Venne Plains

The grass off the side of the southbound road had been flooded, and some had died. The Gale River wasn’t a hundred yards west, and just down the hill into the valley, it roared and tackled over itself, splashing out onto the soil beside it. Pointed rocks struck up from under the water, and the water was foamy, white, and full of little bubbles from its harsh course.

Up above the cliffside, by Tinborough and the Gale Parks, it was known for being a somewhat calm river. The southbound road had been erected beside it because it was predictable. Fen tapped her way over to the edge of the river, yelping and hopping back as the water belched up at her. Once she found a place where it wasn’t splashing out, she swung her claw in and pulled out a wriggling fish. We hadn’t stopped for lunch all day, for the Queen’s Gale was hardly the place for a picnic. Now, it must have been some deal after sixteen hundred hours, judging from the sun alone. Fen took a large bite out of the still wriggling fish, and asked, with her mouth still full, “Would ya bosh like shome?”

“There should be some fruit trees not much further,” I offered. All the roads erected from the Sapphire Capital were intentionally planted with such groves of peaches and apples and loquats. There were grapevines and cherries and meaty twistshrooms where there could be, also. The merchants’ guild had grown all these crops on the sides of rural roads over generations, and the law was that anyone could pick enough to eat, but no more to carry. After all, it was mostly merchants who came through these parts, and no other travelers were disturbed by the practice.

Fen rolled her eyes and took another bite out of the fish, “There’s fishies right here, silly! There’s meat!” She pointed down at the river, “It’s very yummy, too.”

Moxi started back down the south road, “I’m partial to some sort of fruit, myself. But, do take your time with that thing. You’re very cute with it hanging out of your mouth, you know?”

Fen shot up, her back straightening out like she was at attention to an officer. Her tail pointed straight behind her, “C-cute?” One of her ears folded downward slightly, and she turned to look back at the river, “W-well, I’m a soldier, you know!” She bent over and snatched another fish out of the water and stuffed it into her backpack.

This time, I flew ahead of the others, having an easy time seeing from a little over their heads. The grasses of the Venne Plains grew higher the more the road twisted away from the Gale River. Having once followed the path of the river directly, there were some parts of the road that had slowly extended to hundreds of feet away as the river moved over the years. The highest grasses we saw stood ten feet straight into the air, and were more tan than dried mud. On the road itself, there was no grass taller than a couple inches, creating a little canyon barely wide enough for a carriage. I kept letting myself float up past the height of the grasses so I could see ahead. Moxi and I were becoming quite restless for such a fruit tree as we knew should have been planted around here. She made a point of calling attention to how her stomach was growling, and whimpering about how she was starving to death and how she should have never come along at all. When Fen offered her the extra fish, Moxi again declined.

Finally, Moxi stopped and tore her bag open, fighting through it with the tips of her fingers, and shoving aside clothing, quills, pots of ink, and parchment until she snatched one thick scroll that she unraveled in front of us, revealing a map. “Here!” She pointed down, “There’s the hamlet of Venne east southeast of here, and there should be a road to it up ahead.”

“It’s a long way east,” I scanned over the map, “even if we got there, it’d be barely before dark, if before sunset at all, and we’d have to backtrack tomorrow.”

“There’s a Toad Clan outpost there!” Fen perked up, “They’ll have yummy mice or maybe even gophers for supper, and there might be some kind of soup or even milk, too!”

“I was thinking more like a quiet, refined inn beside the road with beef stew and porridge and soft, feathered beds,” Moxi said.

Fen kept walking, “I’ve never been to Venne before. Nobody really goes there unless they have something to do with the quarry.”

“Quarry?” I asked.

“There’s a big mine just outside of Venne, and all the people who live there do mostly for the mine. It’s not like a dwarvish mountain hall like Tinborough is, but they call the mine the Grandfather, I know that. There’s cobalt in it, apparently, and bismuth, and lithium, and something called uranium.” Fen said, “We keep an outpost there because we don’t really trust the miners. Even the general once asked what they’re really up to. What if they’re trying to dig up a dead, buried god? Or if they’re trying to mine all the way to the middle of the world and blow up the core of the planet? Or…”

“Do they ever sell what they mine?” I asked.

Fen shook her head, “When one of the watchmen came back to Tinborough, he told us a group of soldiers from the Sapphire Capital visited the mine once, but never too anything back with them. They just gave the miners some money and supplies and left.”

Moxi blinked, “Uranium?”

“It’s a type of element,” I said, “but, the kinds of things people would want to use it for here don’t work. Futuristic weapons explode if you even try to make them…” My voice trailed off. There wasn’t electricity either, so I couldn’t understand why somebody would want lithium. “Anyway, let’s go to this Venne place, we can rest there, like Fen said.” I wasn’t half sure I wanted to rest there at all, but something about me wanted to see the town. Maybe they were mining those elements for different reasons. My world had one use for those things, but the Second World was made up of people from all across the multiverse. Some other planet may have found a use for uranium that Earth never even considered.

Moxi smiled, “Well, if they had soldiers come through, they have to have somewhere for people to stay, or else how would the soldiers spend any time in town? There’ll be somewhere very comfortable if they’re soldiers from the capital, too!”

“I don’t need some big, fluffy bed,” I said, “I’ve always been able to sleep on just a big leaf if I have to.”

“If you’d notice, Hana, I am not a fairy,” Moxi smiled, “but it’s an easy mistake to make given how pretty and cute I am.”

“Why not just sleep on the floor?” Fen scratched her head. “N-not here in the wild, I mean! There could be snakes in all this grass, y’know! Big snakes that will wrap all around you and…”

“You know, the less you talk, the less you’ll scare yourself,” Moxi said. She grabbed the top of one of the stalks of grass and shook it wildly, “See. No snakes hiding under it!” She froze as the grass behind it shifted slightly, and the sound of something moving came through the bottom of the grass. Little skittering scratches one after the next in a very quick rhythm.

Fen twitched backward, standing up on her back claws with her ears twisting forward and her tail fluffing up behind her. She screamed and fell to the ground helplessly, flailing her arms and legs about in a panic, as a slightly large mouse popped out from the underbrush, ran across the trail, and disappeared into the grass on our opposite side.

She picked herself up, shaking slightly. “Uh-uh, on to Venne… It’s t-this way.” Her cheeks were a soft pink, reddening as they got closer to her almost-glowing red nose.