A Problem Below

At that moment, Arron came back from outside, and Lula exited her room.

"Alright, you all know the drill for the day, Qier, Ag, and Olivia will be joining me today as we talk to our guards from yesterday about the beast corpse, we need to find a use for it as its parts are valuable, we need herbs as the town's supply is getting low, so girls, you'll be joining your mother and the others in collecting some.

Cari, you can choose to join us in our activities, I assume you would like to stay with us for a while till you decide to leave, until then, you are welcome to stay as long as you like.

One peep for staying, two for going."

Cari appreciated Arron's thoughtfulness; it didn't take a second thought for his answer.

~Peep!~

"That decides it then, it'll take us a while to decide on what to do with the body, so you can join Lula and them till we decide what to do."

Cari jumped to the pillow ready to be picked up, however-

"I don't think we can just carry you everywhere on a pillow Cari, that's not really practical for any of us, as all of us are going to be pretty busy."

Lula commented as she raised the pillow so Cari can see her at least a more ease-able eyelevel.

Cari realized what she meant, they couldn't carry him everywhere, and while he could just very well walk on his own, it would be easy for one of them to accidentally step on him, although...

~Aluunma~

As Cari 'spoke', he released his glow, making it bigger and smaller with the volume of his voice.

No one really understood what he meant by this, so he jumped off the pillow, and hopped off the table, and onto the carpet floor.

When his glow got big enough, it was hard to not notice it.

"So you can walk with us and not worry about someone not seeing you, that's great! O-kay then, Lusi, Amara, Lisa, you ready?"

"Give me a minute!", Lusi ran into her room.

The other two mentioned they needed a moment as well as they ran off to the room.

As the older ones got dressed earlier, they yelled goodbye as they walked out the house and down the porch with the Chief, heading towards a clearing off to the left of the infirmary, where a few goblins in metal armor were found heading in the same direction.

As Lula and Cari watched them off(as much as Cari could with his stature), the girls came out of their room with their shoes on, hair in various styles, pigtails for Lisa, ponytail for Lusi, and straight hair for Amara.

Each were wearing simple baggy beige shorts each with a differently colored shirt.

Lula was wearing similar, but pants instead of shorts, and her shirt had a few pockets along with being a long sleeve brown.

"We'll be heading towards the back, Cari, make sure to stay close, you too girls."

Cari nodded, almost at the same time as the others.

They exited the house together, Cari behind the others so he doesn't hold up their pace.

As they walked down the house and around, Cari looked over to where he heard the bell before, and sure enough, he saw a thin wooden tower with a bronze-colored bell at the top, a rope falling to the side of it.

Some of the villagers were already out of their homes, ready for the day while others were just getting out, some sure to be still in their little yellow homes.

Some yelled to greet Lula, and the others.

"Good morning ladies!"

"Chieftess.", one bowed in respect.

'That's the first time I hear her called chieftess.

Although I wonder why they aren't greeting me-'

He had to forgotten, just for a moment, that they saw him as 'her', so he was included when they said "ladies".

Cari refused to let it get to him, and as they finally went to the back and nearly into the forest, something caught Cari's eye.

Under the thick wooden poles that supported the planks that laid the foundation of their house, he saw circular silver structures, leading to the inside of the house through the wood flooring, they came from the ground.

What caught his attention the most was another exterior part; a kind of black wood had made a small trail on the exterior of the metalic structures.

Lula looked behind her to see if everyone was following and noticed Cari.

"What are you staring at Cari?"

He looked back towards her; he motioned his head to the strange poles, irregular of the normal wooden ones that supported the house.

"Ah, those are the pipes that handle our water, each house has them, although ours are revealed like this.

It's a sort of design issue my husband's friend had only after the construction was complete, it's only a small mistake though, if you're curious about such things, you can ask Arron once you meet up with him later, come along for now though, we got work to do."

Before Cari could even wonder how he would ask him, the girls already started walking ahead of Lula, so she ushered Cari to keep up, and Cari hurriedly hopped along.

They traveled throughout a small part of the forest, the Chieftess mentioned that there are multiple routes the village takes for herb-picking, however, they rotate between each so they don't take too much.

Along the way, they found a few goblins already picking various herbs, one looked like a flower but actually had multiple layers to their petals, apart, they were nearly transparent.

"Found a mushroom!"

Cari froze in shock as he watched the surroundings at the sight of the people collecting different kinds of plants, and as he turned around, he found Lusi pointing at him.

"Very funny Lusi, but back to working."

Lula smiled as she got back to picking a small batch of thin plants that opened on their end like a tube.

Cari laughed very forcibly in his head as he went back to looking for herbs, since he couldn't actually harvest them, he would call for the family to collect them.

Luckily, with the knowledge En gave him, he had a really good idea on which plants were good and which were bad.

~Amuuumu~

He made a smooth sound, and Amara came over to see what he found.

"Cupstrips, useful, good job Cari."

~Balli~

These plants were shaped like a handless little cup with little flat 'strips' coming out of their center, so they were simply named after that.

'The strip most of the time is harvested, while the cup itself relatively is not useful, it does have nutritional value.'

Every moment Cari relied on the memories given, the more he would derive from specific parts of the memories that gave applicable information, for example, parts of the memory he directly received for this plant were of how others harvest the strip part solely, but others actually show how some harvest only the cup, while rarely does one actually collect both.

He has memories of living things feeding on the cup, but spitting out the strip, yet people that previously lived in this forest collected the strip, but ignored the cup part...but since he had both sides, he knew both had value...

'Although I don't know what the strip is for.'

Everyone here collected the entire flower, so he assumed they knew what it was for.

This went on for a while, a few hours to be exact, it only began to show signs of stopping when the younger ones returned one after the other, returning with some of the herbs collected.

Cari looked over at them leaving.

Lusi yelled, "Bye Mom, Bye Cari! We'll see you later at the house.", as she left Cari's view with the two sisters ahead of her.

Cari was about to motion to Lula on why they were leaving but paused mid-way as he found her staring at him for some reason.

"-oh! Sorry, just thinking, they are leaving because they are tired, they aren't old enough to continue working for large periods of time."

She picked a small plant, almost looking like a regular strand of grass, but a tad taller and it didn't taper off, but split into three small bulbous blue balls with their bottom having a sort of grey crown, delicate to the touch, each with a sort of reddish-pink color at the center, she fiddled with it in her hand for a moment, like she was considering something.

"One family is in charge of bringing a bunch of bags that us adults sling on our backs, and once we collect enough herbs in there, we send them back with the kids, while keeping the ones with space for more collecting."

After a moment, she placed the plant into a hand-woven bag, it looked a bit like a quiver, but larger, both its top and bottom have a small twine string that was used to keep it shut, the top was left open.

After the three girls were done and returned with the collected herbs, Cari worked with Lula directly, while for the other families, most of their young had also left, those left were only the older ones of the families and the adults.

Collecting these herbs, Cari did wonder something.

'Why did I have such a strong call with that flower before, yet these plants, have no response to being harvested whatsoever?'

Despite a lot of Cari's knowledge being filled in, there were still large gaps, like understanding the difference of living things, plants and tree vs these people...

He understood they weren't conscious of course, and the basic differences, but beyond that, he had no idea.

'It was hurt before, but these ones aren't exactly being hurt, but being collected...'

His head hurt to think about it as it didn't make sense to him, so he focused on the task at hand.

Finding a few more herbs, he noticed something, well, more like the lack of something.

'There are no mushrooms.'

From his memory, he knew 'normal' mushrooms existed, and there definitely were edible ones, of course he was disturbed by it, but that wasn't the focal point, the strange matter is, he hasn't seen a single one, nor one in the others' bags.

There were poisonous ones, edible ones, etc., etc., but as Cari tried to recollect, he realized that as the memories got closer and closer to the present, he noticed less and less memories of mushrooms, or even their existence in others' memoires, as if they slowly ceased to exist at all.

'Just what is going on-'

"That's enough collecting everyone! We should have enough to last us for a while, lets return now."

Cari was shocked out of his thoughts as Lula yelled right next to him.

A conglomerate of responses sounded back as the others began to place the last of the plants collected into their bags before starting their trek back to the village.

"Want a ride?"

Lula called to Cari as she knelt down, motioning her head to the bag.

Ignoring the subtle joke of him being a mushroom in a bag full of herbs, or perhaps not even getting it, he nodded before shifting forward.

For a moment, he didn't know how to get from the grass floor to the bag on her back, but then he noticed a nearby tree that was slightly slanted, nearly adjacent to where Lula was.

Thinking to before as he was traveling, how he jumped over so many tree roots, he recalled his experience.

'You can do it, just...move!'

Cari started to hop rapidly, and once he was at the base of the tree, used his momentum to hop up the tree thanks to its rough surface, enough to where he was halfway up to the level of the top of the bag, and then he jumped from the tree to the bag.

He almost collided with the bag itself, but-

He managed to just make the landing.

"Nice!"

~Illiiiiah~

He sounded out in momentary joy at achieving it on his own.

"Impressive Cari, but I could've just helped you up."

Lula calmly praised him, but bringing him back down to earth as she rose, this took only a few moments, and she began walking back with Cari behind her head, too embarrassed to even think of anything to how he could even respond.

• • • • • •

Back at the village, in the clearing near the infirmary, the corpse of the plant-beast lied, surrounded by goblin soldiers in a metal armor, simple and rudimentary, connected with leather straps across the should pads and chest piece that jutted out in the middle, with overlapping metal parts covering the joints.

 To sell this beast, they couldn't do so while it was in one piece, it was simply too large, nearly 3 meters tall and roughly half that in width, not to include all the partially cut thin tendrils left across the floor, some lying on top of it, its main body looked similar to that of a pitcher plant, but the pitcher was almost the entirety of the body, only kept up with much larger, thicker tendrils making up the base of it, along with a sort of cap that functioned as an opening and closing of its mouth

One could only imagine how it moved around...not the trio anyway.

The bottom squirmed and shifted like a pit of snakes as it moved, they even untangled to allow it to rise, grab, move around, or even lunge forward with its 'maw' wide open...that last action was an eyeful for Ag particularly as he did his best to stall it before on his own.

As he stared at its body being cut up with the dirtied tools in his hand, dripping with its juices, he was thinking back to fighting it, how close they were to death, how close he was to dying.

But as he saw Olivia and Qier having similar looks as they butchered the body, he thought to waking up in the infirmary to knowing he hadn't failed in protecting them, that he survived, to how they were healed, then to what Arron said to him...

Upon thinking that, his face turned into a tomato again before he shook his head and focused on cutting up the body.

They were avoiding the larger parts, only targeting the joints, like how the upper mouth to the sack that served as its entire body to the large and thin tendrils, while they didn't know it's uses or value, they knew the basics to how to cut up a dead animal, so they would avoid damaging it.

• • • • • •

After finishing up talking to the armored goblins on patrol, Arron looked over at the nearly completely processed beast.

'The others should be nearly done with harvesting the plants, if not on their way back.'

As he thought, he looked up, hand over his eyes, seeing the sun nearly in the middle of the sky.

He suddenly thought, 'Wait, did I mean the herb collecting or the beast?'

They were both plants in the end...he moved on from that little confusion and thought of his tasks for the day.

Once processed, he needed to send someone to contact the other village for selling the beast corpse, and for another group to sort the newly collected herbs in their storage house, among a few other things...

As he thought through the needs for the day, he found himself staring in the direction Cari came from...funnily enough, that was also were the patrolling goblin found Ag and his group battling the beast, although it wasn't as funny to think of once he remembered they both came from the same place.

'That's right, I still need to think of a way to repay Cari, to think I almost forgot already.'

He was shaking his head to himself, and as he was looking around, he found someone running towards him from one of the houses.

"Chief!"

He ran over to meet them halfway.

"What is it Berrif?"

He knew nearly everyone, however, he had rather poor memory, the only reason he could relatively remember everyone's names is due to how they have lived here for years.

"I think there is a problem with the water below, the water is struggling to even come out of our faucets."

"By 'our', you mean..."

"I've asked around, and some of the other villagers have noticed similar issues with all their 'tools', one's shower stopped mid-way, Gary was not exactly happy when it came back on once he got out, only for it to not work a few minutes later...

He was quite vocal about that."

Resisting the urge to laugh a little, Arron asked more, their water supply was all interconnected with one source, meaning it was a problem that could affect everyone, and it was their mass source of drinkable water, right now the problem was only just it being finicky, but if it were to get worse, they'll have no supply of water.

After hearing the rest of what Berrif had to say, he checked in with a few other villagers, from the ones at the farthest edges of the cluster of houses to the ones on the completely other end from where he lived, when Arron asked about any water issues, some mentioned they have noticed something odd, some didn't even notice, however, when he asked to check with them, they found the problem was readily apparent.

They were surprised, but that made Arron think even more.

If these issues were growing in range from a certain few in the area around Berrif's house to the entire village, it means that the problem shouldn't be the piping.

He remembered back when the 'Water Distribution System', as his friend called it was finished, his friend had mentioned that the source of the pressure was natural, not magical or 'technological'...

If he remembered correctly, the keyword he used was 'borrowed'.

This meant that something was interfering with the mechanism below the village that pressures the water from down there to up here.

'Looks like I need to check up on it.'