-=Still Plush=-

“Oh crap!”

*thud*

I felt myself fall from something, but for some reason I felt so goddamn awful I couldn’t even make myself want to get up.

My throat was burning, my eyes hurt, I had a headache- no, actually my entire body was aching.

The best part? I wasn’t even supposed to have most of the things.

Like, did I even have a throat?

Do these glowing yellow eyes of mine even count as actual eyes?

What about the ache that I was feeling in my entire body, only time I felt pain before was when we were dealing with the necromancer so why do I feel like some old dude on life support?

And why did it feel like my face was covered in some of that cheap slime you can buy in toy stores?

“Oh dear, sorry about dropping you little fella.” Says Kosei.

“But look, at least he seems to have woken up now.” Shiona follows up.

‘Wait, Kosei? Shiona? Wasn’t I supposed to be at the academy?’

Then with the sound of a fat woman wearing way too little clothing getting up from a plastic chair on a hot summer day I’m pried off of the floor.

*schli~ick*

“ugh…” I groan like a zombie.

“Good morning sunshine.”

Everything looks blurry and I’m just barely able to see at all but judging by the blob of metallic colour Kosei is in is armour and is currently carrying me by my hoodie the way you’d carry a cat.

“Wh… Whad’s habb-” ‘-ening?’ I try asking using a telepathy spell but for some reason it sounds all messed up and the spell stops working halfway through.

“Kos.” ‘-ei’ I try calling out to Kosei, he’s the chief of a village that supposedly lives in tandem with others of my species so he might know what was happening.

“So do you have any idea what’s happening with him Kosei?” Shiona asks.

“Sorry little fella, whenever any of the Fleecy at our village start showing any kind of bad symptoms they disappear for a week or so and don’t come back until they’re all better. If you want to know what’s happening you’ll have to go ask the Fleecy when we arrive, though we never even knew Fleecy could talk until we met Plush so turns out the Fleecy are pretty secretive about themselves, might be hard to get them to talk.”

Kosei then put me down in a large metallic bowl before wrapping me up in a shiny blanket that looked like it was made of tin foil.

“Lizz came out of that book of yours with these, she said Cy had made them to help prevent any stains.”

‘I guess he must’ve dropped me while he was carrying me to the bowl earlier then.’

“S-” ‘-tains?’ I try asking, but Kosei didn’t seem to hear what little I was able to say before the spell stopped.

“Good news is that we should be at the village by tomorrow though.” Kosei said and went back to talking with Shiona, Fallis and Shro.

Ronnie must’ve still been on the roof.

Calls Lizz from within the book.

‘Lizz?’

‘Goo-’

I try asking Lizz what she means by ‘goop’ but I’m interrupted by something happening inside the book

‘Speaking of, I still haven’t actually seen what Barry looks like. And what did she mean by ‘goop’?’

I think to myself and touch my chin with one of my hands.

True to Lizz’s words when I then look at my hand the fingertips are covered in this dark muddy blue substance which can only aptly be described as ‘goop’.

It was sparkling a bit end reminded me of the way energy looks when you use spells but much darker and murkier, almost like someone just mixed it with old engine grease.

I wipe the goop off of my hand on the blanket and then tuck myself in until I feel nice and cosy.

Well, nicer than before at least, everything still hurts though.

‘Cy?’

Responds Cy from within the book.

‘Kosei said you made this blanket to prevent stains, is that right?’

‘Does that mean you know something about this stuff?’

‘Oh... well thanks for the blanket anyways, it’s very soft and cosy on the inside.’

After that we stop talking and I simply stare at one of the walls which suddenly started looking very interesting as the shaking of the carriage made me grow more and more tired before nodding off completely.

* * * * *

-=The next day=-

“We’ll be arriving back home in just a short while.” I hear Shro say.

I still felt just as miserable as when I woke up yesterday, my only solace being that I’d been asleep almost the entire time since.

“Normally entering the village would take a while, you know verifications and all that, but with chief Kosei here-” Shro says and pats Kosei’s metal armour. “-it shouldn’t take too long.”

“That’s good.” Shiona says what I think and breathes a sigh of relief. “But then when we come inside how do we contact the Fleecy?”

Kosei responds.

“Honestly I haven’t the faintest, they just sort of show up whenever someone needs help so who knows, maybe they’ll already be waiting at the gates when we get there?”

“We’re he-” Shro starts but gets interupted

“Wait I’ve got it!”

Everyone looks at Kosei once again, well other than me.

My neck hurt too much to look up anymore.

“They could be at the town hall, that place has been a wreck ever since it was abandoned, it always needs someone to help keep it in shape.”

*cough cough* goes Shro.

“we’re here.” He then says.

“Oh, good timing. Shro, open the doors, Fallis go outside and have a talk with the guards while I start packing a few things to make them easier to carry later.”

Just as they’d been told to Shro then opened the door while Fallis-

“Are you mad Kosei!? The entire forest is covered with snow and you refused to let us bring any winter clothes! If anyone’s going outside it’s you!”

True to Fallis’s words when I looked outside I was greeted by a frigid winter wonderland forest like something out of a fairy tale.

“What, and you’ll handle the packing?”

While Kosei and Fallis continued to argue Shiona put on some winter boots made for bird-kin that Lizz came out of the book with before she came to me and started wrapping me up in the blanket like a newly born infant before having Shro help tie me to her back.

Lizz then flew out of the book and, despite me telling her to stop using the books special brand of telepathy, attached a bib to me since I was still drooling the muddy blue goop.

Shion then went over to where the book had hidden itself and picked it up.

“Litly you’re going to have to have to get out now.”

Reluctantly Litly did what she was told and left Shiona’s bag so she could put the book in there.

“Okay, we’re clear to enter.” Said Kosei who came back inside after having been made to go outside to speak with the guards after losing in a coin toss against Fallis.

Shro nodded and closed the doors once more before starting up the robot horses and entering through a large rusty metal gate.

“You guys probably want to meet the fleecy as soon as possible so you might want to go outside and start walking around while I go wash and park the carriage.”

“Fa-” “No.”

Kosei was about to tell Fallis to go out with us but she stopped him before he even finished his first word.

*sigh*

“Well I guess it’ll be a good opportunity to show off my town to you guys then…” Said Kosei, still sad he had to brave the cold.

Though as luck would have it, as soon as Shro opened the door-

“Kosei, your second daughter came back.”

Rosh, Shro’s brother who stayed behind with his wife, stood right outside, covered from head to toe in thick winter clothes.

Hearing and seeing this Kosei practically beamed a smile.

“Well then I have to go and welcome her back after all these months! Rosh, show Shiona and Plush here around the village would you?”

“Wh- But Isabell is cooking dinner tonight!”

“Well you’d better bring them back with you in time for dinner then. Or are you disregarding a direct order from your father-in-law?”

*sigh* “Fine then, esteemed father-in-law.” Rosh said, his words colder than the snow outside and dripping with sarcasm.

Shiona got of the carriage with me and Litly,

At first it took Litly a while to get out of the carriage since it was her first time seeing snow but mere moments after getting outside she’d started jumping and playing around to her heart's content.

But then before Ronnie could follow us off of the carriage Fallis asks:

“Actually, Ronnie, I was wondering if you could come help us unload everything? It’s going to take forever with just us.”

Ronnie looks at Shiona and she nods back.

“Alright, sure.” Ronnie says and sits back down.

Before Rosh and I start walking he starts speaking.

“But heed my warning.” He said to Kosei. “If I miss my wife’s homemade dinner you’ll be the first person I blame when she asks why.”

What little colour kosei’s pale face had instantly vanished but before he could take back his words Shro had closed the door and started driving away.

And then despite the cold weather I was once more gripped by exhaustion and passed out.

* * * * *

-=Shiona POV=-

“Welcome to Ol’ Rustwood, yada yada yada. Listen, I would give you a proper tour and all that nice stuff but I get the feeling we both want to finish this as soon as possible so let’s just hurry up and get this over with.” Rosh says.

“Hm.” I reply busy fixing up Plush’s harness once more since he suddenly turned limp again.

“Then follow me.” Rosh said, swiftly turning around and walking away without even checking that we were indeed following along.

‘He must really love his wife’s cooking... They’re kind of like the opposite of me and Plush, where I can’t cook anything more complicated than instant noodles while Plush whips up restaurant grade dishes on mere whims.’

Although I wished to get to the fleecy and find out what was happening with Plush as soon as possible there wasn’t a whole lot I could do.

I didn’t know where we needed to go so I had to follow Rosh, and he was already walking as fast as he could so as to not miss his wife’s cooking.

Hell, even if I knew where we were headed I’m not sure I’d be been able to get there any quicker since due to how fast I’d put Plush’s harness together I wasn’t able to move my wings as much as I would need to in order to fly, and even though I could walk there faster if I asked Rosh for directions and simply left him behind I have a feeling that having the chief’s step-son along with me would make a lot of annoyances move out of our way on their own accord.

All in all the slow pace let me think to myself a bunch and actually take in my surroundings, or at least as much as I could with the thought of my husband possible being deathly ill on my back.

‘This place looks like something straight out of… Well I don’t know really, some steampunk story? I don’t read enough steampunk stories to know of any concrete examples but it certainly looks like what I’d expect from what others say about it.’

Rosh and I turned a corner, Litly following shortly while jumping through the deep snow like an adorable puppy.

even though she looked more like a cat.

‘Well, iggoring all the rust that is. Most things I’ve heard about steampunk make it all sound pretty sleek, clean and shiny, not a rusty and rugged as this place. It actually reminds me a lot of the scrapyards that Plush’s father would sometimes take us to, so if someone were to tell me that this place had been abandoned for some ten odd years after having been sprinkled with salt and water I’d believe them. So what would that make this, scrap-punk? Is that even a thing?’

“Shiona.”

‘Come to think of it, Plush’s dad had a pretty odd sense of date-worthy places didn’t he? Then again he was a huge fan of cars, bikes and pretty much anything with an engine so maybe it actually made some sense in his mind.’

“Shiona.”

‘Though weird as he was I have to admit he had a number of talents, not only did he use to be a mechanic and a truck driver, he was also a chef at a restaurant and an all around handyman, so I guess that’s where Plush got all that from.

I’m just happy Plush didn’t get his annoying personality because god damn, as good as it was to have an acquaintance with as many different talents as that he was a ain to deal with every fucking time. Guess that means Plush got his nice and calm demeanor from his mother then?’

“Shiona!”

“...What?”

I finally snap out of my daydreaming.

Normally I don’t fall into deep thought like this but I guess worrying over Plush like this has taken its toll on me.

“We're here.”