Chapter 132: A Surge of Tater'd Feelings

In the morning, Jul, Telos, and Cirn exited the tent together to find the village chief. He merely glanced at the approaching trio, gave them an appreciative nod, and grunted at one of the villagers.

Within twenty minutes, the three were in the central square, a varied group of fey gathered and seated in a half circle before them. Most sported some kind of bandages, at least two having been carried out on stretchers to be placed down where they could see the trio easily enough. All of them had the same exhausted, hardened glint in their eyes.

Once they were settled, the village head gave them all a solemn nod before turning to Telos and Jul. He did not speak, but the air between them was expectant.

Jul spoke first. “I understand the explosions came from inside?”

Enough nodded for him to move on.

“Did you see anyone new come by in the last week?”

Most of the fey present exchanged glances, others shaking their heads.

“Were the explosions all at once, or one at a time?”

Jul continued to lead the grim questioning as the fey took turns recounting events from their perspectives. For most, the order of events seemed to contradict each other, including a couple of hushed arguments about whose house exploded first. Twice, Telos stepped in with a quiet word and a friendly smile to calm a panicked fey caught in a flashback brought about by the questions and raised voices, making Jul’s heart ache.

Hours of questioning provided few direct answers. The only thing agreed on was that the homes in the north of the village were hit first, those in the south hit last. As the majority of the able bodied fey were in the fields or doing work around the village, it was the children and the elderly who were hit the hardest.

When it was clear they would learn nothing more from questioning them, Telos stood from where they’d been crouched by a young male fata. Telos had been using a healer’s spell for calm to keep the fey present and not lost to flashbacks of the day before, so the distance made the fey give Telos a piteous look that they returned with a warm, sympathetic smile.

Telos glanced at Jul before addressing the village head. “Normally, the harvest would be next week. I’ll speed up the process and help gather up all of the ripe crops today.”

Jul nodded while the villagers all shared looks of profound gratitude. “Good plan. I’ll see if I can spot any additional clues around the village or the Wylds.”

Telos nodded, then glanced over at the stiff Cirn. Cirn had not spoken a word in the last two hours of questioning, instead stiffly standing by and waiting for orders that never came.

With a pitying yet exasperated twist to their lips, Telos said, “Cirn will attend to me. Casting large scale magic like this may draw in feybeasts, so be prepared to take them down.”

The way Cirn instantly relaxed and nodded kept the villagers at ease despite the potential threat of rampaging feybeasts, Cirn’s confidence inspiring trust in her abilities to protect them.

Jul gave them all a nod, saying, “Then if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go investigate the explosion points.”

With their duties assigned, the three gave each other solemn nods and turned to their own tasks.

Well. Sort of.

Telos ended up being delayed by gifts of boons while Cirn stood awkwardly nearby.

Though Jul could have helped, he instead left both of them to suffer as he went to hunt for clues as to what, exactly, had caused this disaster to begin with.

Once Squirt had finished making all three—Tater, Puff, and Spark—touch the prismatic chimera, she led them a safe distance away, scanning the forest and meeting back up with Pakos. It was only then that Tater asked, “Where has he been?”

Squirt gave the woman a dour look. Sneaking she might be good at, but was she blind? “Once we got into the forest proper, I had him scouting ahead to find us a feybeast.”

For a suspended moment, nothing happened. Then Tater hissed out, “You mean he led us to that thing?”

“Yes. It was intentional. I told you before and I’ll tell you again—at this time of year, as long as we don’t gather too closely, draw too much attention, or put ourselves inside their mouths, the feybeasts won’t look twice at us. We’re too weak to be worth the effort. The feybeasts themselves have a slower metabolism and need fewer meals, sleeping for long portions of the day, and wild surges are rarer.”

Tater’s reflexive fear eased as she thought about this before hedging, “That’s when we pair up and hide in a tree?”

“This time of year, yes. Again, we’re not worth the effort. So long as you’re not easily visible, they won’t look. Spring will be different. Spring and summer require vigilance.”

Tater wrapped her arms around herself, trembling a little. “… one of those things attacked the caravan on our way here, and yet we just…”

Squirt was surprised in that no one had mentioned such an attack, but then Puff whispered, “The vampire shadowing Dusty just obliterated the thing before it could get near the carts.”

Nodding absentmindedly, she responded, “Makes sense…” Rubbing the back of her neck, she muttered, “Other fey will attract beasts. We’re safest in the Wylds this time of year because we can go where other fey can’t.”

Maybe having them touch the beast’s hide wasn’t the best way to get it through their skulls that they were genuinely safer here.

They continued on in their trek, and the sun began to dip towards the horizon. Finally, about an hour out from the earth tree clearing, a shiver went up Squirt’s spine.

A slap from behind had her spinning to see Tater’s eyes wide and her hand having slapped onto the back of her neck. Squirt nodded, noting signs that the other two also felt it.

More evidence of her not being nearly as special as the gods damned titled fey kept thinking she was.

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

Turning to the other two who were closer to another tree, Squirt didn’t mince words. “Surge. Take cover, there, in that tree hollow at the base.” She grabbed Tater’s hand and tugged her a hundred yards away before finding a tree. Squirt gestured up to Tater and said, “After you. Up to the top.”

Tater took off in almost frantic flight to reach the top of the tree while Squirt got out her climbing hooks. In the distance, she could sense Pakos heading off some of the bigger creatures and luring them away, so she suspected it would be a much quieter surge than any she had faced this year so far.

With any luck, it would be one of the last.

Pulling herself up into the upper branches, Squirt straddled a branch to watch for fires from things like an inferno bear or a black phoenix. Shifting herself, she took out the Skyian recurve and strung it, just in case.

Then she settled on the branch to wait, her body ready, but not stiff, her bow resting ready in her lap. With a roar, a few beasts began passing by underneath. Usually one at a time, though sometimes in small groups as they rampaged through the forest. Most of them were the size of the prismatic chimeras, if not bigger, and yet while powerful enough to do so, not one of them attacked the trees, somehow avoiding them despite their wild state.

Squirt remained alert and ready, but as one hour turned to two, she was reminded why she loved autumn so much.

“… I’m sorry… about your fey, I mean.”

Squirt kept her expression carefully blank. Two hours of silence and that was how Tater finally broke it?

“… was she how you got into this? We’d heard you died some decades ago, and she was in mourning, but… maybe I misheard?”

Yeah, the Sia-bitch fucking would claim “mourning” in an attempt to lure Squirt back.

Squirt twisted slightly in her seat, facing away from Tater. “I died.”

She used the greenling word this time for the greenling connotation of assuming a new identity.

A pause. Then—

“But… I mean… well she had to know, didn’t she?”

“Tater?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re digging.”

“… sorry… I just… I mean… it’s been a while, you know?”

Tersely, Squirt retorted, “Generally it’s considered polite to offer your stories, not ask for another’s.”

“… I was just… never mind.”

They returned to silence, only now there was an awkward air between them. Neither could seem to sit comfortably still on their branch, nor let their gazes settle in any one direction.

“… what’s it like? Being chosen. You didn’t give us the time of day after you left.”

More like she wasn’t allowed to look anywhere that wasn’t her master for fear of the associated punishments. “Overrated.”

Tater scoffed, her tone dry but with an undercurrent of bitterness. “Really? Sixty years of bliss is overrated?”

Squirt’s expression darkened.

Tater winced. “Sorry. Right. Forgot.” Then she sighed and faced forward again. “Who knows… if you have the goddess’s favor, maybe she’ll bless you with another.”

Squirt teetered. She could use the opportunity to come clean. Explain why she wouldn’t be sticking around as some kind of leader, why they shouldn’t look to her with awe, why they shouldn’t offer their gods damned condolences for the best thing that had happened to Squirt in sixty years.

But the bitterness in Tater’s voice kept her from speaking, a bitterness that she doubted Tater was alone in feeling.

Being chosen was a special honor that was relatively rare—only one in ten greenlings or so hooked up with a non-greenling, and of that, only one in five of those encounters ever repeated. The number of those who claimed a greenling for themselves was even smaller.

It turned out that most fey, upon realizing they had compatibility with a greenling, were disgusted instead of enthused, and preferred to pretend the entire event hadn’t happened.

The face of the greenling she had jeered out of their community as a young fey rose up unbidden in her mind, and Squirt lost the timing to speak up.

The sun had fallen over the horizon, and the moon had come out by the time the surge ended. It was a relatively bright night, so Squirt stood on her branch, leaning over the side to study the forest floor. Using the tip of her bow, she pointed. “Look.”

Tater frowned before crawling over, clearly less comfortable with their accommodations than Squirt. She peered over the side, squinting in the dark.

“It’s a coyote pair with their kits.” The little ones were still small enough to have tuffs of puppy hair mixed with their more adult coat, lanky and awkward and possibly on their first hunt. Quietly, mostly talking to herself, she murmured, “Their den must be close by.”

Frowning slightly, Tater eventually said, “I thought only monsters lived in the Wylds.”

Squirt rolled her eyes and tapped Tater on the head with the tip of her bow. “Idiot. You had venison stew for dinner last night.”

Tater rubbed the spot on her head, though the blow hadn’t really hurt. Even in the dark, Squirt could make out the sheepish wince from her. “Yeah… well… I’ve never looked to the hand.”

“You’ll have to, here.”

“I’m starting to get that impression. Honestly, I didn’t know what deer looked like until today.”

Squirt understood. Prior to leaving the Capital, she had all the same confusions as Tater. Venison was not common fare in the Capital, domesticated beasts were. Even then, she’d grown up trying not to think about what exactly went into the greenling stew. The elders would know if it were edible, and if it had any meat in it, it was usually rat.

“So the feybeasts don’t eat the… what did you call them?”

“Coyotes.”

“Yeah. Those.”

Squirt sighed, sitting down on the branch next to Tater. Tater was still laid out, still hugging the branch like she was afraid to let it go, but her eyes were open and curious. It was disarming. Not quite to the level of Puds of making Squirt forget the distance of the last sixty years, but enough to soften her. “… they’re like us. Too weak to register for feybeasts unless the beasts are both weak and desperate for scraps. They hide during a surge just like we do, coming out after it’s over and resuming life like nothing happened.”

Squirt paused, the ghost of a smile touching the corner of her lips, wondering if Tater was just as hung up on romance as ever. “… they mate for life, you know. The coyotes.”

“… really?”

“Yeah.”

“What happens if one of the mates dies?”

“The other will care for the kits, but otherwise, they don’t always survive the experience.”

Silence fell between them, Tater’s expression softened by sadness. She murmured, “Maybe they should learn the same fortitude that helped you passed it.”

Squirt rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Come on.”

With that, she slipped off the branch, using her climbing tools to make short work of her descent. Landing in the leaf litter, she turned and froze at the hardened stare from Tater, her green wings with hints of pink open as she hovered before Squirt.

Squirt returned her tools to her pouch, pretending not to notice the hard stare, turning back to where she had left the other two.

Tater’s voice called out, “Your wings…”

Flatly, Squirt responded, “What about them?”

“I just…” Tater awkwardly had her eyes slowly scanning up to the top of the tree before fluttering and following after Squirt. “Should I have climbed the tree like that?”

Darkly, Squirt muttered, “With what tools?”

“Well, I don’t know, I’m not the teacher here.”

“Did I tell you to climb?”

“Well no, but—”

“Then don’t worry about it.” She was almost to the men, could see them tentatively poking their heads out at the sounds of their voices.

“I mean, aren’t we supposed to be copying you? We’ve copied you for everything else all day, from how we move to where we step. You didn’t fly, so I think it’s a fair question.”

It was. And it hurt more than Squirt cared to voice to know that even with all the evidence laid out in front of her, Tater couldn’t even fathom that Squirt couldn’t fly. Instead, Tater, ever the optimist, ever the romantic, someone Squirt had once called friend and kissed when they were experimental teens, was wondering if she’d done something wrong instead of wondering what made Squirt different.

It was a bittersweet pill to swallow. Sweet to know that even now, Tater was seeing only the best in Squirt, and bitter to know how different the reality was from what Tater saw.

Tater saw Squirt’s hesitation, her feet touching the forest floor and her wings disappearing into her back. She dropped her gaze away, her shoulders as apologetic as her eyes. “… sorry. I just… sixty years is a long time and I, um…”

It was.

They both stood there, the distance between them filled with the same awkwardness the entire day had been plagued with, both trying and failing to connect. Deflating, Squirt finally muttered, “Yeah, well…” before she turned and finished crossing over to Puff and Spark, who had both now exited their hiding spot, unable to escape the awkward air as she did.