"She looks like she's gone twelve rounds with a cheese grater," Allie said, staring down into the nest bed that was currently functioning as the elf girl's hospital bed. The IV bag hung from a small branch Billy had grown for just the purpose, and she looked small and frail with the bandages wrapped around her emaciated frame.

"I think it's all road rash," Matt said from where he stood next to his wife, hands on his hips. "It looked like the Sentinel just basically slung her under its arm and carried her God knows how many miles through the jungle. Skin rubbing against rough stone, branches smacking into you as you go past… travel far enough like that, and we'd probably look like that too."

"You are certain she was the one watching me, too?" Allie asked, her eyes taking in the pitiful site with an unreadable expression on her face.

"The Sentinel, the one that's gonna be our new driveway, I mean, was carrying this." Matt reached into his waistband and drew Allie's missing pistol, the one she had lost in the fight with the gator-cats. "Pretty sure she grabbed it and ran, and then she lost it to Rocky Gibraltar back there."

Allie took the gun without really looking at it, then blinked, looked down, and quickly went through a few motions. Matt watched with half an eye as she checked the weapon over, the rest of his attention on the girl.

He remembered what he had felt when he'd found out that someone had been watching as Allie had almost checked out in her fight against the gator-cats. There had been shame that he hadn't been there to help her, but mixed in had been anger, almost a hatred, of the unseen person who had left his wife there to die.

Seeing the elf like this… All that anger evaporated, leaving him slightly ashamed he had ever had it in the first place. If she had looked like this when she'd watched Allie fighting the cats, then it made absolute sense that she hadn't intervened. It was a miracle she could stand, as emaciated as she was.

"The pistol is different," Allie said, locking the slide and peering into the firing chamber. "I am not sure what exactly is different, but I can feel it in the heft and the way it sits in the hand." She snapped the slide closed and peered at the weapon. "I think I will not use this until we can find out what has happened to it."

"You think it was something the Sentinels did?" Matt asked, finally tearing his eyes away from the elf.

Allie shrugged and tucked the pistol into the empty holster on her thigh. "It could be that. It could be she did something to it. It could be something else entirely. I do not have enough information to know." his wife looked back at the elf, then heaved a sigh and finally turned away. "Come. The soup should be done. We should eat."

"Yeah." Matt turned away as well after one last look, following Allie back to the campfire and the pots of food simmering there.

The two of them sat down next to each other on a log and started dishing up the meal. Matt had brought a bunch of tableware back from the Dilligaf, and the bowls were definitely getting a workout tonight. They worked in silence–companionable rather than the other kind–with Matt ladling up the delicious smelling frankensoup and Alejandra taking care of the side dishes. The sounds of the jungle around them were a muted hum of insects and bird calls, and a soft breeze rustled through the trees.

If Matt closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he was on a camping trip back on Earth. And even with them open, it had those same vibes. If he ignored some of the stranger things, anyway. Like Luc was deep in conversation with Billy some ways off; his son had a wicked grin on his face and was gesticulating wildly. Bel was checking out the forge, a pensive look on her face as she looked at the tools and down at the 'swords' belted around her waist. And Olivia was over by the river practicing something with her staff. Every now and then there would be a flash of light and sound, followed by laughter. She really liked that staff.

And Dinah was still playing with Mister Handerson. Which, if Matt was being honest, was probably the weirdest sight he'd seen since he got to the island, and that included the giant crab and the talking tree. The big snake-lion-thing had certainly been a… surprise when it had walked into the clearing carrying Dinah in three of its hands like a queen on a palanquin. But the girls had assured him that the critter was harmless now that a homicidal gingerbread man wasn't controlling it with stabby tentacles–not a phrase he thought he'd ever hear in normal conversation, incidentally–so he'd gone against his first instincts to tell them to put the thing back where they'd found it and instead had let Mister Handerson hang around.

He would be lying if he said he was completely comfortable around it, however. Which was why he was keeping his shotgun close at hand. Just in case.

"Alright Ninas," Allie finally called. "Come in for supper!"

The kids trickled in and sat down around the fire, accepting bowls of soup and veg from their parents and digging in with a gusto. Dinah was the last one, riding two of the Bargalest's hands in like a surf board.

"Thanks Onesie!" she said, patting the big snake-spider-barrel-thing on its wide nose. The creature made a deep rumble almost like a purr and nuzzled into the girl's palm.

Matt blinked. "Onesie?"

"Yeah," Dinah said, plopping down next to Luc so that her hip bumped into his and forced him further down the log.

"Hey!" Luc glared.

"Scooch over," Dinah said, grinning at the boy before looking back at Matt. "Your Mister Handerson joke was funny, Mister A, but it didn't quite fit. And like, just look at that face. He ain't a 'Neo'. Neo is a brooding loner with wrap-around shades and a trench-coat."

'Onesie' rumbled and shook himself, sending his mane of black fur rippling around his head.

"But ya really nailed it with 'Mister Handerson'," she continued, grinning. "So I figured, okay, what's a better name than 'neo'. And I realized, wait, in the movie, he's 'the One'. So, y'know, 'Onesie'. Neat, huh?"

Allie grinned over her bowl at Matt. "I think she makes an excellent point, mi corazon."

Well… And the critter was basically her pet… He probably should have let her have the naming rights from the get-go, shouldn't he.

"I think it's a great name," he said with a rueful grin. "And I'm sorry I jumped the gun."

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"Aw, it's okay. You're a boy. Boys do dumb things."

Liv, Isabel, and Allie all choked on their frankensoup.

"Woah, this tastes really good," Luc said utterly oblivious to the atmosphere around him. "How the heck does four different soups from a can taste this good?"

"Everything tastes better outdoors," Matt said with authority, grinning and spooning up some for himself. Then he blinked and stared at his bowl. "Okay, except this really does taste amazing."

"I am just that good," Allie said with a little grin. "You may now praise me for my cooking skills."

"Maybe the same thing that happened to the medicine happened to our canned goods?" Olivia said thoughtfully between spoonfuls. "Because wow this really does taste better than it should."

"I'm just glad it's not coldcuts," Bel mumbled around a mouthful of mixed vegetables. "I was about to go into sodium shock from all the baloney."

"No more coldcuts," Allie said, shaking her head. "I checked the cooler this morning. Unless you like your meat green. It's canned goods and living off the land from now on."

"Hunting?" Dinah perked up.

"Eventually, yes," Allie said. "But after today…"

"I know, I know," Dinah sighed. "Too dangerous. I get it."

"Actually, maybe not," Olivia said, her eyebrows drawing together in though. "Hey Hoolio, let me see the map again will you?"

"Hoomph." Hoolio coughed from where he was perched on a nearby branch munching on a stale cracker. The owl coughed again, covered his beak with his wing, and quickly finished chewing before clearing his throat and winging down to land next to Olivia on the log.

"Hoo," he said, pulling the map scroll from the Somewhere.

"Let me see here…" Liv frowned at the scroll. "Okay, so the hexes we've claimed have a green border around them… The ones we've explored have a yellow border, and the ones we haven't been to yet have a black border…"

Matt raised an eyebrow as his youngest daughter dissolved into mutters and mumblings, then chuckled and left her to it. "We will have to start augmenting our food sources soon, though," he said, picking up the conversation thread. "Eventually we're going to run out of soup, and it would be best to have a backup plan going before that happens."

"If we've explored a place and cleared out the monsters from it," Luc piped up around his spoon, "shouldn't that mean it's safe to hunt in?"

"Not if more monsters come in from other hexes, dummy," Bel said, giving her brother a Look. "It's not like just because we take down a boss monster suddenly there's this big glowing sign saying "all other monsters screw off this is a safe zone now".

"Okay yeah sure," Luc said, pulling the spoon out of his mouth and using it to point at his sister, "but like… We know where there are giant crabs, and we know they're delicious, so we could go hunt them. And Dinah saw those weird deer things and she wants to shoot them, so we could hunt those. And probably there are other monsters that are delicious too, so we could hunt those. We just gotta make sure that we don't get ambushed by any really big monsters, right?"

"And how are we gonna do that, genius?" Bel shot back, glaring. "Gonna set up a camera system or an alert system that goes off any time a 'big monster' comes close to us?"

"Well," Luc said, "why not? I mean, that's basically what Billy's eyestalks are, right?"

Conversation went quiet for a second, and even Liv looked up from her map, eyes going wide.

Luc looked around, then snorted. "You guys all forgot that Billy can grow eye-stalks in areas we've claimed, didn't you."

More silence.

"Hey Bill," Luc called up into the canopy. "How hard would it be for you to set up some eye-stalks in that hex Mom and the girls just cleared today?"

"It would require a small investiture of stored power," the tree said immediately in its rustling voice. "But there is more than enough in the storehouses for me to do such a thing."

"Storehouses?" Dinah asked.

"I think he means the coins we've been getting automatically every morning," Liv said, grabbing another scroll from Hoolio. "Remember, every hex we claim harvests coins for us? I think they get put in a treasury, and then I have to decide how they get doled out. I haven't really looked at it much because, well…" she flapped her arms around at their surroundings. "Kinda everything."

"We still need to claim the Dilligaf hex too," Dinah said, swallowing a mouthful of water from her canteen. "And if we're gonna be making armour and stuff from the ingots we found today, we should probably figure out what kinds of weaponry we all want. And I wanna see how exactly that forge can help with reloading, 'cause I really don't wanna give up my rifle if I can help it."

"Wait, you can give us coins?" Luc said, staring at Olivia. "Since when?"

"Uh, since I became Quaestor, I guess?" Liv shrugged. "The scroll says right now the 'empire' gets about ten coins a day just from the territory we've claimed, so I guess that means I can dole it out where it's needed. Or," she added, glancing up at the tree canopy overhead, "I can allow others to use it for what they need, like growing Billy's eye-stalks."

"We'd better figure out what we're going to do about the Bugs too," Isabel added with a frown. "Wherever they're coming from, they've obviously got us zeroed in and are sending things to take us out. If we'd met those things without Billy around to back us up, it might'a gone bad."

"It would also behoove you all to practice more with your abilities, as a group and as individuals," Toraline piped up from where Matt had leaned her against the log. "Your powers are great, but learning to use them effectively will force-multiply what you are capable of."

"I wonder if we're gonna see the fairies again," Dinah mused.

"I can't believe I missed actual fairies," Luc sighed. "At least it's kinda nice to know that we're not all alone here."

"We knew that before, dummy," Bel said, pointing her spoon at her brother. "When Mom's gun was stolen by the elf girl we've got back there."

"Well yeah," Luc said defensively, "but like, it's nice to know that we're not alone and that the other people aren't evil and trying to eat us."

"Fair point."

"I wonder if we should try to contact them again," Luc mused. "Hey, maybe we can set up like a trade deal with them or something! I wonder if they have anything good…"

Matt leaned back on his log and slurped his soup thoughtfully, then glanced over and caught Allie's eye. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he nodded back. Yeah, they were thinking the same thing.

Things were getting lost in the mix. At first it had been understandable. They had been thrown into a chaotic new world and, and everything immediately afterwards had been merely a mad struggle to survive. They had been bombarded with new information seemingly on an hourly basis, attacked by wild monsters, dealt with injuries, new powers, new ideas, new everything. It had been like trying to get a drink of water from the nozzle of a firehose.

Now though? Now they were becoming settled. They had a place of safety, they'd come to grips with their new world, they had their powers and knew–mostly–how they worked. They even had a sense of purpose in the world, exploring and growing the boundaries of their new home in order to make it more safe and secure, and to give them the tools and materials they needed to take it from just 'a place of safety' into well and truly 'home'.

The chaos of their first days were behind them, but they were still operating without a true plan or routine. And because of that, things slipped through the cracks.

Matt and Allie, one parent to another, communicated without words as the children fell to talking and companionable bickering around the campfire. It was time to start getting organized.

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