The Stray

Scars, Pt. 5

This time, now that he wasn't completely empty, he stayed somewhat sentient as he dug in. Valencia had reappeared at some point during his first bowl, now unarmored. A black shirt with a picture of a buff lioness flexing, with a flaming fist, had replaced it, along with blue jeans. The shirt, he noticed, was torn at the sleeves, putting her arm muscles on display. Her really nice arm muscles, he had to add. She still looked sooty and tired, but she devoured the stew like him. Unlike him, she was apparently helping Meri tell the day's events to miss Larue. The rhino wound up standing behind Meri and fretting over the little dragoness as she ate.

"Aw, mama, I'm okay!" Meri protested.

"Yeah, real convincing, sis." Maisie's eyes were fake, but she could definitely still roll'em.

"Yes, don't 'aw, mama' me." miss Larue scolded, though she hugged her anyway. "You can bet you're not leaving our sight for a while, young lady."

"Aww..."

"Yeah, so I found Meri just as she was running out of the wildfire. So I dove down to grab her, but she grabs my shirt and tells me we have to go back for her friend!" She looked at Timothy with respect. "Timothy here stayed behind to distract the 'cage so Meri could run for it." Miss Larue looked moved to tears, and thanked him profusely, even hugging him again. It wasn't any more expected, or any less chest-bubblingly pleasant.

"And, that's not even all! You wanna talk ballsy? So we find the wolf and get flying, and the poor guy's barely livin'. But the Volt—Uh, don't say it's name, call it the Fae Eater, it didn't take when I flattened it, and it starts chasing us into the air!" The way V described it, it'd been a great adventure rather'n a scrabble to stay alive. "Well, it's shooting tons of lightning at me, and even I can't dodge all that lightning! The monster has me in its sights, and Timothy yells for me to roll over. And you know what the shrimp does? He puts up a shield so tough it takes a direct hit that woulda out me in the ground, and then in the ground. This guy's got the stuff, ma."

The slime looked at him with some respect, then. "You must be the real thing, if V's tooting your horn and not her own." The dragoness stuck her tongue out at her.

"W-well, it was the thing to do, y'know? Valencia saved my life'n all." Sheesh, she was really talking him up. Still, it wasn't that unpleasant. Especially when both Meri and her mama were looking at him like... well, like he wasn't just a mangy halfbreed. He hid a small smile behind a sip of tea.

"And... you said you lived in the Deepshadow, dear?" Larue released him, looking him over with concern. It registered faintly that she was already using past tense. Ouch. "I didn't think anyone could live there."

"Well, it's not easy. Or, um, it wasn't." He winced. "The drought and all."

Miss Larue asked a lot of questions about how he kept fed, about his life alone, and about his health in such a dangerous place. At first he thought she was just worried about where her poor kid had been. But she was clearly fretting over him, too.

"...And I have a small garden, where I grow potion herbs and some vegetables." Timothy explained over his third bowl of stew. "It doesn't grow as much as I'd like, though, so a lot of my larder comes from foraging all over the woods."

"Alone with the monsters?" Larue fretted. "Even in the dead of winter?"

"Well, um... I get by more or less okay." The rhino didn't seem to agree, flitting over behind him for another hug. Timothy was embarrassed to admit he leaned in and melted a little, like a snowbank only getting sun on one side. Don't get used to it, don't get used to it...

Just then, the door opened again. Timothy flinched, hands trying to fly into a casting stance, but nobody else reacted. "We're back." A woman's tired voice came.