Chapter 107: Prata

“Rocks, rocks. So many rocks. It’s rock day, and on rock day, we carry rocks,” Lily chanted.

Arthur and Lily were on about their fifth lap between the makeshift quarry and home. Since the morning, everyone had been invigorated by new tea, new tasks, and the general excitement of building new homes.

“Yes. Are you bored, Lily?” Arthur asked. “I can’t help but notice you’ve written a rock song.”

“I’m not bored. I’m excited. We get to build our own houses. I get my own house. I’m a kid and I get my own house. It won’t be big, but Spiky says the plans we made allows it to get bigger later. Mizu says she can get plumbing working for a toilet next week if Rhodia makes me one.” Lily giggled. “An actual toilet, Arthur. Not a terrible shed with a hole in the ground. An inside toilet.”

“That quick? She works hard.”

“She says there’ll be pumps in every house in a month, as soon as Milo can make metal pipes or Rhodia figures out clay ones that won’t fall apart. And running water later. She hasn’t figured that out yet.”

“I’m going to be honest, you already sold me with the whole indoor toilet thing.” Arthur said. “Let’s drop off these blocks and get back to it. I figure we can do a hundred trips today, if we hustle.”

Arthur could carry several blocks in his arms, so long as he didn’t move very fast. Lily couldn’t carry nearly as many, but she had the advantage of using the cart Arthur normally loaded his tea into. With all the various specialized pot-holders and heating elements stripped off, it was strong and spacious enough to carry several blocks as well.

For now, they were shooting for making everyone a basic home, one with a living area, a bedroom, a kitchen space, and a room that would eventually be a bathroom. None of the houses would be spacious by any means, but Spiky and Leena had worked hard on finding established designs that were easy to extend into larger homes later.

As Arthur and Lily got to the site of her new house, she stopped and referenced a piece of paper in her pocket, then pointed at a few places on the ground. “There and there. That will finish up the corners, at least on the ground. Make sure they’re actually touching the other stones, Milo said, or they won’t seal up.”

“Got it.” Arthur carted his stones over, made sure they lined up with what was already there, and dropped them into position. The Slapstone was magical enough to join back up with itself over time, which meant a home entirely without seams. “It’s weird that this stuff even exists. It’s like it wants to be houses.”

“It probably does,” Lily said. “That’s why they say that thing. Skills and Slapstone.”

“I haven’t heard that.” Arthur huffed as he picked up another load of stone. “What’s it mean?”

“It’s supposed to be proof that the system loves us. Everyone has skills, so they can make people’s lives better. And Slapstone grows just enough so that people can cheat a little when they need to. So skills and Slapstone are how you know the system is good. You didn’t have a saying like that on Earth?”

“We did. But it was about cheese.”

“No way.”

“It was.”

Lily scowled, raised her finger, and opened her mouth to argue before a look of comprehension washed over her face. “Actually, that’s really hard to argue with. Cheese is really good.”

“It is,” Arthur said. “It’s even better here than it was there, too. Even better proof, I guess.”

It took a few minutes to get the entire load of magic rock down, and another few to make sure everything was lined up well. Arthur estimated that they only needed a couple more trips to fill out the edges of the house and set the foundation. And by the end of the day, they might even have a couple of the walls done. He walked back to the quarry with Lily, a smile on his face.

“Milo! Another load,” Arthur called. Milo put down his hammer and chisel and started hauling rock as soon as he heard Arthur’s voice. “I’m going to go with you this time. I’m way ahead of the game on cutting. It’ll give me a chance to get some of the dust out of my eyes.”

“It’s unbelievable that it cuts like that.” Arthur ran his fingers across the very-nearly-square bricks of Slapstone. “You just make a small line, and then hit the chisel with your hammer? And it cracks on that line?”

“Yup. It’s magical stuff. Anyone with a chisel can cut perfect bricks. Of course, mine are just a little more perfect than most,” Milo bragged.

They loaded up the cart while Milo tied up a huge stack of bricks and threw it over his shoulder. Halfway back, Arthur, not Lily, saw the tracks.

“Oh, look, it’s the little one’s prints,” Arthur said. “I wonder what it's doing all the way out here. Lith said they stayed in a pretty small area.”

“The big prints aren’t here. I wonder if he’s lost.” Lily looked worried. “Do you think we should find him?”

Arthur wanted to. More than Lily knew. But whatever these animals were, they were a mother and child pairing. It wouldn’t matter if they were gentle under normal circumstances. One wrong move spelled bad news with pretty much any beast when their children were threatened.

Before Arthur could push down his regret and tell Lily no, the animal itself made the refusal a moot point. There was a crashing low down in the brush, and a small animal rolled through, having tripped and sent itself into a full forward somersault. It landed heavily on its butt, mewling pathetically at its own clumsiness.

Arthur had seen bears back on earth. They were great. He had learned not to talk about them here the way he felt about them there. Given that The Bear loomed so heavily in their history, him describing them as chubby joy-balls with silly faces probably wouldn’t have gone over well, no matter how affectionately he said it. And in most ways, this wasn’t a bear. The snout was longer and more wolf-like. The legs were thinner, and the body somehow a little wider.

But it was a loose-hided omnivore with a chubby body, shiny black fur, and an overall impression of mushy, ambling, yet limitless power. Everything in Arthur confirmed that this was a bear cub. And it was absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent awesome.

The bear saw them, paused, then fell over backwards from the momentum of its own fright. It sat back up, regarded them hopefully, then started walking towards them.

“What’s the play here, Milo?” Arthur said, sweeping Lily behind him with his hand.

“No sudden moves. The baby is safe enough, but we wouldn’t want mom to get confused,” Milo said, dropping his load of Slapstones.

The baby bear, who was supposedly safe, was fast approaching, walking on its just-a-bit-too-long legs towards Arthur. It stopped a few inches away, snuffling at Arthur’s pants leg curiously. After it had satisfied itself of whatever baby bears are curious about, it looked up, sat backwards, and wailed. Not cried, not whined, but wailed at Arthur as if it was absolutely sure that Arthur could do something about its problems.

“Oh, hey, buddy. It’s… okay. It’s gonna be fine.” The bear, or Prata if Arthur was remembering correctly, kept on wailing. It was not, it seemed, one to be reassured with mere words alone.

“Arthur, do something. It’s so sad,” Lily said.

“I see that, Lily. I really do. I just don’t want to get eaten by its mom. Or get you eaten.”

“Oh, that’s probably fine now.” Lith fell out of a tree, startling the bear again and momentarily stopping its wails.

“Whoa!” Arthur yelled. “Lith, you have to give me some warning when you do that.”

“Sorry, sorry. I was trying to keep on top of this situation. I could do that better from stealth. But if the mom was around, she’d be here by now. They’re pretty fast when they need to be. Something’s happened to her.”

“But what? I’m assuming that they're big enough animals to take care of themselves.” Arthur eyed the baby bear that was big enough to probably eat him and still have room for dessert.

Lith shrugged. “There’s always someone bigger. Although I admit not many, when you are talking about Pratas.”

As if it were listening to the conversation, the little cub got back on its feet, leaned forward, and grabbed Arthur’s pants leg with its teeth, tugging him towards the it he had just crashed out of. When Arthur didn’t move, it pulled hard and lost his grip, flopped over, and began mewling before grabbing at Arthur’s pants leg again.

“Uh, Arthur? I think it’s trying to take you somewhere,” Lily commented helpfully.

“I can see that. But I’m not sure I want to go,” Arthur said.

“But he’s so cute! I mean, look at him.”

“I agree. He’s very cute. Presumably, his mother is a full-sized death monster. That’s the part I’m worried about.”

“Arthur. Try moving away,” Lith whispered. “Ten yards or so. See what he does.”

Arthur did, pulling his pants leg out of the little fur-beast’s mouth and jumping several feet back. The little bear complained and chased, then chased again when Arthur approached the others.

“The way I see it, you are in trouble either way,” Lith concluded. “This little guy is determined, and he might find you, no matter where you go. You never know when mom will be there, and I won’t always be watching you.”

“I get that, but what’s the upside?”

“That I don’t know. But this isn’t normal behavior for these beasts, Arthur. Not even the cubs. Something’s happening here. I just don’t know what.”

Arthur sighed. “Lily, no arguments allowed, go back with Milo. I’m going to go see what’s happening, but I absolutely refuse to do it if you come along. It’s too dangerous.”

“What about you?” Lily almost yelled. “It’s not like you can fight off a full-sized Prata any better than I can.”

“I’ll have Lith. I think. Lith, can you follow along stealthily, just in case?” Arthur said.

Lith nodded. “I can. And Lily, he’s right. I can’t keep an eye on both of you nearly so well as I can just one. It’s either that, or, I hate to say it, doing something to keep this baby from following Arthur. And all the options for that are bad.”

Lily gulped, nodded, and turned to head back to the Slapstone quarry. “I’m going, okay? But you better not get hurt. I’ll be mad if you do.”

Arthur nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll be careful.”

As soon as Lily was out of sight, Arthur finally took a step in the direction the cub was pulling. The cub looked up at him quizzically, let go of his pants, and took another step backwards. Arthur followed. The cub then turned and walked towards the brush at full speed, only stopping to make sure Arthur was following every several seconds. Lith nodded at Arthur, then disappeared into the trees himself, leaving Arthur feeling very alone with a very confused bear cub in an unfamiliar part of the wilderness.

The cub had none of those worries. If anything, it seemed relieved to have finally gotten its message across. Arthur followed it for the better part of ten minutes, praying that Lith was keeping up in the background, until he finally saw the only thing that counted as an explanation for the new and interesting problem he was now having to deal with.

Out in the middle of the woods, there had once been an enormous tree. It now laid flat on the forest floor, brought down by some unknown force. That was normal enough, except for the fact that when the tree came up, it had dragged its entire root structure with it. And it was a tree that, for better or worse, had a lot of roots. The hole it had left behind in the ground was enormous, more than big enough to hold a small house.

Or, as was the case here, a very large and concerned mother-beast, snarling at the strange creature that had stolen its child.