“When the world wearies, and society fails to satisfy, there is always the Garden.”
dunceWhen Pudd learns of Grike’s new plant-mage friend, she finds herself willing to risk everything.
But first, she’s going to need help.
The wormbeard soldier leaned forward, his piggish green eyes locked on the two Helheeti kits fighting in the center of a chalk circle.
The orange helheeti was quickly working to force the blue one out of the circle, and the soldier felt his heart sink as the bluehelheeti gave one last swipe and was thrown aside.
A roar of approval rose from the dozen or so other wormbeards gathered around the ring, and the orange helheeti’s owner stepped forward to take his winnings.
“Three out of five, Eunice?” The soldier suggested weakly, shrinking back as the larger wormbeard approached.
“No.” Came the gravelly reply.
The soldier’s mane began to shift wildly, the braids freeing themselves from their bindings; trying to hide themselves in the waves of ‘hair’ on the trolls back and beard.
A knife glinted, and a few minutes later the winner settled down, patting the new patch of worms introduced to the multi-colored colony on his own head.
The soldier, meanwhile, was pressing medicine to a very painful bald spot.
The laughter and chatter died into a grave-cold silence as a dark shape approached the group.
As one, the wormbeards turned their gazes toward the interloper, dozens of eyes glinting in the dim torchlight.
Pudd surpressed a shiver, straightening her spine. She kept her horns up as she passed the thin-maned stragglers on the outskirts of the group, but as she got closer to the center, her body language became more submissive.
By the time she reached the piebald wormbeard. she was very nearly crawling, hunched over with her claws close to her chest.
He stepped forward, folding his massive forearms across his chest.
Pudd reached up to remove her helmet.
The others leveled their spears in her direction.
Pudd crept forward and pressed her forehead to the chief’s chest, her breaths rasping and uneven.
Her mane could have been beautiful. The strands grew long and glinted wet and healthy, each worm as pink and perfectly textured as a coneflower petal.
The listless colony shifted, stirred awake by ancient signals only wormbeards could send to the. Medusa-like, the pink worms drifted forward, touching their tips to the snouts of the worms on the chieftains beard.
Slowly, the chief’s colony stretched out in greeting, the symbiotes communicating in some alien way.
The worms relayed what they’d learned to their host; not in words or images, but in a morse code of chemical scentmarks and hormones.
The chieftain nodded, and gestured for the others to lower their weapons.
“What do you want, half-breed?” growled Eunice.
Pudd chafed at the insult. SHE wasn’t a half-breed. Her sire had been. Her mother was a proud and pure Wormbeard mare, and her father had been a powerful blend of Ombre and Wormbeard troll.
So that made her...
....
Well, she was fairly sure she was more wormbeard than not-wormbeard.
Pudd reached for her whiteboard, only for he chief to knock it out of her hands.
“Speak like a proper troll.” Eunice growled, taking a menacing step toward the smaller mare.
Pudd clenched her hands into claws, closing her eyes for a moment.
She stepped forward, lifting her mole-like paws up, palm out.
The chief copied her, and their claws twined.
The two of them began to push against each other, as if to grapple, Pudd bracing her full weight against the earth while Eunice pawed the ground and forced her back.
Once more, her mane tangled with his beard. Pudd’s eyes watered and her head ached like it would split as she struggled to remember the old ways of speaking.
Friend/family/clan-scent
submission/confidence-scentnottoomuch, nottoomuch
flowerscentflowerscent no, no not flowerscent, earthscent, rotandgreenandgrowing
Whelpscent, newscent, hopeandspringeandfireflies
her head hurt so much it was so hard to make her colony understand they were so tired...
Eunice eyes shot open and he drew back, his mane and beard a writhing mass of excitement.
But his expression was calculating, and as harsh as the edge of a spade.
“A garden, here? Have you lost your mind?”
Pudd offered her palms, and he waved her away in disgust.
“Use the dunce board.”
Pudd nodded, and slowly, she began to write out what she’d seen.
she wrote about the human mage, the stone-sort who could bring a cimmerian vine from seed to fruit in less than a day, of the life-giving magic and a chance.
A chance to return to the old ways. To taste sweet, warm rot and feel the earth beneath their claws and between their teeth, to sleep beneath the flowers and roast roots over a cookfire.
Eunice closed his eyes, letting out a very quiet sight.
He was young when Killahead claimed him. Too young to remember the soil.
But his mother had been chief before him, and she remembered. And because she remember, Her colony had as well.
She’d shared this family treasure before she’d died, when he was still small. She’d cuddle him beneath her beard, and rock him to sleep with the scent of petrichore. He’d dreamt of the surface with the ghost of fresh vegetables dancing over his tongue.
He wasn’t the only one who remembered. Two of the worms on his back stretched out, and they touched a wormbeard on the left and right.
Those two reached for two more, and two more after that. Before long, all fifty of the wormbeard trolls were connected, swaying to the memory of green, growing things.
Finally, Eunice snapped from the trance, taking a step toward Pudd.
“Alright, halfbreed.” He growled, “What do we do?”