NOVEL WEB Chapter 30: Squirrels
No, that couldn’t be right. After all, I didn’t turn into a beast. I did NOT. I was still me, a human. Sure, with sails for ears, small antlers on my head, wings, and a tail, that was a stretch to claim, but I was still Korra, not some feral beast out for blood.
I simply must have been wrong.
However, as much as I tried to deny the truth, the sight of the frozen squirrels spoke for itself. They felt the might of the beast dwelling deep within me, and they feared it as much as I did. The might silenced them, and the entire forest, it seemed. Not even the rustle of a leaf could be heard. It was as if the trees themselves were horrified by me and what I was. Add to that a strange feeling on the back of my neck, and I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling of the entire forest watching me.
In a few heartbeats, though, time, seemingly suspended for that odd moment, sped up again, and all the squirrels jumped off me, retreating to the safety of the walnut tree.
All but two.
Lady.
Lady, lady.
‘Huh?’ The meaning of those two’s squeals left me more than confused. If I were to believe what my bestial side was telling me, which, oddly enough, I trusted more than the translation from the [Eleaden Standard Language], they regarded me as a lady. What I couldn’t tell, though, was what exactly was behind the meaning. Was it just their way of showing respect for someone stronger? Or was there more to it?
‘Hang on, surely it couldn’t be . . . no, he wouldn’t.’ I dismissed the thought of Dungreen using squirrel extracts for one of his concoctions. In no way was I related to them - that would be just ridiculous. It WOULD!
Speaking of the buggers, now that they were on the ground and not attacking me, I took a good look at them.
[Esulmor Squirrel: 14 sigils]
[Esulmor Squirrel: 11 sigils]
Esulmor again. Was that then the name of this forest? Or the whole region? Certainly, a name to remember.
The question was what to do with the squirrels. The battle was over, for now at least. And I had won. Well, sort of - I had bloody scratches all over my body, while a pack of squirrels seemed perfectly fine. They might have been weak, but what they lacked in individual strength, they made up for in numbers. Would they dare touch a mossbear, though? I doubted it, but I just as much doubted that the massive beast ate something like nuts.
“Eh, a-are we okay?” I asked the squirrels, feeling the way they were looking at me - dumb and foolish to talk to them.
‘Right, the meaning.’
That must have been what mattered - not whether it was a peep, a squeak, a neigh, or my own growl, but the meaning behind all those. That was how I understood the old man’s horses and how pathetic I was in the eyes of the mossbear. That was how I understood squirrels’ squeaks just now.
There was just one little problem with knowing all this, though.
‘How the bloody heck would one put the meaning into words?’
“Hello, I . . . I didn’t mean to upset you.” I spoke slowly, focusing with all my might on the happy image of me and the squirrels in my head. “I w-was just hungry.”
‘Did it work? Ah, shit . . . ’ The squirrels wore the same confused expression.
“Th-there’s nothing else in the forest for me to eat,” I tried again, this time imagining a walnut tree in the middle of a vast meadow and nothing else around.
Moss.
Eat moss.
‘Holy shit!’ Eyes wide, I didn’t know whether to be thrilled that I managed to do it, that it worked, or be pissed by their suggestion. Despite the weave available to me implying the moss was eatable, after tasting the nuts, I wasn’t keen to take the plunge.
“No moss,” I said with as much emphasis on not wanting to eat it as I could put into the two words. “Is . . . is there something else in the forest? Besides nuts?”
Having my fingers crossed, I hoped for some berry bushes I had overlooked on my expedition through the forest and the squirrels knew about. The two little creatures looked at each other, squeaking something between themselves and those in the walnut tree that I didn’t quite understand. When they finished their discussion, they turned back to me.
Vines.
Eat vines.
Once again, I had to question whatever my bestial side was making good of the meaning behind their squeals. Vines? Seriously? Hopefully, the vines they meant were somehow different from the ones growing on Earth because I couldn’t imagine eating those.
“Can you show me?”
Yes.
Lady, follow.
And so, after a bit of hesitation, I ended up chasing a pair of squirrels, with half-healed scratches, into the woods, with more than a hundred of the little creatures trailing behind us through the treetops. Of course, I marked my way as best I could in the rush - the little creatures proved to be surprisingly fast. And, of course, I stayed vigilant in case this whole thing was some kind of ruse. They might have seemed earnest, but who knows what really lay where they were leading me. It could have been the vines or a massive mossbear.
Well, much to their credit, it turned out to be the former.
While the place certainly wasn’t just a few trees away, the pair of squirrels led me to a spot where the treetops gave way to the sky, and the vines hung almost all the way from their branches to the ground, basking in the sun. Not the first time I had seen a spot like that. On my expedition to find water, I came across a few places like this. But the first time I saw it as anything other than just beautiful scenery.
Vines.
Eat.
“You sure? Those vines?”
Yes.
Eat.
Well, I couldn’t help but question the squirrels’ intentions. The vines they were talking about looked not unlike those high up in the treetops and the ones I knew from Earth, a tangled mass of tendrils twisting and turning, covered with leaves.
“No fruit,” I said, pointing out as strongly as I could that I didn’t see anything I could eat on the vines.
No.
Vines, lady.
Eat vines.
‘Were they screwing with me?’ Full of doubts, I took on the vines in my hand. The stem was surprisingly soft and flexible despite its rough texture, making me wonder how the vines didn’t snap at their length. But in the end, it didn’t matter if their appearance was deceiving or if they grew more solid higher up. What mattered was whether they were edible.
Bite.
Vine, bite.
“If this is . . . ” I said, intending to give the squirrels a warning, but stopped short. If this was just some trick of theirs to make fun of me, I could only blame myself for falling for it. And so, taking a deep breath to ready myself for whatever was about to hit my taste buds, I sunk my teeth into the vine, biting it in half.
‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ What I more than eagerly pounced on tasted mildly like a cucumber, if a bit tougher to chew. Before I knew it, a whole meter of the bitten-off vine ended up in my stomach, filling me up no less than all the nuts I managed to eat before my battle with the squirrels. Just thinking about it was so vexing. Once again, my previous efforts; the knocking down all those nuts; the cracking them out of their shells, seemed utterly pointless.
“Thank you . . . ” I said with sincerity to the squirrels but paused, standing with my eyes wide open. The small creatures were nowhere to be seen. Panic bit into my heart, and a flurry of questions stormed my mind. Did they really screw with me?
However, no matter how long I waited, alerted, no notification tingled through my skull, no discomfort twisted my insides, and no mossbear came rushing through this odd forest lacking any other animals. The two little creatures simply made good on their promise and returned to guard their tree.
And so, with food and water secured, I lived to see the day when Liam, the old merchant, was to ride through the forest again.