Feudal Phase

Reparations

At morning, the nearest obelisk was visible even with the surrounding tree cover. Aster, who had passed out on the disagreeable floor of the cabin the two of them had shackled their newfound freedoms to, perked up and looked out the window to catch the sun sheering the edge of the dark structure like some stranger running a knife along their tongue. The sun's heat blazed in through the window from around the side of the obelisk nonetheless.

Aster had never known the structure's shadow.

"Darter." Their limbs creaking with a weight they suspected they were young to know, they pushed their companion in crime awake. "Darter. Darter! You have to see this!"

Darter's gray eyes swam about in confusion before fixing Aster. With the force of a great beast rising from the riverbed, they lifted themselves and went to the window. Their face caught the light perfectly, causing the mess of spores across their face (concentrated around the center of their face, running in a line across the bridge of their long, broad nose) to glow. "What are we looking at?"

Aster huffed. "I guess nothing impresses you, because you're out here all the time."
Darter said, "I'm appreciating it. I just appreciate everything, and since you're so... Aster... I thought it had to be something dangerous, or... no, I just thought it was something dangerous."
"You're in danger of getting on my nerves," Aster warned Darter.

Darter said, "I'm in danger of starving. How's your stomach?"

Aster flinched. They could sense some imperceptible change to their body as they did so. Their hands flew first to their horns, which were still just nubs, and then to their ears, which were still just nubs. No tail. Aster tapped their stomach, tentatively, which was unexpectedly tender, but there weren't cool spikes or a second mouth or any other number of mutations there. It was just their stomach. "It's fine. I think. You caught that?"

"I think it'll be better after some food," Darter suggested. The bag Aster brought up from the Covena was unraveled back into a sheet, revealing a mess of food which had stained the bag and a few, almost unusable implements. There was a Koda-tooth knife, which Darter pretended not to see as they went for the least impacted looking food. Sander, the Siida in charge of food, at least had the good sense to keep meal in a covered bowl. "We add water, right?"

Aster tapped two fingers to their chin. "Usually we use river water, but I think that it'll be the same if we go out to Big Silver."
Darter nodded, holding the meal bowl like a newling. "I guess so. Then we can start storing fruits and meat in here, when we're done."
"Can we store things?"

"Not long."

"You don't know how to preserve things?" Aster asked, incredulous.

"Do you?"

Aster considered this. They had been taught, but they certainly hadn't learned anything. "No."

"Great," Darter said. "I guess we're going to starve together during some long dark."

"I guess so." Aster had about as much intention to starve as a bird does to fall out of the sky while it is flying.

They followed Darter out of the cabin, which was hardly separated from the outside at all, and descended back through the flower-strewn paths to Big Silver, with Darter. Darter put the bowl on the shore and began fetching water in their open hands. Aster joined, although it already seemed to them that there had to be a more productive way of doing it.

"Can I dunk the bowl?"

"If you want half our morningmeal to go into Big Silver."

"I'll eat it anyways," Aster promised. "You can have the half that doesn't."