Cheep!? 

Chapter 103

Together the Wyldwalkers did their best to help set up something resembling an emergency camp on the northwestern part of Greenleaf. In all of the devastation, the old warehouse district was the only part of the city that still had anything resembling a standing structure. That said, there was no building untouched by fire, and in the subsequent hours following the pair of devastating explosions, that issue had only become aggravated. By some stroke of luck, rain had begun to fall, and while it was hardly enough to keep the fire from devouring what buildings remained, it did reduce the amount of smoke, and helped prevent the spread of the greedy flames.

That, combined with the firefighting efforts of some of those that had remained behind during the rescue operation, allowed there to be a grand total of three buildings still standing in Greenleaf.

‘Just three,’ Niko thought before musing to himself, ‘It’s hard to be happy about that number, but I guess with everything that’s happened, that’s not the worst.’ 

One of the buildings was currently overflowing with people, as those who had been critically injured before or during the rescue mission were now housed within. A sprawling area surrounding it had been set up to protect them, as much as possible, from the elements with tents and whatever materials they could glean from the wreckage and the waterway shelters. Many of the injured remained underneath the city, sleeping away the night now in the Waterways and hoping for a better day to come tomorrow. Others, Niko noted, occupied their time with doing anything and everything they could in the now, even when they should rest.

Still another category of people listlessly roamed the streets, staring at the now hollowed and scorched husks of what was once a home, or a shop, or a park. These ones wandered in and out of the crowd, sometimes farther away and out of sight until Niko could see them no longer. It was these ones that concerned him, and Niko knew by the expressions on other people’s faces that his worry was shared. Sometimes, someone would draw a wandering soul into their circle around a firmly tamed fire, get them to eat something, and wrap them in a blanket. Sometimes, Niko would watch those same wanderers stare into the fire as though they could see something more than light.

When Niko himself did the same, and thought he saw faces and heard the clash of blades and buzzing, he decided it was best not to stare too deeply into the flames. 

“Niko, can you help Thokk move that pillar into place?” Skye gestured, “He’s only got so many hands.”

“Hm? Ah, yeah, that’s fine.” Niko stirred from his reverie gratefully, the noise of buzzing once more echoing in his ears before fading. He looked around quickly for the big Hind-Bear, finding him doing his best to leverage a collection of wooden pillars together to form something resembling a teepee hut. Niko saw immediately that his issue was that the middle pillar was awkwardly sideways. He also knew that Thokk wasn’t fully paying attention to the task at hand, and watched the lumbering giant sway the tied -together poles with a dim awareness of what he was doing.

Niko walked up to the beast, “Thokk?” 

For a few seconds, he didn’t respond, until he blinked in recognition and looked down quickly at Niko, “Ah, my friend, I was preoccupied. What is it?” 

“Well, I was going to ask if you needed help with this,” Niko gestured with a claw and wing to the wood, “But now I’m wondering if you need to sleep. When was the last time you slept?” 

The Hind-Bear looked down at the wood in confusion, before grunting once and setting the entire ensemble upright. Niko watched as he flexed an essence pattern in his arms and legs, and moved earth beneath him like it was as fluid as water. He buried the foundation half a meter deep and compacted the earth in one motion before giving it a hearty bump. When the structure didn’t fall, Thokk turned to Niko, with a tone that sounded defensive, “I am well enough to continue.” 

Niko fluffed his feathers up for a moment before smoothing them out. He knew it was pointless, and hypocritical, to chastise the Hind-Bear for not resting when he and the Wyldwalkers were just as guilty of the same thing. Instead, Niko asked, “Do you know where Sasha went off too?” 

Thokk nodded, “She is patrolling the edge of the town for any signs that the Hornets may not have been dealt with.” 

At that, Niko nodded, and left him to his devices. He suspected that Thokk might have felt guilty in some part for what happened to Greenleaf, but Niko didn’t think anything he said would sway the furred beast. In the first place, Niko was rapidly accepting what happened, though he felt sorrowful. This hadn’t been his home for nearly as long as even his nest had been, but it wasn’t as though he’d made no memories here. He still remembered walking through the streets with the others, his enjoyment at seeing the shops and in capturing the attention of other passerbys around. He remembered warm conversations and stall food, gentle sunlight and sweet fragrances.

The mild smokey scents around local restaurants and bakeries in his memories clashed with the charred scent in the wind now. Scenes of flower boxes on windowsills persisted in his mind’s eye down a street that Niko couldn’t even be certain was the one he’d walked down. So much of Greenleaf had gone unseen by him, and Niko felt regretful that he hadn’t taken just a little bit more time exploring than he had. 

With a wistful, wandering gaze, Niko almost didn’t recognize the person in his sightline down the road. On a double take, Niko spoke up, “Skye! I see Stella!” 

The half-elf stopped what she was doing, little more than deftly knitting together more blankets out of materials the medical corp had lying around, and set everything aside in one smooth motion. Before anyone could so much as utter a word, Skye was already moving quickly to Stella, calling out to her, “Stella! Over here! Stella!” 

Niko watched the full elven woman turn bodily towards Skye, and Niko felt his gut tighten at the forlorn expression she wore. The woman was tall and lean, and under normal circumstances would have been quite attractive in the conventional sense. Now, however, she was almost fully armored and covered in soot, a helmet hanging in a fashion that almost seemed despondent to Niko. Her eyes were empty, barring the flicker of recognition and something else that flared to life as Skye approached her. Niko followed after, ignoring the idle protests of his muscles. 

Seemingly on cue, Ronald, Dachna, and Mithel all moved to flank Niko, approaching behind Skye.

“Skye?” Stella said, her voice cracking with a rasp.

“It’s me…” Skye said, and it seemed to Niko that she registered that her friend was in a very vulnerable state of mind, “Come on closer, let’s go sit down.”

Stella seemed to take a few seconds to comprehend what she said, but Niko saw the moment when her eyes seemed to brighten fractionally. “Hi, I just, no. I-I mean, yeah, we can go sit–” she hiccuped then, seemingly startling herself with the motion before putting a hand to her face, only then seeming to realize they were covered in soot. She looked back and forth to her hands and, on reflex, put a hand to her face where she’d just touched and shook her head in confusion, “Uh, I’m sorry I’m a mess? I just… it’s just…” Stella’s breathing hitched then, and Skye stepped into her space, drawing her arms around her and pulling Stella’s head down to meet her collarbone in a protective embrace. 

“Shh, shh, it’s alright.” Whispered Skye, while caressing the back of her head, “Come here.”

Stella’s breathing became more ragged, and she weakly tried to push away in vain, before stopping. Then, just as quickly as she’d stopped did Niko hear the sharp intake of breath and the slight whimper, “It’s all gone. It burned, Skye.”

“Yeah,” Skye whispered, now pulling her down more firmly into a hug.

“J-just like it wasn’t ever there. The foundation melted, the-the–” Stella stuttered rapidly then, and Niko heard the wracking sobs come through in a babble of incoherent words, interspersed with some that he could understand. At some point, Stella wrapped her arms around Skye’s torso, burying herself as her shoulders heaved. Niko and the others closed in around them, and when the huddle sank to the ground, Niko curled himself up around the back of Skye and Stella as comfortingly as he could.

He couldn’t even begin to see Stella’s face, but Skye’s face was streaked with tears, too. Niko softly cooed at the pair, and when it became obvious that Stella wasn’t going to be done anytime soon, Dachna and Ronald moved off to get some blankets and set up their own little makeshift resting spot. They were far from the only ones going through something like this, and Niko could hear the sounds of grief and release everywhere. 

Somehow, he almost felt like that was a good thing; Greenleaf was healing, even if the first steps of that healing process was an ugly crying fest. 

All the while, Niko felt his own sadness acutely, but instead of bottling it up, he let it flow over him. After many years of being mired in despair, he knew better than to keep it in. Almost like it was second nature, Niko began to trill out a low tune, more like a dirge than the sing-song voice he usually used. He didn't try to force essence to move or anything of that nature, he just sang into the open air, still tinged with the scent of ash as it was. He focused on letting the emotions he was feeling flow outward.

Slowly, the bustle around them came to a crawl as people took note of the song, so radically different from the sounds before that it seized their attention. Niko himself recognized what was happening, but put them out of his mind shortly thereafter. He sang for himself, and he sang for the Wyldwalkers, for Stella. Then, as he felt his heart stir with more emotion, he sang more, for the lost in the battle against the Massacre Hornets, and for those who he’d fought side-by-side with underground against the Dawr Goblins. A quiver entered his voice as he realized he was singing, too, for the hornets themselves, an existence that Niko had seen to protect their own and that made enemies with their seemingly innate tendency towards rapacious expansion and their hunger.

As he sang, he felt the sorrow and heartache ebb and flow with his wordless voice. He chased that feeling, drawing it out from within him, until Stella’s shoulders stopped shuddering and her breathing slowed, approaching calm. Niko kept going, but he let more and more of the ache go with every breath. Sadness still remained, but it was a small, quiet thing, and while he knew that he could at least calm a heart for a moment, time was the ultimate ingredient. 

Time could heal most wounds, and so long as the promise of the future remained, Niko was certain that Greenleaf would be reborn. 

 

It took another half hour for Stella to be able to go with Skye to their area, consisting of a set of beds situated around a pit fire. Others came around, handing out what food rations were salvageable from the warehouses of the city, some of which had, fortunately, had underground storage. If whomever the goods belonged to objected, Niko didn’t hear about it, leading him to wonder if they survived or if they had simply accepted the loss quietly. Either way, he appreciated the salty foods and preserved fruits, and once more counted himself lucky to be omnivorous. 

“It’s such a waste,” Stella muttered to herself aloud.

Niko tilted his head to her, “At least you can start over.” 

She blinked, turning her attention to Skye who translated, “He said you can start again, at least.” 

“Yeah. I guess so,” Stella groaned, seeming much more stable now as she kicked a small stone away from her cot, “It’s just that I just got rare materials sent as a birthday gift a few days ago, and I didn’t even get to do anything with them.”

“What were they?” Dachna asked, half focused on a coin rolling across his knuckles and half on conversation, “Anything that might survive a fire?”

Stella shook her head disappointedly, “Definitely not. It was Manticore hide, plenty resistant to weapons, but not so much for fire.”

The party nodded to that, though Niko noted that Skye and Mithel seemed the most sympathetic. He guessed those materials must have been quite expensive, but it meant little to him then.

Ronald changed the subject, “Well, it’s late, but happy birthday.” He then handed her a hard biscuit with some peach preserves on top.

Stella just stared at the biscuit, perplexed for a second, before Niko saw her face light up in a mixture of amusement and delight. She giggled while taking the biscuit, “That’s adorable. Thank you,” Stella held the decidedly-not-birthday-cake in front of her face with a broad smile, “I think this is the first birthday meal I’ve had in years, actually.”

Niko looked over to Ronald, before doing a double take to see the man staring just a touch more intently at Stella. He noticed Niko looking at him, before averting his gaze down to what he was doing, though Niko could just see the redness in his cheeks. Mischievously, Niko looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, and met Skye’s gaze. 

They shared a quick, lopsided grin with each other, but left it well alone.

“How old are you, anyways?” Dachna asked with clear idle boredom, “I’ve heard that elves don’t really age fast.”

Mithel gave Dachna a playful swat on the back of his head, “Never ask a woman their age, didn’t they teach you that?”

“Uhhh…” Dachna dumbly began, “Weeell, I mean–nevermind, just forget I asked?”

Stella smiled, “I don’t mind, but I’m only around twenty five?” She paused, looking over to Skye, “Does that sound right? I sorta stopped keeping track.”

“You’ve been twenty five for the past few years,” Skye uttered flatly.

Stella paused, before smiling in a saccharine way, “Skye’s actually about the same as me, in fact, she–”

Her words were stopped by a heartily lobbed bundle of blankets from Skye hitting her in the head, “Careful, wouldn’t want to catch a cold.”

Sputtering, Niko watched Stella feign indignance and stick her tongue out at her half-elf cousin. Niko snorted in amusement, before pausing, a familiar scent catching his attention.

“Hey, I smell something,” Niko declared, before straightening out his posture as he realized he knew the smell. Ozone with a hint of freshly cut vegetation, and other familiar combinations that he immediately spoke for his companions, “Crowe and Camille are back, and Orson I think. I don’t smell–oh, nevermind, I think I smell Oum, too.” 

The Wyldwalkers stirred at that, and exchanged looks of relief, “Then I guess they won?” Mithel said, “It’s finally over, then?”

“I think so,” Ronald said, before dragging himself to his feet, “Let's go find out?”