Author's note: so in the chapter I mention that Bug doesn't know math very well. This is mostly a headcanon, because in a society such as the one he would have grown up in, I'm thinking skills like math wouldn't be readily taught.

The house was bright compared to Freyah's room. The family he was only starting to be familiar with bustled about, paying him little mind. Medusa, the woman he was following, lead him to the kitchen, and sat him down at the table as the others filed in. Meioxi, Mkenzi, and a large kangaroo with three youngsters; two joeys and a grub. A few other trolls Bug didn't recognize, and one... Bug couldn't place her species. About five feet tall, pale white, elegant yellow horns that more resembled antlers, dark, dark brown hair. She could almost be a mix of troll and human, but that was impossible.

They sat around the table unceremoniously, not stopping their various conversations. Medusa sat a large platter of french toast on the table, along with pitchers of milk, syrup, and honey, and a bowl of clawberries.

The table was already set, and as soon as Medusa was seated, they dug in.

"Should I..." Bug began. He assumed Medusa expected him to eat, but she seemed to know he'd already eaten something?

"Eat." She said, not looking up from the newspaper she was reading.

So he served himself two pieces of french toast and a handful of clawberries.

After a couple minutes, Mkenzi looked up.

"Hey, why do they call it 'french' toast? What's a 'french'?"

"It's a style of cooking. Frenching something means frying it in a pan with oil I think. Like a french fry or a french spider." Meoxi replied.

"Ah. We should make french spiders sometime. They're supposed to be pretty good."

The conversation stayed light as breakfast finished up and most of the family headed outside to work on farm chores. Medusa stayed inside, and began some housework.

She put on some music and worked on dishes for about half an hour, in which time Bug sat at the table, not knowing what to do.

Eventually, she dried the last plate and seemingly realized he was still there.

"Oh, law I forgot you don't have a schedule or anything yet. Hang on, I'll get you set up."

"What?"

"Well if your going to be staying here, you'll want something to do all day, unless you like sitting at the table and look lost."

Bug lit up.

"You mean I can stay here?"

"Well of course!" She chuckled, "I'm thinking you can have that finished room in the basement, at least for now. And I'll be taking you clothes shopping at some point probably. What are you good at?"

"Good at?"

"What skills do you have? Can you cook? Sort laundry? Heal?"

"Uhhhhhh I don't rightly know."

"Well we'll just have to figure that out, then."

She got a pencil and paper from a drawer beside the stove, and took several other papers from the where they were pinned on a bulletin board.

"Let's see. Physical therapy with Meioxi, probably in he morning. Could... Do some easy cleaning, house at first then eventually barns. Could help me in here. Yeah. You strike me as the cooking type. Then, free time, maybe catch up lessons?..."

She spent a good 20 minutes coming up with a schedule, occasionally asking Bug's input, which, while he willingly gave, he didn't have much to offer.

Eventually, the schedule was set up so it worked together with all the others. The first thing on the list was physical therapy, so it was back to the barn/clinic. One of the nurses had him walk a gentle uphill cycle on a treadmill and some other basic activities. He then tested Bug's current strength compared to other middle-aged #FF470D88 hemotypes. A simple squeeze lever that delivered the results to a computer.

"That's... Odd." The nurse said, tapping a pencil against his desk.

"Something the matter, doc?"

"Well, no, but you're reading as being completely normal."

Bug frowned.

"Oh, well, since you are in an incredibly weakened state, no offense, you should be significantly below average."

"None taken. How can that be right, though? I can barely climb stairs."

"But.. you can climb stairs. Someone with you're muscular density should barely be able to support themself."

"So, what does this mean moving forward?"

A nervous undertone crept into Bug's voice.

"Oh, it just means the road to recovery should be much shorter, erh, hopefully, but it will be difficult to guage exactly what being well will look like."

"Hmmm."

The two men were silent for a second or two.

"So," the nurse began, "I don't mean to pry, but... It might be prudent to know what exactly caused you to lose so much muscle. Dr. Aufera has only told me you were imprisoned somehow?"

"Erh, something along those lines. I was locked up in a... I was locked up for a really, really long time. Don't remember why. I did something powerful bad apparently."

"Ah. A cell I suppose?

Bug began to respond, but didn't. His hands trembled.

"I'd... Rather not talk too hard about it. It was more a... Tomb. A foul little place."

"Oh. Alright, don't stress about it. We'll work with what we have. I-it'll work out."

Bug looked at the carapacian man, smiling.

"Thanks."

The next item on the schedule was helping Medusa around the house. She had opened the windows in the basement, letting fresh air into the small room. She had him look through the various storage items, seeing which one he wanted for his room. A red rug over a blue and white striped one. A pokespawn comforter over a blank one, which she smiled at. A rocking chair at an old wooden table, covered with a soft felt sheet as a table cloth. A book shelf, which Medusa filled with a few books.

"Some classics every Gaian should read, some history, and a few contemporary. I recommend Frieda the Namer, but that's just a personal preference."

"Wow... Thank you. So much. I... This is amazing, thank you."

"Don't mention it. It's about time someone uses this old junk. Now, take a nap so you don't get fatigued, and tell me when you wake up. We'll have a history lesson and then bake some stuff."

"A-alrighty. Sounds like a plan."

Medusa punched his arm in a friendly way, before heading up the stairs towards the kitchen. When she was at the top, she slapped her forehead and turned back around.

"Well I assumed you know the other basic subjects, but I guess I should ask. Can you read?"

"English and Alternian."

"And do math?"

"Well, no, not really. I can add, take away, and multiply, but where I come from you don't have somebody to teach you stuff like that."

"Aight, when I'm out tomorrow I'll pick up a 4th grader math book. Those are kinda the big three... Hmm. If any other subject you'll need to know come to mind, I'll get books for them. Sound good?"

Bug smiled, and was about to say something but was cut off by a yawn. It had come from him.

"Heh. Take a nap, man." Medusa chuckled.

Bug wandered to the bed and flopped down. It was a little stuffy in there, but pleasant nonetheless. It took only a few minutes to get to sleep.

He woke up about half an hour later and didn't feel like sleeping any more. After trying for a couple minutes, he sat up and sighed dramatically. He knew he'd gotten that from someone, but he couldn't pin who. One of the folks here? Perhaps? It was a human. Erh, probably. So it wasn't someone from here then...

"On that note, I s'pose I'm goin to get onto some history."

He fetched a rather thin book titled 'World History volume 1: iuvenistic era through tapis era', opening it to the first chapter.

After reading a disclaimer that this was according to traditional carapacian cantown and not fossile record style history, (what?) he read the first module.

It talked about how the world had grown to its current size through a major catastrophic events. It had started about the size of a... Volley ball... A what? Anyway, the events that happened before the catastrophe were purely theoretical, so they weren't going to be discussed right now.

The first people on the planet were the carapacians and the consorts. The consorts disappeared into the wild, and the carapacians built the original Cantown. In Cantown, the first generation of trolls and humans grew up. The first module went into detail about how this generation lived and grew according to the pacifistic views of the Old Carapacians. It described the leaders of Cantown, a council of three wisefolk who's names are lost. Their titles remained, the Mother, the Guard, and the Staffbearer. The Mother would go on to lead the trolls for a time, which was discussed in module 2, the Guard lead the humans for a time, discussed in module 3, and the Staffbearer lead the Carapacians.

He skimmed the specifics of the three ancient societies, til he reached an interesting looking module called The First Great Calamity.

It came about ten years into the new society. There were very few animals, none over the microscopic size. So no lusii, and no animal material were available.

It was then when the carapacians had worked with the Old World records from the planet's past and a science known as ectobiology to bring into existence the animals known in the world today.

Just then Medusa poked her head into the basement.

"Awake?"

"Oh! Indeed. This is pretty neat."

"Yeh. History often is. You awake enough to bake?"

Bug snorted, saying, "Let's do it."

The kitchen, while built for someone around eight feet tall, was rigged for the short blueblood Medusa. After washing her hands and instruction Bug to wash his, she began setting up. She moved through the orderly chaos masterfully, taking flour, salt, and such, depositing it on the large wooden table in the center of the room. She took a bowl out of the microwave, setting it on the table and removing the cheesecloth that had been sitting over it. The foamy, muddy colored mix below didn't look particularly like bread, until Medusa added a couple cups of flour and a tiny spoonful of salt. It started as a very sticky dough, becoming a soft, malleable ball beneath her skilled hands. She divided it in half, passing half of it to Bug. After a couple minutes of kneading, he began getting the pattern down. Pull, fold, squish. Pull, fold, squish.

When five minutes had elapsed, she took his lump, merging it with hers, and passed Bug a jar of oil.

"Now put a lil bit of oil on that there bowl, and we'll let this bad boy rest for a good long while. Then it'll have risen, and we can bake it. In the mean time, here." She stood, and, while Bug used a clean rag to apply oil to the bowl, she looked through the icebox, returning with a slab of roast beast, a half eaten cheese wheel, a jar of tasty looking sauce, and some... Oblong green vegetables in water.

Bug put his head on one side. "Exactly what're you doing with that stuff? They seem a might... Unconnected."

Medusa laughed.

"We're making sliders for lunch. Ever had a Cuban Sandwich? We're making a miniature version."

They cut the meat, cheese, and vegetables (which were called pickles and, although he tried not to show it, they thoroughly freaked him out,) into thin slices, setting them in large, deep pan.

When the dough had risen, Medusa showed him how to make the dough into little round lumps, setting them onto a cookie sheet. After fifty lumps had formed, she popped them and the tray of sandwich fillings into the oven. She set it to "swelter" and set a timer for five minutes.

Within seconds, a delicious aroma filled the room. The five minutes couldn't go fast enough.

Finally, it was assembly time. Medusa sliced the toasty rolls in half, Bug put the sandwich fillings in and set them orderly back into the deep dish. Once that was done, Medusa filled the bottom of the dish with the sauce, drizzled the tops with garlic butter, and put them back into the oven.

The aftermid flew by as two more batches of sandwiches took shape.

Lunch was served in a long, low room that was invisible from the house due to a retention wall. There were 70 something people working the farm and clinic combined, so the room wasn't nearly full, but the cheerful chatter and occasional roar of laughter fille the space nicely. That girl from the morning had brought several large baskets of dried fruit and a bucket of fresh berries to the table, and milk in small cartons and water was available. Bug stayed for only a few minutes. The noise hurt his ears, and the next thing on his schedule was free time, so he left his tray in the bin by the door and walked out into the field behind the lunch hall.

The moon was mostly full, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky as he walked across the uneven field. It had been roughly ploughed, not precise enough for seeding.

He noticed someone was walking towards him. Just a hair taller than him, heavyset, pixie cut hair, wearing a fuchsia tank top and black shorts. Fuchsia was a danger color. Dangerous people wore fuchsia. He backed up nervously, until he saw her face. It was that woman from the other night. The one who saved him. She hadn't been at breakfast.

"Hey, it's Lighting Bug! How's it going?" She called good naturedly.

"Me?"

"No, the little bug above your head."

"Oh. Of course. Uhh, I'm doing well. You?"

"Just fine, buddy, you sure you should be out here without someone else around?"

He hadn't considered this.

"Well, I suppose. Sorry."

"No big deal, there's someone around now, ain't there?"

He chuckled. Yeah, he supposed there was.