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A Gamer's Guide 340
🕑 Added 2024-12-11 11:00:11 +0000 UTCPreparing the fire isn’t entirely easy for me—Rice is much better at it—but I know enough to do it without her help. Pile some dry leaves and smaller sticks, put bigger pieces of wood atop it, make sure the wind won’t kill it, and then you just have to light it. Thankfully, I still have a few dragon teeth, which are actually excellent at lighting fires. And here I thought they were only good for fancy buttons…
It still takes a while to get the fire going, but it used to be worse.
Rice seems pretty intent on making soup, so while she gathers the rest, I’ll just head back down to the river to grab some water. Happily for me, there’s nothing and nobody down here—exactly what the doctor ordered. With water gathered, I just have to boil it, and it’ll be ready for consumption.
I return to find that Rice has already prepared the mushrooms by searing them over the fire. “Otherwise they just get all slimy,” she explains to me. Sensible, I think.
Cooking the soup only takes around half an hour, which I spend wandering around the garden and imagining all the work I’m going to do. Cut all the weeds down to size, prune the bushes, fix a swing for the tree… As I wander, I happen to catch a look at the mansion. On the second floor, peeking out from a large window, is Lett. He waves at me, and after a moment of processing, I wave back at him.
Right. If I fix a swing, he’ll be able to play, too! I could carry him downstairs, put him on the swing, push him… That’d be nice. Then he could play with the other kids, and he wouldn’t be so lonely.
All in due time, I suppose. For now, lunch is just about ready.
“Thiefhand soup with flatfoot legs, harproots, bulbs, and undergreens! Go on, dig in,” Rice says, tempting me with a bowl filled with reddish goop. It wiggles like half-set jello when she moves it, though the mostly uniform pieces of unidentifiable solids gives it a bit of texture.
“I’m really not hungry, so I’m not sure I should—”
“Aw, come on! Thiefhand soup is a classic! This time I actually followed a recipe, too.”
She shoves the bowl into my hands, and since the only other option is to let the steaming soup spill all over me, I graciously accept it. She soon hands me a fork and knife, though no spoon. “Um, could I have a spoon?”
“What for?” She asks as she begins cutting the soup with her knife before dislodging a solid cube of what’s supposed to be soup, bringing it to her face with her fork to take a bite. Right.
“Nevermind,” I say. The reddish goop in my bowl wiggles seductively. I hide the need to dry-heave by frowning. Might as well, I suppose. With fork in hand, I cut out a cube of gelatinous goop, bring it to my mouth, and instantly remember why I usually refuse her food. It’s warm, but unlike gelatin, the goop isn’t melting or otherwise dissolving. Rather, I have to bite into it, and find that the texture is very much alike that of those cheap rubber balls I had as a kid, the kind that crumbled between your teeth. That’s what this is. Unfortunately, this ‘soup’ has even less flavor than those rubber balls, and simply crumbles into dry nothings while the pieces of actual food inside are released. A trojan horse, these pieces of food present an alternative to the horror of horrific texture but bland taste—bland texture and horrific taste.
Salty and bitter are the main flavors. Crunch crunch crunch go the flatfoot legs. Splat glotch go the harproots. It is by pure power of will and the knowledge that I have gone through worse (surely, I must have) that I’m able to swallow it down. “Rice,” I ask, my voice hollow and forced, “where did you get this recipe? Was it given by someone who maybe doesn’t like you too much…?”
“Of course not! It was on the forums. There’s a user I follow who posts a lot of recipes from Purgatory in an attempt to preserve them for the future. A very noble pursuit.”
Right. Shame that the food itself is more poison than cuisine.
I continue eating it, hoping that it might at least raise a resistance or two. By the end, I get nothing aside from a heavy sensation in my abdomen. I think the same nutritional benefits could have been gained from eating a chunk of lead, but Rice seems pretty content, so I can’t complain.
With lunch finished, I decide that it’s about time to get started on the garden. Initially, I was about to go at it with nothing but my hands and claws, but Rice thought better of it and introduced me to the shed again. There, we find some rudimentary tools, such as a hoe, shovel, hand-shovel, and even a scythe! I call dibs on the scythe, mostly in lieu of a lawnmower. Now, I am become Fennrick, the mower of lawns.
Sharpening the blade of the scythe took a bit of time, but once it was done, it was well worth the effort. Shearing through the grass and weeds, shick, shick, shick… It’s like sweeping, but awesome!
Rice picked the shovel, which she is now using to uproot a few of the larger, more obstinate weeds. Since this isn’t exactly white-collar work, she’s removed her vest and jacket, keeping the sleeves of her shirt rolled up to keep it clean. Not a bad idea. Pausing my scything, I roll up my own sleeves.
So far, this is actually going really well? Way better than expected, at least. Heck, if we keep up this pace, I’m sure we can finish fixing up the garden within the week! Of course, then there’s the matter of making it actually pleasant to be in. A swing in the tree is obvious, but there has to be some other stuff we can add. Are garden gnomes a thing here? What about a little gazebo? Of course, woodworking isn’t exactly something I’m known for, but… How hard can it be?
“Should we get rid of these?” Rice asks, pointing to a row of wild-unkempt bushes in the back of the garden.
Slinging the scythe over my shoulder, I walk up to her and the bushes. They aren’t especially pretty or anything, but it’s clear that they were originally part of some sort of array. Maybe they were even sheared into funny shapes, like they had at the last city I was in? Even if not…
“Keep them,” I say, grinning to myself. “I have a great idea for those…”
Once we finish deweeding the rest of the garden, I return to the bushes. For this, I’ll need no scythe, nor hedge-clippers. The sun is starting to go down so I’m a bit limited in time, but as long as I know what I’m doing, this shouldn’t go too badly. Rice is on stand-by behind me in case something were to happen. Specifically, for the past few hours, I’ve started feeling the gazes of the kids, watching us from inside the mansion, outside in the woods… All around us. Curious as kittens, they watch us. And now, even they are still and silent, their breaths bated.
Even though I don’t need it, I take a deep breath—in, and out.
And then, I strike.
My claws flash out, easily slicing through branches both small and thick, undoing the seams between the plant and its outermost leaves, exposing inner foliage and previously unseen internals. Placing all focus I have on my scent, I’m able to tell with pinpoint precision which leaves connect to what branches, and what I can cut without losing too many leaves. Mind focused to a needle-thin point, I act almost fully without thought—only guided by the well-detailed understanding I have of what I want to carve from the bushes. Smooth out the foliage to make a cohesive form, and then segment it into head, neck, body, tail, with the stems of the bushes acting as legs… In lack of bushes, I make the tail curl around the body, while the wings lie folded across its back, and the horns are made from thicker branches that have had their leaves all removed, and then the open mouth, with teeth of leaves…
I take a step back. It’s lumpy, barren in some parts and had more of semblance to the Bolibompa dragon than to any actual dragon I’ve met, but… Boy, howdy is it a dragon!
I wipe at my brow only to realize there’s no sweat there. Nor do I feel warm. I guess, when you no longer have a body temperature, there’s no need to sweat, huh?
“Is it finished?” Rice asks from a few meters away. “Can I approach without being sliced in quarters?”
“Of course,” I say, taking another few steps back. “He is very much done.” Even with no eyes and a body like dough, it is still very clearly supposed to be a dragon of some sort. I put my hands on my hips. “I think I’ll name him Sune.”
“Sune?” Rice asks, approaching closer. She touches the side of the fluffy dragon, patting his leaves thoughtfully. “Sune is a very nice dragon, if I may say so. Far less dangerous than the real ones.”
“We can’t know that,” I say. “If we fail to keep an eye on him, he might very well come to life and burn down the mansion. Wouldn’t that be horrible?”
“It would! Sune, I didn’t know you had such a dark side…” Her suspicious glare would be enough to send any living creature scrambling, but Sune is beyond such primitive reactions. He stands his ground, chest puffed out, tail twirled. After a few seconds of glaring, Rice is the one to avert her gaze. “You win this round, Sune. But don’t hang up your medal just yet! Soon, you will taste the bitter taste of defeat, just as I have now…!”
“I’ll be sure to cheer for you when you beat my son to a pulp,” I tell her.
“Excellent.”
We both stare at Sune for a few moments more. And then, I notice an intruder. At the other end of the yard, one of the kids has officially stepped onto the lawn. Previously, none of them dared to enter. But now, one brave child has taken the first step. His friends seem conflicted, as some are whispering, cheering him on, while others are gesturing for him to return. I pretend not to notice him, keeping my eyes on the hedge dragon. Still, my finely attuned senses tell me that he’s getting closer, and closer, and…
I take a step to the side, creating a space between myself and Rice. The kid jerks back, now frozen in place, half-hunched. Looking back at him, I ignore the obvious terror on his face and simply wave towards the empty space and to the dragon just beyond it. Nevertheless, he remains frozen. The memory of a girl lying on the floor, laundry splattered everywhere, flashes through my mind. But it doesn’t have to go like that again. “Go on,” I say. “You want to check him out, don’t you?”
The kid starts moving again, blinking, and swallowing, and… His little voice pipes up, saying, “Um, him?”
“Oh, yes,” I say, injecting some theatrical grandeur into my voice, “this is, after all, none but Sune the Conqueror! Bane of goblins and humans alike, ruler of the northern mountains and this one island in the far east! Yes, despite being a colonizer, Sune has now come here to visit, and in order to teach you all about dragons, he has decided to settle here, out of the goodness of his glowing heart.”
The kid slowly straightens out, his face softening, losing the more overt tones of terror. “Glowing heart?”
On the far side of the lawn, I notice some of the other kids, creeping closer. “Indeed,” I say, loud enough for even those kids to hear, “dragons have glowing hearts! You can’t see it unless they part their feathers or you open ‘em up, but the glowing heart of a dragon holds many uses. Lighting is the least of these uses, but even in the magical business, the hearts of dragons hold much utility…”
As the other kids come closer, I keep talking. After some time, they’re all close by, listening intently as I tell them about the physiology of dragons. I can even spot a few older kids, equally curious. At times, a hand will fly up, and I’ll answer their questions, each in turn.
“What do dragons eat?”
“See, that’s the funny thing, they don’t technically need to eat, but…”
“Why do some dragons have four wings?”
“To answer that, I’ll first have to explain why some goblins turn into dragons, which happens when…”
“Do dragons have scales or feathers?”
“Depends on the type of dragon! Typically, though, much like drakes, they have feathers, but the coloration differs, depending on…”
Within a quarter of an hour’s time, I’ve got over a dozen kids listening to my little impromptu lecture, all of them sitting in a half-circle, attentive and interested. Even Rice, though slightly off to the side, is listening with a fair bit of interest. A certain question about why I know so much about dragons actually causes me to retell a fair bit about my time at Loathe Summit, which they eat up like kids at a candy shop.
“—So, after my good friend Goss accepted that he wasn’t a Religist after all, we decided to go meet with the rest of the groups to figure out which one he belonged to. The first group we met was…”
Ding, dong! Ding, dong!
I’m interrupted by the ringing of a bell echoing out over the forest, loud and clear. The kids turn towards the mansion, their ears falling.
“Awww, not already,” one of them says.
“The food sucks nowadays… I wonder when the housemother will be back?”
“Will you continue after supper?” another one asks me, her eyes twinkling. “I really want to find out what happened to the nice dragon!”
“Yeah! What group did he belong to in the end?”
“Did he become a four-winged dragon?”
“Did you kill him?!”
The final question sends the others into a stir, demanding to know whether or not I killed Goss. With them all complaining so loudly, I can hardly get a word in, especially when they start crowding around me.
“Alright, alright, back off, young’uns!” Rice says, stepping between me and the kids. “Kitty here will still be here tomorrow, yeah? It’s getting dark, so with the ghosts about, I doubt we’ll be out here after supper. However, tomorrow, at the same time…” She turns to look at me, her eyes asking me for permission. I nod at her, and she returns her attention to the kids. Holding her arms up like a Barnham-style ringleader, she says, loud enough for all to hear, “Kitty will be here tomorrow, same time, same place! Return, and prepare your little hearts for the next part of his epic story… The Tale of Kitty!”
The kids whoop and scream with glee, only silenced by another bell chiming. Groaning amongst themselves, they start bustling away, running towards the mansion, some of them waving at me and promising to return, same time, same place. I wave back and promise the same thing. As I watch them crowd inside the mansion, I notice that on the upper floor, Lett’s window is open. I wave at him, and get a wave back. Did he hear the entire thing? If so, I certainly hope he enjoyed it.
“Not too shabby,” Rice says, sidling up to me. “Your scene-setting could use some work, but the characterization was excellent.”
“Thanks,” I say, but before I can give a quip back, I notice someone over at the mansion, heading towards us. Someone with a silhouette as tall as us.
In the early darkness of the mid-October evening, Holly approaches us.
Shoot.
Comments
Nogardnoir
Will Kitty finish removing the weeds ? Will the kids finally learn the dragon's fate ? You'll know it all in the next episode of Dragonba- [koff koff] next episode of GAMER'S GUIDE.
