----This chapter is a bit longer than my average. I also got delayed quite a bit by distracting neighbors and my parents. I rather like the final product though.-----

As I examined the possessions of the creatures, searching for knowledge, I also considered them. I wanted to learn from them, but the possibility of hostilities between us was still there. With this in mind, when I finished examining each of the items, I hung them from my many lines crossing the ceiling. There was no telling what the true purpose of these items were, and this would keep them away from the damp floor. They were dry when the creatures wore them, so I decided to keep them that way. I kept the reflective stick used by the one riding the bear close at hand. I decided it was mine, and I would learn how to use it.

I needed to impress upon the creatures that I was as intelligent as they. I doubted we could communicate easily, so I decided that I needed to make myself wearable skins like they had.

I had pondered the materials worn and used by the creatures for some time. The skins they wore were not actually all animal skin. Many of them seemed to be made of tiny hairs or ropes, woven together like fishing nets only unimaginably fine. These seemed to soak up water and grow heavy fairly easily also, so I gave up on imitating these, at least for the moment. The ones the shiny one wore easily repelled my beak and I was unable to bend them, even with all 8 of my arms working in concert. I wanted skins like those, but I would have to settle for less, as I was unsure how to make them. I looked through my bone pile with interest, ideas dancing through my brains, my tentacles wiggling with glee.

I had found a much smaller reflective stick among the things possessed by the creatures, stored in an animal skin tube of approximately the same size and shape as the reflective, sharpened surface within, and I appropriated it temporarily for this task. I took it in one of my arms and began scraping the old skin and flesh remnants from the pile of armored fish bits I had scraped together. They had bone like growths across the outside of their bodies that even my beak could not penetrate, however their underbellies were soft and easily breached. I collected and cleaned as many of these narrow and curved bone plates as I could gather, piling them up and laying them next to my pile of suitable lizard skins before getting to work.

------------------------------------------------Lorence--------------------------------------------

I woke to the sound of cutting and scraping, completely disoriented. I was in darkness, wrapped in something warm and furry, and completely naked. I struggled to recall my last memories. A tunnel? Was I in a cave? My head pounded and throbbed. I shifted, and nausea swirled within me.

A concussion, I realized. Quickly, I began questioning myself, executing the checklist the mage guild healers had taught me on myself for once. Item one. My name. Lorence Assuerus, Mage Associate, Third class. Specializations in water and earth. I recalled this slowly, a rasping noise in the background stabbing into my throbbing head with each repetition.

I could not remember where I was or how I had arrived. A bout of nausea seized me. I rolled free of my warm resting place onto cool smooth stone, and threw up everywhere. I definitely had a concussion. The harsh rasp, ever present since my waking, suddenly ceased. I held still, listening, awake and aware that I was not alone. After a few moments of silence, I softly queried the darkness. "Hello?" A soft buzz and a series of clicks came from beside me, quite unlike any noise I had ever heard before. I jumped slightly, startled by the nearness of the sound. I felt something fleshy and damp prod my upper back. I tensed, nervous and powerless, too rattled and disoriented to cast any real magic. I couldn't even flee without light. Something long and serpentine wrapped itself around my torso, lifting me into the air. It was damp, fleshy, smooth, and very strong.

My heart pounded in my chest. This was it. I was going to die, eaten by a monster in the dark. Suddenly, the grip released with a curious suction. I found myself in a pool of water. I flailed, oriented myself upright, and gasped for air. The water was shallow, a foot deep at most, but it was fairly warm. A jet of water hit me in the face and chest. As I sat in the water, I heard more spraying and splashing. The thing was cleaning up my mess, I realized. Soon, it returned, lifting me again, blowing me dry with several violent jets of warm air, shoving me back between what I now realized were two coarse fur pelts. The rasping noise from before resumed after a moment. My confusion was great, but my exhaustion greater, and I swiftly returned to oblivion on soft wings of sleep.

---------------------------------

One of the creatures appears to be recovering. I do not think it can see. I waved my arms all around it and it did nothing, but when I prodded it, it startled instantly. It made a foul mess on the floor, but I am unsure if that was simply a response to being threatened or a recovery symptom. To be safe, I demonstrated both my strength and my lack of agression to impress upon it that I was not a threat, but also not prey, and I submerged it in water to clean it off. Its wounds are healing nicely. I will need to figure out what it eats.

I had several dozen holes to bore in the armored fish plates, and even with the tool I had appropriated for the creatures, it was taking a long time. Fortunately, I had many limbs and only one tool, so I was simultaneously scraping and softening lizard hide with a round rock and two sharp ones.

After a seemingly endless amount of time in which I cut a lizard hide into very fine strips and straps and cut the last 3 into shape. I poked many holes around where the seams would be with a sturdy fish bone and I finished drilling the holes, and assembled my new masterpiece. I made a leather hat that covered half of my body down to my arms, with a large square hole on each side for each eye, and a hole for each of my siphons. I used the holes through each bone plate to affix them all across the outside of the hat with the leather strips I had made, leaving very little uncovered space. With that, I was done. It hampered my ability to deform my upper body, but I could slip out in an instant if needed. I felt like wrestling an animal to test the protectiveness of my new headwear, and I decided to go get dinner.

I returned happy, dragging a 6 foot lizard through the water and my bag, full of clams and crabs. The lizard hadn't even scratched me, and my helmet had held up admirably. I hadn't needed to drown it, I merely wrestled it down and beat it with a rock until it stopped moving. Glorious success. Next I needed to figure out the mysteries of the fantastic shiny material the creatures possessed.

As I approached my home, I saw light bleeding through the water. I preemptively closed my eyes and slowed my approach. One of the creatures must have recovered enough to glow again. Probably the one that had risen once already, I decided.

I breached the surface of the water, taking in the situation. The creature had retrieved its skins and its stick from the line on the ceiling, and was fully covered, looking around. A glowing ball of light floated above its head. It made noises in my direction, so I emerged from the water, dragging my prey onto the stone. I placed my bag in front of me, opening it and removing a clam, holding it out to the creature. My three hearts thumped in concert as it slowly approached, taking the clam from my outstretched arm. It turned the clam over, looking at it intensely. It slowly handed the clam back, so I demonstrated how to eat one. I held it to my beak and pierced the shell, sucking out all of its innards. I gave the empty clam and another fresh clam to the creature, and it gave them both back just as before. I gave up, and went around the creature, dragging the lizard to my prey disassembly area.

Taking my edged stone, I split the lizard's skin and peeled it off, keenly aware of the creatures watchful gaze throughout the process. I removed the lizard's leg, then approached and attempted to give it to the creature, but it waved its hands and refused to take it. I ate the leg with relish and threw away the bones after I cracked them and sucked out the marrow. I tore another leg from the lizard and offered it again. The creature took it, then headed to the entrance of my secret place. It paused and waved its arms at me, so I followed.

The creature walked into the water, and the water parted around it. Amazed, I stopped and stared, but the creature continued on like this was normal. Soon the creature had completely submerged itself, a bubble of air around it as if the water itself made way for them. I shook myself and followed. This would be a useful thing if I could learn it.

We emerged from the water into the main cave, and the creature headed over to the pile of wood I had made last year, when I was experimenting with drying racks. In the end, I had found that twine had worked better, once I increased its strength and added pieces to prevent the water dripping down the stalactites from wetting the things I hung from it. The creature selected a long thin stick, and impaled the lizard leg on it with great force. It then selected quite a few other pieces and broke them into extremely fine splinters, and placed them on top of a large piece. It then selected a stick, and rubbed it on the log with tremendous vigor. The stick became a brown blur, and after a few minutes, smoke began to rise. After a few more, a bright orange light lept forth from the log. Adding more wood to it, the creature dismissed its glow with a wave. Propping the meat above the flames with more wood, carefully positioned, the creature removed one of the sticks from the fire and began drawing on the wall.

---------------Lorence---------------

After I had started the meat cooking slowly, high above the flames, I took another look at our unlikely companion. It was an octopus, much larger than any I had ever seen before. When it had stretched out in the water, swimming beside me, it had been almost 10 feet from the top of its head to the tip of its arms. Now, it stood only 3 feet off the ground, its arms relaxed and spread out forming a ring around its body. It occasionally shifted to a different color, matching perfectly with the color of the floor. It wore a crude hat with bony plates tied all over. I had heard it working on something earlier, and I guessed this was it. What a strange creature.

I had woken a second time, feeling much better, and held very still, pretending to sleep, then waited until it left. I then summoned a light, and examined my surroundings, surprised to find civilization here, if crude. Paintings covered the walls, and crude tools lay all over the place. A giant pile of bones lay against the wall, far taller than I was and 3 times my height across the base, none of them human that I could see. Inexplicably, all my clothes and things hung from the ceiling far above me, each piece tied to fine ropes crossing the ceiling. I also saw armor and a sword hanging there, and looked around, finding Sir Robert in a pile of furs like the one I had just been buried in. His face and body were pallid, his eyes were sunken, and he looked like he had lost a lot of blood. I had seen him drink his last regeneration potion only minutes before he had been injured, so his wounds must have been near mortal for this level of injury to show. His wounds were long and deep, but packed with some kind of greenish brown paste. I had noticed my wounds were packed with the same substance. I scraped the paste free from the smallest of them, and saw fresh scabbing underneath, and decided to leave it there. It was obviously supposed to be some sort of medicine. I decided to leave Sir Robert for the moment, he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. I channeled the power of the earth and leapt and climbed my way to the ceiling, hanging on to a great stone pillar while I retrieved each piece of my clothes. After what must have been an hour, I was dressed and waiting for the creature to return.

I had thought I was ready for anything, but when it returned, and I saw it for the first time, dragging a 200 lb lizard and offering food, I found myself abandoning plans of violence. The creature was hesitant and twitchy, and I was reminded of myself on my first date as a school boy. That's when I decided to find out how intelligent this creature really was.

So now I found myself here, drawing pictures on the wall, the smell of cooking meat in the background, attempting to teach an octopus written language. It had not made any noises so far besides the clicking of its beak and a buzzing sound of varying pitches from its siphons. The combinations of clicking and buzzing seemed too purposeful and intermittent to be anything but speech. I got the feeling it was attempting to communicate. I knew it could draw, though, so I burned the end of two sticks, handing one to the octopus, and began to write the alphabet on the wall.

I drew the lizard arm cooking on the wall, pointed to the arm over the fire, and wrote food underneath in block writing and repeated food several times aloud. I did the same for fire, wood, bear, lizard, octopus, human, then waited to see what it would do. It took the charcoaled stick I had handed it, and began drawing pictures on the wall. A fish, a clam, a crab, and a surprisingly well done picture of the three of us entering the cave. I realized it must have watched the whole scene. I labeled each drawing in turn with its written word in our tongue, the desperation to know what had befallen Aelina and what had happened there overshadowed with the knowledge that I could never figure it out without the help of this octopus. Stoking both my determination and patience, I set to work getting this creature to draw exactly what had happened.