A/N: welcome to some more homestuck fanfiction. As per usual, it might not fit into canon that well, but what the heck. Enjoy.
Stalking through the woods was one of her favorite things to do. Nairuu had left her shoes back at the farm, and stepped over the damp mossy floor with no fear. Almost no poisonous biteys could harm a purple blood.
She closed her eyes and stretched her arms high above her head, taking in the sounds of the beautiful late aftermid. Taking off into a light jog, she made quick work of the small property and was soon out into the neihboring hills. The humid air tickled her as she stepped into a small creek. But her foot found no earth, just loose vines. She let out a yelp as she fell. The water in the pool below was exactly the same temperature as the air. It was very blue and very cloudy. She looked around, trending water. The shore was about ten feet away.
After pulling herself up onto solid ground, she felt it. The tug of magic. Or, if not magic, some sort of freaky science Meioxi had yet to tell her about. It came from deeper within this place. She stood up, wary. Grabbing a large stone from the ground, she stepped quietly down the hallway. It was a very short hallway. There was barely a point to having a hallway in the first place, it was essentially a super thick doorway, but that was neither here nor there. In the room on the other side, on a raised pedestal, a coffin lay resolute. She stepped up onto the platform to examine it. After pulling the weeds off of it, she discovered that it wasn't a coffin, but s refrigerator.
"The heck? Who leaves something like this in a dramatic as crap underground lair? This thing better have snacks worthy of the founders or I'm outta here."
She lifted the lid, not expecting to find anything other than, worst case scenario, some stinky old food.
But what she now stared at was enough to freeze her in her tracks.
A troll. His hair was wild, filling up the bottom of the fridge. He wore no clothes, and his body was crisscrossed with veins bulging grotesquely. His claws had cracked and split, looking like they had stopped growing altogether. His horns were thick and stubby and instead of the lovely candy corn shades they were pale, a sickly blend of yellow and purple. His eyes were just barely purple enough for her to know he wasn't either blind or dead. His mouth hung open in shock.
Nairuu felt her throat tighten in disgust.
The other troll swallowed, making a parched, "golum" sound.
"You... You have saved me!" He rasped.
"I? You? What?"
"You saved me from the dark!"
"Who are you?"
He was quiet for a full minute.
"I don't know."
"How long have you been stuck in that box?"
"Long enough for worlds to end."
"Who put you in there?"
"I don't know."
"I... I've got to get you back to the others. Can you walk?"
The man tried feebly to sit up, collapsing again. His muscles were nearly nonexistent, he was barely strong enough to stay upward for a couple seconds.
Nairuu sighed, before lifting him from under his arms. He was a good head taller than her, but he weighed the same as a rustblood grub. He didn't smell to great either. Not half as bad as she expected, but like mud and sower sopor slime. He was absolutely filthy. She could feel every single one of his ribs, and see them as well.
She carried him piggy back style back to the water room.
" Can you hold onto me?"
He shook his head mournfully.
"Heugh... Ok fine." She collected a bunch of vines from the surrounding walls and tied him to her, before wading out into the water.
He made a soft happy noise at touching the water. She swam to the wall with the shallowest slope and began climbing. At the top they were completely upside down. with the trickling water running down her arms, Nairuu cringed again and clambered out of the hole, into the outdoors.
She untied the other troll and sat him on the ground, flopping against a tree to rest for a minute.
"So, uh..." She began, but didn't continue. The other troll sat like a barely metamorphosised child staring up at the trees, where fireflies danced.
"What do you call those? The stars that dance below the heavens?"
"Uh, lightning bugs. They not got those where you come from?"
"No."
Silence for a brief moment.
"We're going to have to call you something, eh?"
"Eh."
"What's your signclass?"
"Juggalo."
Her eyes widened. Juggalos (while not actually a signclass) were mythical beings of terror who disguised themselves as harbingers of salvation. They had died off with the Old World nearly 5,000 years ago. Coincidentally, she too was related to that ancient breed, and her whole class was still paying the price for the heinous crimes none of them committed. Maybe it'd be best if this stranger didn't identify himself as a juggalo right now.
"Do you have any sort of preference for what I call you?"
He scrunched up his face. "Nothing of what I was, please. I was something bad before the tomb."
"Aight, fair enough. How about...Lightning Bug? Nah that sucks... You need a right troll name," She muttered the last part, but he still heard it.
"Lightning Bug! It's good." He said. His smile went from ear to ear, displaying deeply yellowed fangs.
"Well then, Lightning Bug, let's head home. The others'll wanna meet you."
She picked him up again, and jogged back towards the farm house.
Her and her siblings lusus, a huge kangaroo, met her as she climbed over the fence into the pasture. Shortly after she was met by Mkenzi, her moirail.
"Nai, what did you drag in from the woods this time?" He said, the amusement in his eyes dying as he saw what she carried.
"Meet Lightning Bug. I found him in a fridge at the bottom of a well. Where's Mei?"
"In the stable, with that Cheems girl's human lusus."
She continued to jog, and Mkenzi joined her, (quickly running out of breath, however.)
Inside the immaculate clinic Mei had built out of an old barn, they were met by a short human in a cast coming down out of the loft. He waved distractedly before leaving. Nairuu smiled. Who knows what that guy might have thought had he really taken a look at her cargo.
Up in the loft, Meioxi smiled pleasantly at them.
"Excellent to see you two. And... You, sir. I assume you need me to heal this?" He said tiredly.
"Yes sir."
Nairuu set Lightning Bug on the wooden examination table. Mei began his examination.
"Well the very first thing I can recommend is a blanket. Then a good bath and about 24 hours of sedated sleep, aided by a hydrating drip. Do you concur?"
"Uh, s'pose."
"Right then!" I shall get a bath drawn up, then we shall escort our friend here to a bed. Mr Bug, do you prefer recuprecoon or mattress?" He took a thin blanket from a drawer and handed it to the other troll.
Lightning Bug, who had been silent the whole time, now unfolded the blanket, wrapping it around himself and making a sound that they took for indesicion.
"A sopor mattress then."
But the word sopor illicited a response. Bug cowered to the back of the table.
"No no no no no" he said, whispering.
"Is everything ok? Do you not like sleeping near sopor?"
"The blood of the peacemakers... It caused ruination... No no no no no..." He cradled his knees, hiding his face.
Mei, Nairuu and Fravas stood in concerned silence around the wiry shape.
"You... Can just have a normal mattress, if you want..."
Bug had retreated into a bubble. The others glanced at each other long enough to know exactly what they were thinking.
"Freyah," they said in unison.
Freyah, the resident alchemist, therapist and a rare limeblood had a special knack for getting people to feel at ease.
"I'll get her." Mkenzi said.
After he left, Nairuu approached Bug again.
"Ok, Lightning Bug, we're going to get you a nice bath and see how you feel in the evening. Sound good?"
No response.
"Should we stay in here, or leave?" She asked in Bug's direction, even though she intended Mei to answer.
"It might be better if we didn't leave him alone in a strange place, at least not until Freyah gets here."
It was a tense couple minutes while Mei drew up a bath, before the limeblood climbed into the loft office.
She had a small frame even for a limeblood, but she commanded the attention of everyone in the room. Bug looked up, and loosened his stance a bit.
"That one is the one who wants me?" She said.
"Yes..." Nairuu answered.
"Thank you. Meioxi, you can stay, but I think you would prefer to be free to help others, and Nairuu, I think you should stay, but not directly in the room right now."
They knodded, before both existing the room. That small troll knew what she was doing, and even though she wasn't very verbal about it, she wasn't to be argued with.
After the room was clear, she stepped across it, to stand in front of Lightning Bug.
"Hello."
He looked up.
"My name is Freyah Aufera. And yours is Lightning Bug?"
A faint nod.
"Lovely to meet you, mr. Bug. Meioxi has made a nice warm bath for you, do you think that's a good idea?"
He nodded.
"I... I can't walk. I've not the skill."
"I'll help you. Here, take my arm. He reached out, taking her arm, letting himself become settled on the ground, before walking shakily to next room, (only separated by a curtain,) where the bath was.
After helping him situate himself in the tub, Freyah closed the curtain, and began ruffling through the drawers looking for clothes he could wear afterwards. There were none. She made a mental note to borrow some of Mkenzi's clothes in a few minutes. They seemed about the same size.
Bug, on the other hand, barely believed he wasn't in some sort of cruel dream. This world he had awakened in was too perfect for words. It felt way to good to be true. Impossible. He had been banished to the box and left to die, it was impossible that this was real. Yet the water stung his leathery skin, the lamps in the rafters above shone with a sweet golden light, and he could feel. He could feel everything.
But eternity did things to your mind. It might make his imagination sharper, it might make it able to imagine sensations other than sight.
At that moment, a voice came from the other side of the curtain.
"Doing ok in there?" The sweet troll from before said,
"I'm ok." He said, realizing it probably didn't sound very convincing.
"That's good. You might want to get out soon, though. Wouldn't want the water to get too cold. I've got some clean clothes for you, and I thought that if you wanted to, we could trim your hair a bit."
"Uh, yes ma'am, that sounds like a good idea."
"I'm going to come across the curtain to set down the towel and clothes, ok?"
"Ok."
Freyah, holding one hand in front of her eyes, pushed away the curtain with her back, setting the bundle of fabric on a chair beside the tub. She was one of the smallest trolls he had ever seen. No, there was one other who was smaller still than she, somebody who wore gray? No, that was just something he made up. He made up a lot of things.
Very shortly after, he was dressed in his new clothes and sitting on a pillow on the floor while Freyah snipped at his mass of snarled hair. She cut his hair to shoulder length and then cut his beard to the base of his neck.
"Now if you want to style it differently on your own, you can. But you shouldn't focus on hair just yet."
"Lady Freyah?"
"Yes dear?"
"Do you know why I'm here?"
"Not yet, but we'll figure it out."
It was a good answer. After pulling up his hair in a bun, Freyah half carried him out of the loft and into the bed area in the building below. Meioxi was a respected physician, and there were at least a dozen other patients in the bay area.
She laid him down onto a matress, covering him with a soft sheet. It was summer, so not much covering was needed.
"If you need anything, there's always someone in..."
But Bug had already fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Freyah smiled fondly at her new ward. A couple minutes later, Meioxi administered the hydration drip. Nairuu shuffled in to observe, before the two women left Meoxi to his work and went to the large white farmhouse to council with some of the others about their new guest.