"Don't speak of golden dreams
You once had a chance to make things right"
"Acting" from You Will Never Know Why by Sweet Trip
An unyielding void surrounded Max. He couldn't see, move, feel, hear, or taste anything. His nose twitched, taking in a bright aroma of flowers. He sniffed at it more and flooded his nose with the noxious scent. Like smelling salts, they seemed to pry into his mind and pull it out of its slumber, quickly making the harsh, pleasant scent the least of his concerns.
All across his chest, back, arms, legs, tail, head, ears, everywhere, cuts and scrapes cried out in pain. Every few inches along his body had one shouting scream of suffering to stab into him, and each breath that brought him closer to consciousness made them more intense. A dull ache from his right leg slowly introduced itself into the symphony of agony. He wanted to fade back into unconsciousness, but of course the pain was too much to let him sleep.
Oh, you're finally awake.
The voice jolted him out of daze. Adrenaline dulled his pain just enough for him to jump up, but he cried out, "Pika!" the moment his right hindpaw threatened to hold weight. He braced his arm against the wall mercifully next to him to hold himself up, held his tail in front of him and looked around the empty room.
Ah, not quite fully, yet.
He kept a watchful gaze around the room, but couldn't see anyone.
What? You don't remember your damsel in distress?
The disdain prickled his ears, but even they couldn't tell where the voice came from. "Chuuu," he growled. He heard whoever it was scoff.
Look at what a pitiful thing you've become. Why agree to hold me at all? Did you want to have someone else to suffer in your isolation with you?
Its tone suddenly gave him pause. The intense hatred hid a tenderness within. Was it hurt? "Ka… pi?" he asked. It didn't respond for a while, but even in silence, he felt it. A cold chill of warm breath brushing over the back of his neck.
Maybe I'll believe that if you can say it when you truly awaken. Your little tantrum of repression is ultimately temporary, after all.
"K-ka chu," Max argued, but it remained silent. The feeling bristling the back of his neck remained, but he could tell it finished talking. With that horror acknowledged, he looked around the room. It didn't have much besides a window above the pile of hay he'd woken up on, and a door on the opposite side.
He relaxed just enough for the worst of the pain to return when he heard paws padding closer. He didn't have to shift much to face the door, holding his tail up like a shield while bracing against the wall with his right arm for balance. The pawsteps stopped short of the door. A violet light surrounded it and lightly creaked it open. An espeon stood unassuming on the other side.
Her eyes met his, and she giggled. "That's a unique fighting stance," she said.
"Piiii," he growled. Sparks bounced off his cheeks in warning. Her light smile twisted down a bit.
"You must have been in there for a while," she mumbled. He thought about running past her, but his ankle hurt too much to even move down to the ground, much less hold his weight in a sprint. While he tried to look at what lay behind her, a bowl hovered into view. "You're quite the fighter. It's not often you see someone as beat up as you still fighting in a dungeon." The bowl started hovering closer to him. "But even tough guys need to sleep eventually."
The bowl set down in front of him. He glanced at it, some aromatic paste, but kept a careful watch on her. "Ka?"
"It's food," she said. That got his attention. He dropped down to grab the bowl while keeping his tail up and watching her for the slightest movements. He wasn't all that hungry, but he shoved his maw into it to scarf it down regardless. You got food when you got it, and ate it all because who knew when you'd get more. "Oh Arceus," she mumbled. A warm hand started kneading his heart. "How long were you in there?"
The fist gripping his heart slowed down his devouring, as did feeling pretty full, but he forced the rest down. "Chu," he whimpered. A paw went to his chest, but it couldn't grab whatever had a hold on his heart. Instead, the sensation lightened its hold on its own, but not fully.
"May I come in?" she asked, and he leered at her with suspicion. "You're in pain, aren't you?" He didn't answer, but his constant wince answered for him. "I want to help you with that." The bowl he'd emptied floated away, and another came from the room behind her, as well as some bandages. They began approaching, and she followed close behind.
He considered firing a warning shot between them, but seeing a similar force to the one that brought him food preceding her gave him pause. Her approach wasn't aggressive, either. She stepped slowly and kept her head and tail down in a meek posture. If she'd fed him, perhaps she wasn't a threat. For now, at least. She stopped in the middle of the room and watched him. He waited for a moment to see what she was doing. He pushed himself up to sit against the wall and realized she was waiting for permission. "Pi," he said with a nod.
She flashed him a smile, "Thank you," and kept walking forward. Her height towered over his and made him press his tail a bit tighter against himself. She started humming a tune. No words, just a melody, light, soft and sweet. Slow. Disarming. She carefully sat in front of him. "You're safe," she whispered. "Don't worry."
The request didn't fill him with the most confidence. Having her so close reminded him he couldn't escape if he needed to, and her size could easily crush him… or worse. "Pi… pika pi," he whined. She rested her head on her paws and looked to the side. When he tilted his head to the side, "Ka?" she closed her eyes. Sleeping? Was she trying to sleep?
He couldn't make sense of it. It had to be a trap. The instant he made a wrong move, she'd probably pounce. "Piiii kachu!" he barked. He tensed his tail into iron and built up a large enough charge in his cheeks that any type could feel it.
"Would you like me to leave?" she asked, not moving a muscle. Completely calm. Not merely free of tension in preparation for a battle, but genuinely relaxed.
"Chu?" He let go of the charge, but kept his tail ready for defense. The warm kneading in his chest came back with a vengeance, collapsing him forward into coughs.
"What's happening?" she asked; the squeezing turned to crushing. "Please let me help you," she begged. When he looked into her eyes, the sensation got clearer, but no more intense. It was coming from her, he knew that even without knowing how. "Here," she pulled the bowl next to her paw. "Let me see a paw."
No resistance came; he had none left. He showed it to her, but still kept his tail as up as he could. The crushing stopped getting worse, finally. Whatever she was doing, he couldn't fight against it. Her paw cupped his, while her other dipped into the bowl. The sting of his wounds sang for an instant long enough to remind him they were there before the cream covered them, soothed them. She turned it a bit and rubbed all the other knicks and cuts, then let it go. He pulled it back cautiously and looked it over. "Pi?"
The pain had left wherever the cream touched. "Is it better?" she asked, more urgently than she'd been so far.
Max looked it over, "Pi," and nodded with a quizzical look in his eyes.
The crushing in his chest disappeared. "You're still in there," she sighed. "Good." They shared a simultaneous sigh of relief. He caught a glance of her holding the bowl of cream up in an offer when he went to eye her with suspicion. "May I?"
"Pi!" he spouted with nods of terror. Whatever she did, he needed to comply to prevent it.
"Aw," she cooed. "C'mere." With that same caring smile, she got up to wrap herself around him, cradling him like a hatchling. He whimpered in fear a few times, but then she started nuzzling him. "You must be hurting a lot, little guy."
The nuzzling and the soothing cream did double duty making him feel safe. "Pi," he nodded. His ears and tail both drooped down.
She squeezed him a little. "It's all right," she whispered. She started spreading the cream along his back. Every inch of the medicine made him realize how much pain he'd been in. "You know, you became something of a legend around these parts."
"Ka?" he asked, turning his head to look at her as best he could.
She giggled and poked his face back forward. "Just lay down," she chuckled. "Relax." The jiggles of her chuckles wiggled some of the tension out of his neck. "It's rare enough to see a feral outside of a dungeon once." She'd covered the worst of the wounds on his back and started lightly kneading stiffness out of his muscles. "Then you go on and show up in and around not one, not two, but three different dungeons—in this region alone!"
Her words flew mostly over his head. The massage let out tensions he never even knew could be there. "Chaaaaaaa," he groaned with a little smile.
"Like that?" she giggled, and he nodded happily. Her story continued while she kept poking and prodding his tensions. "I'd scold you for fighting those kids, but even they said they provoked you, and," she tilted her head up to look him over, "You don't look much older than them, anyway."
"Piii," he said, nodding along. He didn't really care what she was saying as long as the massage continued.
Another laugh rumbled behind him. "You'd think a 'menace to the community' wouldn't be so cute," she chuckled. "Honestly, you'd think people would know by now that it's just dungeon sickness. The only truly feral pokémon are dungeon illusions."
The beginnings of a headache pulsed above his eyebrows. "Chu," he whined.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, quickly twisting him around to hug him from the front. "It's all right. I know you'll get better. They always do." He didn't know what she was talking about, but the headache left, so he didn't much care. With his nose all up in her fur, he smelled the same flowery scent he'd woken up to on her. He tilted his head and started poking his nose closer so he could sniff out the source of that smell, and she started laughing and pushed him away. "If you want to start like that," she chuckled, "You should at least know my name." He looked at her in confusion. "I'm Neb. Do you remember yours?"
His inquisitive look shifted inward. It took a bit of digging to find, but he knew he had one. If nothing else, he could always remember that. "Piika," he answered with a nod.
Neb twisted her mouth into a conflicted smile. "Well, it's better than nothing. At least until you can talk again," she said. "Hello, Piika."
"Chaaa!" Max cheered back, melting all the conflict out of Neb's smile.
"Arceus, you're adorable," she said. "All right, Piika. I'm gonna finish tending to you. Sound good?"
Max nodded. A paw absently went to grab something around his neck and shot a spike of panic through him when it grabbed nothing. "Pii pika pi!" he shouted, bolting up and almost instantly crashing back to the ground when he tried to stand on his bad hindleg. Despite the shooting pain, he forced himself back up and looked desperately around the room.
A paw stopped him from even trying to walk forward. He looked up to Neb, and she asked, "What are you looking for? Can I get it for you? I don't want you hurting yourself."
"Pi chu," he answered while his eyes examined every inch of the room around him. He felt the absence of fabric around his neck as much as if it were there. Even without it there, his paw tried to grip the scarf. He tried to step to the side around the paw, but his hindpaw collapsed under the weight, and he followed after.
Neb's paw propped him up before he could hit the ground. "See?" she asked. He used his paw not clutching the air around his neck to push himself up, and she must've finally seen his busy paw. "Oh, are you looking for that scarf?"
"Pi!" he shouted. He looked up with desperation and tears filling his eyes. The blurry haze of her form vaguely nodded while his tears started spilling over his muzzle.
"It's all right, okay? Stay here," she commanded. Before he could object, she continued, "I'll go get it."
"Ch—, pi pi?! Pi!" he begged between nods. He wiped the tears out of his eyes so he could watch her go get it. Every bone in his body begged him to run after her for the scarf, but the constant pain in his ankle reminded him she'd told him to stay put. He could only watch, so he put all his energy and focus into that. Crying meant he didn't have to blink quite as much, which was a bonus, though it certainly made his vision less clear than he'd like.
Max analyzed her every step to see where she was hiding the scarf, or if she was planning some trick, or if she was unwittingly on fire enough to light the scarf. She didn't appear to be any of those, but a stream of whimpers poured out of his lips when he lost sight of her around the corner. "P-pi! Ka pi pika pi chu pikachu! Pi!" he begged. He couldn't decide if she wasn't rushing sufficiently, or if she was going fast enough to be suspicious, so he just cowered up against the wall.
His breath felt thin, the air like a thin stream of wind rushing itself through crevices of lifeless rock. He couldn't move. He felt stone crawling up his legs even though he only saw fur when he looked down. Every twitch of his paws felt against nature, like lifeless shells bursting forth with necrotic energy. A sea of stone pokémon surrounded him, motionless, lifeless, yet closing in all the same. He clawed at the empty air that should have been his scarf. Cries for help choked out of his petrified throat.
"Piika!" Neb shouted. Her fur brushed around his in opposition to the stone army. "It's okay. Here! Take it." The scarf brushed against his paws, and they snatched it right up to his chest. He'd put it on so many times that he didn't need to think as he wrapped it around himself. He buried his muzzle into it and curled up into as tight a ball as he could. Neb tried comforting him with words, pats, pets, but he ignored them all. In that moment, all he needed was his scarf.
"Gone are your friends in need when you broke their heart
So sad, so sad, so hopeless"
Max prowled the perimeter of his room yet again. Staying still for the first few days had been a special form of torture, but the constant pain managed to keep his mind off the boredom at least. After that, Neb had suggested he stretch the ankle somewhat and he quickly obliged since it gave him an activity other than wallowing.
To his surprise, the room didn't ever seem to shift. Not only did he always wake up in the same spot he'd slept in, but the door, the window, his bed, even small cracks and imperfections in the walls stayed impossibly consistent. The unsettling consistency of his surroundings unnerved him at first, and even still he figured it was just a matter of time until the world righted itself. Yet, day after day, he woke up in the same place, same surroundings, same Neb, same self.
Checking the whole room had worked alongside his boredom to convince him to keep trying until he could march the entire perimeter. The first few days, he'd barely managed one lap around, but he'd gotten a lot better since then. His paw traced along the wall for some support, partially out of habit (checking for the shift he knew had to happen eventually), but also because the exertion started taking its toll on his ankle the past ten laps.
Gasps and groans squeaked out as his paws stepped on his sleeping hay yet again, and he finally sat down. "Chu!" he shouted, clutching his ankle. It always hurt the worst when he let the weight off it (Neb said it was something about compression or whatever), but he could never remember that. Clutching it as tight as he could, he remembered Neb's advice: stretch it.
The idea seemed ridiculous to him, but the time she'd done it for him after he decided he'd healed enough to try running proved its worth. Shouldn't be too hard to do. He just needed to let go of it. His paws held tight. Irksome. Okay, it was fine. He could do this. One paw at a time. Starting with the right. Easy. All he had to do was pull it away. Slowly. Carefully.
With all the care and grace of a surgeon, he watched as both forepaws stayed firmly wrapped around his ankle. "Chuu," he sighed in frustration. He was overthinking it. One. Two. Three—he yanked his paws away and winced away from the pain he knew was coming. It didn't. He waited a second or two to account for lagging nerves, then let out the breath he'd held. He rested his head against the slightly sloped wall behind him and put his forepaws on the ground behind to hold himself up.
He took in a deep breath and pointed his toes away as he let it out. Like Neb told him, he brought it out just far enough to feel tension and held it there until he ran out of breath, then relaxed. Small break for another breath in, then he did the same but with twisting it to the right, then left, then he started over until he couldn't stand it anymore.
Watching it wiggle side to side, he tried to remember how he'd hurt it. Even though the last two weeks had been monotonous, he could remember them pretty well. Sure, some days melded into each other, but he could still recall specific events. Yet, he only got slices and slivers from before he woke up here. Neb asked him about stuff she'd heard of him doing, and even mentioned them meeting before, but he couldn't remember any of it.
His paw went to his chest thinking about that conversation. It had never gotten as bad as that first day, but that warm kneading in his heart had returned pretty strong when she asked him about his memory, his ankle, and especially after his little attempt at running laps around the room. That sensation rivaled his ankle, even.
If she did it, he couldn't figure out why, and she never acknowledged it either. He stopped trying to get her to acknowledge it, too, since it seemed to get worse when she saw the pain it put him in. Hiding it seemed to do the least damage. A few other odd sensations sprung up every once in a while around her, but they weren't as concerning.
In came boredom once more. "Kaaa," he whined. He glanced down at his hindpaw and wiggled it side to side. The stretching seemed to help, but doing another lap around his room brought back a discouraging echo of the ache. He spun around so he could flop down on the hay and stare at the ceiling, but the window caught his eye instead.
A hash of logs blocked anyone getting in (or out), but he had another idea for how to use them. An idea started spinning into motion in his head. His scenery had worn thin after the third day. Thanks to his vigilant watch for change, he'd basically memorized every square inch of the room by now. While he didn't want to escape for fear of running into anyone not as nice as Neb, looking outside didn't seem too dangerous.
He stood up under it and took a few steps back. His ankle felt mostly fine, just a bit stiff. If he could walk, jumping couldn't be too bad, and his forepaws didn't have any injuries to make holding himself up there an issue. The window was only a few heads taller than him, anyway. He bounced on his toes for a quick stress test and didn't feel much of any pain at all.
Maybe more safety checks were necessary, in fact they most definitely were, but his apocalyptic boredom didn't much care. In one motion, he leaned back and leapt forward. His ankle didn't appreciate the maneuver, but it cooperated at least. Each forepaw grabbed a bar on the window, and he held himself tight as the residual momentum gave way to gravity. Just like that, he was hanging from the window and drinking in a direct dose of fresh air.
The view didn't offer much more than trees, but Max didn't mind. The sight of a treeline leading into a forest comforted him a bit with familiarity. Trees, grass, rocks, and wind: simplicity. He tried to kick up his left hindpaw to help hold him up, but it couldn't find any purchase, so he kept watching. Some movement disturbed the scene; a little speck of brown and white wandered out of the woods carrying a little sack.
He recognized the skull on its head as a cubone's once it drew closer. A threat to run from normally, but he had plenty guarding him from it, so he watched on with a smug smirk. It got a little bit closer and slowed down slightly. An odd, light chill prickled Max's fur as he watched it stop to glance around. It yanked its bone out of its bag and held it tight, and the chill grew more pronounced.
Instead of starting in the extremities and growing inward, he felt it all over himself at once. It couldn't have been that cold out, right? Even the exertion from holding himself up did nothing to stave off the cold.
The cubone's gaze glanced past him and then doubled back to stare. The chill instantly froze him entirely. He couldn't even shiver, forced to stare at the horror in its eyes as it realized it wasn't alone. "P-pi?" he greeted.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH," it screamed and ran away. The shriek shocked Max enough to lose his grip and flop down onto the ground butt first.
"Chuuuu," he grumbled, rubbing the sore spot he landed on. Just shy of his tail, luckily, since landing on that would've hurt way worse. He could still here the cubone screaming, couldn't have been more than a few seasons old, and rubbed his arms against the cold. Yet, the cold had already left completely. "Ka pi chu?" He turned his paws over looking for some kind of ice attack, but of course found nothing. Could cubone even learn ice attacks? They were grounds.
The chill returned slightly. He perked his head up and looked around. The screaming had come back a bit, but now it was a bunch of words coming out too fast for him to parse. Another voice (Neb's, he quickly realized) tried getting a word in edgewise. As she got more and more control of the conversation, Max felt the chill fade.
You really don't remember, do you?
Max barely reacted to the voice, fairly used to it at this point. "Chu," he answered. The prickling in the back of his neck stayed there so much that he eventually stopped paying attention to it altogether. It preferred speaking up when he was alone, but not exclusively. A few times it chimed in with Neb in the room, and that's when he found out she couldn't hear it.
A foreign sense of overwhelming guilt slammed into his chest so hard that he struggled to breathe through it. "K-kachu? Pii!" he whimpered, and the sensation left. The air around him felt damp with sorrow. A thick silence enveloped the room, thick enough even to block the sounds of Neb in the other room.
I'm sorry. Perhaps I've been too harsh on you.
"Kachu?" he asked the air, but it went dormant yet again. The sorrow and silence in the room faded enough for him to hear Neb approaching his door. Three firm knocks rattled it. "Pi ka," he answered.
The door drifted open and revealed her smirking. "You made a friend, I see," Neb chuckled.
Max crossed his arms, "Pi chu!" and scrunched up, looking to the wall beside him. He was innocent!
She laughed harder, and that diluted Max's frown. "She was just surprised, don't worry," she said. "Seemed willing to meet you some other time, as well."
"Chu!" Max shouted. A ground? What was Neb on?
Her laugh started eroding his incredulity as well. "I won't force it," she said. "But you have nothing to worry about. She's just a kid." Max opened his mouth to object, but didn't have much to say. Instead, he deflated with a bit of squirming. "Hungry?"
"Pi!" he cheered and hopped up. A tray floated along beside Neb, and she walked along side it as if escorting it to him.
The tray lowered, revealing a massive bowl—larger than his head—of noodles dripping with a red sauce. "Like spaghetti?" she asked. Max didn't see it fit to answer outside of tossing himself at the bowl. When he reached to grab some, a veil of purple revealed itself to block him. He drew his paw back and tilted his head. He tried the same place again, but the same force blocked him, so he tried a different spot with the same result.
"Ka?" he asked while he glanced around the rest of the tray. Then, he noticed the metal tool on the right side of the bowl. He picked it up and raised a brow at Neb.
"A fork," she answered. "I want to see if you remember how to use utensils… and also don't want you tracking sauce all over my walls again."
"Pika chu!" he said, rolling his eyes while his cheeks roasted themselves. He'd already apologized for doing it, and it was a good experiment! That sauce definitely would've moved by the next day if she'd left it on. He twisted the fork around in his paws and felt it find a resting spot in his paw right under the thumb, but above the middle nubbin.
The grip felt secure enough. He twisted it back to wrap his whole paw around it, but that made it much more difficult to maneuver, so he went back to the first position. The command to keep it off his paws rang in his head, giving him a devious smile. He looked right at her with a smirk. While her eyes draped into concerned intrigue, he twirled some of the spaghetti onto the fork, plopped it into his other paw, and then shoved it into his mouth.
"Chu ka?" he asked between chews with all the sarcasm he could force through his stuffed cheeks. A little orb bonked him from behind, "Pi!" and disappeared before he could turn to see it. Of course, he had a pretty good idea where it came from.
He turned back to look at Neb's thin smile and narrowed eyes. "You think you're clever, don'tcha?" she asked.
Max giggled at her and started licking his paw clean. "Piiii ka," he said with all the feigned innocence he had.
"You're lucky you're cute," she chuckled.
"Ka chu!" he thanked.
She nodded, but kept watching him. "Are you going to eat properly now, or am I going to have to feed you like a hatchling?"
"Chuuuuu," he hummed, tapping his freshly licked paw to his chin. After pretending to consider his options, he held up his fork and declared, "Pi!" and started digging in. At first, he always ate as much as he could as fast as he could. Meals weren't usually constants to rely upon, after all, and it's hard to store food when the ground itself is rarely the same day to day, so he'd scarfed down everything Neb brought him in under a minute those first few days.
At least, until that cold little treat from hell assaulted the roof of his mouth. Max had assumed he'd met his end, finally suffering the last step of Neb's plan while she laughed out apologies at him. That 'brain freeze' as she called it lightly taught him to eat slower. Although, even if he still ate it when she brought it, he didn't totally trust ice cream after that debacle. It tasted delicious, at least, so he took the risk every time.
He still made sure to finish the meals completely, of course, as difficult as it was. Neb always brought him a lot. According to her, he was malnourished from being in dungeons for so long. It felt strange, getting consistent yet varied food every day, but he didn't question it. She seemed right, too, since he felt a lot of strength return in just the first few days even after most of his other wounds had healed.
Yet, he didn't know if he could keep it up. His stomach already groaned from how much he'd stuffed it, but he hadn't even made it through half the bowl. It seemed bottomless. He glanced around the room. The window, bed, door, walls all stood in the same place they had the first time he woke up. He looked back at the bowl with his head tilted in thought.
With a confident nod, he dropped the fork into the bowl, picked it up and brought it over to his bed. He set it down to the side and heard Neb let out a sigh of relief. "Good," she said.
He turned around to look at her, one ear and brow raised with his head tilted to the side. "Ka pi chu pi?" he asked.
"Was wondering when you'd start storing," she said. "I was happy not to see your ribs anymore, but honestly, even for a pikachu, you're starting to get a bit chubby." He glanced down at himself, mouth twisted down into a frown, and pinched at his belly. "Oh, sorry," she giggled. "I was just kidding, don't worry about it." He looked up at her with a furrowed brow and a growl, and she walked over to him. "Body image issues are a good sign of sapience, though, so this is promising."
He could tell that she was joking but decided it'd benefit him to act hurt. He crossed his arms and sat down looking away from her. "Ka chu pika pi chu," he grumbled. He hunched forward and pursed his lip out a bit. His eyes gave him away, though, darting up to gauge her reaction (she seemed rather amused by the display).
"Oh, all right," she sighed. "Sorry, grumpichu. Can you ever forgive me?" He turned to look at her and got a neck full of her nuzzles. By the time he realized what she was doing, it was too late: her muzzle had full access to that little spot between his neck and his shoulder. His weakness. How dare she? An all out assault of tickles incapacitated him with laughter before he could retaliate, this attack only the beginning. Once he fell over, she pinned him with one paw while her other went to search for other weakspots.
"P-pi—Pi ka! Pi ka!" he forced between giggles.
She got the message and pulled away. "There, all better?" she asked.
"Piiii," he whined. A few more giggles shook out of him, making it impossible for him to play the victim.
"Good," she said. She stepped back and nodded her head at the bowl. "I'll store that for you, okay Chub-chu?"
"Chu!" he shouted, but the laughs still kept a smile on him. He couldn't even pretend to be insulted by an insult! Her powers were far too strong. "Pi, pika chu," he reluctantly agreed, and she went to take the bowl out of his room.
She stood at the door while the bowl floated off and shook her head to invite him over. "C'mon out," she said. He got up like she asked, but had a brow raised in question. "You stink," she explained, "And you'll be cleaning yourself up this time."
Max looked away while his cheeks warmed up enough to pop a few sparks. He hadn't needed her help after the first time, but she always liked to specify. He suspected she did it because she knew it embarrassed him. Licks had worked fine up to that point, so how was he to know what the little block was for? Sure, it smelled nice, but that was just misleading. He shook at the memory of the disgusting, horrible flavor he got a mouthful of for biting it when Neb wasn't looking.
This new way of living was strange. Very strange. Still, he had to admit, if it meant smelling nice and getting food all the time, he could happily get used to it.