Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Four — The Village Hidden in the Leaves
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Four — The Village Hidden in the Leaves The Beaver Cleaver cut across the sky on a north-westerly course that had us flying over hills and an endless untamed forest where the occasional river broke up the sea of green.Howard took a bit to get used to the perspective. It was hard to navigate using familiar landmarks when you were seeing those landmarks from above. Still, once he got us going in the right direction it was pretty smooth sailing, with only the occasional course correction to fly past a specific bend in a river or past a formation of rocks.Hopsalot wasn’t that far from Insmouth. The two days of travel time seemed to be mostly because there wasn’t an actual road between the two villages, and because Howard’s route twisted and turned with the landscape instead of darting straight towards Hopsalot.Being in the air gave us a big advantage with that. By the time noon was rolling around and our lunchtime sandwiches were nearly done with, we could see little trails of smoke coming up fast ahead.“Let’s circle around halfway and anchor ourselves next to the village,” I said. “Do you know if there are any fields near Hopsalot we can use?” I asked Howard.“Sure, there are a few. They have a lot of trees in their town, but there are some open areas too.”“What can you tell us about the people from there? Are they nice?”Howard’s face took on a strange expression for a moment. “They’re certainly nice, yes. Perhaps too much so. Though I haven’t been here in nearly half a decade.”I didn’t know what that could even mean, but maybe Howard had gotten a strange reception the last time he’d been here. Hopsalot grew close enough that I was able to make out the town, or at least some of it. There was a river in the middle of it that switched back and forth, with bridges crossing it here and there, and near the centre of town was a big building with a waterwheel on one side.The problem was that there were only maybe a dozen other buildings I could see between all the trees.Then I noticed the homes built atop the trees and it clicked.“It’s a village of tree houses!” I said.“Yeah, buns tend to like building in strange ways,” Howard said.I blinked. “Buns?”“Yeah, your sort of folk,” Howard said with a gesture to my head.I got excited and leaned over the figureheads as we crossed over the hilly little town. I noticed little gardens and neat little rows of bushes here and there, as well as long-eared heads turning up to stare at us as we coasted by. Clive was at the wheel, so our turn and stop was textbook-perfect and soon enough we were dropping our anchors by the edge of the town.“I think we’ll be using the same away team as last time,” I said as I hopped onto the deck. “Amaryllis, Awen, Bastion if you want to come. And of course Mister Howard. We’re kinda here for you, after all.”“Thank you, ma’am,” Howard said. “I’ll be honest and say that these old bones of mine are looking forward to being on solid ground again.”I patted him on the back, then shuffled over to the ladders to lower them down.Bastion leapt off the side, wings buzzing, then because she couldn’t be shown up by a Sylph, Amaryllis jumped off too. Awen and I stared at each other and shared an eye roll before she started down with the ladder.I just walked off the edge of the ship and landed in a crouch at the bottom where I could hold the ladder taut to help Awen and Howard come down.The moment everyone was down I set my hands on my hips and surveyed the town of Hopsalot. No greeting party? Didn’t they worry any?The town was idyllic. They had cute little homes set up in the branches of trees and with doors and porches painted in soft pastels, and some of the bigger hills I’d noticed from above were actually burrows, with big doors set in their sides and sometimes big round windows that let us peek into living rooms and kitchens. That’s where the smoke was coming from, smoke that smelled like fresh bread and roasting veggies.The town had a bunch of cobbled lanes criss-crossing it, and everywhere the road met the stream gurgling through the town there would be a little arched bridge with carefully tooled rails carved into fanciful shapes.There were people too. Buns! With big ears and bigger smiles. They mostly wore earthy clothes, the men in overalls and the women in long summer dresses covered with aprons at the front. They seemed like very nice people. Plenty of them were gathering in clumps next to gardens or at intersections to point at the Beaver.What really caught my eye was the row of rabbit ears poking out from behind a nearby hilltop.They wiggled and waved, and sometimes they’d rise up a little and I’d catch a glimpse of big curious eyes staring from under the brim of flower-yellow caps.It seemed, much to my glee, that little buns grew their ears out before the rest of their body caught up. Like puppies with too-big ears. Mine were not quite two feet tall, and so were the little buns!That meant that some of them were nearly a third ear in height and it was adorable. And they all had big rounded cheeks, and huge eyes, and I wanted to hug them so bad!I squealed and waved to the nearest group, only for them to scream and hide away. Not a terrified scream, but a happy playful one. “I like this place,” I announced to my friends.“I noticed,” Amaryllis deadpanned.“How can you not like it?” I asked her. “It’s so cute!”She rolled her birdy eyes and sighed. “It is quite nice, yes. A bit primitive, but at least it’s clean.”“Someone’s coming,” Bastion said.I looked over and noticed that he was quite right, a woman was walking our way, trailed by six teeny tiny buns who were using her skirt as cover to peek at us. Next to her was a huge slab of a man, like a walking wall of muscle. He had a big hammer looped to his belt, and one of his ears looked like it had been chewed off in the middle. The lady stopped some dozen steps away and crossed her arms under her chest. “Hello there!” she called.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.I hopped forward, scaring the little buns into hiding behind the lady until only the tip of their ears poked out.“Hi there!” I said. “My name is Broccoli Bunch, captain of the Beaver Cleaver!”The lady hummed. “Oh my, I’m the mayoress of Hopsalot, you can call me Momma,” she said. “You don’t look like one of my buns.”“Oh?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m not from around here. These are my friends, Awen, Amaryllis, and Bastion, and that’s mister Howard, he’s from Insmouth to the south.”“A harpy, a human, a sylph, and a fishman neighbour. Oh my, oh my,” Momma said. “Welcome, everyone, to Hopsalot. We don’t have much, but what we do have is yours. I hope we can become good friends.”I nodded super fast. “I hope that too! Your town is very pretty.”“Thank you,” Momma said. “But it’s not the town that matters, it’s the people living in it. I’d like to think that the town’s just a reflection of the people within.”I decided that I liked Momma. “That’s a nice way of thinking!”“Are you a sky pirate?”The question came from a tiny head poking out from behind Momma’s skirt. A little bun girl, her head tilted down and her ears almost dragging to the ground. She was hugging a little plush doll to her chest, one of the doll’s ears in her mouth.“Not technically,” I said. “But we’ve fought pirates before!”A bunch more heads popped out, all with expressions varying between ‘whoa’ and disbelief.“I think if you keep on like that you’ll earn yourself quite the following of little listeners,” Momma said. She chuckled and reached back to rub one of the bun’s between the ears.“Are they yours?” I asked.“Oh my,” Momma said. “Some of them certainly are. We have a lot of little buns here. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of who is who’s child.”“They all just run around?” I asked.Momma shrugged. “It’s safe enough around town. As long as they know not to head into the woods. We have some folk keeping watch, of course, and they all have school in the afternoon. Isn’t that right?”There was a chorus of grumbles from the little buns. It seemed as though school wasn’t really popular.“Hey, miss captain?” One of the bun boys asked. “Can we go on your ship?”I smiled. “Not right now. But maybe later we can give you guys a tour?”That seemed to brighten them up a bit.“But only if you behave and are good little buns.”A few of them deflated at that, but some seemed just as eager. “Alright everybun,” Momma said. “I need to keep our guests company for a bit, why don’t you all run off and play?”“But we wanna see the ship!”“Ara, you can look at it all you want without bothering our guests, right?” Momma asked. Soon she got all of the little buns to hop away, and a few moments later there was an eager game of ‘pirates versus good guys’ going on atop one of the nearby hills, with lots of tumbling about and rough-housing and squealing laughter. Momma eyed them all for a bit, then turned to us with a smug smile. “That’s taken care of. Now, are there any supplies you need? Or are you just here to rest?”“We’re here for business,” I said. “Or, well, Howard here is.”“I see,” Momma said. “Why don’t you follow me over to my place then. I left the cauldron on the stove with some soup on, and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”“Thank you,” I said. “We have some veggies and such on our ship too, if you want.”“Now why would I want that?” Momma asked.“Well, your food should be to keep all your little buns, and yourself, you can’t just give it all to strangers like that,” I said. “Not if it means empty little tummies.”Momma laughed, then she pulled me into a tight-tight hug. “Oh, you’re a sweet little one. But no worries. My garden is still quite plentiful. We won’t run out of carrots and turnips any time soon.”Looping my arm in hers, Momma pulled me along and down one of the cobbled paths. Her big friend, the man with the hammer and the broken ear, followed along at a leisurely pace, a content smile tugging his lips up.I saw my friends sharing a look before they started walking to keep up as well.Momma’s house was near the centre of Hopsalot. It was a strange little home, with half of it built into a hill that had a huge tree atop it, and the other half hanging off said tree. Entrance was little more than a few stone steps leading up to a big round door dug into the side of the hill.Momma opened it up and gestured to a rug right by the entrance. “Please wipe your paws,” she said. “I do enough dusting as it is.”Nodding, I took my shoes off, then used some cleaning magic on them before placing them onto a rack next to the doorway. I helped my friends clean off their boots too, just in case.The interior was very snug, with a low-ish ceiling and a bunch of small corridors broken up by arches every so often, all lit with the orange-y light of a few lamps hanging from the walls.Momma led us to the dining room, which was a long, curved room with a curved table in its middle with a mixed assortment of chairs and stools all around it. There weren’t any windows, but there were plenty of little paintings hanging from the walls with deserts and forests and pretty mountains on them.“So,” Momma said as she sat at the head of the table and set her elbows down. “What did you want to talk about?”
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Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Five — Grandmomma's Hug
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Five — Grandmomma's Hug Howard took off his fisherman’s cap. “Miss Momma, I’m Howard of Insmouth. I do believe we’ve met once before.”Momma nodded. “I thought I recognized you,” she said. “We don’t see our closest neighbours all that often.”“The road’s... well, there aren’t any,” Howard said with a self-depreciating chuckle. “As things are going, there might not be any need for them.”Momma frowned and leaned forwards. “What do you mean?“Ma’am, Insmouth isn’t doing so well. That’s why we solicited the help of the fine captain here. Our dungeon, there’s some cruel thing strangling it. An Evil Root. We’ve tried everything we can to stop it, but nothing has worked so far.”Momma made a sound that was almost a whine. “You poor things. What is the Evil Root doing?”“It’s twisting our dungeon,” Howard said. “Turning the traps into awful things, and letting the creatures that lurk within spill out as grotesque monsters. We can’t truly use the dungeon anymore. Not with the added danger. We could just overlook it, maybe, but the monsters are spilling out into Insmouth.”The older bun lady sighed. “That’s awful. Do you need buns who can fight? We have a few who guard the edges of the forest. Maybe we could send some back with you? I’m certain they could help. And our last crop was fairly good. We can send some preserves over, to tide you along.”Howard bowed. “Thank you, ma’am, that is very generous of you, but... no. I was sent to ask you for your font.”“No.”I shifted on my stool. A glance to my friends showed that they felt just as awkward as I did.Well, alright. Awen looked awkward. Amaryllis was just paying attention, and Bastion had his eyes closed and arms crossed. One out of three was good though.“That’s really unfortunate,” I said with a sigh.One of Momma’s ears twitched my way before she looked at me. “What are your stakes in this, Captain?”“Ah, please just call me Broccoli. And I don’t really have any? I mean, I really would like to help Insmouth. They’re nice people, and I don’t think they deserve to be in so much trouble.”Momma’s smile turned even sadder. “Nobunny deserves pain or tribulation, little bun.”“Exactly,” I said. “So if we can help, we should.”Momma shook her head. “I don’t think you see the full picture.”I pouted, but she was probably right. “Can you explain, then?” I shifted forwards on my seat. “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble?”“It isn’t,” Momma said. “And I hope that it will smooth things over with our neighbours. The offers for other kinds of assistance are still very much on the table, of course.” She cleared her throat in a rather dainty way. “Hopsalot is a village that has been around since the days of the fall of the Tanyints Empire and the rise of the Kingdom of Pyro. It was a time when neighbours turned on neighbours, and being different was a danger.”“Oh no,” I muttered.“Our ancestors escaped, of course, and sailed into the Flat Sea. They created a small community on the Scattered Isles, but, as is our want, we reproduced far too quickly, and soon the islands, small as they are, couldn’t support us all. You know what I mean, I imagine?”I felt my face warming up a bit and shook my head. “No, not at all.”“Hmm, well, some took to the seas again, and we arrived on the shores of these forests. It was such a dangerous place, but one that was rich as well. We moved deep into the woods and settled here. It was only thanks to our one relic that we managed to survive as long as we have. I don’t think that giving it away would help in any way.”“What if Insmouth only took it for a while?” I asked.“Even parting with it for a week would be dangerous for us. And I doubt it would be of any use to Insmouth.” Momma stood up. “Let me prepare some tea for you, and perhaps a little snack. You travelled quite a ways to come all the way here.”I got up too. “I’ll help!” I said.She smiled at me. “There’s no need.”“I have the Teamaking skill,” I said. “But I need to practice it more. And I’d love to see what bun teas are like.”Momma hesitated, then nodded and gestured to the door at the back of the room. I waved at my friends as I followed her out and into a kitchen. The room was near the centre of the round house, and shaped like a semi-circle. The flat wall had a stove in its middle, and the curved section had all sorts of counters and cupboards and shelves for plates and such.The room smelled a bit like smoke, a smell that only grew better when Momma shifted a ring on the stove and looked at the fire within. “Could you pass me a log or two, dear?”“Sure thing,” I said as I hopped to fetch a piece of wood.When I tried to tuck it into the stove, I found a pair of hands carefully tucking back the hair on the side of my head. “Sorry,” Momma said. “I was curious.”I looked up to her, my own curiosity plain.“You weren’t born a bun,” she said matter-of-factly.“Oh. No, I wasn’t,” I said. “My first class was Cinnamon Bun, and it turned into Cinnamon Bun Bun later.”Momma smiled and rearranged my hair. “That’s wonderful. Did you spend much time with buns?”“Ah, I only have one bun friend. She’s a bookseller in Port Royal. Booksie Cabbage.”“I see, I see,” Momma said. She pulled out a tin of tea leaves and set them on a counter, then she grabbed a kettle and filled it with a few pumps from a manual faucet over the sink. “Did she tell you about bun culture and such?”“Not too much,” I said.“Oh my, you poor little bun,” she said.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.I tilted my head. “Am I missing out on something?” I asked.“Of course you are. Bun culture is very rich, and surprisingly old. There have been buns of every sort. Adventurers, explorers, kings, queens and tyrants. But most of our culture comes from places like Hopsalot, little enclaves where bun families cross paths and try to build something nice together.”“That does sound nice,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind living in a place like this. With a little house and a garden.”“That’s the spirit,” Momma said. “Now, if you were born a bun, you’d be right at that age where you’d run away from home and go poking around at the wider world.”“Isn’t that what I’m kinda doing already?” I asked.She chuckled. “I suppose so. Captain of your own little ship, filled with friends who seem to respect and love you in equal measure. I’m sure you’ve already planted all sorts of ideas in the little one’s heads, even if you’ve only been here an hour.”I huffed. “You’re making me sound like a bad influence,” I said.Momma laughed and pulled me into a big hug. It wasn’t a hug like I was used to getting from my friends. Somehow it felt more... mom-like. “I bet the little ones would talk all four of your ears off with their questions,” she said. “And I have no doubt that they’ll be making imaginary airships out of whatever junk they can cobble together.”“Mean,” I said. I didn’t pull out of the hug though. It was very warm, and Momma was soft. “You know, I came back here to see if we could still help Insmouth somehow.”Momma nodded. “I figured as much. You might be trying to play sly, but you wear your emotions on your sleeves.” She reached up and patted my ears down onto my head. “And on your ears. You’d make an awful liar.”“So there’s nothing we can do?”“We? Well, I suppose there are a few things. I’d need to see this Evil Root myself, I think. Maybe it’s just some creature we can get rid of?”I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’ve seen them before. Twice now. Both times the dungeon had to be destroyed.”Momma stiffened a little. “Had to be?” she asked.“That’s what the World said.” I pulled out of the hug and gave her my most serious look. “The world wants us to get rid of those Evil Roots. No matter what.”Momma reached up and touched her bottom lip. “And how do I know you’re being truthful?”“I... don’t know how to prove it. But I am a really bad liar.”“You could just be a very good actress instead,” she pointed out.I scrunched my nose. “I wish I could show you miss menu.”“Miss Menu?” Momma asked.“Yeah. I call the normal menu Mister Menu, because he’s quite polite. But the one for the quests is different. It looks the same, but it’s a bunch trickier.”“I see,” Momma said. “I think I’ll choose to believe you.”“Huh?”“Like I said, you’re a poor liar,” Momma said. “And I have an inkling that you really do want the best. Now, could you steep the tea while I grab some cups?”I blinked a few times, then jumped to it. “Thanks,” I said. “Does this mean you’ll help?”“Not with our relic, no. I don’t think it would be of any use in this situation anyway. But, I think there might be something that could help nearby. And I will send over some of our best to assist. It’s the right thing to do.”“What sort of thing?” I asked.“Have you ever explored a ruin before?” Momma asked.“Just once,” I said, thinking of Threewells. “It wasn’t that old of a ruin though. Mostly weak ghosts and stuff like that. I got the Archeologist skill, but it’s really weak.”“My my, still full of surprises,” Momma said.“We’ve only just met! You can hardly expect to know all of my surprising things.”Momma giggled and patted my head again. “You remind me of some of my cute grandchildren.”“I’m not cu— wait, grand-children?” I asked.“Of course, who do you think all those little ones hanging off my skirt were? Though to be fair, some might be neighbours, it’s hard to keep track. I have... well over two-dozen grandchildren? A couple of great-grandbabies too, though they’re mostly too young to be running around just yet.”“Whoa,” I said. “That’s a lot! I kinda wanna see what a baby bun looks like. Are their ears already long when they’re still small?”“Long, yes, but they only grow stiff enough to stand on their own when a little bun is two or three years old, until then they’re rather floppy.”“That must be so cute!” I said.Momma nodded sagely. “It really is. Human babies suck on their thumbs, but buns tend to nibble their own ears.”“Can I see some?” I asked.Momma giggled. “They’re not pets you know. You’d need to ask their moms. I’m a little too old to have my own now.”“You don’t look very old,” I said.“Once you grow strong enough, you tend to age more gracefully,” Momma said. “Let that be a bit of advice for you. Level up fast and quickly when you’re young, and you’ll stay spry for a whole lot longer. Now, where did I put the honey?” Momma poked through a few cupboards before finding a jar of honey and adding it to a tray covered in cups. “There you go. All set.”I nodded and skipped after her, kettle in hand.We set things onto the table, where it looked like Amaryllis and Bastion were arguing about something. Mostly Amaryllis was the one arguing while Bastion politely refuted her. Howard was sitting and staring at his hands, looking a bit lost.Momma sat down at her place and smiled at everyone. “I think I’ve found something of a solution for your problem, Mister Howard. But it will require a bit of effort on everyone’s part.”
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