>>6117825“So, uh, there’s really nothin’ else ta’ the story?” you say, reverting back to your earlier subject as you clear your head.
“My family’s back in the wastes,” Yeb answers simply. “Lost ‘em long before we came here.”
“Oh!” you gasp. “Oh shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean ta’ dig up any bad memories or nothin’!”
“They’re not dead.”
“…Oh.”
(Huh? What in the Hells is that supposed to mean then, ‘lost’? Are they still enslaved somewhere out there? Something else?)
Still, you sense there’s more to the story… More than you can eke out of the stoic old gob right now, maybe, but something else beyond what’s he’s saying. You can practically TASTE it.
<span class="mu-g"><WANT: 12></span>
Yeb shushes you with a silent finger to his lips, though, and you can snoop no further into his secret history—not without interrupting the hunt. Together, you shuffle through the underbrush, and find a small family of some sort of chubby, rodent creatures—chipmunks or squirrels, maybe. The young look quite young, which causes you to hesitate…
>16, 15, 15<span class="mu-b">TWANG</span>
<span class="mu-b">TWANG, TWANG, TWANG</span>
…But not Yeb-Uit. If your talk of lovers and offspring evoked any emotion in him at all, it wasn’t the sort that makes one hesitate to open fire on a family of animals. Maybe he’s just less sentimental than you, though something about the ragged way he breathes out when he’s done hints that there’s something more to it.
“Help me gather ‘em, and gut ‘em,” he says.
“R-right!”
(Oh… Seems like maybe you’re not the Boss, after all?)
When the kills are prepped, you have enough meat for a meat or two, and some furry pelts besides. It’s not quite as much meat as was on that ‘snipe’, and these squirrels aren’t as auspicious a trophy as the strange supernatural bird… And YOU, personally, didn’t really do much to help with them…
>Gained: 1 rank of Survival!…But it wasn’t a TOTAL waste, tagging along. You feel like you learned something, at least! Maybe it isn’t the end of the world?
By the time you make it back to camp, you find An-Yii is already sleeping, curled up on hr side and with her packed-up belongings under her head as a makeshift, lumpy pillow. It can’t be comfortable, but she IS a goblin and a former slave, and she makes do as you all must.
“Where in the hells WERE you?!” Zith-ZI is tilla wake, though she looks as if she’d rather not be. “It’s been hours!”
“Uh, well… We got these!” you say brightly, snatching the tails of the squirrel-things from Yeb-Uit and holding them aloft.
Yeb narrows his eyes a little as (and you realize this only belatedly) you inadvertently steal his credit. He says nothing though and, feeling awkward, you hand them back with a self-conscious titter, unable to correct the record either.
