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In the weeks after their escape Bonesaw is hard at work, building up a lab and growing food and splitting branches and stitching them into a scaffold so that they grow into a living treehouse.
Bonesaw and Beka outside of Angband
lost-child
"Oh yeah, I guess there will be."
Even if that sounds boring.
"Can you tell me another story tonight, like you did when we were in the hallucination?"
orf
"Sure!
"Once upon a time there were three sisters. The oldest sister was clever and the middle sister was friendly and the youngest sister was brave.
"One day, their favorite grandmother disappeared! The oldest sister said, "I'll go look for her in the mausoleum. I'd know those teeth anywhere. And everyone winds up there sooner or later." So she went to the ossuary, and looked at skulls and jaws and tusks and molars, but couldn't find her grandmother's bones anywhere. Wherever she was, she hadn't been interred there.
"The middle sister said, "I'll go ask people from far away if they've seen her. She can't have gone too far, so someone may have seen her, even if they only got a glimpse while she was on her way." So she went to the far reaches of Angband, down in the sub-basements and up on the parapets and even out on the patrols, and told everyone about her grandmother and asked if they'd seen her, but no one told her anything useful.
"The youngest sister said, "I'll go ask the balrog." And her sisters said, no, no, don't do that! Don't bring down those firey whips on our family! Don't you know a balrog is just this side of his lordship? If our grandmother has been so much as noticed by a balrog, there's no saving her now! But the youngest sister was determined. She marched right up to the balrog who oversaw their part of the fortress and demanded to know if he had seen their grandmother. And then he ate her. The end."
orf
"No, because he ate her. - I don't think they really eat but in the version I heard he ate her."
lost-child
"I don't know just uh, the bed time stories I'm used to have the person they're about doing the eating usually. Like if the Balrog was the main character instead of the girls."
orf
"I guess you could tell it that way but it seems like a less interesting story if it's, one day a balrog may or may not have eaten somebody's grandma, and then a girl walked up to him and asked him something and he ate her."
lost-child
"Oh usually it's more uh, a bunch of people were trying to get the Balrog to do a thing and it avoided them until one found it and it ate them. That sort of thing. Except not literally a Balrog - there aren't any of those where I'm from."
lost-child
"Yeah, lots of brave dumb people hassling me and the family I had there and trying to get us to stop doing things or ruining the things we do."
orf
"I guess Angband'd be a nice change. Though I don't think anybody's likely to come bug us here either except maybe like his lordship once he's recovered."
lost-child
"That's also neat! Though there's less material for my art here than there was at Angband so it's sort of a mixed bag."
orf
"I think I was imagining you could do with the animals and fish and stuff. You got the treehouse to grow like that, I think that's super cool!"
lost-child
"Oh, sure! Uh, I've noticed that orcs seem to hurt a lot but not what causes it, but I can probably figure that out."
orf
"I think it's 'cause their souls are like Elf souls and don't fit right in their bodies? I'm not sure quite how that works though."
lost-child
"If the souls are feeling pain I don't know if I can do it but so far I've mostly not seen souls feel things except for maybe oaths and osanwë, so I bet it'll be fine."
Bonesaw inspects Kat's skin inquisitively.
lost-child
Bonesaw inspects things underneath the skin next - turning off all of Kat's pain before doing so since otherwise it might be distracting.
lost-child
Oh that's so cute!
Is this the thing causing the pain? No... Is this the thing? .... Nope.
Bonesaw continues searching for things for a while.