Bryx

THREE FOR A FUNERAL

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"I say, would you mind keeping your tail a bit closer to your personage, Rivsk?"

"Well I say, would you mind not crowding my personal space? Why are you constantly riding my arse?

"I… I'm not! That is to say, er…"

"Got a thing for me? I've never met a nonhuman furry before"

"Furry…?"

"!"

"Hey, Rivsk, lay off Rosort. I'm sure he's got a good reason for keeping close to you."

"Oh! Er… thank you… Gartroth. I… quite appreciate your support… Ehh… you were saying about those… fascinating twigs…?"

"Ah! That's right! Thank you, Rosort. So, as I was saying, the Nulli-American Oak, dominant oak species in this region of the Ravelwoods, has 76 known raveling patterns, of varying rarity, and one tree typically displays seven of those throughout its lifetime. Now, I know what you're thinking. 'There's no way mathematics can possibly predict something so overwhelmingly random as nature' right? Well, normally, you'd be absolutely correct… but that's why we have logarithms…"

It was a new day, the Third Day in the Trees. The Magpie hunting party was still hot on the trail of the stolen Library book, and everyone was more or less getting used to their new teammates' quirks and habits. The sun was rising, somewhere beyond a heavy curtain of mist. Combined with the dew on most of the plants, it was like walking through a rainstorm in stopped time.

"Hey, Gartroth. Why is this big flower here so dry?"

"AHH! Oh, um, that's not a flower, Eurillya."

"What is it!?"

"DAMN! Uh, um, no, you're right it's actually a flower. Something even more harmless than a flower, even, er… It doesn't matter what it is! Please! just keep walking aaand don't pay any more attention to it! Nobody look back! And please try to think of it as a flower or something more harmless if you feel any curiosity WHICH YOU DON'T NEED TO BECAUSE IT'S A NORMAL okay, we're out of sight. Still, think of it as a flower when you think about it, just to be safe. Now, back to those logarithms—"

Thankfully for anybody whose thoughts may have been entangled by a flower, JUST a dry flower, not a predatory neurovore, the group shortly came to an edge of the forest. Waiting beyond the trees, in the cloudy white light, was a sight far more compelling than logarithms.

At first glance it seemed to be a meadow with a shoreline, a thin bar of dirty, sandy gravel that went for miles in either direction, beyond which was apparently normal grass. A little further off the grass started to look squashed before disappearing in a sheen of white, at which point the brain filled in the gaps and the eyes realized that the entire meadow was flooded.

"Oh my," Gartroth breathed. "Ohh my my my…" The surface of the water was perfectly flat, extending until it disappeared into the fog, and yet, nowhere did the water seem to be more than two feet deep. In some places it was barely a couple of inches. Wildflowers and long grass stems poked through everywhere. Lone trees and patches of scrub jutted out in places. It all seemed healthy and unaffected by the waterlogging.

The troll stepped down to the edge of the water, approaching a cluster of floating objects that resembled giant wooden lilypads with bonsai trees in the middle.

"Yes! Stone lillies! That clinches it!" She started whooping and punching the air as her companions looked on in puzzlement.

"Why is she dancing?" asked Eurillya.

"Your guess is as good as mine," replied Rivsk. He yelped and jumped to the side as a particularly energetic kick from the naturalist nearly splashed him. "Hey, Hoppy! Can you stop trying to soak my magic supplies and tell us what's got you jigging like that?"

"Oh! Right! Right right right! This can only be the Lake of Grass! Isn't it glorious! This literal floodplain covers nearly 800 square miles in about twelve inches of water, on average, and every single organism found within its shallows is completely unique to it! That grass? Only looks like it. It's algae, in symbiosis with an underground layer of matgrowth which stabilizes the whole meadowbed! The roots, trunks, and branches of all the trees and bushes have naturally secreted hydrophobic coatings! The petals on that tulip will burst like a grape if you squeeze them! I'm writing my thesis on this place!"

"How fortunate for you," said Rosort with a mildly sardonic expression.

"Congratulations," said Rathin, without his brother's sarcasm.

"Great, can we get moving?" asked Rivsk testily.

"Hold on! Hold on! I need to take a sample of this and make a sketch!"

"I don't understand how everything in this lake just happens to look exactly like a terrestrial plant," started Eurillya. "I mean—"

"Oh, it's not just the plants. I haven't even gotten started on the animals. You won't find a single fish in this overgrown puddle, but you will find shoals of prairie dogs."

"How small can the dogs—"

"As for how this place came to be, I'm so glad that you asked, because that was going to be the main subject of my thesis!" The troll cleared her throat and paused, then, "we have no idea, but it was almost certainly the work of a god."

Eurillya waited. "…And that's it? How—"

"Well for one thing, the fossil record. Like I said, every single living thing native to this ecosystem isn't found anywhere else. Now natural selection is a wonderful and mysterious thing, but several thousand-odd species of plant, animal, insect, and fungus evolving mimicry? Water filtering algal mats under the silt anchoring a bunch of fake wild grasses? Trees that are exactly the same as the ones growing over there on dry land, with no differences in composition besides those secretions I mentioned? Coincidences stacking on coincidences stacking on coincidences."

Gartroth picked up one of the stone lilies by the bonsai and shook it at the group. "I mean, just look at this thing! This is one the lake's, for lack of a better term, 'original designs.' The entire pad is actually part of the trunk. It starts off as a green stem,

« Chapter 2 For Mirth | Coming…? »



1. Gartroth: Female. Species: Troll, of the Fardowns Subspecies. Six feet tall, lanky, physically strong by human standards, weak and underdeveloped by troll standards.

She is a scholar of the great Rheeve Library in her home universe, and has studied the Ravelwoods for many years. She is quite excited to find herself in the very forest she has spent a lifetime learning about. Her specialty is naturalism, or what we would call biology.

She is erudite, somewhat neurotic, and slightly impractical as a result of spending so much time sheltered in academia. She has a habit of interrupting people. However, she possesses a vast store of truly useful knowledge for the quest at hand.

Secret: Gartroth's childhood among simple, close-knit shepherds was characterized by resentment on both sides. She did not understand her family, and they did not understand her. She left on bad terms with them to pursue her dreams of knowledge.

2. Rivsk: Male. Species: Caniloper(intelligent wolf). Blue eyes. Wears a belt with many free hanging pockets. Has strap-on opposable thumbs on his front paws.

He is a working-class mage, employed by Library patrons to find doors to certain universes in the Library and discover how to access them from the other side. Aside from hunting down the Library book, he is currently under commission to find a door to the Ravelwoods that does not disappear when you pass through it.

He is self-motivated, but also fairly laid back. He's the most likely to let a situation develop rather than intervening, regardless of what that situation might be. His way of thinking is unconventional, and he only knows archaic slang and obsolete units of measurement.

Secret: Almost all of Rivsk's magical ability comes from the various substances stored in his belt. He's successful because he's good at finding creative ways to use the tools available to him, and he resents the popular image of the "all-powerful wizard" who can solve any problem with a wave of their hand.

3. Eurillya: Female. Species: Not Human(currently pretending to be human). Long blond hair, tanned skin of a somewhat unnatural shade. Skinny, with strong, wiry muscles. Suffers from an apparent protein deficiency, and carries a pouch of jerky to offset it.

Eurillya is a normal girl in her universe, and she has only been in the Library for a few months. Her role in the narrative is as the character who asks the questions that are "obvious" to all the other characters, for the benefit of the reading audience.

She's a little socially awkward, and prefers staying in the background, out of the spotlight. With that being said, she has a strong will and a mind of her own, and will be the first to correct anyone who mistakes her shyness for passivity.

Secret: Eurillya is from a universe where humans evolved with photosynthesis. Her natural hair color is blue-black and her natural skin color is leaf green, but she bleached her hair and made the photosynthetic cells in her skin go dormant so she would look more human, because she was deathly embarrassed about constantly having to explain to everyone why she had green skin. This radical dyeing is causing her protein deficiency, and will have much more serious health impacts if left untreated.

4. Rosort Serrin: Male. Species: Desthari(Lizard person) Three and a half feet tall, average height for his race. Pebbly blue and purple scales, polished to a sheen with rosemary oil whenever Rosort has the opportunity.

While he calls himself a soldier, he is actually a mercenary, alongside his younger brother Rathin. He is enamored with the romantic ideal of the gentleman soldier, and strives to emulate that ideal.

He is rather prim and fussy, with a stubborn insistence on viewing everything through the lens of his military experience. He tries to take charge of every situation like a modern major general, but he is not a very skilled leader, and his strategies are often impractical or ill-suited to the task at hand.

However, he is still a skilled soldier, capable of holding his own on the battlefield and surviving in hostile conditions.

Secret: Rosort's obsession with soldiers stems from the death of his parents. He felt crushed by the sudden onslaught of adult responsibilities, and turned to military fiction as a coping mechanism. He found role models in those boisterous, jolly soldiers who did their duty no matter what, and subconsciously based his new personality around those characters.

5. Rathin Serrin: Male. Species: Desthari. Four feet tall. Both tall and very heavily built for his species. Dull yellow and green scales.

Younger brother of Rosort, who considers it his duty to follow his brother in whatever he may decide to do. More capable than Rosort, but less interested in the life of a soldier. His primary concern is always hi brother's safety and welfare.

Rathin is the stoic type. He keeps his opinions to himself unless he feels the need to make himself heard. He is very observant and quick-witted, with a penchant for dry humor and quietly sardonic statements.

Secret: Rathin is asexual, and incapable of producing the pheremones his species requires to mate. Due to his culture's extreme emphasis on family structure, he has a lot of internalized self-loathing, and considers himself, his desires, and his emotions to be worth less than those of his brother.

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