Neil

Yallia, Talass and I left the meeting shortly after I had agreed to join the Lamia expedition. They had asked why Yallia wouldn’t be joining us and I gave the excuse that she didn’t want to miss her father, which was actually true. Talass had surprised me by slithering beside me and all but ignoring Yallia. I couldn’t decide if this was because she was trying to be professional and show that she could work with me, or if she had soured on the cat-kin for some reason. Either way it showed me that perhaps my choice to go hadn’t been complete foolishness.

“Gather your things tonight, the expedition should be three days if we are lucky, and no more than four. Leave room in your pack for food, tomorrow morning before we leave, I will give you your share of the provisions and it will be your responsibility to carry them.”

“Will we be carrying any potions?”

“I will have some healing potions and poisons for our weapons. I trust your weapon will be your magic?”

I hesitated ever so slightly before answering, but it was enough for Talass to pick up on.

“What’s wrong? Are the stories of your magics just that? stories?” She asked with a sneer in her voice.

“You’ve seen my magic with your own two eyes Talass, you know what I can do, but I’d like a spear and some poison as well.”

“Not confident in your magic then?”

“Well if I’m going to be protecting you, then I might need all the help I can get.”

Shooting me a final glare she turned away from us and she started down a street. “Be at the elders chambers at dawn, and I will have your spear. Don’t be late outlander.” She said as she left.

“You two are like children, just kiss her already.” Yallia said.

Shocked I looked at the cat girl and the wry grin she was now sporting.

“It’s so obvious the way you two flirt with each other. If you were cat-kin you two would flicking each other's ears, and grabbing each other's tails.”

“What?”

“That’s what cat-kin children do when they like each other and they don’t know how to express it properly.”

“You think she likes me?”

“It's obvious in how she moves, she practically radiates sexual tension and nervousness. I didn’t see it before because their body language is guarded buts it's obvious now.”

Turning to look at the retreating form of the snake girl I tried to see what Yallia was talking about. Talass was beautiful and voluptuous in a way that most of the Lamia women here were not, but I couldn’t see any sign of sexual tension that Yallia talked about. “I think your way off. She can’t stand me.”

“Trust me, women can sense these things. Although I guess you’ll be busy blessing that man's daughter tonight?”

“Huh? Oh yeah that. You think I should do it before I leave? You don’t think it will take too, long do you? I’ll need to get to sleep early tonight.”

Yallia stopped in her tracks staring at me a smile threatening to split her face as she tried to stifle her laughter. Not able to stop a little of the laughter from slipping into her voice as she spoke. “Well, I don’t know it's your blessing, I guess it can take as long, or be as quick as you want.”

Knowing that I was missing something obvious but not wanting to give her the satisfaction of asking what it was I continued “I was never very religious so I’m not sure what I’ll be doing really. Probably just have to make something up as I go along.”

Yallia made an odd coughing squeaking noise from beside me and bent over her hands on her knees as she started coughing into her knees.

“Are you alright?” I asked patting her on the back.

Waving my hand away she slowly got herself under control and stood up a small smile on her lips. By now almost every Lamia near us had stopped what they were doing and were staring at her with concerned expressions on their faces.

When I tried to ask Yallia what was wrong she just waved me off and refused to give any answer that wasn’t clearly a joke, unfortunately while I had no idea what that joke was, I was clearly the punch line.

“I’m going to check on all my stuff, see what I still have, and what I should bring with me.”

Walking through the village making my way back to Nialla’s home the Lamia kept staring at us and although Yallia seemed unconcerned with them I found myself getting increasingly uncomfortable with the way everyone was looking at me. It had been fun at first but now it was starting to get annoying.

When we finally reached the hut I was feeling tired again, it was like I had hardly even slept the night before. There was no one near the hut and the net that Yallia had been working on with the children was nowhere to be seen. Letting myself inside I found my pack in the corner where I had left it the night before.

Bringing it over to the table I turned it over dumping the contents out and I took stock of everything I had left. With what the Lamia returned to me I now had half of my clothes, all of them at least a little dirty, and most of them little more than rags. My cookware was here, although there was no sign of my small stove, both of my knives had been on my hips thankfully and were still here, my first aid kit was still half full, I had both of my canteens, my found mortar and pestle, and after a moment of thought I checked the pockets in the pants I had worn the other day and found my garbage bag with healing plants in it. Just enough to make one or two batches of heeling potion.

Turning over my bag over I examined the patch job I had done with my t-shirt. I had torn it wide open and the t-shirt was nowhere to be seen now. I was trying to think of a way to patch my bag once again with my dirtiest shirt and no sewing kit when Yallia seeing what I was doing interrupted me.

“This looks pretty useless Neil, why don’t you use my smaller bag?”

Giving my bag one last look I threw it down onto the ground. “Thank you, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this thing.”

“I guess the garbage is too good for it.” Yallia said leaning over my shoulder getting a closer look at my bag.

“Ha ha,” I said with no humor in my voice. “I’m serious, I don’t have a lot of things from home, and I just dropped a bunch of them on a mountainside. If I can fix this I’d like to.”

“Then why don’t you?” She said feeling the material in her hands. “I’m not sure why you’d bother though aside from sentimental reasons, this material feel shoddy, no wonder it broke so easily, and what's with all these straps and buckles? It looks like something a pirate would wear.”

“First of all, the straps are all practical, it’s light but it's supposed to be, that makes it easier for long distance hikes, and it's not shoddy. If it weren’t for the slimes acid it would have held up just fine, even sliding down the mointain.” I countered plucking the bag from her hands.

Walking to my tent I placed it and some of my clothes into my destroyed bag. Yallia handed me her pack. Turning it over in my hands I looked at the simple bag.

It was made of a soft leather that had seen some wear and tear but looked to be in excellent condition. It was heavier than my own bag while not as large and it had a lot less padding, but it could probably survive a lot more damage.

“Thank you.”

Placing a single change of clothes in my bag along with my first aid kit, cook ware and both canteens I closed the bag by its surprisingly complicated buckles.

Yallia who had been poking the plastic clips on my bag looked up when I moved to grab my mortar, pestle, pot, potions ingredients and headed outside.

Sitting in front of the fire I put everything down and started to slowly make some healing potions. I was so absorbed in my potion making I didn’t hear anyone approach, and the first sign that I had an audience was the head popping into my line of sight about 4 inches from me.

I jumped a little in the air, but fortunately I didn’t spill my potion on the ground. Looking to my right at the offending face I saw a young boy’s face much closer than was comfortable. He was about 4 years old, with olive green hair, a slightly upturned nose, buck teeth and he was staring at me with a smile that threatened to split his face in two.

“Hello!” He shouted at me.

Surprised and not sure what to do I answered him. “Hello, how are you?”

His eyes widened in surprise and belatedly I remembered that I had never really spoken to him before. I had crashed dead asleep the day before and woken up late.

Barely missing a beat, he started speaking quickly. For a moment I couldn’t understand him and I thought that he might be speaking a dialect before I realized that it was just a slight lisp that was just making him a little harder to understand.

“Hello! I’m Stallat!” He yelled at me again.

Smiling in spite of myself I was about to answer when my potion started boiling in my pot.

“Shit.” I said in English switching my focus back to the potion just in time to see the mixture begin to bubble up far too much. “Excuse me!” I said in Lamianese as I took the pot off of the fire and began stirring it trying to salvage the potion.

“What are you doing?” He almost shouted into my ear.

Frantically stirring the potion I ignored the kid as I tried to think of something that could salvage the potion. Maybe a little more moon berry juice?

“What is it?” I asked out loud in English looking at the potion.

DING

An average quality health potion. This will heal most minor injuries, and help someone recover from a major injury. Contains moderate amounts of unrefined Mana.

Well not too bad, this potion was probably on par with my earliest attempts. I could try to distill it a little more and increase its strength, but I only had enough ingredients to make one more potion so if I ruined instead I would only have the one potion with me. While I trusted the Lamia to be able to make excellent potions, I wasn’t sure if I trusted that Talass would give me an excellent potion.

Pouring the potion into my larger canteen I finally turned to the young Lamia and looked at him. I probably should have been annoyed with him for ruining my potion, but his expression was so earnest and innocent that he was actually fairly endearing. He was staring at me with literal wide-eyed enthusiasm his mouth slightly open.

“Hello Stallat, how are you?”

“I’m great! I was at the river and I got a turtle!” He shouted again thrusting a shelled creature into my face.

Unsure of how to respond I looked at the poor reptile being held in the small boys' hands, its face peeking out of its shell a look of hope on its face. Deciding I had to say something I settled on encouraging. “That’s great, where did you find him?”

What followed was a five minute rambling explanation that I only half understood. Apparently he found the turtle while he was helping his sister help their father catch fish for the tribe.

“And then, and then I found him on a rawk.” He said in his lispy voice. “He tried to run but I gawt him.” The story finished as the turtles head and legs came out of its shell and it started pawing at the air.

“That’s awesome buddy, I need to finish this potion right now so maybe you should go see about helping your mother or father. They’re probably worried about you.”

“Can I help? I’m good at making potions.” Stallat said ignoring me completely.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Yallia watching us from the door to the hut. I was starting to understand why she had been so annoyed with me earlier this morning.

“Tell you what , you can watch and even help a little, but only if you do what I say ok?”

“OK!” He yelled once again in my ear, if he kept shouting like that, I might need a healing potion just for my ears.

Wincing I directed him to hold onto an extra moon berry that I probably wouldn’t need in order to keep him busy.

As I worked the potion I had expected Stallat to largely be in the way, but I was surprised to find that he actually knew his stuff. He could tell me about the plants I was using and said what each one did, he even had a suggestion for what order I should put the ingredients into the pot. He had mentioned it to me a little too late so I wasn’t able to follow his advice, but it was something I thought I could try some other time.

“Now, now, now, now, you need to stir it faster.” He said stumbling over the word ‘now’.

“Like this?” I asked as I stirred the potion a little faster.

“Yeeeaaah.” He said looking at everything but the potion. “Can we play a game now? This is boring.”

DING

For practicing a skill with a teacher you have increased your knowledge of potion making.

‘Well I’ll be damned’ I thought to myself. ‘The kid really does know what he’s talking about.’

“Just a second buddy, I’m almost done here. What is it?”

DING

An excellent quality health potion. This will heal all but the most serious injuries, it has very little unrefined waste mana.

Pouring the potion into my other canteen I quickly cleaned up my potion making supplies walking past Yallia to the river.

“Did he yell into your ears too?” Yallia asked with a smile as I walked past her.

“A little, the kid knows his potions though.”

“All Lamia know their potions. They have an intuitive grasp of what plants do, and how they can be mixed together. He may be a bit better at it than most his age though.” Yallia said as washed my pot and then left it upside down near the river.

Stallat, tired of waiting at this point grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the hut towards a small clearing his turtle having been abandoned near the river. Picking up a small ball he threw it to me. Catching it I turned it over in my hands a few times. The ball was quite heavy and lumpy, it felt like some stones wrapped in several layers of leather and animal hide. While it was softer than a rock, not by much. Gently throwing it back to Stallat he caught it before throwing it back at me a lot harder than I had thrown it to him.

“Not so hard ok Stallat?” I said gently throwing it back. Unfortunately he only took this as a challenge because the next time he threw it my hands actually stung.

We threw the ball back and forth for a few minutes Stallat getting more and more excited as we went and the ball going faster and faster, I started wondering if health potions could regrow teeth. Fortunately I was saved by the appearance of a small girl only a few years older than Stallat entering the clearing.

I guessed she was two or three years older than Stallat, and she looked similar enough to him that she was clearly his older sister. She had the same nose, eyes and chin, the biggest difference was that she had brown hair.

She regarded us both for a second and watched as Stallat lobbed the ball at my head as hard as he could with a smile splitting his face.

Approaching me with a look of condemnation on her face that was adorable on a child I held onto the ball.

With a high-pitched voice that was far clearer and easier to understand than Stallats she started lecturing me.

“You shouldn’t let him throw the ball that hard. He could hurt someone.” She declared looking as stern as a wet kitten. “You should tell him to play gently, like this.” She said taking the ball from me.

A little stunned I watched as she slithered closer to Stallat and encouraged him to throw the ball underhanded a lot more gently.

The underhanded throwing lasted a few minutes but before long Stallat was back to throwing the ball over handed.

“But, if you throw it like this you can get it to go faster! And then you can hit them in, in, in the chest!” He said stumbling over some of the words as he threw the ball again.

Catching it and shaking off my hand I held onto it. “If you're going to throw the ball this way then I don’t want to play with you ok? Why don’t you throw it like your sister showed you?”

“Cause I don’t wwaaannnaaa!” He wailed throwing his hands down and looking forlorn.

For a few moments I felt baffled at what had just happened before Yallia pushed by me with a look. “This is what you left me with this morning.”

I watched as she approached the child and patted him on his shoulder and whispered something to him. It took a few minutes but eventually he calmed and his crying lessened.

“You can’t even understand each other, how did you do that?” I asked surprised.

“Practice.” Yallia said dismissively, “Tis isn’t the first time I’ve had to make do without understanding much of a language.”

After Stallat calmed down I was finally introduced to Rania, his older sister. Their parents were busy at the river catching some fish so they had sent them back home to get them out of the way. Normally Rania and Stallat would be fixing a net on their own, but because all of us were here they decided to show us a game.

“So you catch the ball with your hands, and then you throw it with your tail, and once you have it you can’t move.” Rania explained looking extremely serious. “Then you throw it to your team mate. You want to get to the end and throw it through the hoop there.” She said pointing at a hoop the size of a hoola hoop. “You can be on my team.” She said grabbing Yallias hand and pulling her away.

This unfortunately started an argument where no one wanted to be on my team, until Rania pointed out that Stallat could throw the ball at me if we were on the same team. Yallia thought it was hilarious when I translated and couldn’t stop laughing. I mostly just tried to not get hurt, physically or emotionally.

Stallat and I started with the ball, I gently threw it to him and he dropped it. Picking it back up he threw it in my general direction with his tail. Stretching I grazed the ball with my fingers and it flew into the forest. Stallat found this hilarious but I went into the forest to retrieve the ball. Throwing it back to Stallat Yallia managed to grab it and toss it back to Rania who caught it with her hands, she then threw it to her tail and then threw it back to Yallia.

Tossing it back and forth between them they moved down the field, towards the hoop. Stallat slithered after them as quickly as he could, arms swishing back and forth behind him in a way that I had to bite my lip to avoid laughing at. Yallia tossed Rania the ball who threw it at the hoop missing by just a few feet.

Picking it up off the ground I gestured to Stallat to head towards the other hoop. He went way too far before turning around, throwing it a little short so as to not hit him in the face, as it rolled to him he picked it up. He was too impatient to wait for me so he ran towards the hoop and thew it through as Rania yelled at him.

After that the game devolved into Rania and Stallat yelling at each other as Yallia and I tried to separate them. After a few minutes we managed to calm them down but each of them had been crying and were exhausted.

It was then that their parents returned. Coming out of the forest hand in hand with a net that had only a handful of fish, and smiles on their faces, it wasn’t hard to guess what they had been doing while their children had been distracted. Nialla even had a few twigs in her hair.

They took one look at their children and split up to comfort them. Nialla picked up her son while her husband Gand picked up his daughter. Before long both of the children were calmed down and sitting near their mother while she prepared dinner by the fire. Grinding a large root vegetable into a paste in a small stone bowl she talked to the children explaining what she was doing.

Walking to their father Gand I spoke to the man for the first time today.

“How did you do that? I thought I was doing well with them, until they both burst into tears.”

He looked at me a little coldly and I thought he might simply refuse to answer. “They were just tired, too much playing can cause them to act out like that. Don’t you have children?”

“Me? No, I’m too young for that. Are you working on something? I’d be happy to help you.” I offered as I saw him doing something with the nets.

Gand reluctantly agreed to let me help him, at first I thought he might be a little xenophobic, but after a few minutes it just became apparent I was next to useless at repairing the nets and that was something he had predicted.

“Mending the nets is difficult, our children have already started learning and they won’t be ready to do it on their own for years.”

“Weren’t they supposed to be working on that now?”

“Yes and my wife and I would have had to fix it after they finished.” He said with a smile. “It is good to let them practice even if they are not very good at it.”

Gand showed me the motions and it was enough to gain a skill in “Net Mending” Not a skill I had ever intended to gain, but it was useful and it let me help him. After that he worked on the net while I helped him, we talked about news in the village and I told him a little about myself. It was the most relaxed I had felt in weeks and we talked until dinner was ready.

Then they invited us into their home and we ate a simple meal at their table. The food Nialla had been working on was some sort of a ground radish mixed with something similar to potatoes. It was a little less salty than I was used to, but still delicious. The hut was cramped with all of us, but the closeness was nice rather than cloying. Yallia was even picking up a few phrases that the children were teaching her. They would pick up an object, show it to her and she would repeat its name. She managed to turn it into a game for the children that they seemed to love.

Soon after dinner was finished the sun went down and I laid on my sleeping bag in my corner, careful to avoid the rock I had forgotten to get rid of today.

As I drifted off to sleep I hoped that tomorrow would be peaceful and much less exciting for me, but somehow I doubted it.

Oh well, I had hoped for a life of adventure when I decided to stay here. I couldn’t complain about it now.