As usual, Pari Clansnarl smelled it before she saw it. Like so many in the last few days, this was a new, unique aroma, one which had never before graced her nostrils—acerbic yet fusty, with a slightly sour background and subtle hints of sweetness similar to lilyberries. It was a good, proud smell, though a little murky and muted. As she and her friends made their way up the steep, nearly vertical crack in the great tree’s bark, the smell grew in intensity, calling out to her, until she could tell she was nearly upon it even though it was nowhere within eyesight. That could only mean one thing. With a quick leap to the left, she swung out of the crack, letting the rope connecting her to Ruddy support her. A resigned sigh came from above, but she had no time to ponder such uninteresting noises when something so fascinating, so unique, so filled with possibility was right...

There! The mushrooms, yellow-stemmed with pointed, speckled blue and black caps, grew from the great tree just a few Pari-lengths above her. Quickly and nimbly, she grabbed a hold of the bark and climbed up to face it. She sniffed again, taking in the thousands of nuances that she hadn’t been able to before because of distance and the giant tree’s pervasive scent blanketing everything.

Poisonous? No, not on its own at least; she noted seven different compounds within it that could make a fairly strong poison if combined with two or three other ingredients.

Potent? Definitely. She could name eighteen different aspects to it that she could use to make stronger candles than she could with only other ingredients.

Most importantly, new? Absolutely. There were at least five different notes to this fungi that she’d never had the chance to explore yet. Several other mushrooms, doubtless cousins of this species, overlapped three of those paths, but there’d been no time to have fun with all her new toys.

The overlap was a good thing, actually. It meant that she could use this mushroom to replace several of its relatives currently occupying her all-too-limited pocket space. One hand holding onto the tree, the other clutching her latest prize, she carefully fished out another, smaller mushroom of similar shape and sniffed it. No, this one still had one unexplored path. She tucked it back into its pocket and fished out a second one. Yes, this one was now redundant, as was this other one, and—

Pari yelped in surprise as the rope went taut and she was unceremoniously yanked upward. Oh, right, she was climbing a supertree with her friends. She knew that, and it was hard to forget such an in-your-face aspect of reality, but sometimes the implications of such a situation flowed through her fingers as she focused on the truly important things, like this wondrous fungus. Oh well, she could just let Ruddy pull her up for a bit as she finished her sorting.

Soon enough, three separate mushroom variants were sent to the world below and their glorious new replacement was stuffed into one of her now-empty pockets, leaving two free for the next neat thing she came across.

Pari felt rather proud of her pocket system. She’d made them herself, spending much of her time at the base of the big tree sewing pockets onto her trousers and tunic, just like Sofie-sis had taught her—Sofie-sis knew so many cool things—so that she’d have somewhere to store all the great things she’d be sure she’d find up here. She’d never once questioned that Gabby-friend would take her up with the others. She was Gabby-friend, after all, and a friend would never forbid their friends from climbing up a giant tree to smell and collect the best ingredients in the world. That just wouldn’t be right! Okay, there’d been that one moment during the ceremony where she’d started to have doubts, but friendship had won in the end, as she’d known it would!

There was just one problem with her pocket system: she could only fit so many pockets onto her clothes. With so many amazing bugs, mushrooms, molds, and assorted other things she’d come across in their climb already today, she’d already hit maximum pocket capacity and the day was only half-over! There was a simple solution to this problem, but strangely, nobody would let her add pockets to their outfits.

Well, at least she had a little space again. Re-engaging with the rough bark, she climbed back into the crack and rejoined her friends just in time for them to come to a sudden halt.

“Uh... we might have a problem here,” Gabby-friend called from above.

The rest of them joined her a moment later. The crack they were traveling through turned nearly fully horizontal, letting them all stand and catch their breath. That was not the issue, however. Gabby-friend pointed down the crevice to something that caught even Pari by surprise: a massive, thick, green vine more than three times Ruddy’s massive height plugged the way forward.

Pari paused, her brain trying to come to terms with this unexpected roadblock. It would impede their progress, sure, but that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem is that she hadn’t smelled it coming. Even now, only twenty paces away from its end, she couldn’t detect a single whiff of a scent. The realization caused her hair to stand on end and her tail to puff up in outrage. Something so large, yet scentless! Impossible! And wrong! Super very wrong! Living things had scents! That was how it was supposed to work!

Together, the four of them approached this blaspheming plant, Pari watching it warily for any more shenaniganery.

“Well, this might be a bit of a problem,” Cappy sighed.

“What do you mean?” Gabby-friend asked as she hugged the inside of the passage, her voice tight.

“She told me about this, but it wasn’t anywhere near here the last time. I was trying to steer us around it, but it must have grown out.”

“So we’ll just have to climb outside again,” Ruddy chimed in. “We were going to have to do that eventually anyway.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Cappy said, stepping forward and running a hand along the plant. “Feel this.”

The others stepped forward and did as suggested, so Pari cautiously did the same. What she found shocked her.

“Nya? Pari cannot grab!” she protested, her hands sliding off the plant’s smooth, slippery exterior. Grab and claw as she might, she could not get even a single bit of purchase on the glossy, almost waxy material.

The others expressed similar realizations.

“If it’s this far past my estimates down here, it’s going to be far more widespread as we go up,” Cappy explained. “Even if we climb up the side, we’ll end up hitting any number of its arms blocking the way. And with how slippery it is, we won’t be able to climb over it.”

Ruddy let out a naughty word, the sort that made Sofie-sis very angry when Pari said it before.

Gabby-friend clawed at the vine as well, but even her fingers slid off. She pulled her arm back and then swung it forward, driving her fingertips into the plant’s skin with an audible squelch.

“Okay, it’s not that tough,” she said with some satisfaction. “I can climb it like this. Rudra, too, I would think.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Cappy immediately corrected her. “It’s one thing to be able to do that standing like this, but hanging from the side of the Mother Tree is a different story—no way to plant yourself and no leverage. And, I should add, the ones above will be at least twenty times thicker than this. We won’t have anybody anchored for when, and I mean when, you fall again.”

“I haven’t fallen that many times...”

“Five times now, counting yesterday,” Ruddy stated. “He’s right.”

“How about this, then?” Gabby-friend untied the ropes holding her great giant, blacker-than-night blade to her pack and stabbed it deep into the vine. “I can use this.”

“Maybe if you had more than one,” Cappy said with a shake of his head.

“Let’s be honest, you’d end up dropping it at some point,” Ruddy added. “Not worth the risk.”

“Then, what do we do?” Gabby-friend moaned, ripping the blade free. Her actions left a large gash in the plant’s flesh, from which a pink-purple sludge began to seep.

Pari’s nose lit up as the sludge’s aroma greeted her at last. Ha, the vine couldn’t defy the rules forever! Now, this was a proper scent—acrid and pungent, with a refreshing tang that tickled her nostrils. Her eyes went wide as she detected a wide range of unexplored compounds within the sap—and the potency! Oh, the potency!

“Let’s take a break and think,” Cappy suggested. “We should eat, anyway.”

The others begrudgingly agreed to settle down, but Pari had no such intentions. Positively giddy, she snatched her bag before Ruddy could even finish taking it off his shoulders and dashed over to the leak, eager to collect as much of it as she could. It boggled Pari’s mind just how much stronger all the materials grew as they ascended. Her nose told her that this sap was, without question, the most potent ingredient she’d ever gotten her hands on. It would increase the strength of many of her usual candles by at least five times, and that didn’t account for whatever new, undiscovered properties she might find given time. They hadn’t even reached the giant tree’s leaves yet! Just what sort of wonder materials would she find up there?!

Careful to avoid touching the thick liquid, as her nostrils told her that it was corrosive enough to leave a rash, she filled eight containers to full. Presents from Sofie-sis, the containers were small and simple metal cubes that her sister had forced Metal Man to make, which Pari had diligently lined with Grandfather’s wax to inhibit any unwanted reactions. Pari treasured this gift, partly because it was another sign of her sister’s love and partly because she always enjoyed it when Sofie-sis and Arly-sis made Metal Man do things he didn’t want to do. Pari found the man’s disgruntlement satisfying, though her distaste for the man had softened somewhat over the seasons.

These containers were great, as they let her store much more of any substance without having to waste too much of her precious wax. They also were very tough, so she didn’t really have to worry about anything breaking in an accident, which had sadly happened before. This bag holding her supplies was her fourth bag for a reason.

“Pari, come eat,” Gabby-friend called.

Pari almost ignored her, but a rumble from her tummy reminded her that she was hungry. Quickly sealing the containers, she packed them back up and returned to the group, her brain resuming its paused processing of nearby conversation.

“—called the Violet Infant. Honey told me about it, but I don’t think either of us expected it to have spread this far. Perhaps we’re lucky and it’s slowing them down as much as it is us.”

“What sort of name is ‘Violet Infant’ for a vine?” Ruddy complained, clearly frustrated with something.

“It clings to the side of Ruresni like an infant clinging to the side of its mother, and its flowers are... well, you’ll see,” Cappy explained.

Pari took a packet of food from Gabby-friend’s outstretched hand. Unwrapping the leaves to reveal a squashed rectangle of squishy, spongy ground grey-brown... something. Some sort of tuber, perhaps? This was different than the other food they’d had so far. She studied it, taking a few tentative whiffs. It was not what one would call “appetizing”.

Gabby-friend noticed her reticence and patted her on the head, and Pari pressed her head against the hand and let out a short purr. Gabby-friend was still learning the importance and art of headpats, so Pari had to do what she could to encourage her.

“It looks gross and lumpy, but it’s not bad,” Gabby-friend reassured her. “Tastes kind of like tofu.”

“Pari not worried about taste,” she replied, her mind whirring through her mental catalog of ways to chemically alter the compounds within the food. “Pari know ways to make lump taste better, but Pari not sure which way best. Best way make lump taste delicious, but Pari’s skin turn yellowy. Other way also good, but many farts and burps for long time.”

Gabby-friend gave her a concerned glance, the sort that all sorts of people seemed to give her for some reason. “Pari, sometimes it’s best to just put salt on it.”

“Ahhh!” Pari nodded, remembering that Gabby-friend’s food always tasted better than Sofie-sis’s food—and much better than Pari’s own attempts. Gabby-friend was so wise! Pari rummaged through her supplies. She had some rock salt in here somewhere...

“Here, you can use mine,” Cappy said, tossing her a small cinched-shut bag.

Pari peeked inside and found tiny, ground-up salt crystals. How convenient!

Pari gave Cappy a wide, happy smile and a “Thank you!” Though she didn’t know Cappy better than Gabby-friend, she’d known Cappy first. He’d always been nice to her, and she loved the look of his curly orange-brown hair and bushy tail. What’s more, he properly understood the joys of explosions, being the first person not to ask her to make fewer bangcandles but more. That had to count for something!

Cappy grinned back at her and Gabby-friend. “Of course! Anything for my little pal.”

Pari gasped, her heart suddenly leaping with excitement. Pal?! That meant friend! “Cappy be Pari’s friend?” she eagerly requested.

“Cappy?!” The man laughed. “That’s quite a request coming from a cub like you to a Hono like me, and calling me Cappy to boot... Bowbreaker-hono would throw a fit!”

“Pari...” Gabby-friend said in that tone that she and Sofie always used when they disapproved of something she was doing, though Pari had no idea what for.

Pari glanced her way to find her sporting a disapproving scowl, as predicted, her gaze flitting between Pari and Cappy. Pari chose to ignore her for now; friendship was on the table right now, and that was too important for distractions.

Cappy chuckled some more. “But, would it be alright for you to be friends with the husband of your enemy, little cub?”

Pari squinted at him, confused. “No?” What did that have to do with friendship?

The Stragman let out a handful of hearty guffaws, though Pari still didn’t know just what was so funny about all of this. “Well then, who am I, to say no to such a heartfelt request?”

“Yaaaayyyy!” Pari cheered. “Cappy-friend is friend! Pari have more friends!”

“Pari, you shouldn’t associate any more than you have to with this two-faced man,” Gabby-friend warned.

“So harsh! I was helping a girl in need. Didn’t you know that you should always pack plenty of salt for long journeys?”

Pari sprinkled some salt onto her food putty and took a bite, wondering what tofu was.

“What I know is that we’re basically stuck and going to lose this competition,” Gabby-friend sent back. “I knew you were all talk.”

Was this tofu pasted root, like this? Pari sniffed it again, taking note of the proteins and the surprisingly high fat content in her now-salty lump.

Wait...

“I already explained what happened. The vine—”

“—‘the vine grew.’ Yeah, that’s what plants do, you ass!”

Pari sniffed again. This might be a problem. She tugged on Gabby-friend’s shirt.

“I don’t need your ‘explanations’!” Gabby-friend continued. Her voice was one step below a holler as she gesticulated passionately while ignoring Pari’s tugs. “What I need is for you to not mess up in the first place! There’s far too much riding on your whole stupid, crazy ritual for mistakes! And, frankly, I don’t think you appreciate just how important it is that we win this stupid crap!”

“Gabby-friend!” Pari tugged more, but her friend was just too worked up to notice.

Gabby-friend pointed emphatically at Ruddy. “I will be taking him out of this blasted forest, one way or another! He is too important for me to give up if we lose this dumb race! You understand?! I don’t care if I have to kill ten Stragmans or ten thousand, he will be leaving this forsaken place with me whether you like it or not! So, if you don’t want that to happen, then you’d better stop making excuses and figure out a solution to this issue while we still have a bloody chance!”

“I am not leaving until you’ve met my terms, and you are not going to slaughter people if you want my cooperation!” Rudra snapped.

“Shut it, Mister Box! We both know that if push comes to shove, you can’t stop me from taking you out of this place.”

“Famous last words. You still haven’t even told me what’s so damned important that you’re bothering with this at all!”

“There’s no way I’d tell you with him right—” Pari jumped up and grabbed Gabby-friend’s hair, hanging from it with her full weight. “—OW! WHAT, PARI?!”

“Bugs,” Pari informed her.

“Huh?”

“Bugs coming.”

“What bugs? I don’t see any—”

An insect as tall as a man crawled up over the ledge before Gabby-friend could finish her sentence about how she didn’t see it. Wide as it was tall and three times as long and encased in mottled brown-purple chitin, the bug aggressively chittered and hissed at the group. Compared to many of the creatures Pari had seen in the forest, she found the formidableness of its appearance rather lacking, but that didn’t mean it was harmless. Each of its six long legs ended in clawed, two-toed feet, while a long, thick, and sharp armored proboscis jutted downward from its mouth.

The insect began to charge, only to find a blade bisecting its head before it could take a second step forward. It collapsed, lifeless, its various bodily fluids running out over the nearby bark and sparking Pari’s interest.

Pari didn’t make her move yet, however, choosing instead to stay put and rummage through her sack for the appropriate candle.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Gabby-friend said.

A nearby chirp came in response, followed by a great many more. One bug crawled up behind the body of the last one, while a second appeared further down. A third appeared from the ledge of the ceiling, then a fourth. More and more insects crawled into view, tens of hissing, angry, proboscis-armed creatures arriving each moment.

Gabby-friend took a step back. “W-wha?”

Pari didn’t know why Gabby-friend was so surprised. She’d said bugs, not bug, after all. Their myriad scents had been growing stronger for a few long moments before she’d been able to get them to listen to her.

With a chorus of hisses, the scene exploded into a frenzy of chaos and violence. Insects swarmed towards them from left and right, above and below, rushing in with seemingly little regard for their own survival. Gabby-friend moved to the right, her giant black blade a blur of slicing and dicing. Yet, it seemed as if two bugs would appear for each one she chopped apart.

In the center, Cappy-friend squatted down with his palms on the ground. Thick brown spears of bark emerged from the ground, skewering two nearby bugs. More spears grew out in a line, forming a small fence of sorts about fifteen paces long cutting off the marauding insects from her and Cappy-friend. The man wobbled slightly for a moment before pulling out two long fang-shaped knives—made from actual fangs, if her nose led her correctly—and began stabbing through the barrier, aiming for eyes and other vulnerable spots.

Ruddy, on the other hand, was not faring so well on the left side. When she looked over, he was on his back, hands wrapped around a bug’s proboscis as it tried to jam it into his chest. With a grunt, he tore the sharp, armored tube off the creature’s mouth and stabbed the point into its head before shoving the writhing insect off him. Climbing to his feet, he kicked the bug’s twitching corpse off the ledge, knocking two others off with it. Still, that left many more to come, and Ruddy’s improvised weapon lacked in comparison to those of the others.

Finally, after several moments of blind searching, Pari’s questing fingers wrapped around something long, thin, and waxy, and she pulled it out with great anticipation. It was the first time she’d be able to see her new candlecandle in action outside her testing ground, after all. Inspired by something Sofie called a “Roman candle”, the candlecandle was a revolutionary concept in candlemaking design. All this time, half of the difficulty with bangcandles and boomcandles was getting the candle to the desired location and then not being in that same location a few breaths later. Despite years of practice, Pari still could not throw very far—stupid tiny arms! Now, however, she had a better solution. Why throw the candle when you make another candle to throw the candle for you? It was such an ingenious yet obvious solution that she had no idea how she had never thought of it on her own.

With a snap of her fingers, Pari lit the wick and pointed the lit end towards the massing insects on her left side. The wick burned serenely for two breaths as the flame worked its way through the very thin shell of blue-headed bumper beetle wax covering the string. This was to give the candle lighter time to take aim before the candle activated. Once the flame touched the wick proper, the flame raced down the line like a three-toed spotted lizard streaking for a hiding hole at the first sign of a shadow from above. This was thanks to the burn-fast juice she’d soaked the wick in before assembling this work of art. Made of a special mixture of ground pearmara seeds, underwood sap, water, and just a drop of her saliva, the burn-fast juice sucked the fire down into the candle proper in a flash.

Once inside the candle, the flame passed by and lit a second wick—this one not treated with burn-fast juice—which connected to the first of the inner candles. The flame then scorched its way along a tight spiral that wrapped around the sides of the inner candle. This was to help free the inner candle from any sticking, and more importantly, to catalyze the reaction between the two powders encasing the inner candle. One powder was made from ground jecki petals, a common flowering weed found around most of Eterium, which were then dried under low heat until brittle. The other came from a moss found largely on the trunks of yellow-barked kermith trees in Otharia, dried, ground, and then soaked in a solution of water and eephim root, then dried again. Apart, neither of them did much, but when combined and exposed to heat, they created what Pari had named “stick slime”, a thick ooze that did little in a container but turned quite sticky almost immediately upon exposure to air. The newly formed stick slime would coat the outside of the inner candle and then adhere it to the target after it was launched.

Following its spiral, the flame descended further, terminating at a very thin disk of Pari’s trusty bangcandle formula, which served as the thrower in this candle-throwing candle. It had taken a bit of work to find just the right amount of throwing. She’d initially tried with a super-thin layer of boomcandle, but no matter how small of an amount she used, the boom would shatter the outer candle’s casing. Too much bangcandle would do the same or crack it, but after some trial and error, Pari had found the level she needed.

The ignition sliver lit and the candle kicked in her hands, smacking the butt end into her sternum and knocking her back a step, but she managed to keep it pointed where she wanted. A muffled bang rang out as a small cylinder shot from the lit end. It zipped across the compressed battlefield towards the thirty or more hissing, shrieking insects slowly cornering Ruddy by the leaking vine, and smacked into the side of one with a little “plap” that she wouldn’t have been able to hear over the noise had she not been listening for it. A half a breath later and...

BOOM!

The small projectile—a much smaller and weaker boomcandle, but still a boomcandle—lit up with a delightful flash and crash, instantly reducing the creature to pulp. The shockwave ripped outward and pulverized the flanks or heads of three more unlucky attackers, killing them as well and sending their dying bodies crashing through the crowd.

“Hee...”

Pari shifted her aim elsewhere in the crowd and the candle launched its second payload with another bang, followed by another messy and spectacular boom.

“Heehee...”

Bang! BOOM!

“Heeheeheehee—”

Bang! BOOM!

“—heeheeheeheehee—”

Bang! BOOM!

Bang! BOOM!

Bang! BOOM!

“—heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee—”

The mass of insects swarming Ruddy was now a pale shadow of its former self. At least eight in ten of the bugs had been converted to little more than broken shells and gunky stains covering the floor, wall, and ceiling of their little crack. Even without a real weapon, Pari figured that he would be able to take care of the rest of them for the moment. She swiveled right somewhat, taking aim at some insectoid raiders closer by who were trying to get around Cappy-friend’s barricade while his back was turned. With a wide, toothy grin on her joyful face, she pointed her candle toward the nearest one.

Bang! BOOM!

A spray of blood and bile struck her, coating her left side from head to toe with liquefied bug viscera. Her grin widened and she giggled ever harder, her spirit singing with delight. Candles were the best! Explosions were the best! Climbing this tree with friends was the best! Life was just the best!

Bang! BOOM!

Bang! BOOM!

Bang! BOOM!

After ten shots, the candlecandle finally fell silent, depleted. She tossed it towards the back—no sense in wasting the remaining wax—and rummaged through her sack, looking for the second of the three she’d made before the climb. It was only after she found it and pulled it out did she realize that her surroundings had fallen silent. Looking about, she realized that the fight had come to a sudden but conclusive end.

To the right, countless slashed and sliced bodies littered the area. Gabby-friend stood among them, red mist wafting from her body as she looked back Pari’s way, her body covered head to toe in various bodily fluids. Cappy-friend in the center, meanwhile, looked almost untouched. Far fewer dead insects could be found here, but each looked to have been killed far more precisely, with only a few stab wounds on each, most around the head. He was also looking in her direction. Finally, off to the left, a bleeding but intact Ruddy was busy punting the last still-breathing bug off the tree. She was no body expert like Grandfather, but none of his wounds looked worse than deep scratches. He also was looking her way for some reason.

“Again! Again!” Pari exclaimed, hopping up and down with excitement.

“I’ve had enough fun for a while, sweetie,” Gabby-friend replied, plopping down against the wall a few steps away. She groaned as she tried to wipe her face with her hand but found her hand just as dirty as the rest of her.

“What... in the world... was that?!” Ruddy gasped out between pants.

Both of them stared the question at Cappy-friend, who shrugged and shook his head almost aggressively back. “How am I supposed to know?”

“No?” Gabby-friend pressed.

“She never mentioned anything about swarms of predatory bugs attacking around this area, no. I have no idea what happened here.”

“Nya?” Pari had not expected them to all be so clueless. She’d thought it obvious, not just from the scents she was picking up but from the insects’ forms themselves. “Bugs come because bugs smell vine juice,” she told them, pointing towards Gabby-friend’s still-leaking gash.

Gabby-friend’s expression tightened into one of chagrin, while a flash of recognition passed over Cappy-friend’s eyes.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Of course!” He smacked his forehead with the heel of a palm, a smile creeping onto his face. “I should have realized it earlier! I do know what these are!”

“Yeah?” Rudra snorted. “What are they, then?”

“She mentioned offhandedly once that there were insects like this around here. They were peaceful and never went near her, however, so I didn’t put it together until now. She said they would use their ‘straws’—that’s what she called them, straws—to pierce the Violet Infant and suck their meals from it. They must feed off the vine’s blood! The smell of it coming from here must have driven them into a frenzy and they viewed us as competition for their prize!”

“That’s great and all, but why are you so happy about it?” Ruddy grumbled. “It would have been nice to know beforehand, but it doesn’t help us much at all after the fact.”

“Oh, but it does, you see?” Cappy-friend hesitated for a moment. “No, you wouldn’t see. I forgot to mention the important part. The reason she brought these things up at all, even though they were so inconsequential to her climbs, was to complain that they could walk on the vines while she couldn’t! If we knew how they did that, we’d be able to climb past the Violet Infant without a problem! And look!” He gestured emphatically about the surrounding area. “We have as many of their feet as we need to figure out how they do what they do.”

Gabby-friend coughed. “We’d still need to figure it out, though. That might take forever.”

“You wanted a solution; here’s your solution. I suggest we get on it quickly while we still have a chance at success.”

“But, how?”

These bugs could stick to the slippery vine? Interesting... but how? Pari withdrew one of her Grandfather-bone knives and—after wiping her slick, bug-juice-covered hands—sawed off the foot from a nearby dismembered leg. The clawed appendage was quite large; if she stuck the bottom of it against her front, it was large enough that it could nearly wrap around her whole torso. Still, for something of that size, it was surprisingly light. Then again, it was from an insect, even ones so enlarged at these. Insect parts were simply like that, once the good, fun juices had dribbled out, at least. Turning the leg side downward, she confirmed that this piece was, indeed, almost empty. All that remained were some muscles stuck to the inside of the joint chitin and a few thin tube structures running from the leg into the foot before then splitting into smaller tubes for each claw.

So... how and where did this foot do its vine-grabbing cool stuff? She tottered over to the vine and placed the sole of the foot against the hard, waxy, almost frictionless outer casing. It slid off without gaining purchase, like everything else.

“What’s she doing now?” Ruddy asked softly.

“Figuring this out for us, I think,” Gabby-friend replied.

“We should do... something.”

“Like what?” Cappy-friend scoffed. “As much as it pains me to admit it, she might be our best hope.”

“We’re adults. We shouldn’t just sit here and rely on a child.”

“You sure did a lot of relying on her just a few moments ago,” Cappy-friend pointed out.

Pari could practically hear Ruddy’s scowl. “Shut it.” A moment later, he grunted. “Agh, my ears won’t stop ringing.”

Pari inspected the foot again, holding it real close to her nose for some extra-good sniffage. Was that...? Yes, she could smell something faint coming from certain spots on the bottom, but not the whole foot. Whatever it was, it was so weak that she couldn’t even detect it when holding it a full arm’s length away. Bringing the bottom up to her eyes, she squinted hard at them, hoping to find some sort of clue. It took her a few moments to notice the tiny, nearly imperceptible holes dotting the chitin, only one around the center of each joint section.

Taking her knife, she started trying to wedge the blade into a joint. It took a little work, but after a while, she was able to pop off a single section on both ends. After cutting through the muscle and tubage, she held the insect equivalent of a phalanx in her hands. Sure enough, hidden inside the claw piece was a small, shriveled gland. Reaching in with her child-sized fingers, she pulled it out. It didn’t look like anything special—just a little lump, like most any gland. When she gave it a squeeze, however, it puffed out a minuscule puff of orange mist, which she promptly inhaled. Finally, she’d gotten a proper whiff of the odor she’d been chasing. She quickly analyzed it down to the finest detail, taking in its bittermintysavorycitrusystalesweet in all its glory.

She squeezed it again, but smelled little; it seemed it only had one puff’s worth left in it. That was fine. She never forgot a smell, especially not one like this. Harvesting the contents of these glands would take too long, and even then, she didn’t know if there would be enough for them all to climb. It sounded like the vines went pretty far.

That left producing a copycat substance as the best option—a fairly simple matter, really. Reproducing this exact chemical would take time and effort, but the odds that she needed to recreate the entire scent were very low. She’d learned long ago that most chemicals only required some portion of their scent to accomplish a single function. For example, she’d found a blue sourripesaltypeppery vine sap not ten days ago that, when mixed with several fairly common ingredients, would make the candle spray out a slick, noxious-smelling slime that refused to burn, the odor of which made Gabby-friend and the others less happy. So, Pari had recreated the pieces of the scent profile, testing each to see if that was the part that would give her the heat but not the smoke. After several experiments, she found that succeeded with a powder that matched the ripesalty features of the original exactly while lacking the sourpeppery that led to the smoke. The result: a new and improved version of a candle variety she had dubbed the slipperycandle, now with a slipping agent that wouldn’t light the area on fire like the older grease-based ones too often did. It had been so difficult to design the old versions in a way that wouldn’t just result in flaming grease getting thrown everywhere—that was a job for oilcandles, not slipperycandles! With this new formula, she wouldn’t accidentally set the area on fire if she used one!

The question was, which parts of the bittermintysavorycitrusystalesweet were needed to let them adhere to this stupid vine and which could she do without? To really figure that one out, she needed to study not only the gland’s chemical but the vine’s coating, as well to see how the puzzle pieces fit together. There was just one problem...

“Gabby-friend...” she whined.

“What’s wrong?” Gabby-friend asked, slowly walking closer.

Pari couldn’t help but notice how, now that the action was gone, her friend stepped hesitantly, keeping one hand on the inside wall of bark at all times. The woman tried to hide it from her face, but anybody could see the tightness in her movements, while Pari could also smell the terror she was radiating from ten thousand paces. Gabby-friend’s fear of highness brought Pari sadness. She didn’t like seeing her friend so constantly on the verge of breaking down through sheer panic and fear.

It was a serious problem, and Sofie-sis had told her once that friends help friends with their problems. But, what to do? Pari had tried to help with her specially formulated scent-releasing candles, and while those had helped some, they were a temporary half-measure at best. Like a candle flame lighting the darkness, they could only accomplish so much, and their benefit didn’t last once they were gone. Pari needed to find something bigger, something stronger and more permanent. She only had to think of it first.

The thing about Gabby-friend’s problem was that it didn’t even make sense! No fall could actually hurt Gabby-friend—nothing could permanently hurt Gabby-friend, as far as Pari understood it. She’d personally watched the woman get her head caved in and stand up again moments later. Word was that Gabby-friend had even survived being turned to ashes by Grandfather himself! Pari had not been there to witness such a blasphemous event, but Sofie-sis and Arly-sis wouldn’t lie to her, right?

Any way Pari looked at it, Gabby-friend had absolutely no reason to be like this. This was not like Pari’s perfectly understandable and well-founded fear of the evil, all-consuming roaring suction beast. Pari’s fear was grounded in reality, while Gabby-friend’s was not. If Gabby-friend could only understand this, then everything would be fixed, surely! But how to make her understand it?

Gaaaahhhh! Thinking people things was so hard sometimes! Pari shook her head. This wasn’t the time for such thoughts, anyway. She had vines to cut—or more accurately, get her friend to cut.

At Pari’s request, Gabby-friend took Pari’s bone knife and sawed off a piece of the vine from its wounded area. As she did, Pari returned to her sack and set up her usual equipment—the molds, beakers, distillers, and all the rest. Upon receipt of the vine sample, she settled down to work this all out.

Her sample was rather large, being long and wide enough to cover her lap with a bit extra sticking out over the sides. Largely rectangular with a rounded top, the shape reminded Pari of the square-ish breads the bakers of Begale would bake in square pans. How was that city doing these days? Her short time there had been lots of fun, especially all the running on rooftops.

The first thing that Pari noticed was that the outer coating was a lot thinner than it had first appeared, being maybe as thick as the width of two of her fingers. To her surprise, when she prodded the translucent white shell on top, it suddenly slid off the rest of the sample. Picking it up—a harder task than it sounded, given how slippery it was—she plopped it back onto the rest of the plant flesh and slid it back and forth. Against her initial assumptions, it seemed that the vine had no way to stick to its own protective coating. It must be held in place by its shape and nothing else, Pari surmised. Well, there went her backup plan in case the whole insect route turned out to be a lost cause. At least it meant she probably didn’t need to pay much attention to the rest of the plant.

Shoving the non-coating part of the plant off her lap, she balanced the side of the coating on her legs and gave it the once-over. Mostly clear with a milky-white tint, the shell was surprisingly light. Once again, she tried scratching it with her nails, but the smooth, almost waxy substance refused to catch in any way. She sniffed it but found not even a trace of a scent, nor one on her fingernails. This continued to be utterly mystifying to her. Everything had a smell! Even metal objects had a faint odor if you sniffed them up close! For this to be utterly odorless meant that even the air slipped right off of it!

Well, if she couldn’t get a smell the normal way, then there was only one solution: when in doubt, burn things. Pari pulled out a small mesh ‘cup’ and set it aside. Picking up her knife again, she tried to cut into the edge. This, too, proved to be a challenge. Her blade kept slipping off and nearly cutting her. Eventually, she had to ask Gabby-friend for help again. The Earthling’s great blade proved to be up to the task once again, carving off a thin sliver that Pari immediately dropped into the mesh container. Placing a boringcandle—a candle variety so named because it refused to do anything fun, interesting, or exciting; it just burned like candles other people made, except for a very long time—beneath the sample shaving, she lit the wick and waited.

Everything in the world had a smell, and that included Pari’s candles and the flame they made. This did not pose an issue, as Pari knew the signature aroma of her candles perhaps better than she knew anything. Removing that odor from her sense was as easy as meat pie. She was practically just as familiar with fire as she was with her candles, not just in how it smelled but how it altered other smells. Fire could take a smell and twist it, or add to it, or sometimes break it into pieces, but she was far too experienced to fall for its tricks. With only a few sniffs, she could reconstruct the original, not-on-fire smell of almost anything by now.

For a while, long enough to make Pari start to worry, the coating sliver did nothing even with the flame reaching up and licking its bottom. Just as panicked thoughts began to enter her mind, she noticed the substance starting to droop, the lower extremities beginning to spread out over the thin metal mesh. It was melting! Yet, even now, she could detect not a single odor wafting to her nostrils except the fire itself. The coating spread and spread until it covered the whole of the container. To her relief, perhaps because the holes were so thin, it did not leak through the bottom. Soon, the sliver had melted entirely, becoming nothing more than a small white-ish circle at the bottom of her container. Still... no smell.

Just as Pari was about to give up, she noticed a sudden ripple in the melted circle. With an audible whoosh, the entire piece lit up in blue-white flame. Pari eagerly inhaled, her eyes going wide with shock at the bevy of aromas. It all made sense now. This was an incredibly complex lattice of aroma, with hundreds of interconnecting pieces that would combine to form a wall of sorts if arrayed correctly—a wall that would reject practically all other smells, for they would find no holes in which to stick. But, no wall was perfect. If she was envisioning this complex arrangement correctly, there remained a few specific gaps where very specifically shaped smells could fit inside. Not surprisingly, one of those smells was the smell from the insect’s gland—the mintystale parts, specifically.

She began to mentally run down the list of ingredients she had on hand, letting her intuition, guided by years of experience, lead her along the way. Motitha bark was close to the specific minty she needed, but not quite. Remma fluid? No, close, but too sour. Yrri dew, however, once combined with ebbit stomach acid and then burned, would be just the minty she needed. As for the stale, that was easy! She could get that with green uppon powder, no problem. The only issue was that the two ingredients, with their minty and stale smells, hated each other and would refuse to merge into the combination mintystale final product that she was looking for. What she needed was a mommy ingredient, an extra piece to hold the squabbling minty and stale together in a warm hug so they would get along and stop fighting. However, the mommy ingredient had to hold them the right way, facing each other, or the end result wouldn’t have the right shape.

Pari had tried before to describe all the details of smells to others, but each time, she found that she lacked the words to truly get what she meant across. When it came to smells, each one was different, even though there were a thousand different saltysweet aromas out there, for example. What made each saltysweet smell different? It was hard for her to explain, but her mind liked to conceive of each of them as having a different ‘shape’ when she envisioned them. Much like how two sides of a Many could look exactly the same but hold their bodies in different positions, so too could the salty and the sweet. Arly-sis had given her a long, quiet look after Pari had shared this wisdom with her. Pari understood; such profound knowledge took some time to fully comprehend.

Luckily, she had just the thing today that she needed to mimic the spell shape she was going for. Crystallized rusted nettle gum, when mixed with a bit of her spit and exposed to flame, would grab both the minty and the stale and hold them in just the right way to shape the smell the same as the insect gland. It would also help adhere the resulting chemical to one’s skin—very important! All she had to do was mix them up, add a misting agent and spray propellant, and... her test candle was ready to go!

Pari wasted no time setting her creation alight. Once the flame dug into the wax, her creation began to spray out a fine mist, of which Pari took a tentative sniff. She grinned. Just what she’d wanted, as usual! Sticking her hands into the small cloud, Pari let the mist coat her hands thoroughly. She opened and closed them, feeling the very slight stickiness largely provided by the rusted nettle gum, before sprinting back to the vine. She slapped her palms against it and giggled as she found her hands somehow clinging to the plant’s smooth exterior despite seemingly having nothing to grab onto. She pulled herself up off her feet, letting her whole body pull against her hands, but felt no slippage. Unsticking a hand ended up being a little harder to manage, but once she got the trick of removing it by rolling her hand through a quick rotation of her wrist, she was scampering up the green menace with ease.

“Well, what do you know...” Ruddy muttered to himself.

“Great job, Pari!” Gabby-friend applauded.

Cappy-friend laughed. “Every time I think I can’t be more surprised than before... Just who are you, little one?”

“Pari is Pari!”

“You don’t say,” Caprakan chuckled. “That’s what I get for not phrasing my question better, I suppose.”

“Pari make more candles super fast!” Pari declared as she hopped off the vine.

Sitting down, she delved into her task, a small, unimportant part of her mind taking in the conversation nearby.

“I don’t like how much you’re prying into her past,” Gabby-friend told Cappy-friend, her voice dark with foreboding.

“Curiosity is forbidden, now?”

“Not all people get to open all doors. Why are you so interested in her, anyway?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? You just saw what she did as well as I. Didn’t even take her a quarter of an hour.”

“No, that’s not going to fly. You’ve been doing this since the start. Why? And it had better be a very good reason.”

There came a pause, followed by a melodramatic sigh. “What can I say? Mysteries intrigue me. I first met her a long time ago, you know. Far earlier than you, I’d wager.”

This seemed to put Gabby-friend off-balance.

“Surprised? She first introduced herself a few years ago by blowing one of our prime housing platforms to splinters. I even used a few of her creations in my assault on the damned Drayhadans. Still, I thought her an alchemist prodigy and left it at that. There are many talented people in this world, after all. Then, I quickly found myself with far more pressing concerns.”

He paused for a moment, perhaps reflecting on his past.

“When you first came to us to bargain for a person’s revival, I never imagined it would be for her. When I found out, I couldn’t understand it. So, I started to look into who she was, beyond the child that I knew.”

“Seriously? Aren’t you one of the rulers here? Didn’t you have more important things to do?” Gabby-friend asked heatedly.

Another sigh. “Alas, I did not. From the day of my imprisonment by the Esmae until relatively recently, I had very little to do at all. For a time, I could not even move my body, leaving me with nowhere to go but within my mind. Through much of that and even past its end, I lost myself in bitterness, hatred, and self-pity. Any distraction became a ray of light in the gloom, no matter how fleeting. So, yes, I delved into this oddity, if only to momentarily save myself from myself. And, as I found scattered mention of this child in old intelligence reports and as the more focused reports I requested came in later, I discovered a little beastkin-girl-shaped enigma.

“No past to speak of, as if she simply appeared one day with the coming of the dawn. Capable of strange alchemy unlike anything anybody has ever heard of. So well-known among the Eterian military—or what remains of it, at least—that they have their own nickname for her. You, of all people, are well aware of just how notable one must be to earn a nickname.”

Gabby-friend grumbled unhappily, which didn’t make much sense. Who wouldn’t want a nickname? Pari loved nicknames so much, she gave them out to as many people as she could!

“Hey, if you two have time to chat, at least get packed and fix the rope, will you?” Ruddy butted in.

There came the sound of the pair rummaging about, heeding Ruddy’s words, while Cappy-friend continued without missing a beat.

“So, I look at this girl, and I ask, where did she come from? Where did she learn such a craft? Why did she first appear alongside my partner’s childhood idol of all people, fleeing from bounty hunters? And, perhaps most notable... look at her; you see the way her tail waggles and twitches, the way her ears shout every emotion to even the most passive observer? Even disconnected from their homeland, her parents would never have neglected to teach their child the fundamental body control we all learn as soon as we can walk. But no, her lack of manners and control are so stark that I would call her nearly feral, as if she was raised by a pack of animals in the woods. There is a story there, behind it all—there must be. Aren’t you curious? Surely you’ve noticed all this about her and more. Have you never asked yourself these same questions?”

“A bit,” Gabby-friend begrudgingly admitted after a moment. “Still, she’s not some rare beetle stuck in a box for you to study. You’ll get your answers if and when she chooses to give them and not a second earlier, or I will make sure you will regret it.”

He chuckled once more. “Don’t get me wrong; while it is hard to resist my curiosity when the object of that curiosity is right beside me, I have no desire to face the Monster’s wrath while there are so many important tasks still left undone. This is just a personal fascination I indulged in to help buttress my flagging sanity. Even if nothing more comes of it, good things have already come to pass from my investigations.

“I found one answer, you see. Little Pari’s family did come from Stragma, it turns out. The Clansnarls were a small family some thirty-five years ago who were persecuted by corrupt magistrates bought off by their business rivals. When their entreaties to the magistrates’ superior fell on deaf ears, the magistrates struck back by colluding to slowly grind the family into dust, cutting off any avenues for them to thrive. Left with no better option, they left the forest in search of better opportunities elsewhere. The magistrates, however, were all still employed—promoted several times over, even. Dragging them through the mud was... bittersweet. At least I can say that there is a bit less corruption rotting our nation now than a season ago.”

“So, that’s why she grew up out there.”

“As much as I would love to deny it, the vast majority of beastkin living outside the forest come from families chased out for one reason or another against their will over the centuries. Some were rightly exiled, but I would hazard a guess that the great majority of them were not, their stories lost to time. This one, at least, was redeemed, if only slightly.”

“All done!” Pari announced, holding out twelve small, freshly crafted candles.

“Good, let’s get moving,” an impatient Ruddy said. “We’re burning time we can’t afford.”

After taking a few moments to show the others how to work their candles, the group continued upward. Able to cross the vines with ease, they made great progress, with Gabby-friend only falling once. As they went, the vines grew thicker and thicker, slowly taking over more and more of the bark’s area and often not just running through cracks but winding right over them. In these cases, Pari’s new candles really showed their worth. Along with the increased vines came stems and leaves growing from the vines. The smallest one being over forty paces wide, the leaves offered great resting places once they applied her candle spray to their feet as well, though Gabby-friend hated walking along the stems to get to them. At one point, Ruddy had needed to hoist her over his shoulder and carry her there.

Partly because of that and partly just because he was the person whose feet she was always looking at as they climbed, Pari found her thoughts turning to Ruddy as the day wore on. The man confused her. He always seemed gruff and disgruntled and... frowny. Pari didn’t usually like frownies; they were always telling her not to do things. However, Gabby-friend had said that Ruddy was the reason she could see Grandfather and everybody else again, so she couldn’t dislike him even if she wanted to. It would still be nice if he wasn’t so grumpy even though, according to Gabby-friend at least, this whole climb was all his idea. If he hated his own idea, why had he suggested it in the first place?

Maybe he was just in a bad mood? He probably missed Teppy a lot. Pari could tell they spent a lot of time together, given how much of her she could smell on the him. Pari understood it. Pari missed Sofie-sis and Arly-sis and Sammy-friend, too. But still, would it hurt him to lighten up a little bit?

Perhaps he was just standoffish because he was shy? Maybe he just didn’t realize how neat he looked? Between the eyepatch and the peppery beard, he didn’t just look neat, he looked cool! Maybe it was just her, though. Others sometimes acted weird when she complimented their style. Hey, she couldn’t help that people like Sofie-sis couldn’t understand what true style was! All she could do was—

What.

Was.

THAT?!

Pari’s eyes went wide and she swayed, nearly losing her footing as her brain did backflips. The wind had shifted and a new smell—no, a fragrance—had found its way to her nostrils for the first time. It smelled so incredible that she didn’t know what to do. Her body nearly acted on its own as she sniffed again, deeper this time, taking in all facets of the fragrance’s sweet, floral aroma. No, wait, aromas! This was not one scent but two she realized, working in tandem with each other to create an intoxicating sensation that threatened to sweep her off her feet. Her heart thundered in her chest, her breath came hot and quick. She needed more than anything to sniff the source of this scent up close. But, where was it coming from?

Pari’s gaze urgently swept over the ‘trunkscape’ above her, her eyes latching on to the one and only place it could be coming from. Up ahead, more than a thousand paces above them, hung a gigantic, bowl-shaped, violet flower. Facing directly downward, it shimmered in the sunlight, beckoning to her. She needed to get to that flower—needed it—more than she’d needed anything in her entire life, but what was she to do about that? She was tied to the others, with her pack around Ruddy’s shoulders. She wouldn’t be able to outclimb them if she squirmed loose and went alone, especially not Ruddy and his long limbs. Plus, climbing with her bag would be really hard. It was tough enough for her to run around on the ground with it, and that alone had taken her a lot of practice to get down with her small body. Doing that but upwards would be dicey, to say the least. All she could do, it seemed, was wait.

What followed was the most torturous period of Pari’s life as they crept ever closer to those petals of promise. She had no idea how long it took—an hour? Three?—but it felt like an eternity, a terrible eternity wherein she could smell those intoxicating aromas with each and every breath. With every inhale, the fragrances grew stronger, and with it, her need grew to match, until it took everything she had to keep from abandoning everything and rushing forward on her own. She couldn’t do that; she needed her equipment to get lots of samples!

Finally, at long last, the group made it to the base of the flower’s stem... and bypassed it entirely, going around it. Oh no! Pari’s mind raced, trying desperately to come up with some sort of stratagem but coming up empty. There was only one route she could see that would work, one she was utterly loath to do. Still, she didn’t see any other option.

Pari would have to be bad. She would have to lie.

“Gabby-friend, stop!” she cried out. “Pari tired! Pari need rest!”

Her cry jolted her friend from her muttering trance. Perhaps disoriented, Gabby-friend looked down toward the source of the voice and saw the open world below her. Pari could see in her eyes as her horror increased tenfold and her body tightened even more. A loud crunch announced to the world that Gabby-friend had just pulverized her handholds to dust.

Pari felt a momentary twinge of guilt as the Earthling fell once again, screaming at the top of her lungs as she went like always. Pari told herself that this was necessary to get onto the stem, even if she didn’t like it.

A few moments later, the group set foot on the fifty-pace-wide base of the flower’s stem. Ruddy and Cappy-friend looked around, while Gabby-friend faced the vine-covered trunk and pressed her trembling body and forehead against it, purposely avoiding looking anywhere but right in front of her. Her chest heaved in and out with each shuddering breath, and once again Pari experienced a moment of guilt and regret. That, too, passed, for Gabby-friend was not the only person breathing heavily.

Pari’s breaths came quick and fast, bringing in more of this seemingly all-pervasive, heavenly scent combination than she knew how to handle. Her heart raced, her body shivered, and her mind focused only on the glorious fragrance and getting closer to it. Her nose picked up plenty of other smells, but her mind did not register them. They did not matter. Only the flower mattered. It called out to her with each and every inhalation, tantalizing her, but she could not go just yet. She needed to escape her bindings and get her equipment first, but that was proving to be harder than hoped.

“We don’t have time to rest,” Ruddy insisted. “We just rested a little while back, anyway.”

Crud, resting wasn’t going to do the job, it seemed. Pari needed to lie more, lie better.

“Pari have to pee real bad!” she yelled, hopping up and down while pointing hard towards the top of the flower. “Super bad, lots and lots!”

Ruddy groaned. “I’ll handle it.”

Perfect.

Pari squirmed out of her rope restraint as Ruddy did the same in a much less frenetic fashion. She grabbed his hand and tugged—if you could call a child pulling ineffectually on the arm of a giant ‘tugging’—him down the stem towards the flower proper.

“Can’t you go right here?” he asked as they moved down the floral rod so wide it could be a bridge.

“No! Pari pee alone, away from people!”

“Fine, let’s hurry up.”

They kept walking until they made it all the way to the end of the stem, whereupon the stem curved sharply down and morphed into the flower itself. Ignoring the few upturned sepals, the petals slotted together to form an upside-down bowl. Pari could spot nowhere flat outside the stem itself, as the petals began to curve downward even from the very center. The initially gradual slope quickly became more wall than floor as you moved further out. The petals—the external ones she could see at least—did not extend straight down, but rather out at an angle, with each petal overlapping its neighbor on one side and being overlapped on the other. This was key.

“Pari need bag!” she told her companion.

“For what? You collect your pee or something?” Ruddy asked with an equal mix of confusion, disbelief, and skepticism.

“For cleaning!” she replied, thankful that she’d come up with a satisfactory answer fast enough that it wouldn’t seem like she’d had to think about it.

The man tisked but unslung her supplies anyway, placing them on the green ground in front of her. She seized her belongings with both hands, pulling them up against her feet. It took everything she had not to bolt right then and there, but there was still one more step she needed to make sure.

The two of them looked at each other in silence for a moment, accompanied by nothing more than the sound of the wind.

“Well? Are you going to pee, or not?”

“Pari cannot go if people watching.”

“...fine, just make it fast.”

Ruddy turned his back and started walking away. Pari counted to ten before making her move.

One...

Two...

Three...

Fourfivesixseveneightnineten!

Her sack clinked and clanked as she heaved it up over her shoulder. Ruddy glanced back at the sound, but he was now a good five Ruddy-sized steps away, which was too far to stop her as she turned and leapt off the stem. She fell through one of the many large gaps between the sepals and landed atop a petal, her feet slipping out from underneath her and planting her on her butt. She let out a tiny ‘oof!’ as the landing hit her harder than expected, and before she could climb to her feet, she found herself starting to slide down the petal. Well, that worked, too.

A far-off cry of “Pari, no!” found her ears, but she paid it no mind. She focused instead on the upcoming petal overlap where her current slide got covered by its neighbor. There, she could see a small gap of space between the two. This gap was her entry point, as it held the dual features of getting her inside a flower that would otherwise be near impossible to access and being so thin that it would cause any adult to struggle to follow.

Pari reached out with her free hand, bracing for impact as she rushed towards the edge of the overlapping petal. That single petal being large enough that you could fit maybe five whole Grandfathers on it, even its edge was larger than she. At the last second, she had an idea. Instead of trying to hit the side and grab on, she leaned back and slid into the gap, letting her body wedge itself in there. Her momentum ceased almost instantaneously, and she had to fight to keep hold of her precious supplies, but in the end, it all worked out. After flattening out her sack as best she could, she pulled it in with her, turned onto her hands and knees, and began to crawl.

Thanks to the elasticity of the petals making up the bread in her Pari-burger, she didn’t have to work too hard to make progress. The plant flesh squished just enough for her to push ahead, heading slightly up and around towards the inside edge of her floor petal. The scents here hit her like a sledgehammer, threatening to overwhelm her ability to think, but she didn’t need to think, she just needed to crawl and drag her sack alongside as she went.

Finally, after some seemingly long amount of time that Pari was currently unable to mentally measure, her head emerged inside the flower... and what a glorious sight it was. It almost reminded her of a city but upside down. Yes, that was it. It was almost like an inverted Wroetin. The massive towering pistil in the center was like Metal Man’s fortress, with the huge, winding stamens being like the chaotic buildings built around the city—well, the stamens were far bigger, but the comparison still kind of worked. Meanwhile, a city wall of violet wrapped this little world, shading everything lavender, and everywhere she looked, Pari saw the glint of her prize.

Nectar. Magnificent, wonderful nectar. A thin coating of the stuff lined the roof, but the vast majority of it dripped ever-so-slowly in great big gobs down the many stamens. It was luck that placed one of these stamens not three paces to the side of her exit point. Tying her sack around her shoulder so she had both hands free, she crawled forward and jumped, hitting the side almost spread-eagle with a loud splat. Clear, sticky, gelatinous slime enveloped her, and her very being sang with joy. Pari rubbed her face in it, luxuriating in the delectably sweet taste that filled her mouth and the resplendent aroma that filled her very world.

Ohhhh, this scent! This delicious, iridescent, melodious scent! It was wonder! It was life! It was... only half of what had called her here.

She sniffed again, the urgent need returning as she sought completeness. Down. That’s where the other half was. Down below her, and not too far.

It took some effort to slide down the stamen thanks to the nectar’s stickiness and viscosity making her whole body cling to the stamen’s side, but after a few tries, she was able to work out a way to undulate like a worm and work her way down the shaft. Like all flowers, there, at the bottom of the stamen—or the top, depending on how you looked at it—Pari found an anther, one of the flower’s many pollen factories.

Once she landed firmly on the anther, Pari took the largest sniff of her life and immediately fell on her face in an uncontrollable fit of giggles. This was what she’d come all this way for, this transcendent combination of melodious nectar and harmonic pollen that left her unable to do anything more than roll around, coating herself in both substances. The pleasure brought by the glittering, effervescent duet of fragrance engulfed her so completely that she lost herself within it for a time.

Cognitive function returned in a limited capacity sometime later, though Pari used that cognition to choose to simply let herself be. How long had she been here? When had she started purring, or giggling? She had not the answers to these questions, nor did she feel the urge to find them. This here was everything she wanted, everything she needed. This was her world. This was her life, an ebullient existence encased in nectar and pollen like a sugar-dusted pastry—except no pastry could ever hold a candle to this feast for the senses.

A pleasing purple encompassed her vision. Scrumptious sweetness with a hint of tart and umami hugged her taste. Her sense of smell was overflowing with this wondrous, sparkling, soothing symphony, this bubble bath for her spirit. Even her senses of touch and hearing were getting in on the action, as her body vibrated pleasingly to the sound of a low rumble growing ever louder.

It wasn’t until that rumble drowned out her giggles that Pari realized that it wasn’t coming from inside her head. No, it was coming from below her... but there was nothing below her but open air. Slowly, she wrung enough body control from her scattered senses to scoot a pace over to the side and look down. What she saw below made her gasp in both shock and delight.

Hovering beneath her was a creature she was more than familiar with. Flower appreciators like herself, she’d always felt a bond with them. They were so friendly and useful! She could follow them to find rare or unusual flowers, and their hives often provided her honey for her candles. It was just that they normally were the size of one of her knuckles, not eighty paces long. Still, that didn’t matter to Pari.

“Buzzfriend!” she laughed. “Hello, buzzfriend!”

The buzzfriend paid her no mind as it hovered closer, its great wings beating so fast they blurred. Instead, it grabbed hold of a nearby anther, flipped itself tummy side up, and began to harvest nectar with its eight huge legs, scraping it off the various stamen and shoveling it into its gaping mouth.

“W-woah! Heeheehee!” Pari laughed as the anther she lay upon shook and swung violently from the buzzfriend’s actions. Before she could even process the danger, she found herself, sack tied around her shoulder, tumbling off the side. Instead of a long, deadly plummet, however, she plopped against the buzzfriend’s belly, her thick coating of nectar adhering her and her supply sack fast to the great bristly fur lining the beast’s abdomen.

Exhausted, disoriented, and still overflowing with bliss, Pari did not have it in her to struggle free. Any desire to do so vanished a moment later, anyway, when she realized what this fortuitous development meant: she was about to go flying again!

“Yaaayyyy!” she cheered.

Soon, the buzzfriend, ever so diligent in its work, finished collecting the nectar and released its grip. It, and its passenger, fell away from the blossom before the drone of its wings returned and they flipped right-side up. Pari felt the wind pick up as the buzzfriend flew up past and over the flower.

“Wheeeeeeee! Heeheeheeheeheeheehee! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Down below, she noticed her three companions all standing atop the flower stem, gazing up at the buzzfriend and her, their mouths agape with awe. She waved to their shrinking forms as her ride quickly gained altitude. Strangely, they did not wave back.