As promised, Chapter 2! I already noticed a small inconsistency with terminology. It's hard to keep track of which words are strictly "Stomper" vocab and which are common language. I'm probably thinking way too hard about this. After this point, "medical" and "medicine" are commonly understood between both because finding effective synonyms was getting difficult haha.
Chapter 2. Stomper
It had taken Nod approximately twenty minutes to convince the strange, extremely confused girl that, no, Maia really was a very normally sized hummingbird, and please, stop screaming like that or it might attract more Boggans to them. He wasn't entirely sure how much longer she would have continued freaking out about how "big everything was" if she hadn't gotten dizzy and collapsed in a heap at his feet, muttering weird words like "concussion" and "hospital."
"I'm going to take us to safety, but you have to promise you won't go crazy on me like that," Nod told her, helping her to her feet.
The girl held her head like it was too heavy for her neck to carry. "Okay," she muttered.
"Is it safe?" she asked when he hoisted her onto Maia's back. The hummingbird trilled indignantly, but Nod raised a hand to quiet her.
"Maia's the best flier around." Nod swung himself up onto the saddle and wrapped an arm around the girl's waist. She grumbled in protest. "Calm down. I won't let you fall." There was a brief pause, and finally, the girl leaned into him, and he secured her in place. Nod nudged Maia's sides with his heel. "Back to Moonhaven." In a flurry of wing beats, Maia surged into the air, sending dust scattering around them.
"How on earth am I going to explain this to Ronin?"
The girl was fast asleep and a dead weight in his aching arms by the time they arrived in Moonhaven. Nod steered Maia away from the Leafmen landing pad and guided her over to where the healers dwelt. Maybe if he just dropped her off there, he could wash his hands of the problem entirely.
"Nod, don't tell me you went and got yourself injured again," the head healer said the instant he touched down on their vine-covered balcony.
Nod only flashed her a grin. "You wish, Asteria. I know you like my company." He pulled the girl into his arms and carried her into the sanctuary. Asteria's eye-roll quickly vanished at the sight of a legitimate patient, and she hurried over, beckoning the other Jinn to help her.
"Where did you find her?" With the help of the subordinate healers, Asteria placed the girl on a bed of soft leaves and feather down. She held her hands over the prone girl, sensing her patient's energy.
"Out in the borderlands. Seems like she got caught up in patrol skirmish with the Boggans."
The girl stirred, and everyone turned their attention to her. Nod frowned at her garb, struck by the urge to touch the unfamiliar fabric. Not only was her coat trimmed with alarming shades of yellow and pink, it appeared to have a faint sheen.
"Hello, dear. Can you hear me?" Asteria asked gently.
The girl blinked hard several times before attempting to sit up. She immediately clamped a hand on her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut with a groan. "Where am I?"
Asteria prompted her to lie back down. "You're in Moonhaven now. You're safe."
The girl kept an arm strewn across her eyes. "Moonhaven? Where the heck is that?"
The Jinn all exchanged surprised glances.
"The heart of Brightwood, home of the Queen of the Forest," Asteria told her, confusion sprawled across her face.
The girl withdrew her blindfolding arm to squint at them. "Somehow I'm understanding all the individual words you're saying, and yet I feel like we're not speaking the same language."
Asteria shook her head. "Never mind that. How are you feeling?"
"I have a headache, but that's expected." The girl held her hands out in front of her, flexing her fingers. "I'm pretty sure it's a concussion," she added. The other healers looked at each other in confusion.
"Vision seems all right. Maybe it's not too bad," she continued to mutter.
"What is your name?" Asteria asked.
"MK Malone-Bomba," the girl replied, eyes narrowed in concentration. "Can you go through the tests? I'm not sure how badly my judgment is impaired right now."
If Nod left now, he had a good chance of beating his patrol group to the barracks and avoiding any unwanted explaining to Ronin. But his curiosity nagged him and kept him fixed in his place, watching the strange new girl in fascination.
Asteria blinked at her in confusion. "I am not sure what you're saying."
"What? This should be basic diagnosis. Are any of you certified?" The girl called MK sat up slowly, despite the protests around her, and examined her surroundings. Her eyes widened with some realization, and she hurtled out of the bed.
"You shouldn't overexert yourself," said Asteria, running after her.
Nod followed the crowd after her out onto the balcony where MK was frantically searching the area. A clarity had found her since their initial meeting when she had been dazed by shock, and Nod could see her looking—really looking—at the world around her.
"What's the matter?" he asked her.
MK slowly turned to him, tense as bowstring. "Everything isn't big, is it?" It was more of a statement than a question. "I'm small. Either I'm completely hallucinating, or I'm small." She turned toward Maia. "A hummingbird sized saddle," she murmured. Nod briefly wondered if she had gone crazy.
"MK, you should probably get some rest," Asteria said, guiding her back indoors.
"Dad was right." MK tensed again, stopping in her tracks and pacing back out. "Dad was right!" She looked at Maia and then whirled on Nod.
"Can you take me somewhere?" she demanded.
Nod lurched back from the force of her question. "Um, I can, but I don't think I should. Not sure you're feeling tip-top."
"No, I'm fine enough. This is really important. I have to tell my dad about this." MK was nearly shouting.
"I'm sure he can wait a little while," Asteria said.
"You don't understand. This is the breakthrough my dad has been desperately looking for his entire life. I'm literally the breakthrough! I need to find those cameras." She started peering over the edge of the balcony, as though looking for a way to climb down herself.
Nod rushed over and pulled her back. "Whoa, whoa, calm down. Okay, I'll take you to wherever you need, all right? Just stop…freaking out. You promised, remember? No more panicking. Everything is all right."
MK brushed her tousled hair from her face, exhaled sharply, and turned a fierce gaze on him. "Fine, I can be calm," she said with a startlingly even tone. The drastic transition of temperament threw him.
"Okay. Good," he said, eyes wide.
"Nod, I really advise against this," said Asteria.
"I said I'm fine enough. I'm going regardless of your willingness to assist me," MK said, still wearing the face of a commander, rather than that of the panicked newcomer from a few minutes ago. "So are you going to help me or what?"
"Yeah, we're good." Nod turned to Asteria. "We'll be fine. I promise. I'll bring her right back, as soon as we're done. No staying out late to party." He winked, and after a lengthy pause, Asteria rolled her eyes and waved them away.
"I'm riding up front this time. It's really hard to steer when I'm trying to reach around you," he said. "So you'll have to hang on."
MK groaned. "Fine."
Nod waited until MK secured herself in the saddle behind him and urged Maia into the air. The hummingbird fluttered in annoyance at having to embark again so quickly.
"So, you planning on explaining what just happened?" Nod looked at MK over his shoulder.
She lurched away from the sudden closeness of his face. "It's a long story. Right now I need to find my dad's cameras. Do you know what those are? He usually keeps them in nooks of trees." She attempted to mime a camera shape. "Round lens thing made of glass."
"Uh…"
"They would be big compared to us? Wait a second," MK rummaged in the bag slung over her shoulder.
"Hey! Can you not move around so much while we're zooming through the air?" Nod's arm shot out to hold her steady, and Maia paused in midair to let her squirming mounts get their act together.
MK pulled something out of her bag and began to draw on her palm. She held it out to him. "Cameras," she said. Nod took hold of her hand and pulled it forward to examine, ignoring her grunt of protest.
"Oh! I do know what you're talking about." Pieces fell into place. "Wait a minute. You said those are your dad's. That means…"
"Getting the picture?" MK yanked her hand back.
Nod held up a hand in apology. "I completely understand why you were freaking out earlier." He frowned. "Unless some Stompers actually are regular sized?"
"Stompers?"
He shrugged. "Like your dad. You know, always stomping around through the forest, making a lot of noise. Are there really some of you who aren't big?"
"I'm not supposed to be this size either! I was normal at the beginning of the day, but I got caught in a freak storm and suddenly I'm small. Honestly, I'm still not convinced this isn't all a crazy dream," MK said.
"Freak storm, huh?" Nod repeated.
"Yeah, why?"
"Nah, never mind." He fell silent, musing over something. After a lengthy pause, he gave a light snort.
"So your dad's the guy who's been looking for us. We've been leading him all over the creation for years now. There's no way he could get past the threshold anyway, but it's fun to mess with him." Nod chuckled, imagining the redheaded giant crashing around the undergrowth.
Nod turned around to see her reaction and instantly regretted it. The glare MK gave him melted the grin clean off his face.
"You mean you've all been taunting him? He's been laughed at for years by his peers for insisting you people exist. It broke my parents' marriage, broke up the family! I spent years being angry at him for choosing a fairy tale over me and Mom, and I come to find out he was right this entire time. You think that's funny?
"My dad's conviction ruined all of the most important relationships in his life. He's been living years by himself because everyone thought he was crazy." He could hear her breathing hard behind him. "Everyone rejected him. I rejected him, when I should have stood by him. He should have been vindicated."
Nod sobered immediately. "I'm sorry. Really. We never thought about that possibility. It wasn't for fun and games though. We needed to protect our own people and their sanctuary. Stompers can be dangerous to us. I'm really sorry for what it did to you."
MK said nothing, fixing the air with a chilly silence.
"Just take me to the cameras," she said after an eternity.
The forest stretched hundreds of times farther since MK had shrunken. Shrunken. She squeezed her eyes shut and massaged her head. Maybe when she opened her eyes, she would be back in her room in the rickety old house, with her dad just down the stairs typing furiously at his desk. The wind whistled in her ears and whipped her loose hair into her face insistently. The humming of Maia's wings, the vibration of the bird's motion beneath her, the sturdy arm of the soldier in green wrapped around her waist all served to solidify her new reality. MK kept her eyes shut. At least it let her pretend she could avoid the truth for a little while longer.
"That's the thing you're looking for right?" Nod's voice jarred her back to life.
She turned around and followed the direction of his pointing to a nook in a tree where sure enough, one of her dad's cameras did indeed sit. MK swallowed. "Yeah."
"What do you want to do now?"
It occurred to her that Nod probably wouldn't know what a camera did. "Take me closer. If we fly in front of it long enough, we can trip the alert, and he'll know where to find me. Then I'll go home with him and hopefully we can figure out how to get me back to normal."
Nod let out a stifled noise of protest before nudging Maia forward. The camera lens dwarfed them, and the sight of it reminded MK of those big fisheye windows at the aquarium her mom used to take her to. Her warped reflection swam around in its depths.
This is really happening isn't it? She had still been hoping that she might wake up, but seeing the camera made the reality sink down on her even harder.
"Dad?" she tried, but her voice cracked halfway. "Dad, are you there?"
There was silence for a while, and Maia looked back at them impatiently. She twitched in the air until Nod hushed her, but MK could hear the tension and confusion in his voice.
"What is it?" MK asked.
"Mm…" He shuffled in his place in front of her.
"I can tell you want to say something."
"You're not gonna like it," he said finally.
"But is it important to my problem or not?"
She heard him sigh heavily. "I don't think your dad can help you change back."
MK startled, jarring the saddle and making Maia waver midair. "What do you mean?" She felt the panic creeping back into her voice, but she swallowed it back down with practiced calm.
"When you mentioned the storm, it made me think of something. There's a magic in the forest, as the Queen says, that protects us from danger like the Stompers for example. How do you think we've been isolated for so long?" Nod said.
"What does the storm have to do with anything?" It had been weird, now that she thought about it like that. MK thought back to the pristine morning weather report and Oak Bridge's history with the sudden squalls.
"Freak storms mean that the forest magic is acting up. It sort of summons them somehow. I don't honestly know that much about it. The forest kind of has a mind of its own, in a way. We live in harmony with it, not control it. Whatever happened to you, I think it has to do with that magic. That's not something that can be reversed by any old person," Nod said. All the smiles had gone from his voice, and he spoke like one diffusing a bomb.
"So you're trying to tell me I'm stuck for good, that some fairy forest magic turned me into a tiny person for the fun of it?"
"I'm saying I'm not the person to ask, and neither is your dad. We have to take you to see Queen Tara. If anyone knows what to do, it'll be her."
"Well, how long is that going to take?" MK demanded. Her mind flew to the lunch she had promised her dad that she never got home to make. She didn't even know what time it was anymore, or how long he had been waiting.
"I don't know. I'm sorry. This isn't really my thing." Nod sounded almost as helpless and confused as she was, so MK tried to keep herself from venting unnecessary frustration onto him.
He added, "I really wish this was something we could just fix, but like I said, the forest has a mind of its own. The Queen is the one who comes closest to speaking its language. At the very least, let's go talk to her, and if there's nothing we can do, I'll try to take you home."
MK was about to speak, when the camera lens whirled to life, spinning and focusing on the hovering bird.
"Dad!" MK shouted, trying her best to stand up in the saddle. "Dad, it's MK! If you can hear me, I just want you to know I'm all right. And second of all, that you were right. They're real, Dad. You were right." The camera stared back at her, and she prayed he could hear, that he was staying calm.
"Something weird happened out in the forest, and that's why I'm like this. But I'm going to figure out how to fix it. Might be a while, so make sure you eat three meals a day, and not just canned food." She attempted to smile, but her face quavered.
"Remember the rules." She tapped her head in mimicry of his gesture the other day. "I love you. I'll come back soon. I promise." At that her voice broke, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She buried her face into Nod's back, abandoning her former restraint.
"We should go," she whispered, and Nod obligingly turned the bird around, and they zoomed off back to Moonhaven.
A quiet evening had fallen over the forest by the time they made it back to Moonhaven. Nod could see the courtyard path leading to the Queen's sanctuary. Ronin would be lurking nearby, as he always did, but with MK's predicament becoming increasingly more astounding, he no longer had the option to sneak out of reach of the Leafman general's anger.
The line of guards that stood out front of the inner sanctum twitched in surprise at Nod's brazen landing, right smack in the middle of them. He shooed Maia to go find her perch in the aviaries and led MK toward the entryway.
They almost reached the door without any commotion from his comrades, and Nod began to entertain hopes of talking his way past the last few guards between them and Queen Tara, when Ronin stepped out of the threshold.
As far as glares went, Nod still had to give MK the golden feather for that, but the fury that Ronin fixed on him just then definitely gave her a run for the prize.
"Where were you?" Ronin paced forward, and Nod danced away.
"Oh boy, now that's a long story that you really should hear before yelling at me," Nod said with a nervous smile.
"What excuse could you possibly have this time? What is the one thing I demand from every one of my soldiers after a fight? The one thing, Nod!" Ronin pressed the bridge of his nose in frustration.
"I had people looking for you all afternoon. Can you even imagine what I would have had to tell your mother…"
Nod cringed. Ronin pulled the Mother Card on him all the time, and it drove him crazy. "Ronin, I'm sorry. And look, I'm fine now; you can stop freaking out. It's not exactly fair that you hover over me more than anyone else. Besides, I had a legitimately good reason this time." He stepped aside to reveal a sheepish MK, hiding from the argument behind him.
"It's because you're the most reckless, disobedient—" Ronin froze mid-sentence at the sight of Nod's redheaded charge. "Who is she?"
"My legitimately good reason," Nod muttered, guiding MK into the threshold. "Can we please see Queen Tara? This is really important." At Ronin's skeptical gaze, he added, "It has to do with the Draíochta."
Ronin's glare faded into a frown, and finally, he pivoted and gestured for them to follow. Nod's shoulders sagged in relief.
"Who's the intense guy?" MK whispered.
"That's Ronin, the general of the Leafmen," Nod whispered back.
"Sounds like you're an even bigger troublemaker than I was led to believe," she said, and he shot her a look of mock-hurt.
"You don't know the half of it," Ronin said without turning around.
MK slapped a hand on her mouth in embarrassment that she'd been heard, and Nod made a face behind Ronin's back.
Nod took advantage of the ensuing silence to admire the Queen's chambers. He had only been inside twice before, and each time, different vines and flowers spiraled around the hollowed tree trunk that made up the sanctum. From the high ceiling, pinholes of starlight filtered down, showering them with pale blue that crisscrossed the golden glow of the vines saturated with the energy of the Draíochta. In the center of the hall, the foliage thickened to the point where Ronin had to brush aside the leaves in order to proceed.
"Forgot something?" called out Queen Tara, laughter thick in her voice. She sat amid a bed of flowers in the very center of the room. Above them, the vines were so dense, the moonlight no longer reached them. At the sight of the crowd and the pensive expressions they wore, her smile dropped.
"What's happened?" she asked, sitting up.
Ronin turned to Nod. "Yes, I'd really like to get my explanation now."
For a brief moment, Nod considered deferring the story to MK, but with Ronin's temper balancing on a thread, he decided to skip the mischief for once.
So he began. "This is MK. And she's a Stomper."
Next Friday is Chapter 3. Currently in the works: Chapter 7.