Before we head off to our great adventure, we decide to show each other what we can do. He makes Illusions, big scary monsters that can be used to herd creatures in a certain direction. He also can make the Illusion of the same creature and make it calm down. He can make us look like certain animals. His Illusions are not great yet, they are kind of see through and don’t take in the environment. It turns out that Russell is skilled with a knife and with setting traps. I transformed into my German shepherd form first, behind a large rock of course, Russell may be cute, but I am not getting naked in front of him. Russell sat on a rock and spent the first ten minutes just petting my head and staring at me in amazement. I let him because now I know why dogs let us pet them like we do, it feels good. Really good. “I have never seen a canine like this before. The color and the shaggy fur kind of look like bigger Rashin. The Rashin are the farm canines that take care of the Resan and the Kiern. Oh, the Resan and Kiern are the most common grazing farm animals in these areas. We use their milk to cook. I like Kiern milk the best. Makes a good rich cheese.” This boy is babbling but he is good with those hands so I let him. Eventually he stops and realizes that he is just petting me and babbling away. He flushes again and lifts his hand off my head. I stand up and lunge for the target that we set up and show him my improved bite skill. Then I switch to my Kitsune form. I can see the hearts in Russell’s eyes. Yeah I don’t blame him, Kitsune are adorable. I still want a plushie of one that I can just hug and hug and hug. I am a little afraid that he is going to try to hug me, but he does have some restraint. He is vibrating there on his rock, and his hands are white with how hard he is gripping the rock, but he is still sitting there and not trying to hug me. I show him my much weaker bite, and then do a little will-o-wisp action then launch all five of my fireballs at the target and burn it to ash. Russell starts to clap. “That fire attack is strong! If we set this up right we can do some major damage!” He looks down at his hands for a second. “Can I pet you?” He asks quietly. I really don’t blame him, I am adorable, and he really is good at petting. I trott over to him and since I am much, much smaller in this form, I jump up into his lap. I look up and see the delight on his face as he strokes my ears. Best massage ever. I may or may not admit to staying like that for a few hours. What can I say, I fell asleep at one point. Man do animals have it good.
Once I was back to my very respectable human form and properly dressed with my wild hair tamed with a leather hair tie. I am slightly surprised that Russell had one on him, but with how crazy his hair is, I could see him needing one for when it gets a little long. We head off to the forest, the one with the canines that I need to get. “It is going to take us a few days to get there.” Russell informs me as we travel along the coast. “Is there a reason why we are following the coastline?” Russell blushed a bit, he does that a lot. “Fresh seafood is the best. The Crab eaters look scary but they taste really good when you cook the legs. If we run into some S’leni they might give us some of the reject seafood from their shipments to the collectors.” Huh, what? Oh I said that out loud. “The S’leni bring seafood to government officials who sell them. Seafood is Darva’s biggest industry. In other countries the people pay the officials and then collect the seafood from the S’leni. If you catch them at the right time they might be willing to give you some of the fish and things that do not sell.” It sounds like a strange system “What do the S’leni get out it?” Russell looked at me, “You know, I don’t know how they are paid. They spend most of their time under the water. I have only seen them when they are bringing and selling their goods.” Russell looked lost in thought for a moment then shook his head. “Anyway that is why we are going along the ocean. Is there a problem with that? We can move more inland if you want.” I shook my head. “No, no problem. I was just wondering if there was any special reason. I have killed a few of those crab eating spiders and have not tried eating them. Too creepy for me, I actually thought they might be poisonous.” Russell gave me an odd look, “Don’t you have the Analyze skill, and you said that you have the Scavenger skill. It should have told you that they were not poisonous.” I felt myself flush, with how many times he has blushed I am probably due for one. Fair is fair. “To be honest my Analyze skill is a little low. Spiders in my old world are all poisonous. I also have a fair phobia for the things. I was too busy trying not to scream and run to stay around and try to figure out what is going on with it’s gross disgusting corpse.”
“I’m getting the feeling that you don’t like spiders. These aren’t spiders though. They are Crab Eaters. Spiders are found more inland and they are poisonous. We will have to make plans for when we come across some.” Great, there are spiders here, and he makes them sound big, and dangerous. Just my luck. If I get killed by a Spider then me and that God Darvin are going to have words and the words are going to turn into my teeth in his stupid face. I am not sure why I feel like ripping the guy’s throat out, but I do. It might be a side effect of the canine influence. The guy is a wolf, and my inner canine is dying to literally take a bite out of him. It really is just bad planning on his part. He is the one who made me part canine. Russell seems a bit confused by the sudden hostility coming off from me, but I do not feel like explaining my newfound canine rage. I turn, grab my beat up pack and head off down the beach, leaving a confused Russell to run after me.
I get my first real look at what Russell can do when we come across a large group of Crab Eaters. I pull out my Analyze skill to watch the health bars of my targets. We agree to lure them one at a time to me in my German shepherd form, I attack from the front and Russell takes it on from behind. He conjures up some imaginary crab and has the Eaters running around trying to catch them. He leads them over one by one to our death trap and I lunge from the front, my powerful teeth taking a large chunk of its health as Russell drives his knife into its brain. That kills it, and then we remove the corpse, all the while the illusionary crabs are still giving the other Eaters the run around. One by one he held the illusions and led the group of six Crab Eaters to their death. By the end of it we have a large pile of legs to eat. Turns out Russell has the Cooking skill. His food is the most delicious thing that I have tasted since coming to this world. I am not sure what he even cooked the meat in, but it was salty and tasty. He grilled them over the open fire that I started in my Kitsune form. To eat it we did the same thing that you do to eat crab. The crack is not the same, since it is not the shell of a crab. The snap was more muted and a soft pop. The skin is more leathery and thin, but breaks easy enough when cooked. I can see myself eating this a lot. I do hope that there are more food varieties in the near future. As good as this is, I don’t want to eat only it. “Where did you learn to cook so well?” I asked, and my mouth was definitely not full at the time. Russell shrugged and swallowed, I did not speak with my mouth full, I am only a part-time animal. “My Father and his people do not approve of eating meat, but I learned how to cook it from my Mother. She and her people love meat. I can make a wide variety of meals. I didn’t learn how to make seafood until I came out this way. I actually learned about seafood and how to best eat them when I met the S’leni. For a race of people that eat their food raw while they live in the water, they know how to cook while they are on land.” That is a bit surprising. From Russell’s explanation, it seems like most S’leni spend most of their lives in the water. How does that work anyway? Oh I said that last part out loud again. I think that I need to work on that a bit, because I spent a little too much time alone this last month. “I have never seen a S’leni while they are in the water. One of them told me once that they have scales and tails and fins and swim faster than any boat. That is all that they would tell me though. Not the most talkative people the S’leni.” We finished the food and I have never been more full. I was not sure that I was going to be able to walk after eating all that food. “Next time we need to eat less, or at least catch less.” Russell nodded in agreement and we packed up our belongings, took out our sleeping gear and chose who would take first watch. It is nice to have someone on watch. After winning the game of cat, dog and bird, a game very similar to rock paper scissors. Only rock was the dog, paper the bird and scissors the cat. Was not hard to figure out, I settled into my pretty ragged Wooly Claw furs and had the best sleep of my new life.
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