The Stray

Scars, Pt. 5

Now that he wasn't completely empty, he was able to pay (a little) attention to his surroundings. Valencia had reappeared at some point during his first bowl. She looked a lot different without the armor. Only a little less imposing, though, considering she still towered over him. She wore a black T-shirt, emblazoned with a picture of an attractive, muscular lioness flexing her flaming arms. That drew his attention less than th' fact that her shirt was torn at the shoulders, putting her arms on display.

Her huge, amazing arms. Wow.

She still looked sooty and tired, but her appetite was just like his! What wasn't like him was that she still had the energy to talk, apparently midway through retelling the day's events to miss Larue. He, er, didn't think it was helping her mood to hear how many times her youngest had almost died.

"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 her mid-hug. "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...