The Stray

The Long Way Home, Pt. 1

Of course, sayin' that was one thing, doing it was gonna be a whole 'other one. Meri was still healing, and he was still tired, and they were both still upset. With little else he could do, he just kept brewing tea for the two of them, and tried not to dwell on his old tribe too much. At least I'm safe from'em here. Warriors or not, nobody likes coming in here. As it was, he was edgier than he'd like to be. He couldn't see the sky here, but it felt like rainclouds were gatherin' over him.

Having to plan this whole mess didn't make him feel any better. True night will fall soon, so all the nastiest monsters will be hunting. Ugh, the ones that didn't get woken up earlier. Timothy could sneak through the night, and he'd had to before plenty of times, but with Meri behind him they'd be easy prey. It'd be easier if he could just keep the dragoness here for the night, but that had problems of its own. Mostly, he couldn't feed a second mouth that long. Heck, he couldn't feed his own! Damned drought. But it's not just that, either. If I have her stay the night, her family might come looking for her... and get lost too, or worse. The longer this situation sits, the worse it'll get.

More missing people meant more riled up monsters (and, y'know, more loss of life. He couldn't shelter everyone here.) And if enough ruckus got raised, the Voltcage would wake up, and then they'd all be screwed. It was bad enough he'd set off a bomb to escape the 'ganths, without knowing where the fae eater was sleeping. So no, somehow Meri had to get home, tonight, and he was going to have to somehow make that happen without being seen in the process. In short, he felt a headache coming on.

Soon, Timothy cleared away the dishes from lunch, washing them out outside. The dragoness followed him. "So, um... How bad is this gonna be?"

"Ugh... it's like this. If we could march at my best speed the whole way, it'd take a little under half a day to make it to the forest's southern edge."

"Well, that doesn't seem so bad..." The dragoness had hesitated.

He floated the bowls back to where they belonged before continuing. "Yeah, but we're both already tired, and we probably woke up acres of forest with that fight. Then those might have woken up more and more trouble. We're going to need to waste a lot of time sneaking past monsters. And it's already past noon, so we're gonna be trying to outrun nightfall."

"But there's no day or night in here, right?"

"Yeah, but critters still sleep, and most of the strongest here are nocturnal. When true night falls, this forest gets deadly."

Meri gasped. "Ooh!" Timothy whirled to see her holding up her wounded arm— no, her bracelet. "I could just call my big sister! She can pick me up!"

"Wait, what?" That was what he was trying to avoid! "No, y'can't!"

"She can come fly here and just grab me!" And before he could do more than stammer a protest, she slapped the bracelet hard. "Valencia!"

Timothy froze, half-expecting one of the dragons the tribe had told stories of to crash out of the sky, flattening his house and smashin' him into wolf jelly. Instead, her bracelet grew hot against her scales, and spat a few elemental sparks. ...That was it. "Um...?"

"Valencia! Valencia Ashborne-Murphy!" Meri's voice grew high and anxious. "Please?"

Murphy? The witch raised an eyebrow. What kinda name— no, wait, bigger issues. It only took him a moment's thought to realize the problem. "Uh, Meri, that's the arm that got slashed."

"Yeah?"

He tried to leave a bigger hint. "The one an humoganth slashed."

"Yes." She wasn't getting it. Timothy stifled a sigh.