travel is exhausting and strangers are really difficult and I dunno about the sleep one 'cause my sleep is weird but it sounds super plausible.:

Vanyel sniffles. :I guess I have to. It's not going to be any better if we just stop in the middle of nowhere. And Gating would be worse: 

:Yeah, sometimes we have to do things that really suck. Doesn't stop 'em from sucking.:

That seems to help a bit. Vanyel stays hugging her for a while and then pulls free. "We should keep going so we don't get delayed." 

Nodnod. 

They do successfully reach the town before nightfall, despite the stop. It's big enough to have an inn. Savil suggests they stay there instead of trying their luck camping. Conveniently, it has high ceilings – Wilbur only has to stoop a bit to get in – and there's a two-room suite available with two big beds in it. 

When they go down to eat, Vanyel takes one look at the crowded, raucous taproom and flees back to the room to hide.  

Lucy...stays for food. But she flees back upstairs as soon as she's bolted a reasonable supper down. 

"That is too many people. I like people and that is too many."

She puts down a handful of food items she'd grabbed beside where Vanyel is sitting. "You should probably eat." 

Vanyel is exhausted at this point, but manages to pick at the food until Savil and Wilbur get back and they talk about allocating beds. Savil and Vanyel can share one – it's unclear if Lucy and Wilbur will both fit comfortably in the other, spacious or not, if Wilbur wants to fit at all he'll need to scrunch up. 

Wilbur can curl up. 

"I don't need to be in a bed, I can just sit up reading."

"Silly me, that's right, I always forget you don't actually need sleep." 

They bed down for the night. 

...Vanyel has nightmares and wakes everyone up twice by screaming in the middle of the night. It's not the first time this has happened but it's not that frequent. 

...Will it help if Lucy starts quietly petting him in his sleep. 

Vanyel does stay asleep after this point. At dawn, Savil yanks the curtains shut and donates her cloak to make it even darker, and then declares that they are not leaving until Vanyel has had enough sleep, if he has two nights of bad sleep in a row then today will be a disaster. 

Lucy gives Savil a thumbs-up. "How does Yfandes stand being in stables where she can't help?" Lucy asks quietly. 

"She hates it," Savil whispers back. "In k'Treva he used to sleep out with her a lot – they don't really have weather there, there's a shield over the whole Vale. Staying in the barn would've been good for that if not for stupid chickens." 

"It sucks. And she can't hug him. I'm so glad I have tentacles when I'm not a biped." 

Savil had honestly not thought about whether tentacles would be good for hugs, but she supposes it makes sense.

With pets, Vanyel manages to sleep until almost noon – he was apparently pretty behind. They're definitely not going to make the rest of the journey in one leg, at this point. 

Oh Well, sometimes you do what you need to do. She read somewhere that humans need sleep like they need food and food is not a matter to fuck around with. 

Vanyel does seem to be in a better mood than the day before when they set out, although he's pretty tense. 

Lucy spends much of the day's journey quietly sympathizing with Yfandes over the difficulties of a horse body in taking care of a Vanyel. 

There's no convenient town, or farm, so they're going to have to camp off the side of the road again. Savil does manage to scout out a nice little meadow with a stream nearby, and she can cast a weather-barrier spell, which keeps it a nice temperature for sleeping and will hold off dew and rain. 

Conveniently they've covered more than half the total distance that they were planning to originally, so tomorrow will be a short leg. A couple of candlemarks on the road, which according to Savil's past experience on circuit gets busy around the harvest, but is currently quiet enough that Savil feels comfortable with Lucy spending most of it in her big form and only switching to human if her Thoughtsensing detects someone coming. Then a few more down a dirt side track much like the one they came up through, and they'll be there. 

Vanyel seems kind of terrified at the prospect.