Feudal Phase

Stories and Smoke

They became a family during sunsets around an open flame, in a pit that had become entrenched in ash from several uses. The last of the snipper shells lay cast around the fire, half empty and strewn out in colorful, violent displays of blue and gold innards. Aster sucked out of a shell, passing it around to the group.

"More?" they asked.

Santala's face wrinkled with disgust. "The flesh is sour," they said. "Those snippers must have gone ill half a traversal ago."

"We've had them ever since you joined up, and then some," Aster announced, cheerfully.

Santala scooted a little further away from the shell pile, their nose wrinkled up in what was no longer so much disgust as it was raw fear. "No thank you."
"What?" Aster brandished the shell, causing snipper juice to slosh around and spill on the ground. Everyone in the vicinity kept careful distance. It was hard to slide any further around to fire, especially as all three of the newer panta to the party were already clustered together on the exact opposite side of the bonfire. Aster complained, "If you won't take our food, how are we supposed to trade with you for the weaving you're doing?"

"If someone tries to kill us again, you could protect us," Erica offered.

"I don't think Pascal was trying to kill us," Aster suggested, optimistically. "I think they were just... attacking us."
"And we could have died," Dillen said.

"They had a pike!" Santala exclaimed.

Aster nudged their foot into the ground. "I just want to be useful."

The three other panta whispered to each other. Santala said at last, "You know what we could always use? A good story."

Aster's nose scrunched. "I have to go first?"

Darter emerged from their shelter near the trees, just out of the fire's glare. "I can go first."
"They're finally out of the corner," Dillen murmured.

Darter nodded and settled next to Aster, slumping their head on Aster's shoulder. Aster leaned back, although it was hard for them to find a comfortable resting place around Darter's bulk. Aster said, "You never tell me stories."

"I've got one now," Darter said. "Should I?"

"Yes," Aster said, at the same time at which all three of the other panta eagerly agreed. Aster leaned back with the slightest, most definitely not jealous skulk on their face, and said, "If you want to tell one."

Darter dipped their head low, patterns of firelight flashing across their spores. They were also assisted by the patterns of ambient light from nearby glowbugs and the dramatic flash of wings from all kinds of winged hooligans, all of whom had settled on their skin at some point when Darter was nowhere near the fire and were now distressed by how close they were advancing its blazing vicinity. Darter was something to behold. They began, "It started years ago, when I was twelve. I lived with a panta who was two or three, who had shown me all I knew. They were the one who taught me how to get clothes and food from other panta, how to jump around Big Silver so that you never became too well known in one place, what plants were good for eating and what killed you. They were covered in wings from all the leaving they did, two big ones and a whole span of tail feathers, more wings on the feet, a few around the face, and a second pair that looked like they were part of the big first ones, up until they got into the air.

They were a big thief, but no one could catch them. They'd be up in the trees before anyone could try. Once, when someone found our hideout, they snatched me up in the air while I held the best of our spoils and took off into the sky, landing two islands away. They taught me how to fight, too, even without any weapons, in case I got cornered. We were happy, but one day they said they had something serious to talk to me about.