Kinderling 31

  In case you are interested in starting this story at the beginning, Kinderling 1 can be found here:

The Tricycle of Thought: Kinderling 1

Please don't judge the story or the writing too harshly, this story is written with little to no editing.  It is just meant to get me writing regularly for practice.  

Now back to our story, already in progress...

I quickly found out that Mizzy hadn't so much tackled me as such.  By the time she reached me, what little strength she had left gave out and she "tackled" me by the expedient of falling in my general direction.  Luckily, she didn't miss.  This left me in the situation of being underneath a very collapsed Mizzy.  Normally, this wouldn't be so much a problem.  While Mizzy normally outweighs me by half and is a good bit taller, this new, rescued Mizzy didn't seem to outweigh me by much if at all.  It wasn't a question of if I could lift her off me, became a question of how to do so without harming her.

After a few moments, Mama rescued me.  

"Off we go Mizzy.  Safe and dry inside."  Mama said, and with that Mama carefully lifted the skin and bones Mizzy and carried her though the ferns covering the cave opening and disappeared.  I collected my things, and...  the opening was gone.  I knew it should be there, but where was it?  Apparently my new no-see-me charms were good enough to even fool me!

"Mama?"  

Mama came back out and dragged me inside by my hand.

Then it hit me.

"Mama, how do you go in and out without losing the way like I did?"  I asked.

"I don't look for it.  I know where it is, so I just go where I need to go."  Mama replied.  "If I stopped to look for it, I probably wouldn't be able to find it either.  This version of your no-see-me charms are a lot more powerful than the previous ones.  It's almost like the act of looking actively confuses the mind.  I know that part of rune crafting is tied to the intent of the crafter.  That's why different runes work differently for different Kinderlings."

Leave it to Mama to so easily circumvent even my best tricks.

When I entered the cave entrance, Mizzy was laying on some fern fronds off to the side sleeping, wearing nothing but Mama's tunic.  We didn't take spare clothes or blankets into the Stump with us.  We didn't want to chance being weighed down, so we left them in the fort intending on picking them back up on our way out.  Only Mama didn't go to the fort, she came directly here to the cave.  That would mean...  Yep, Mama was topless.  In my daze, I hadn't even noticed.  That explosion must have really rattled my brain around.  

Luckily, I hadn't wanted to leave anything for Daggi, and packed up as much as I could before I left the fort.  I gave Mama the pack after pulling out my blanket and carefully covering Mizzy.  Along with the blanket, out came Smoke, who was happy to curl up with Mizzy.  I worried about both of them.

I noticed that Mizzy was no longer wearing the harness which was lying on the cave floor a few feet away.  When I went to pick it up to examine it, Mama stopped me.

"Tandy, before you touch that thing, I want you to brace yourself.  That thing is evil.  It was a good thing we got to Mizzy when we did, because I don't think she could have survived much longer wearing it."

Forewarned is fore-armed.  I touched the harness and immediately wished that I hadn't.  I could feel it sucking at my will, draining my energy.  I became light headed and everything started going fuzzy.  Then everything went black.

I vaguely remember waking up for a few seconds, being carried by a large Gorf.  I wasn't able to stay awake long enough to figure out if it was a friend, one of Daggi's slave soldiers, or a wild Gorf taking me to his cookpot.  

When I woke up again, it seemed like almost no time had passed, but I was in a nice Kinderling bed, with nice Kinderling pillows, and everything smelled nice.  My head was still a bit fuzzy, and I still hurt all over, but it was a dull ache, not the sting of still-new wounds.  

"You've been out for days."  Came Mama's voice from the corner.  

I looked down at myself , I was covered in bandages.

"Whatever you did, it nearly shredded the whole front half of you."  Mama continued.  "Are you up to sitting up and sipping some soup?"

Mama was treating me like an invalid!  I'd show her!

I tried to get up...  Then I laid back down, nice and slowly.  OUCH!   Clearly I was hurt more than I thought.

"No it is then."  Mama observed.

"I can try to sit up Mama.  I just overestimated my gumption."

With Mama's help, I was soon sitting up and quickly had a tray set in front of me with a bowl of soup that was more broth than anything.  It was good though, and I quickly realized how famished I was.  I drank the soup down as quickly as I could, and asked for more.

"I think we'll give you a bit of time before more."  Mama said, "You didn't get a chance to tell me what happened to you."

"First, is Mizzy ok?" 

"She's fine." Mama replied, "She's in the next room over, probably on her third bowl of soup this morning.  Smoke has been frantically going back and forth between the two of you.  She's probably with Mizzy now."

"The other mission?  Did Uncle Zon make it back?  Did he have all the people with him?"

"Yes, Zon is fine.  They succeeded better than we expected.  In fact, I suspect that the distraction we used to get Mizzy out of the Stump was Beso calling Daggi to task because they found the caves empty.  Zon and company got in, and got everyone right out from under their very noses.  Zon says it helped that the Gorf soldiers are even more dopey than regular Gorfs."

"The kitchen Gorf?"  I asked.

"When Watcher, Flower, and Mouse found me in the fern cave, Flower almost had a fit.  Apparently you were right to bring it along, because the kitchen Gorf is none other than Flower's sister... or cousin... or niece...  or whatever it is.  Gorfs family structures are confusing."  Mama said, then added, "Now, out with it, what happened to you?"

I could tell that Mama was getting impatient.

"You remember those explodey arrows that I designed with Tilly?"  I asked.

"No, you designed... explodey... arrows?"  Mama asked confused.

I guess in my excitement, I never got around to telling Mama about them.  Indeed, I only took them along on a lark.  I didn't consider them usable since there wasn't a good way to test arrows that explode without... well... exploding one.  We didn't do that, because the noise might attract too much attention.  

Guess they're tested now.

"Tilly and I, or really just me after Tilly taught me some new runes and ways to connect runes, invented and crafted two arrows that are designed to explode when it hits something.  I was thinking along the lines of a no-King-day firecracker, but apparently they explode a bit bigger than that."

"A bit?"  Mama said raising an eyebrow like only Mama can do. 

"And I kinda, accidentally grabbed one of them when I re-loaded the arrow-chucker and took a shot at Daggi."  I cringed expecting Mama to be mad, but the anger never came.

"I would suggest aiming at things further away in the future when using these."

I agreed.