The next morning, Vaozey was already up by the time I awoke and was picking some lukewarm meat from the roasted monkey. The look on her face told me everything I needed to know about the change in its taste over the night, which made me thankful that I wasn’t particularly hungry. As I began to recall the conversation I had had while half-asleep, I realized I should probably explain myself better now that I was rested, and opened my mouth to speak.

“Just forget about it,” Vaozey sighed before I could get a word out.

“What?” I asked, wondering if I was still half asleep and missed something.

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, like I said,” Vaozey said. “I don’t want to know either, I’ve decided. I was tired, asked some stupid questions, and I poked what’s left of my nose in where it didn’t belong. My mistake.”

“I don’t mind explaining,” I offered.

“Even if you do, save it for later,” Vaozey replied. “You slept later than usual so we should get going. I’m sick of being out here and we’re still days away from civilization.”

Around mid-day, as we walked through a small clearing, Vaozey and I came upon a stream. It wasn’t large enough to wash much more than our hands in, but the water was clean, so I knelt down to fill up my water container. We had both been using the empty metal containers from the caravan’s soup mix to store extra water, and since they were just over a liter in capacity they were usually empty. I tried to use a bit of magic to direct the stream into my container but found that affecting flowing water was difficult, so I made a funnel with my hand instead.

“Yours still fresh?” Vaozey asked, speaking for the first time in hours.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied. “It’s clean water, of course it’s fresh.”

“Mine’s gone stale as of yesterday,” Vaozey sighed, tossing me her container. “See?” I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but when I pulled the cork from her container my nose was immediately assaulted with a foul smell. That’s bacterial buildup of some kind, I thought, thrusting the container away from my face before my gag reflex kicked in. “Told you,” Vaozey snarked.

“Have you not been cleaning it at all?” I asked.

“With what?” Voazey scoffed back. “We have no soap, no aangzoylf, and it’s not like I can flip the thing inside out to use the sun.” My container was full, so I corked it and hooked it back onto my belt, then bent down and started to add some water to Vaozey’s. “You can’t be serious, water? That won’t work.”

“You do it like this,” I said, pulling the container out of the stream. With a bit of magic, I quickly brought the water inside to a boil, then capped it and shook it around. My hands got a bit scorched, but healing magic fixed them fast enough. Once I was sure I at least got most of the interior properly heated, I set the bottle down and waited while Vaozey looked on.

“That won’t work, it’s not the water, it’s the bottle,” she said.

“You’re partially right,” I replied. “It’s not the bottle, it’s what’s gotten into the bottle. If you put clean water in here, the bacteria will just multiply in it again. It’ll be worse during the day, they tend to like body temperature ranges the best, but even at night they’ll multiply and spoil it. Tell me, does stale water like this make people sick?”

“You don’t know?” Vaozey asked.

“I don't make a point of drinking it,” I replied.

“If you drink enough you might throw up or shit your pants,” she explained. “Otherwise, it’s not dangerous, just disgusting. You said there’s something in it, like a plant or…”

“It’s a bacteria,” I repeated. “I’m assuming your people don’t have knowledge of devices that can greatly magnify small objects?”

“You mean a yaawleysaeay?” Vaozey asked. I had no idea what the word meant, so I just raised an eyebrow. “It’s made of special glass, very clear, and it can make things appear larger.”

“How many pieces of glass?” I asked. “What shape?” It can’t be a microscope, there’s no way, I thought, probably just a magnifying glass.

“Just… one big flat one?” Vaozey replied. “I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard about them. My father used to-” abruptly, she stopped, like someone had snatched her throat mid-sentence. “I’ve never seen one,” she repeated with a sigh.

“That sort of device is likely not powerful enough,” I replied. “Bacteria are small living things that can’t be seen with just a human eye. In this case, bacteria have entered the bottle and are multiplying inside it, and even if you wash it out with water some will remain. Due to their size, they can reproduce very quickly, so you need to kill them all.”

“Ah,” Vaozey grunted, sounding skeptical. “So this is a religious thing. I know you’ve mostly dropped the pretense of being Gwahlaob, but I’ve never heard of that belief before. Are they like your people’s version of spirits?”

“No, they’re a type of living thing,” I tried to explain. “They’re like animals or plants, they live and grow and produce offspring. They’re just very small so you can’t see them without specialized tools.”

“Spirits are alive, sort of,” Vaozey replied. “Spirits give life to things, in a sense they are life.”

“These aren’t…” I fumbled, trying to find the words to explain myself. Uwrish didn’t have a word for ‘supernatural’ that was absent of the implication of religious opinion. Calling bacteria ‘real’ wouldn’t mean anything either, because spirits were very real to many people in Uwriy. “They are physical beings,” I said. “They have bodies, they live, they die, like you and I. What I’m doing right now is killing them with boiling water.”

“Physical bodies that are invisible to humans,” Vaozey said, sounding mildly amused at my struggle to explain myself.

“Okay, fine, they’re spirits,” I shrugged, giving up on my explanation. “Once this is clean, just heat it until it's almost glowing every time you empty it out, and boil some water in it if it gets like this again. That’ll keep them away so the water stays clean.” I uncorked Vaozey’s container, poured the water out, rinsed it, then handed it back to her. She held it near her mouth for a moment, hesitantly took a sip, then raised her eyebrows. It still smelled, but not nearly as bad as before, and probably tasted far less foul.

“Seems to work,” she replied. “I’ll heat it like you said. If it keeps the water clean, it's fine by me, spirits or not.”

We managed to kill a deer in the late afternoon, much to my surprise. It seemed less intelligent than average, or perhaps it had been conditioned to human noise enough that its fear response was dampened, because it allowed us to approach within five meters before becoming alert. I used the crossbow, not wanting to risk Vaozey missing a vital point, and shot it in the head just under its ear. As with the monkey, I removed its head and carried it along with us, allowing it to drain into the road. It’s good that nobody is following us, or I’d have to come up with a better method, I thought.

We also had to chop some wood, since our bundles of dry firewood ran out quickly and there wasn’t much in the way of dry sticks and fallen tree limbs around. Thankfully, there was a mostly-dead tree near the place we decided to rest for the night that wouldn’t need much in the way of special preparation to be burned. My small hand axe wasn’t nearly large enough to cut it down though, so I had to use my sword. Somehow, I didn’t roll the edge on the blade, probably because I used as little magic as possible.

Vaozey was mostly useless when it came to skinning the deer, but she did an alright job of building a rack for it over the fire pit. Having been raised in a city, and apparently not exposed to any survivalist skills, her manual dexterity when working with a knife left much to be desired. As the smoky fire cooked my kill, I wondered how much of that deficiency might have resulted from her burns, since they likely impacted the sensitivity of her fingers. Meanwhile, Vaozey had removed her left gauntlet and was trying to place a flat rock between her third finger and her knee for some reason.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Just thinking,” Vaozey sighed. “Pass me the knife, would you?” A second later I tossed my throwing knife that we had been using for butchery in an arc over to her, and she caught it with her right hand. Since Vaozey’s face was unwrapped as it had been for the last few days, I saw her frown before she put the knife just below the highest knuckle on her finger.

“Don’t,” I warned, breaking her concentration. “Is there some reason you want to cut part of your finger off?”

“I wanted to try the thing,” she replied. “I figured I would just-” she made a cutting motion with the knife, then shrugged.

“As I told you, it’s not as simple as just putting the piece back on,” I explained. “You need to concentrate the magic fuel in your blood near the injury and give it the correct instructions.”

“You think I can’t do it,” Vaozey said, waving the knife a bit for emphasis. “Yet, you were the one who thought I could do magic even though I tried and failed my whole life. You were right then, so why the seyt do you think I can’t do this? It’s just magic, right? If I can do magic, I can do this, just like you can.”

“It’s more complicated than just lighting a fire,” I replied. “In your case, you’re also creating heat, not fire, the same as I do. Making heat is simpler than making fire, at least as far as I know.”

“So all I can do is poymawpjh magic, is that what you’re saying?” Vaozey snapped. After spending a few days with her, I could sense that her anger in this case wasn’t genuine, but instead just a tool for emphasis. “And what the seyt is magic fuel?” she added.

“You said you didn’t want to know,” I reminded her.

“I said I didn’t want to know about those spaotao vials of yours,” Vaozey countered. “You never mentioned magic fuel when you showed me how to make fire, but now you’ve talked about it twice. That means it’s probably something you learned about in Kahvahrniydah, isn’t it? What is it?”

“It’s a-” I began, but then I paused. I guess it’s a chemical, but the Uwrish word for chemical is just ‘substance’, I thought, it sounds wrong to say it like that. “It’s the source of magical power, and it’s a part of your blood,” I explained. “When you use magic, your body sends instructions to it and somehow converts it into energy, like heat or light. I'm not clear on the specifics.”

“So magic uses blood like oil in a lantern?” Vaozey asked. Interesting that she’d come up with the same analogy, I thought.

“It uses a substance in the blood like oil in a lantern, yes,” I agreed. “The blood itself isn’t consumed.”

“But you said that-” Vaozey started to protest.

“Think of it like salt in water,” I said. “When you use magic, the water gets less salty, but the water itself isn’t consumed.” Not an accurate picture because removing salt would reduce the overall volume, I thought, I doubt she knows that though. Vaozey thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. Before I could stop her, she brought the knife down on her finger and chopped the tip of it off.

“That stings worse than I expected it to,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Been a while since I've lost a fingertip.”

“Why?” I asked, reaching out to grab the knife she tossed back to me. Meanwhile, Vaozey grabbed the tip of her finger from the ground and put it back on the flat rock near where it was previously attached. “You know you’ll need this if you want to re-attach it, right?” I asked, gesturing with the knife.

“Right,” Vaozey grunted. “Pass it back.” Once again, the knife arced through the air, and Vaozey caught it. The deer must be almost cooked by now, I thought. “So how do I do this?” she asked.

“I told you, you need to-” I said, stopping when I realized my explanation wouldn’t make any sense. Even if I were to try to explain blood magic concentration manipulation to someone experienced in magic, I wasn’t sure I would be understood. “I can only explain what I do,” I said. “I can feel the magic in my blood, and I can move it around, so what I do is move it to the separation point. Then, I re-injure the area and push the severed part into it, and will them to re-attach.”

What do you mean by ‘feel the magic in your blood’?” Vaozey asked.

“I can’t describe what it would feel like to you,” I replied. “This is why said not to do it.”

“What is it like for you?” Vaozey asked, sounding impatient. I looked at the deer, reached out and pulled a piece off it, then took a bite. Still a little bit raw, I thought, edible though.

“It’s just a sensation,” I replied, knowing I was being unhelpful. “If I force the concentration too high, it becomes a sort of painful ‘noise’, like what you would feel after numbness from lack of blood flow but almost-”

“Hot and sharp,” Vaozey interrupted, holding up her injured hand as a gesture to stop. “Like you’re being stabbed with burning needles all over, with a side of muscle cramps.” That’s quite accurate, I thought.

“Yes,” I nodded. “How do you know that?”

“That’s what I always felt like when I tried too hard to force my magic to work as a kid,” Vaozey replied quietly. “I remember… I remember crying because my hands hurt so badly one time when I was eight, maybe nine years old. That was the second or third try my mother made at teaching me to light a fire. Another time, years later, my whole body stung for almost half an hour. I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want my tutor to quit again. And when I was thrown in the…” she trailed off, not finishing her sentence.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same thing?” I asked. Vaozey, though still physically present, was lost in thought. Every few seconds, her eyes would shift from one point to another, and she mouthed a few words each time. Finally, she closed her eyes, then opened them again.

“I’m going to try it,” she declared, then before I could say another word she took the knife to her hand again, cutting the skin from her previous wound and shoving the severed fingertip into it. Gritting her teeth and wincing, she squeezed her right hand tightly around her finger, then exhaled slowly and forcefully through her teeth. Ten seconds later, she removed her hand slowly, and her fingertip was reattached.

“You did it,” I blurted, accidentally voicing how surprised I was. She couldn’t light a fire without being practically hypnotized, but she could reattach a missing fingertip on her first try? I thought, trying to make sense of the situation, How does that work? I suppose I managed to learn it rather quickly too, but I don’t have any trouble with magic. Is it just a natural variance in aptitude?

“I did it,” Vaozey confirmed a second later, sounding as shocked as I was. “Gods, I actually did it. It wasn’t even seytoydh hard. I just did it, like it was nothing…” A moment of silence passed, then Vaozey grabbed the knife again and brought it up to her wrist.

“Stop!” I ordered.

“Shut up, I need to try this,” Vaozey growled back.

“The food is done,” I said, gesturing to the deer that was roasting to my right. “Let’s eat before it gets overcooked.” Vaozey blinked, then looked at the deer, and shook her head slightly.

“Right,” she replied. “Let’s do that first.”

Vaozey’s mood was better the next day. She spent much less time muttering under her breath, kept pace with me as I walked without having to be reminded, and even successfully shot a bird out of a tree without me needing to point it out. And all this after I managed to convince her not to cut her hand off as a test, I thought, I would have thought her morale would fall over it, but I guess not.

Around mid-day, we passed by a tree that was so unusual that I had to stop and look at it. All along its bark, someone had carved spiraling patterns with a knife of some kind. There was also a ring of stones around the base of the tree, each sized about as large as my fist, with only a few missing. Even though it had been heavily damaged by the engraving, the tree was still green, and new branches were sprouting near its top.

“Huh, a mermey’ynerv,” Vaozey remarked from behind me. “Never seen one in person before, just drawings.”

“What does it signify?” I asked, wondering out loud.

“Who knows?” Vaozey shrugged back. “Whoever made it sure isn’t around, and they wouldn’t tell us if we asked.” I looked back at her, and she noticed my confusion. “Forgot you’re foreign for a second,” she continued. “The forest men made these. They’re not around anymore.”

“Oh,” I grunted. “I’ve heard of them, not much though.” Looking back at the tree, my eyes started scanning for signs of writing, but there didn’t appear to be any sequenced characters. Maybe the variance in the patterns means something, I considered, but it doesn’t look ordered in any way.

“Come to think of it, covered in dirt like this, you almost look like one,” Vaozey jabbed, sounding amused.

“I’ve heard that before,” I replied.

“As an insult, I’m guessing,” Vaozey chuckled. “Still, you can speak Uwrish, so you’re obviously not a forest man.”

“Why would that matter?” I asked, looking at her again and raising an eyebrow. “Surely they could have learned it, right?” Vaozey furrowed her brow, then grunted and put the crossbow over her right shoulder.

“They weren’t people, human I mean,” she explained. “They were more like very smart animals, at least as far as I know.”

“What do you know?” I asked, trying not to sound too curious.

“I read a lot when I was younger,” Vaozey replied with a shrug. “I was never much interested in forest men in particular, but they were in a bunch of history books. From what I recall they were supposed to be large-bodied with dark head hair and eyes. Their skin was brown and leathery, more like an animal hide than a person's skin, with little hair besides what was on their scalp. They lived all over this continent in small nests, usually about twenty of them per group, and were fiercely territorial.”

“Sounds human enough to me,” I replied. “I’ve seen people living similarly to that before.”

“Yeah well, as I said, they weren’t human,” Vaozey continued. “They didn’t have any metal, even working stone into bricks was too complex for them. If they needed something sharp, they’d just grab a rock and bang it on another rock until it formed an edge. Most importantly, they never spoke anything resembling a language, just grunts and roars. To make up for all that, they were supposedly so durable that only metal weapons could kill them, and so strong that even one of their children could rip a warrior’s head off without much effort.”

“Supposedly?” I repeated, sounding doubtful.

“Well as I said, they’re not around, and that’s because we killed them all,” Vaozey stated simply. “They hated humans as though we were their mortal enemies. Even hearing our voices in the distance would send them into a rage. In the early colonial days, they used to ambush hunting caravans. The settlers could tell if it was forest men because nothing would be taken besides the people. All the weapons would be left behind, and the wagons would be intact most of the time.”

“They didn’t take the weapons?” I asked. “You said they could use tools, did they not have weapons themselves?”

“Just sharpened sticks if they brought anything at all,” Vaozey replied. “Sometimes they’d even leave the corpses of the people behind too. Settlers would find their family members torn to shreds, literally in pieces around the wagons or tents.”

“As a warning,” I intuited.

“No,” Vaozey replied. “When they hunted anything, they’d tear it apart once they killed it. It’s just that, if they were hungry, they’d gather the pieces up and bring them back to the nest afterwards.” Again, I looked back at the tree, staring at the spiral patterns, but this time wondering about the mind that created them. How much of that history did the people of Suwlahtk know? I wondered, How much of it is even accurate? It didn’t really matter much, but even once we left the tree I kept thinking about it. It wasn’t until I went to sleep that my mind finally let it go.