Suggested Listening

It was slow going, helping Cali limp across the plains, to a city Elruin was beginning to worry wasn't there. Then she started to recognize the wall of trees they approached was not a forest, but in fact an actual wall made of living trees that had been grown close together so that they fused into a single continuous lifeform.

It was, in her opinion, a far superior defense than the walls which protected Arila, in that it was more than capable of blinding her magic. Every branch sang with complex and well-crafted magic that was of powerful but unknown function. She came to the fast conclusion that the magic of the tree-wall would have repelled Claron's attempts to take this city, if he used the same tactics he used in Arila.

"Attempting to take our measure?" Tua asked.

"No." Elruin rethought her words when the white dog growled at her. "Not in a bad way. I was studying how beautiful the magic was. I don't think Claron would dare to invade here."

"Is 'at so? I'll tell you what I tell all 'oreigners," Tua said. "We don't know how good our walls are. No'ing's e'er reached 'em be'ore."

That piqued Elruin's interest, so she opened herself up to the magic, to the songs which resounded and confounded. "You have a Lyra? A stronger... no, the songs are... you have two Lyras?"

"Lyra's the name of the dryad in Arila," Lemia explained. "You might know her better as 'the Granddaughter of Enge', or perhaps 'Daughter of Tythes'. She's powerful, made a magic tree like the one that is your walls, but not nearly as big."

"Ah, you must mean our Sisters, Cleda and Melana," Tua said. "You must be quite skilled to sense 'em so well, 'rom out here. Did you say you had only one Sister in your home?"

"Lyra's the only one we know about," Lemia said. "I've never heard of there being another."

"Such unspeakable loneliness she must endure," Tua muttered. She spent the rest of the walk in silent contemplation and prayer, until they reached the gates of the great tree fortress that was her home. "Welcome to Sonhome."

They passed freely through the opening, without a single guard to stop them, but Elruin could see the magic dancing through the roots of the city. If they were to turn upon these people, every inch of the soil was a trap ready to spring. Either they would be impaled upon spikes of wooden death, or they would be ensnared and stripped of vital energy while waiting for whatever punishment the city saw fit to deliver.

Tua began speaking to other silmid in their native language, which Elruin didn't understand. She returned to the much less comfortable human tongue moments after a pair of silmid approached. "'Ey'll take your companion to a ground nest to reco'er."

"I'd feel more comfortable if Rin stays with Esra," Lemia said. "Don't worry, I can tell you everything of importance she knows about the invaders. She's a good mage, I trust nobody to care for Esra better, but she's not well equipped to explain political or military matters."

"As you wish, but we might speak wi' 'em later," Tua said. "While you're here, you are 'ree to visit the city, but please stick to the 'isitors' section. And don't be too upset by the behavior o' our people, you'll 'ind our culture is... more permissi'e... 'an yours. And keep out o' our bough nests and 'e dwar'en tunnels, 'ey are not sa'e 'or you humans. And don't let Rin out on her own. Our people are beyond reproach, but we cannot speak for all 'isitors."

Once through the great wooden archway, they found themselves on a stone path just wide enough to allow two wagons to pass side by side, and a large trader's pavilion to service and store such things. It was the only artificial stone feature in the entirety of the city that Elruin could see. The rest of the city was covered in wild grasses, with networks of tree branches above where the silmid would leap from branch to branch not unlike Cali, or squirrels.

Elruin could understand why they didn't want humans up there.

Suggested Listening

Hours later, Lemia finally stumbled into their small 'nest'. "Ugh." She looked around. "Uh, do they really expect three people to stay in here together?" The survival tent she'd brought had more space in it than the alcove they called a nest.

Cali shrugged from her corner. "From what I understand, silmid fit seven or eight into nests like this one. Up to twice as many if some are children. So, how'd the interrogation go?" She traced a line from her nose to her jaw, the Engeval cultural gesture to be careful what was spoken of.

"Don't remind me." Lemia sighed. "So, they know know I'm Mila. They know the story about Lord Claron, and that we snuck out with Lyra's help. They seem to have a lot of respect for their dryads, I think it extends to ours, too. Had to tell them that we killed our way through a bandit ambush and stole their cart. Got hairy there for a minute, but necessities of war and all. Also, they said something about caravans saying bandits are humans who act like goblins? I said that was a fair description. What is it with silmid and dwarves hating goblins? It runs deep, like us with the centaur-demons."

"Religious, you mean. Because it is." Cali shifted to a new position, not because she was uncomfortable, but because she had to remind herself to move now that she no longer experienced comfort or discomfort. "The stories vary, but silmid claim that they were the first mammals created by the gods. It's in their name- silm means fur, id means beginning. Their religion teaches that they were to be inheritors of the world, taking over from the reptiles like goblins and dragons who ruled before the age of the mammal, but the reptiles rebelled against the natural order, thus cursing themselves and the world. Naturally, the curse is whatever vice the silmid storyteller holds as the most evil."

"If silmid were first, what are humans, dwarves, elves, and ferin?"

"Well, the dwarves are silmid," Cali said. "That's not speculation, we know dwarves are silmid that became their own bloodline, much like elves descend from human bloodlines. Humans, according to the silmid, were created to serve as warriors and drive out the reptiles who refused to die. Until we forgot our purpose and turned upon ourselves in a civil war that is destined to last forever, which is why silmid want so little to do with us and our wars, they believe them nothing more than the prelude to the next war. Then the ferin were created last, warriors perfected from the lessons learned by humanity's inadequacy."

"Well, ain't that lovely? Anything in there that might be true?"

"We've found dragon remains so ancient that the bone transmuted to stone, which lends credence to the belief that those were the eldest of all species as the silmid claim. Otherwise, the ferin and reptilian religions teach more or less the same story. The difference is that the reptiles claim us mammals to be usurpers who stole their rightful place as the caretakers of the world, and that the world will remain chaotic, flawed, and filled with injustice until every last one of us are exterminated."

"Well, that explains their willingness to keep chasing us even after we killed so many while retreating," Lemia said. "Their whole belief system teaches our deaths are more valuable than their lives."

"About the sum of it," Cali said. "But back to more immediate problems, we were at the part where you told them about the bandits."

"Right, then I told them that Elruin used her necromancy to drive the mules to the point that they died of exhaustion. I don't know how it worked, I'm not a necromancer. They asked me a bunch of questions about magic, then dwarven elders at the meeting declared that they would use their stone magic to send warning to all the major cities of Engeval. I tried to talk them into giving additional help, but..."

"But dwarves are infamously isolationist, and silmid are pacifists to a fault," Cali finished. "Frankly, I'm amazed you were able to talk them into sending messages in the initial meeting. I expected at least three days of begging while I spent every night digging through religious texts to find arguments supporting even that much involvement."

"Yeah, about that. They spent half the time I was there asking about scrying, and suspicious magical activity. I told them Arila was having problems with scrying, too, and tried to imply Claron was responsible. They didn't buy it. So I switched to arguing that at least he was prepared to exploit it, which implies he somehow knew it was coming ahead of time. Still don't know if they agree, but they're getting desperate for answers and want any clues Engeval has to offer. They didn't tell me much, but the goblin population around here's going nuts and they don't know why."

Calenda looked up. "You did good work, but linking Claron to the erratic events was a mistake. If they think Claron has answers, they may contact him directly to ask what he knows, and who knows how that will play out? They don't care who rules the human kingdoms, so long as they stay out of dwarven territory."

"Merat!" Lemia looked down. "All that hard work wasted!"

"No, we can salvage this," Cali said. "Dwarves are slow to act, but when they do, it's decisively. It might take weeks before they're ready to contact Claron, but they will message Engewal and the other cities by the end of the day. And they will stay neutral, which means they won't hand us over to Claron no matter how he insists."

"And he was afraid to fight one Lyra," Elruin added. "Imagine how scary two would be!"

"I guess it all depends on how desperate he is, but I think we're safe. He wasn't willing to fight Lyra, so I don't think he'll come after Sonhome, and he can't absolutely cannot lay siege to a city as well-defended as this one. Speaking of, Rin and I should avoid the dryads. I don't think they'd be fond of me anymore."

Everyone looked unhappy, which made Elruin unhappy. "We should go play in the hotsprings!"

Cali laughed, an odd, silent chuckle since she didn't have the air in her lungs to do a real laugh. She took the breath she needed to speak. "Know what? That sounds like a great idea. Nothing we can do until we all get our strength back, anyway."

"Unanimous vote, then," Lemia said.

Once they climbed out of their nest, Lemia looked at the nearby silmid that was their effective guide for now. "Can you please tell us where the hot springs are?"

"Ataways," the guard pointed toward where hills began to form. "Along the ri'er, impossible to miss."

"We thank you," Lemia held her hands over her chest. Elruin and Lemia did the same as they passed.

Once they got deeper into silmid territory, they realized that Tua was not exaggerating about the differences in culture. The first thing they noticed was that silmid did not wear clothing. Once away from the wall, with guards who wore armor, silmid seemed content to walk around in nothing more than a belt to hold coin purses, and the occasional necklace or bracelet for jewelry.

They were saved from appearance of indecency by the fact that they held few notable human characteristics. Their hind limbs were shorter than humans of their height, while their forelimbs were longer, and they had no breasts or external genitalia. Coupled with their thick but short layer of fur, they might have been mistaken for human children wearing fuzzy, tight-fitting clothes with decorative animal ears. They may have been compared to giant, tailless, meerkats, if any of them had seen a meerkat before.

If that wasn't enough, they had no sense of privacy. While hugs weren't unheard of for humans, the twelve-silmid cuddle pile taking place one of the patches of grass would have been called indecent. None of them were copulating, they were merely hugging and grooming one another, but it was uncomfortable for the women who had lived their lives in a different society where such actions, were they ever to occur, would never happen in public.

"Silmid like to hug a lot," Elruin observed.

Cali put an arm around the girl's shoulder. "They do, but let's leave them alone. They've clearly got enough members."

Several other such groups, none quite so large, were lounging along the trails as the hill grew steeper and the lazy river split apart into numerous fast-running brooks. Further still, and Lemia began feeling the soreness of their climb up the scenic but steep hill.

Near the top, they found a silmid of white fur with stripes of black who grunted and pointed to different paths while speaking in gruff, uncertain words. "Males, 'emales, laundry, toilets. I no good speaking."

Calenda made the gratitude gesture, followed by the others. "Thank you."

"As I walk," the silmid answered back.

"She looked different," Lemia said as they moved along toward the women's side of the springs. "Like, pointier?"

"I think that one was a male," Cali said. "It's hard to spot, but males are a little wider, with more protruding muzzles and more pronounced claws. They're burrowers, while females live in the trees when they aren't in their mates' nest."

"Mates?"

"Yes, mates, and that's all I'm going to explain." Cali gave Elruin's shoulder a meaningful pat. "Keep in mind that silmid aren't like us, on a level deeper than any you imagine between rich and poor or the virtuous and the evil. Those all share the trait of being human, while the silmid do not. Whatever you think of their religious claims that humans were built for war by the gods, it is true that we have a lot of violent tendencies that they lack. Greed and jealousy being two of the big ones. On the other hand, they are indecisive and unambitious, some might say lazy, so it's hard to call them 'better' than us, but they are different."

"I'll keep that in mind."

In the bath, they found a number of silmid near the edges of the water, seeming unwilling to move deep into the water. Instead, they stayed near the shallow edges, and scrubbed one another's fur in the steaming chemical-scented waters. Most stopped to gawk at the human trio as they began to strip for their baths.

With the eyes of the other bathers on them the whole time, there wasn't much the three could speak of except small talk, but after they had been through, an excuse to be quiet and relax in the simple luxury of warm water was just what they needed.