CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

“FARMING SKILL XP GAINED”

“FARMING SKILL INCREASED TO 1”

“FARMING SKILL INCREASED TO 2”

“FARMING SKILL INCREASED TO 3”

By the end of the day, the dwarf had planted half his corn and, conservatively, a portion of broccoli, dedicating a much smaller portion of ploughed earth to beetroot while, on advice of Doetrieve, waiting until sleet to plant steel. Thanks to the captain’s generosity (and, unbeknownst, Doctor Mallow’s), the dwarf came into many more seeds. What once preserved vegetables in glass found new employment as vault, only to be unsealed at the dwarf’s next mining. In the same kitchen, the dwarf produced a bowl and, outside, fished it through the rushing river parallel to the crops, watering them. He ensured moist soil, careful to avoid overdoing the process in regards to beetroot. And the dwarf recalled grave advice given by Doetrieve: allow not the steelroot a single day of sunshine, only snow.

The dwarf glanced again at the roaring stream. He wondered if he couldn’t manage crude irrigation--less effort than a bowl on completion, but more to first accomplish. Such effort would require the use of exhausted muscles and the dwarf, sun setting on his skin, lost enough interest to delay the effort another day.

Saturated blue gi disrobed, submerged and wrung, the dwarf hung his laundry on branches and allowed himself a wade, Waspig following. The dwarf submerged his head and reveled in the cold. He wondered if he himself was a steelroot. Beard rising from beneath the waves to whip the dwarf’s face, he recovered to witness Waspig’s cleaning beneath starlight. When they had first entered the river, the rest of the flock waited apprehensively at its edge. But having watched their master and compatriot share a bath, temptation ruled their hearts and the animals, barring Joshua and Speedy, rushed to receive their cleaning. The dwarf, though tired, did not resist. If anything he was relieved he could do something about the church’s declining smell.

So startlingly white, Joshua no doubt groomed regularly, theorized the dwarf. Speedy, however, exceedingly filthy, did not appear remotely interested in cleanliness. For the next visit to the elf settlement the dwarf would research a mudkip’s hygiene, he decided. He thought these things splashing back onto land, dripping past crops and clothes and laying on warm grass. The wind too was as warm as it’d been all week and, according to the captain, would continue for many more months before the end of swet. Yes, the dwarf understood summer’s replacement very well by the hard toil performed under such blistering heat. While he reflected on the temperature, his animals gathered to shore slowly save Blissey, preoccupied. And while the dwarf wished to rest his eyes, he had kept his guest waiting long enough. Rising dry, he approached and entered the church, remains of door in days past unhinged and set aside. His animals followed--save Blissey--and the dwarf tread singed, unraveling carpet across the nave and towards the back where Doctor Mallow waited atop an uncomfortable seeming stool.

“Dwarf... you are without clothing once more.”

The dwarf felt a little embarrassed.

“I see you have been tidying up the place somewhat. He is pleased, I am sure of it. Continue your work in earnest and you will be rewarded as you will be now, for we shall begin our faith training. Are you ready?”

But the dwarf protested in favor of a meal having skipped lunch. The many arms of Doctor Mallow from beneath its wide cap folded in pairs.

“So long as you provide hospitality.”

Forced to share the captain’s gifts--for the dwarf was unwilling to settle for just vegetables again--he and the funguay broke bread and sipped fresh river water from polished brass. The bread was delicious, the dwarf’s eyes watering at the salt and separation between his teeth. Doctor Mallow, in contrast, did not seem impressed and made comments of his superior loaves. It did enjoy the nuts as did the dwarf, and raisins were tolerated by the former, loved for a nostalgic taste by the latter. While he reveled in the gifted baked goods, the dwarf understood a growing need for meat and its nutrients. The dwarf knew he could not bring himself to slaughter any of his flock--circumstances were not so desperate. But, focused on farming, the dwarf yet hunted. Busy, but the dwarf knew all the same he did not wish to push himself to engage in an act he did so little as boy and man. He recalled the struggle for survival many moons ago within the digesting stomach of a frog and the rage he had doled. Unfaced guilt ate him. But he remembered the taste and let saliva build. Noticing, he stuffed his mouth with more bread.

The dwarf understood the unspoken topic suspended above he and the funguay and did not know how to reconcile it. A great portion of his stout form hated Mallow. He hated not only its act in allowing spores infect his creatures but the lack of apology, mention at all. The funguay appeared to not think anything of what had obviously been noticed by the dwarf given the number of days in which fungi were sustained. It arrived for whatever reason on business of ‘FAITH’ and the dwarf could not shut the opportunity out to learn more. Far beneath the steeple the dream eater once waited before its demise by what Mallow now came on business of. He decided his enraged feelings would be better placed aside like the seeds he’d sealed.

Doctor Mallow knelt facing the wood planks far and ajar of the entrance. Its two eyes closed. Many hands clasped with exception of a gesture downwards, and the dwarf dropped, knees on cool tile--the only way he’d been able to sleep here. Doctor Mallow held a silence the dwarf could not seem to puncture, and so the two remained quiet for an extended period. Stars shifted over them and the animals inside.

At first the dwarf sat clear headed. His thoughts settled on the digesting meal. He did want meat. The dwarf held the recalled taste back and refocused on the farm. He and his father had endured crop failures; the dwarf would do all he could for his crops and hope for their enduring. He became grateful for the river beside, the task of irrigation all the harder without. Appropriately, mud tracked in from dead ahead based on the sudden slick paws slapping against tile. Eyes maintained shut, the dwarf heard--to his best guess--not Speedy but the return of wet Blissey, it almost certainly having showered after onto its gathered companions. The dwarf began to track all the various steps that crossed the emanating floor and softened on carpet, the buzzing throughout the air with differences in verticality. He thought of his first encounter with Waspig, the two locked in battle finding death at the bottom of a hole no more than a few feet away. Discovering the many hogsects and pigbugs within the feral funguay cave continued to warm the dwarf’s heart. But on topic of funguay, he remembered the fungi, and he became again angry with Doctor Mallow.

Furrowed brow, sweat felt sliding, the dwarf fought within himself to quell the anxiety and discontent as result of Mallow’s infecting of his flock. He despised the funguay beside him. He despised Funguayou, complacent, subservient, illegitimate offspring. He grimaced at the thought of the ferals feeding on his flock, and the dwarf decided he cared little for funguay. It was not the elfs that had betrayed the dwarf, he argued, but the cap headed. The doctor had merely projected its awful intentions onto a susceptible dwarf. And where had all the spawn gone? The dwarf, in attempt to cool his temper, appreciated the funguay coming to him rather than demanding his presence at the cottage. In fact, he begun to feel another round of surprise emerge; why had the doctor come? Evidently the gold pleased it, but the amount was a little less than the cost of chartering a ride across the sea; it was not what Locust had delivered. And, as the former captain’s suspended corpse hung in the dwarf’s mind, he realized he’d not given much thought to the dead elf. It was The Ponderous One which weighed heavy on his mind, The Ponderous which he killed by ‘SAVING’. In the burst of those blank pages, Locust’s fate too had been sealed.

Slowly the dwarf realized his brow had lightened and his skin felt cool. His breath passed effortlessly through cartoon nostrils, and the dwarf resumed the collecting of his thoughts around Mallow. Did it feel guilt? Was the gold insufficient but balanced by its own actions towards the flock? The dwarf frowned. He had once been forcibly host to a parasite which grew to be Funguayou. As far as he could ascertain, his dwarfen body had not suffered any short term effects. Could his future be different? Would anything happen to his animals? Though Waspig once unwittingly played incubator itself, bandits took to his beloved pet before any repercussions could manifest. The dwarf recalled his assault on their held church and the resulting capture of its criminals. But the dwarf banked only on their being wanted, and began to worry many of the captured would be turned loose back out onto the wilds. He resolved then to not travel without ‘SAVING’, never allowing a fall into the clutches of an ambush himself. And, perhaps, he would steal a couple more spiders from the elfs and allow them the plains church to themselves. The dwarf’s eyes nearly opened to glance up at the ceiling of white web made worse by the introduction of Paris and the dark, yet named arachnid. He recalled ‘Tuskus’, the once given title to the spawn of Waspig and Mallow. The dwarf began grappling air.

Why had the doctor come? The dwarf could not find himself in any camp with regards to its reasons. If he asked, would the lessons in ‘FAITH’ cease? He would have to relent, the dwarf admitted, to becoming a participant in its lack of acknowledgment--he would mention coin nor parasite without the funguay’s own introduction. Until then, the dwarf resolved to remain as silent on these mysteries as he maintained in the cool space between them.

Though his posture shifted through changes while the funguay remained motionless, the dwarf felt threatened by sleep. Indeed, mind so worn, topics so hammered, he considered himself susceptible to drifting off, and shut eyes did not help. With the hours that had certainly passed, the dwarf acknowledged he’d been put into a test, and the dwarf, thinking of the dream eater, would not fail it. He began digging his fingernails into his hands. He bit his lip. The aching of his stiff form and labor throughout the week joined fresh pain and the dwarf shot awake, focused and alert. The dwarf examined the ‘test’ and considered what the funguay wanted from the aching dwarf: could he actually be failing it? Was the goal to speak out? But he, a frequent visitor to the church as a boy regardless of input, knew well what prayer was and did not believe Mallow wished for anything other than communication with a god. Was He the same? The dwarf had considered it once before. How could the sun and moon so familiar orbit anything but ancient faith? But the blue orb of singular dotted green high in the air was no fixture from his days on the farm. It was clear, at least, Mallow did not worship deitrees like the elfs. No, the doctor gleefully stabbed in the back--but could it to God? It appeared to the dwarf a certain inclination had already been assumed but, vile imagery of deteriorating skull and flesh immovable, the dwarf would not reveal his ignorance. He would learn ‘FAITH’.

Vision black grew to a lightening of translucent flesh. Over hours the oppressive darkness of the dwarf’s own sight illuminated, and he felt more than heard the doctor beside rise. One of its hands took a quick tug at his beard, and the dwarf understood to follow but remain blind. Careful steps guiding him forward, the dwarf stopped at three arms blocking his path and felt the rich warmth of sunlight over his bare skin. Still with eyes inoperable, he realized potatoes with Waspig had once been eaten where he and the funguay stood. Time continued to pass but, unlike facing the nave, the dwarf hoped the funguay would keep its silence forever; heat so invigorating, he could not bear to think of abandoning the spot. But the silence broke.

“I am impressed, dwarf. You did move around unquestionably, unable to assume perfect form, but your heart focused itself, did it not? Well, have you done it? Has peace come to you?”

The dwarf, eyes revealed, did not especially feel his concerns resolved. But, so satisfying the spot was, the dwarf nodded.

“It appears so. Continue to speak to Him. I will return in three days time. Should you require anything sooner, return to the cottage when possible. It is looking certainly better.”

The dwarf’s face felt hot. Because he’d vowed to never return beneath the mossy roof, he’d not given any real thought to the disastrous state of the home as the dwarf left it. And yet the doctor mentioned this neither. What drove such a funguay? Why would it return, no less invite the dwarf back? The dwarf, soon splayed across tile, soaked in the growing warmth while his thoughts drifted to welcome slumber...

The next day, the dwarf brought his pickaxe down upon the earth again.

“MINING SKILL INCREASED TO 30”

“MINING MILESTONE 1 REACHED”

“DRILL TECHNIQUE APPLIED”