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Nate swallowed, checking her all over for injury with attentive gaze and pounding heart. I don't know. He panted, brow furrowed. But — Ȟákac'enyu, Miss Ȟákac'enyu look at me. Nearly a whine. It's alright. We're alright.

The stone he'd taken from that vengeful earth pulsed between their feet. Harsh flutter of wings pulled his ears back to alert. But the ground stayed silent, lurking.

There was another story, my Eduda told me, you know. She looked well, only shaken. He searched again for injury. A paw stretched out to tug gently at one of her own.

Courage and hope for himself still remained scant, but to comfort another, he could press well beyond his limits. And perhaps a story was silly. But stories had connected them once before:

Men were cruel and all the other beasts, the frogs and bears and deer and wasps, they decided they'd had enough. They wanted us all gone. They came up with plagues and disasters to put an end to us all. But the trees, the flowers, the grass. They said men had always been friends to them. So they made themselves healers. They gave us medicine from themselves, so we could live, and —

Hell, he was still out of breath! He struggled to resolve the memory into something comforting, or even relevant. The revelation he'd hoped to find when he opened his mouth to first speak hadn't found him by the last word.

Instead, Well. I think here, in this world, they pissed off the plants, too.