The frog does indeed look discolored and a little ill.
It is odd for a frog, especially one that doesn't feel well, to aggressively attack a group of people.
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Ives breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
The town people are safe; that woman somehow made the frog people fall asleep. The frog doesn't look well. The water problem?
He whispers again. "Doggy, do you mean that the sour water killed the naiad? It didn't get in a fight with anything or... anyone? Like one of these town people?"
"Yep. No fight. Maybe it was the water. I don't like the taste."
"It's odd that this frog attacked us in the first place," Teleri says. "And look -- those patches of its skin look discolored. I think it's ill. How curious..." she hesitates for a moment.
"Come on, let's go," she says. "We need to get clear before it wakes up, then patch up Madog and get him back to town. I presume there's a healer in town?" she asks as she starts leading her small crew back the way they came.
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Ives follows quietly and behind by a large distance, but his interest is in the water as they get closer to town.
Where is all the bad water coming from? I wonder if the town... is putting something in it? How disgusting! I would not be surprised though, that town people would do something like that.
. Ives smells the water and keeps his eyes on it, trying to see where the bad water comes from. He looks for small incoming creeks and studies any little springs as well.
Springs are often found in sections of watercress, or when a goopy brown substance sits on the bank...
Ives spots several springs and small creeks feeding into the larger river but they all seem pure! Whatever is polluting the water is farther upstream.
The guard and the boy nod and help the wounded man walk along. His face is very pale and he appears to be in a great deal of pain. You leave the frog, which looks a little underweight to you as well, and head back north toward Pentrefan. The rugged terrain and the distance begin to wear on you, especially with the wounded man.
As you pass by a particularly densely-wooded section, you hear two slight whizzing noises. A man behind Teleri calls out. She turns and sees that the guard who had not previously been hurt has been wounded!
Two small-sized, blunt arrows lie on the ground. They came from the thickly-wooded copse to the east. One of them struck the man and the other missed.
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Ives can't see the arrows on the ground, but he certainly heard the man cry out, which causes him to pop his head up from examining the river! The man is hunched over, clearly injured.
What is going on in my woods?!? No one is allowed to get hurt here, not even town people, if I can do something about it!
Ives starts running forward as fast as he can.
"What is it?" Teleri asks, turning quickly at Dylan's cry of pain.
"I've been shot," Dylan yells.
"Shot!" Teleri exclaims, and scans the trees for any sign of the assailants, but see nothing.
"Uh ... take cover, I guess?" she says, and puts action to word, dropping prone by a low hummock and peering cautiously around.
Teleri's companions aren't sure what to do but Teleri's suggestion sounds like a very good one! They rush to cover and throw themselves flat on the ground.
ou notice two dark shapes moving about in the trees but can't see them very well! Two more arrows come flying in from the eastern copse. One goes wide by such a large distance that you wonder what it's purpose is. The other flies with pin-point accuracy and manages to hit Teleri's exposed foot! Now Teleri can't help but notice that this is a small-sized, blunt arrow.
Despite the damage, Teleri manages to fire off her spell! One dark shape slumps to the ground while the other totters for a moment but stays up!
"OW!" Teleri yells. This day has been hard on my feet, she thinks. Lifting her head up, she spots the two assailants, shoves back her bonnet, and throws out a hand towards them. She smiles when both of them slump to the ground.
"I got them, they're asleep," she says. "Madog, Dylan, could you secure them please? Alive. I want to know who attacked us, and why. I imagine SBC will also be curious as to who shot at their employees without provocation. I don't suppose either of you have rope?"
Teleri turns her head sharply at this new voice suddenly coming from behind her, ready to face some other unanticipated threat. But the plant-boy's words ease her concerns -- a bit.
With as much dignity as possible, Teleri hauls herself off the ground. Streaks of moss and dirt mar the front of her brown dress. She ignores them rather than calling attention to her dishevelment by brushing at them.
"Ah ... I believe we will be fine, sir," she says primly. "We have been assaulted by unknown ruffians, but I believe we suffered no more than a few bruises; and our assailants have decided to take a nap." She looks back at Madog and Dylan. "Best secure them quickly, gentlemen; they'll be waking up soon."
"And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?" she asks the plant boy.
While Teleri and Ives meet, visibility gets even worse in the copse of trees! You notice that a fog has rolled in, with suspicious rapidity!
Madog and Dylan look very hesitantly at the foggy woods and don't want to head into that fog!
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Suddenly noticing that this group of town people is able to take care of themselves, Ives feels very silly for running out like that. All his defensive instincts tell him to run back in the woods! Instead, he stammers out... "I... um... this... um... yes..." As he struggles, the fog comes in.
Ives starts, confused at this. "Wha--- what is happening?"
"Blast!" Teleri mutters. "I thought they were both asleep."
The fog lies silently on the clustered trees. No sounds are coming from there anymore.
Ives can't see or hear anything coming from the fog. But he does judge the fog to be about 40 ft across.
This looks like a fog cloud spell or spell-like effect.
"One of them must be a magician of some sort," Teleri says. "They've conjured up a fog cloud. I bet they're using it to cover their escape! Well, not if I can help it!" And with that she rushes into the cloud as quickly as her poor, abused feet will allow.
Teleri plunges through the fog and the woods, somehow avoiding tripping on the thick carpet of tree roots. She races out of the other side of the mists and finds herself looking at a blue, naked, humanoid figure on the river bank. The figure glances over its shoulder at her with impossibly bright, blue eyes and slips into the water with an unreadable expression on its face. It glides deeper and downstream rapidly, disappearing in the moving surface of the river.
"Well!" Teleri says, hands on her hips. "That certainly explains a lot. They must have thought we killed their friend."
Teleri trudges back through the slowly-dissipating fog cloud, looking carefully for any signs of the second figure. I only saw one slip away, she thinks. Perhaps the other is still napping by a tree.
The figure Teleri saw was probably female but it's hard to say. It was definitely medium sized. She does see some disturbed ground.
She finds no unconscious blue people.
"Well, they got away," she reports to the others. "I got a good look at one of them, though -- it was a blue person who slipped into the river and swam away. Perhaps they thought we killed their friend. If so, the attack certainly makes a lot more sense." She sits on a rock, wearily listening to her feet throb.
"Naiads? Is that what they are?" Teleri says blankly. "I'm sorry, I don't think I've ever heard of such a creature before. I'm even more 'from town' than these gentlemen --" she gestures towards Rhys, Madog, and Dylan, "-- as I only just arrived from Dinas Diwydiant this morning."
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"Ummmm... yeah. Naiads. Water fairies. They ah... ummm... like water? They live in it. Water has been gross recently."
Without another word to the town folk, Ives walks over to the river and sticks his head in and starts yelling in Sylvan.
"Øya du naiads, hvorfor angrep du denne damen?" Oy you naiads, why did you attack this lady?
Teleri watches in mild puzzlement, rising to profound astonishment, as the strange young man strides into the river and shoves his face into the water.
Bits of water slosh about as the young man apparently begins speaking. Large bubbles mixed with incoherent bits of noise make it to the surface.
"You know," she says, very quietly, "I do believe he may be mad."
I've doesn't get a response from his water yelling but that doesn't surprise him. It only ever worked that one time and the naiad told him to please stop being a nuisance. Ives also know that the naiads are respected and rather mysterious as well as peaceful and wise by reputation.
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Ives pulls his head out of the water and rolls over to sit normally. From this close up, Teleri can see that Ives hair is laced with green vines and leaves, and there are little white and yellow flowers growing in the mix. And his dark skin, which she saw from a distance, has patches of bark on it.
"You know... naiads. Sound goes really far underwater so I thought maybe they would hear me. Do you... uh... do you know that I found a naiad dead just over there? I wonder... if ummm... maybe these thought you killed her. You are from the town." He says this last sentence a little accusingly, and looks at her from the sides of his eyes, as if waiting to see how Teleri responds to the insult.
"Were you the one that moved the body, then?" she demands. "Why? That's going to make it a lot harder to do my job, you know."
"And," she adds, "I'm not from the town. I'm from the City."
The wounded guards and the boy from town get up slowly and carefully. They look uncertainly at the wild boy of the woods. "Um... Miss... What's going on? Should we help with something? Can we go home now?"
The dogwood yells at you from far away, as loudly as it can "Hey! What about my reward!?!"
"I ... see," says Teleri after this peculiar outburst. "Well, uh ... I'm glad that the plants have such a solicitous friend." She smiles. And nods. And edges slightly away.
Turning to Rhys, Madog, and Dylan, she continues "Yes, we should go back now. Hopefully without any further violence. Just one last thing." Leaning down, she retrieves a couple of the arrows that the naiads shot at them for later examination.
"Well, sir," she says to the plant-boy. "Thank you for your ... assistance, and we'll just leave you to it then, shall we?"
And with that, she nods politely to him, and -- unless he moves to stop her -- returns to plodding wearily back towards Pentrefan.
Madog and Dylan, wounded as they are, willingly turn back to Pentrefan with no curiosity. But Rhys can't contain himself. He turns to Ives "You can talk to plants? My ma said some of the elves can do that too... But you don't look like an elf. What are you?" Magod and Dylan look exasperated with the boy. "C'mon, lad. Let's get back to town. Right Miss? Just get back to town. That's all we need to do. Nobody expects a young lass from the city to come figure all this out for us. You've done plenty."
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Talking to a boy younger than himself, Ives gets a little more confidence. "What I am? I am a human of course! I just decided to get away from that town and all of its problems. I live in the woods, with Mother Tree, Uncle Spruce, Aunt Hickory, and all the others. If you are smart, you will leave town too. A terrible place!"
Rhys' eyebrows shoot up when Ives insists he's human. "Oh! Really? But you live with trees? And why do you say the town is terrible? We were starving before we came to Pentrefan. Now we have food every day."
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"Bad things come from town. It is where the bad people are! Look! Look at this water! It is sour. All the plants alongside it are crying out in pain! The town has poisoned our water. Dogwood told me that the naiad died from the water. So I am trying to find out where the poison is coming from."
Perhaps using this word "poison" for the first time awakes something in Ives.
He looks at Teleri. "You seem very smart and powerful. You cast magic spells! Help me find this poison."
Teleri had paused to listen to the conversation between Rhys and the plant boy. When he addresses her, she flushes and looks to one side a moment, frowning. "Yes," she says in a cold tone, "I cast magic spells. A few. But it's not something I generally advertise. I wouldn't have today, except ..."
She trails off without finishing the sentence, and then abruptly changes the subject. "So the water is poisoned, you say? Interesting. Let's see." She pulls a small vial from her belt pouch, walks to the water's edge and fills it. She holds it up against the light for a moment, letting it grow still.
"It looks like perfectly normal water to me. But looks can be deceiving." Cautiously, she takes a very small sip of it, rolls it round her mouth like a wine taster, and then spits it out.
Finally, she reluctantly traces the motions of a spell, keenly aware of the others watching her.
Teleri finds the water ever so slightly sour and bitter but she can barely pick up on this. It is certainly not magical.
Rhys looks surprised and confused at Ives' accusation. "Poisoning? Why would the town poison the water? We're not poisoning anything!"
Whatever tracks you might have hoped to find seem to have been erased. It's almost as if there's been a rush of water over where the tracks otherwise might have been.
You do make out a small imprint in the ground. You're not sure what it is! The imprint is about four inches across.
"Do you have a name, sir?" Teleri inquires of the plant boy. "Mine is Teleri ver Rhosyn."
She glances up at the sun, growing steadily lower in the sky. "And although I am definitely interested in discovering what's wrong with the water, the past few hours have shown me that I am poorly equipped to go haring about the wilderness. Also, my companions and I have been attacked twice in the last hour, and require medical attention -- particularly Madog, who suffered a rather nasty bite from that giant frog."
"So: no, I will not go with you just now. If you wish to work together, we can meet up tomorrow morning, about ten 'o clock, after I have had an opportunity to get some supplies."
She glances about. "And though I would like to speak with these naiads, it seems they will be difficult to find. They've cleared their tracks."
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"My name is Ives Tunn...Ives. Just Ives. I will help you, and you help me. I want to stop this sour water before the plants get sick. Let's meet right here. Just us, right?"
Ives decides at the last moment not to share his last name. This woman is going back to town, and I don't want her to find ma and pa. Better that she not know where I am from.
With that, he turns around and runs back into the woods, waving once.
"Very well," Teleri nods.
What would Mrs. Owens think of me? she wonders. Agreeing to a private meeting in the forest with a man, not twenty minutes after meeting him! It's most unseemly. And ... at a deeper level, not even articulated, Teleri made the uncomfortable observation that her mother had once made a very similar choice.
"What a peculiar person," Teleri says aloud after he's safely out of earshot.
"All right, let's get back to town. I sincerely hope we're not in for any further surprises along the way. But best keep a sharp lookout." And so saying, she begins walking back to town.
As you return back into the woods, you hear a slight rustling from a bush. Then a large shape leaps out at you! It's the frog! He's woken up and decided to follow the tracks! He bites you and grabs onto you.
Now you are close enough to notice that there is a small, red gemstone peeking from under the skin on the frog's head.
You head back into town and arrive with your limping guards. Rhys breathes "Oh boy! I can't wait to tell everyone what happened!" The two guards lurch toward an SMC building with Infirmary painted on it. Molly, along with a couple other workers, come out of their huts to see what is going on. Trenton hears their surprised murmuring and also comes out to take a look.