Beka works on learning to cook, and collecting water, and singing, and painting the treehouse as it goes up, and playing with Kat.

Bonesaw also plays with Kat! One day she wakes up early and does some surgery so that she can play with Kat better.

"I got your nose!" she says, popping Kat's now detachable nose off her face.

"Uuuuubb!" says Kat.

"Where'd your nose go?" she asks, holding said nose behind her back, "Where'd it go?"

"Bah."

Bonesaw brings her hands back around, the nose stuck on top of one of her fingers.

"Can you find the nose?"

"Beh, beh." Armwave armwave.

Did you... take her nose... off of her face? asks Beka from where she's getting water from the stream.

Yep!

"You found it!" Bonesaw declares, poking Kat in the bellybutton with the nose. 

Why? What if she loses it?

I wanted to play the nose game! I can always make her a new one if she loses it.

But then she wouldn't have a nose while you were making it! Are you going to detach more of her?

I don't plan to? It's fine for her not to have a nose for a bit - she just won't be able to smell.

I knew a guy who lost his nose - like in a fight not this way - and it seemed to give him some problems.

Oh if you don't detach someone's nose properly it might do that.

Well, I guess you did it properly... are you going to do any other stuff to her?

Probably?

Like what?

I don't know yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. Why?

I dunno if she likes surprises.

I'm not sure she thought it was surprising at all.

Well right now she's a baby and nothing's surprising really because she doesn't know how things work but when she gets older she might not like it.

That would be unfortunate!

Yeah!

Hopefully she grows up like you,

I guess that'd be convenient.

What're you working on today?

A sort of metal refining fungus, since I can't get metal from other places out here. Also trying to get another marshmallow type for the Lucky Charms shaped right.

Oh, how's it supposed to be shaped? She's coming back into view with her water haul and a fish she caught now.

Like the moon - oh I suppose you don't know what that is. The moon is a giant rock that goes around the planet I'm from and comes out at night and shines brightly. The Lucky Charms version looks like this:

Though the moon is only a crescent like this sometimes.

Huh. I could try to carve a mold for that shape?

Oh that would be helpful - my power isn't always cooperative about getting the exact shape I want Rather than some other shape it thinks is pretty.

I didn't know it thought things were pretty or not! She puts Kat in her shirt and sets about carving.

Bonesaw can return Kat's nose.

I'm pretty sure it does! Hard to tell but it adds pretty things when it thinks what I'm designing is otherwise boring.

After a few hours of working Bonesaw asks Beka what they'll be having for dinner.

"Fish and acorns!"

"Yum!"

Bonesaw will happily set the table before dinner, humming a song to herself as she does.

Ooh, is it a pretty tune?

The fish is raw but Beka got most of the bones out and the acorns are shelled.

It is a pretty tune!

"You know you could cook the fish if you wanted?"

"But this is good too." Bonesaw hastily adds to be polite.

"It looked like your project was on the coals, I didn't want to risk moving it. Maybe we should have two fires?"

"Oh it would have been fi- okay actually it's probably good you didn't move it."

"Having two fires sounds good, I can change the fire suppression system so it will cover a second fire tomorrow."

"I'll get extra firewood. It'd be easier if I had an axe or something..."

"Hm... I can make it so that your ulnar bone has a reinforced serrated edge that you can push out of your skin when you need to cut wood?"

"I don't think I could cut down a tree that way. Maybe it'd work for sawing off branches but it sounds pretty awkward to be up a tree and using my arm to saw..."

"You can also use it as an axe if you swing it right? Also it'd be like, really sharp and a pretty long blade so it might be easier to saw down a tree with it than you think, so long as the tree isn't thicker than your forearm."

"Also it'd be a bone saw," Bonesaw adds, giggling.

"Most of the trees around here are thicker than that! Probably two fires isn't enough to need that much wood anyway though, I'm not having trouble finding stuff yet."

"Most of the trees aren't but I bet enough of them are, but if we don't need it yet I can work on my other projects for now."

"If you get metal refining maybe there'll be enough to make a regular axe."

"Oh yeah, I guess there will be."

Even if that sounds boring.

"Can you tell me another story tonight, like you did when we were in the hallucination?"

"Sure!

"Once upon a time there were three sisters. The oldest sister was clever and the middle sister was friendly and the youngest sister was brave.

"One day, their favorite grandmother disappeared! The oldest sister said, "I'll go look for her in the mausoleum. I'd know those teeth anywhere. And everyone winds up there sooner or later." So she went to the ossuary, and looked at skulls and jaws and tusks and molars, but couldn't find her grandmother's bones anywhere. Wherever she was, she hadn't been interred there.

"The middle sister said, "I'll go ask people from far away if they've seen her. She can't have gone too far, so someone may have seen her, even if they only got a glimpse while she was on her way." So she went to the far reaches of Angband, down in the sub-basements and up on the parapets and even out on the patrols, and told everyone about her grandmother and asked if they'd seen her, but no one told her anything useful.

"The youngest sister said, "I'll go ask the balrog." And her sisters said, no, no, don't do that! Don't bring down those firey whips on our family! Don't you know a balrog is just this side of his lordship? If our grandmother has been so much as noticed by a balrog, there's no saving her now! But the youngest sister was determined. She marched right up to the balrog who oversaw their part of the fortress and demanded to know if he had seen their grandmother. And then he ate her. The end."

"Huh, she didn't make the Balrog tell her where the grandmother went?"

"No, because he ate her. - I don't think they really eat but in the version I heard he ate her."

"And she couldn't... stop him?"

"No, how would she do that?"

"I don't know just uh, the bed time stories I'm used to have the person they're about doing the eating usually. Like if the Balrog was the main character instead of the girls."

"I guess you could tell it that way but it seems like a less interesting story if it's, one day a balrog may or may not have eaten somebody's grandma, and then a girl walked up to him and asked him something and he ate her."

"Oh usually it's more uh, a bunch of people were trying to get the Balrog to do a thing and it avoided them until one found it and it ate them. That sort of thing. Except not literally a Balrog - there aren't any of those where I'm from."

"Usually the balrogs don't have to do the avoiding."

"Yeah, Angband's nicer than where I'm from that way."

"There are lots of dumb brave people hassling whatever you've got instead of balrogs?"

"Yeah, lots of brave dumb people hassling me and the family I had there and trying to get us to stop doing things or ruining the things we do."

"I guess Angband'd be a nice change. Though I don't think anybody's likely to come bug us here either except maybe like his lordship once he's recovered."

"That's also neat! Though there's less material for my art here than there was at Angband so it's sort of a mixed bag."

"I think I was imagining you could do with the animals and fish and stuff. You got the treehouse to grow like that, I think that's super cool!"

"Yeah, and also you and me and Kat. Plenty of things to work with."

"Do you s'pose you could fix it so she didn't hurt all the time from being an orc?"

"Oh, sure! Uh, I've noticed that orcs seem to hurt a lot but not what causes it, but I can probably figure that out."

"I think it's 'cause their souls are like Elf souls and don't fit right in their bodies? I'm not sure quite how that works though."

"If the souls are feeling pain I don't know if I can do it but so far I've mostly not seen souls feel things except for maybe oaths and osanwë, so I bet it'll be fine."

Bonesaw inspects Kat's skin inquisitively. 

"Baweh."

Bonesaw inspects things underneath the skin next - turning off all of Kat's pain before doing so since otherwise it might be distracting. 

Kat thinks it is HILARIOUS to have her pain turned off and cackles about it.

Oh that's so cute!

Is this the thing causing the pain? No... Is this the thing? .... Nope. 

Bonesaw continues searching for things for a while.

"Is she gonna have scars?"

"I dunno, think she should?"

What about this? Nope that was supposed to be that way whoops she'll put it back now...

"I think it'd be neat if she didn't."

"Kay, I'll do that then."

Squish squish. 

"Who can fit soooo much blood in their tiny body? You can! Yes you can!!"

Bonesaw pats the tiny baby head, getting some of the aforementioned blood on it.

Weird, Bonesaw isn't even touching Beka.

Search search search.

"Huh."

"I think I figured out what it is but I have no idea what's even causing her body to irritate her nerves like that - I can still fix it by making it so the thing stops being painful but I'll need to add some extra nerves to compensate so she can feel other things like normal." 

"Oh, that sounds - good probably -"

Bonesaw grabs a bit of Beka and starts stripping her skin to get at the nerves.

"Um, am I gonna be able to feel things normally if you take those."

"Yeah, I'm only shaving some so the regrowth agent will make sure it's all back and working in a day or so, it's just harder to do that for a baby since they don't have as many nerves to start with."

Shave, twist into a baby nerve, and repeat! It's almost soothing.

Beka holds still and closes her eyes and reads Kat's mind to remind herself that it doesn't hurt her a bit.

And then soon enough it's all done!

"Done! She'll shed her skin in a few hours and the scars will disappear then."

She can flip the normal sensation back on for Kat now!

Beka scoops up her baby. "- She's itchy," she says.

"Yeah, to help with the shedding. I can't change that... Oh hm. Unless I make her sorta a lizard..."

"I don't think that's worth it if it's just a few hours." Scritch scritch, poor baby.

Bonesaw puts down her tools and hopefully waits for Beka to tell her she did a good job.

Scritch scritch scritch. Kat squirms in her arms. "She's not in pain," she reports, "probably when she's done itching she'll be all better."

Her face falls.

"Yeah, she should be."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," Bonesaw replies, with a small smile.

Beka wears Kat around most of the time, usually on her back once she's big enough to hold up her head. She paints the treehouse, and walks on water to get to the best fishing spots, and collects nuts and berries and roots and eggs and animals for Bonesaw to render into whatever combination of dinner or materials suit her. Sometimes she comes up with project ideas in case they'll be distracting - Elves sometimes ride horses, what if this deer were rendered suitable for riding, it could have its own stirrups built in? What if these plants were even more responsive to the crop song than regular plants? Once there's a Lucky Charms production setup could they be introduced to other foods from Bonesaw's home too?

The deer idea sounds great and Bonesaw can make them go so fast and easy to ride! And she can give them really pretty and detailed antlers that branch in a fractal-like patterrn recursively so that you can't even see the smallest branches with the naked eye and also they are razor sharp as a side-effect of this.

The crops things is complicated and interesting and soon enough Bonesaw has figured out how to grow most vegetables in minutes with the song and some other hypergrowth modifications. She has to make some changes to Beka and Kat's digestive systems so the foods safe but that's easily done. 

The Lucky Charms set-up is an ongoing long term project that she's going to keep spending a little bit of time on but not that much. She can definitely make mac'n'cheese for dinner one night! And for dessert there are intricate lollipops that take on the shape of iridescent shells a sea creature might live in.

The lollipops are so beautiful!! If Beka catches snails for her can she do real shells like that to hang from the treehouse?

Ooooh definitely! She can even make them glow colors for lighting!

Gorgeous!!! Beka will catch so many snails!!!

And soon enough there place will be lit by iridiscently glowing snail shell creations on strings, the light dimming in the evenings.

Beka experiments with several ways of arranging them for maximum effect. There's not a ton of string to be had in the range between "animal gut" and "rope" but it turns out braiding grass into rope is kind of fun too.

Pretty!

One night Bonesaw smells blood - her own. She's wide awake near instantly and flips herself into a crouch, adrenaline shooting into her veins as she scans for who's attacking her but none of her senses are showing anything and she can't see what to attack and -

"BEKA!!"

Beka leaps awake and seizes Kat. What's wrong - She's sniffing the air but her first guess was fire and she doesn't smell smoke -

There's a spot of blood leaking through Bonesaw's underwear.

Can you sense any minds?

She starts deploying a colorless oderless knockout gas that she's immunized herself, Beka, and Kat to. 

- just us -

I'm bleeding, so someone attacked. Maybe long ranged - I can modify the Deerfriend to have better smell and see if it can find someone without risking me being ambused, give me a minute...

Are you sure you didn't just scratch yourself in your sleep or something?

Bonesaw glances down at her body briefly before returning to waking the Deerfriend up from the knockout gas she just used. 

It's underneath my underwear I don't see how I could have scratched myself there... Though no holes in it either so maybe that means it wasn't a normal projectile...

...Beka has known Bonesaw long enough to not suggest that maybe she should be more selective about masturbation implements but she can't really think of anything else.

... Oh.

Bonesaw stops working on the Deerfriend.

It's my time of the month... It's a thing human bodies to do, when they stop being kids... but I'm still a kid! And it should be delayed by consistent extreme physiological stress! ...I guess I haven't really fought anyone since the breakout, and that was after a long time of being safe too.... But I'm only twelv-thirteeen. Oh.

Human bodies just bleed for no reason?? She starts putting Kat back to bed.

It's part of um. Inappropriate reproductive things. For when you turn into an adult.

Bonesaw looks so sad about this. 

That's so weird, I don't think Elves do that and I know orcs don't! So probably if you ever want to reproduce you will still be able to even if you fix it so you don't bleed randomly.

Oh, yeah, I could fix it. I guess if I stop things from changing than I won't have to be an adult until I'm actually old enough....

She starts gathering supplies.

How old's that?

I dunno. When I know how to be responsible and things, I guess.

Oh, I was expecting a number but that makes sense.

Bonesaw puts a few more tools into a pile.

"Could you help me with some of the surgery?" she asks Beka very nicely.

"Of course, what do you need?" Kat's bedded down in the treehouse now.

Bonesaw can show her where to cut and how and what liquids to inject and how to prop things open to get at other things!

Osanwë makes giving precise directions so much easier! Beka does it all under the shell-lights, humming.

Bonesaw also occasionally picks up a tool with there's something delicate that Beka is having trouble with and does it herself - it's pretty obvious that she could in fact do the whole procedure much faster by herself actually.

It's an awkward angle but yeah. Maybe she just likes scalpel-wielding company.

She definitely seems to! And eventually they are done and she is hugging Beka tightly.

Thank you.

Anytime!

Sometime later the metal refining setup is complete and Bonesaw can weave strands of it together with bio-aramid fibers to create an elegant silvery mesh which she installs over Beka's more important organs.

"Think I should do Kat too?" she asks while she closes Beka back up along a now permanent velcro-like seem that she installed for ease of access. 

"Well, she's still growing, so probably not now."

"Yeah that'd be the downside, I'd have to update them a bunch. She can have them when she's older I guess."

"They do seem handy for some possible situations." Snuggly baby.

"Mhm! I've also changed them around to be more aimed at knife wounds and brute force and retaining basic vital functions before I can get to you, since those are probably bigger concerns than being able to keep fighting after someone hits you with a laser beam or whatever."

"Probably! I don't even know what that is!"

"A sort of energy thing that some powers provide - they're usually really fast and can have a bunch of different effects while being not very possible to dodge."

"Wow. Yeah, I don't expect to meet any of those. If His Lordship chases us down probably he'll just sing us into a stupor or something."

"You think he might do that?"

"I mean I don't know what exactly he'd do but Maiar are super magical in part because of being really good at singing to Creation so I think it's a good guess."

"Oh, I meant do you think he might track us down?"

"Yeah, maybe one day."

"I can work on some contingencies in case the ones I already have don't work on him. I'm guessing he'll be prepared for the acid I used last time?" 

"I think probably he wouldn't come after us if he weren't?"

"Yeah, I can prepare some more things. Do you have a good understanding of what his abilities are?"

"Not really. Since he can, like, change them, if he has long enough."

"How long?"

"I dunno. Years and years, probably, Ainur are slow."

"Oh that's probably fine then, I'm plenty fast and I'm sure I'll figure out lots of good ways to stop him."

"I could rig up a failsafe in the meantime? Kill all the orcs if we get hurt bad enough, so he won't want to try it."

"I don't think he cares about orcs basically at all."

"Isn't he using them to fight elves?"

"Yeah, but a lot of that is because the Elves hate it even more than they'd hate it if balrogs just showed up and set them all on a lot of fire."

"Why?"

"They don't like having to think about orcs, I think because they're not pretty but it might be more complicated."

"Huh, that sounds like the sort of thing Jack said heroes do, I guess."

"I wouldn't know, what did he say?"

"That they like destroying anything that shocks or offends them or is out of place. So I had to figure out how to make my art work even when that happened."

"Huh, I guess Elves are a bit like that, yeah."

"Yeah..."

"Want to make some art today?"

"Like painting or singing or like I should go catch a pheasant?"

"I don't know, do you want to pick?"

"Singing's always my favorite!"

Bonesaw smiles back.

"You could teach me something new?"

"Sure! I can make up a new song, then it'll be new to both of us."

She improvises something about colors seen by torchlight.

Bonesaw can learn it! She would also like to try improvising a bit herself, which isn't nearly as good.

How about she improvises but publicizes what she's thinking about the music so Beka can riff off it and make it sound nice?

Oh yay! That's really good and Bonesaw is enthusiastic about doing so.

Time passes - Kat grows, Bonesaw doesn't, and one evening a moon rises over the horizon.

"Wow, that's so pretty!" says Beka, who climbed up a tree to get a better look at it. Kat scrunches grumpily down in her pouch.

She can follow up the tree.

"Oh huh."

Bonesaw looks at the moon and feels homesick for the first time she came to this new world.

"That's the moon..."

"You had one where you came from? That's kind of funny, I wonder why they'd be the same."

"The one we had was really big and far away ... I'm not sure how it got there right though I suspect it didn't just appear one day like this one."

"I couldn't tell you. It's beautiful though! What does yours do, I think this one is moving..."

"It goes around the planet and also changes shape in a cycle. It comes up about once a day, usually during the night."

"Neat! I hope this one is like that. It'd be sad if it didn't come around too often."

It does apparently, rising once a day just like Bonesaw's. After two weeks of this a much brighter golden orb appears in the sky.

"Wow, that one's bright! Look at all the colors! - Kat doesn't like it, poor baby." She tucks Kat deeper into her pouch.

"Oh it's the sun! We had one of those too!"

Bonesaw checks on Kat to see if she's scrunching up her eyes or if it's a skin thing or something else.

Kat's hiding her face in the pouch, but her skin looks okay.

Bonesaw reaches in to the pouch and moves Kat so her face is visible.

"WAAAAAH," says Kat, when she catches a glimpse of - either Bonesaw or the sun?

Beka turns away.

"Could you turn back around? I think Kat's eyes aren't adjusting right to the sun."

"They're not but she yelled because you were poking at her and that scared her."

"Huh? She sees me all the time."

"Yeah but I think she's scared you're going to do surgery to her again."

"Oh."

Bonesaw frowns.

"How do you know it's that?"

"'Cause I read her mind all the time."

"Oh."

"Can you send it?"

"...sure, okay."

The sun is tooooooo bright and scaryknifesister was TOUCHING her but Mama fixed it.

Bonesaw freezes, caught between a complicated bundle of guilt and anxiety and fear about the 'scary', and an unexpected surge of desperate joy at the 'sister'.

- Beka stops relaying.

"She.... she thinks I'm her sister."

"That's what I call you to her, I'm not all the way in the habit of names all the time."

"Oh. That makes sense."

"I don't think I want my sister to be scared of me but probably she should be?"

"She didn't really like the nose thing."

"Oh. I thought the nose thing would be fun."

"Maybe she's not old enough to appreciate it? Maybe it would be fun when she's four or something."

"That would be nice."

"... Usually when I do surgery on four year-olds they still don't like it."

"Do you usually turn their pain off and check that they think it sounds like fun?"

"No? Do you think that would work for her?"

"Maybe! And maybe it'd help if you did the actual surgery while she was asleep, I think she doesn't like that part and she might like stuff like being able to see better in the sunshine."

"Oh that's a good idea.... I could also put her to sleep if she's awake when I come up with an idea?"

"As long as you didn't do it a way that scared her that'd probably work too."

"I could do it without her noticing, I'm pretty sure. It should work fine for her to be asleep for most surgeries I might do, unless they require her input or something."

"Do a lot of them?"

"Not really? Sometimes I want to know about what the subject would consider pretty. Also sometimes the brain is important enough to the surgery that putting someone to sleep wouldn't work well. Or I might get lonely during the surgery I guess."

"I can hang out with you if you wanna fix her eyes for the sun or whatever!"

"That should work, I think."

"Oh good. If it's gonna come by as often as the moon it'd be good if it didn't bother her."

"Yeah, the sun is once a day too."

Bonesaw can do the surgery later that evening, once Kat has fallen asleep on her own.

"Uh, she'll wake up from being just regular asleep if you start poking her a lot even if it doesn't hurt."

"Mhm, I poked her with a sedative first."

Eyeball slicing time! It is really rather surprising how much eyeball slicing can be done without detrimental effects, apparently.

If Beka has misgivings about the situation, none of them, at least, are about Bonesaw's ability to perform eyeball surgery that results in whatever she was trying to accomplish.

It's true - Bonesaw doesn't mess up eyeballs on accident. ... Well okay she's actually messed-up a lot of eyeballs on accident but they weren't her sister's eyeballs, they were eyeballs she was paying much less attentions to and cared a lot less about. 

"Can you hold these two parts apart from each for a bit?"

Hold!

Bonesaw goes to get some liquids. 

"Oh! Should I change the color while I'm doing this?"

"- well, I like her eye color the way it is but she doesn't have an opinion yet I guess."

"I could make them rainbow! Or change color with her mood! Or golden like the sun!"

"Huh, I guess mood eye color could be neat! What moods would go with what eyes?"

Hmmm... 

"Oh, I got it. A sort of ruby red for angry, goldish for happy, amethyst for when she wants a thing, silverish like the moon for calm, and maybe a few others?"

Bonesaw can send what she thinks they'll come out looking like.

"I like it! And black like she has now when she's... hmmm..."

"Bored or sad or uh, remembering the past?"

"I guess that works, it'd just be kind of sad if I never got to see her regular eye color again."

"I could make it default to it when she's not having a lot of strong emotions, or when she just wakes up from sleep. So it would be like the colors are being sort of pushed out by the emotions into her eyes, and when that doesn't happen the colors fade?"

"That's a lovely idea."

"Great! Also I want to have thee colors push outwards from her pupils across her irises, so when she changes you can get intermediate combinations of colors! Human eyes can do that sometimes and it's really pretty."

Bonesaw can send what this will look like!

"Wow, cool!"

Surgery time! This is going to be a lot more elaborate and she has to install some tiny little organelles into the eyes but not very complicated ones so they'll be ready by the time she's finished with the brain surgery portion of the emotion detection system.

Beka serves as surgical assistant as needed and sings to keep Bonesaw company when not needed.

"Huh." says Bonesaw after a bit, pinky deep in Kat's brain.

Beka's gonna not ask because Bonesaw is busy!

Poke poke. Yep, that's definitely what that bit is.

"She's got a corona pollentia." 

Still not asking but increasingly alarmed!

"Bit of the brain that means she can get powers - it's the first one I've seen here. Lots of people have them back home and there's no reason an orc can't get one but I guess there weren't any powers around to cause them to grow until I got here."

Bonesaw can route the synaptic hookup for the eyes around it to get at the bit of the amygdala where it's supposed to go.

Huh. Cool.

Thread this bit into this lobe and then it's time close the head back up, putting some powder on the seems she cut into the skull and then licking them to activate the sealant so it'll be right as rain. Connecting the eyes is pretty easy now that the tiny organs are done boiling in the pot she put them in earlier. 

"And all done!" she says as she drips three drops of liquids into Kat's eyes, causing them to briefly pulse with waves of each color Bonesaw installed before settling back down to their original black.

Beka closes Kat's eyes for her so she can go back to sleeping. "What kind of powers will she get?"

Hmmm... 

"Probably she'd inherit them from me - powers can do that even when people aren't biologically related. So it would be similar in some ways, especially in terms of what capabilities the agent that's providing the powers has, but possibly with some sort of refinements from how I've learned to use mine. Some of it will come down to how she triggers - she'll need a sufficiently stressful event to induce the connection and the circumstances around it will have a big impact on what shape her powers take. Though it'll take less since she's second gen..."

Bonesaw thinks for a moment.

"Her corona pollentia is probably too high up and deep for it to be a Tinker power? Not close enough to the bulk of the prefrontal cortex for the connections that typically develop as a result of that. Probably not Thinker either, for the basically the same reason, though it's less clear. I bet I could induce a Brute or Striker or Mover though... Trump too maybe though those typically ended up disappointing when I've caused them, which is really annoying since I'm a Trump and my power isn't disappointing at all... I suppose if she's a second gen off of my power she might get a neat Trump power like mine but I'm guessing no since my Trump aspects seem more like restrictions being removed than my agent having a lot more inherent abilities..."

"What do all those kinds mean?"

"Oh um, Brute means strength and durability and is triggered by physical damage, Striker is a touch-based ability and is triggered by immediate simple stressors, Mover is movement and wanting to run away, Tinker is inventing and is triggered by mental stress that persists over subjectively long time horizons, Thinker is cognitive but not related to the same sort of inventing and triggered by briefer mental stress, and Trump is powers that interact with other powers directly and is from stress involving powers. Their are also a few other classifications and really the whole system is just an attempt to describe what's going on, not something inherent to how powers work. Except for Tinkers and Trumps which do seem to be pretty natural categories."

"So she'll probably be a Trump if she's triggered by getting too many surgeries or something and a Mover if Sauron chases us maybe?"

"Oh um. Yeah. Though the Trump trigger would have to be because of the sorts of surgeries I do with my powers, if it was just about having surgery done at all it would more likely be Brute powers."

Bonesaw frowns.

"I don't want to make her trigger."

"- huh, I thought you'd be excited for her to have powers."

"Triggering isn't very nice...."

"Well, lots of things aren't very nice but most of them don't also give you powers?"

"I think the people I've made trigger before would almost all prefer to have died instead?"

"And um. They were scared of me afterwards. And angry."

"Oh."

"It probably wouldn't be as bad for her? Since she's second generation it takes less to trigger. But um. When I was working on triggering someone who was second generation her dad still tried to stop me even though it meant he'd die."

Nod nod.

Bonesaw hugs her knees.

"Probably it's good that she can trigger if she needs to."

"It sounds useful..."

"Yeah."

"...It didn't really help when I triggered."

...hug?

Hug! Tight clinging hug.

Pat pat. "Maybe we will just live in the woods forever and nothing scary will ever happen to Kat."

Cling.

".... but I'm something scary."

"- not always! I don't think she'll mind her eyes changing color and she didn't even notice you doing it, right?"

Nod nod. 

"... I think they'll be really pretty this way."

"And this way you'll be able to tell what she's thinking a little even though you don't read minds."

"Oh yeah... that's probably good."

Bonesaw hugs Beka while she thinks for a bit...

"'m scared that she'll always be scared of me and hate me."

"I think it's pretty normal for sisters to sometimes be mad and hate each other and then make up later."

"Huh."

"....Probably my brother hated me when he died cause I let it happen and I won't get a chance to make up with him. But I'm not going to let that happen to Kat."

"She will live for aaaages and ages." Pet pet the soft squishy baby.

"Yeah."

"... I'm not going to let anything happen to you either, just so you know."

"I really appreciate that! If I'd tried to run away without you like if I'd had Kat a couple years ago probably this would not have worked at all, you're keeping us so much safer."

She is wiggling a bit about this, apparently! It is a complicated wiggle, but happy.

Hug.

Hug!

Weeks later Bonesaw is out searching for a stream with a particular kind of fish, when Beka hears the sound of trees bending, and then breaking, in the distance.

She grabs Kat and bolts through the trees, singing to keep her feet sure while she races in the direction Bonesaw went.

Apparently whatever was causing the trees to fall is now doing that faster! And in the same direction she bolted in!

RILEY! RILEY SOMETHING'S AFTER US!

On my way, five minutes.

A muscle clenched and stimulants flood her system as she drops the fish she was carrying to bolt back towards her family.

Can you find the green bottle in the kitchen?

I'm already half a mile away, should I circle back?

Not if you've been heading towards me. What do you know about the ca-thing chasing you.

Bonesaw's location can be sent to Beka, in case that helps.

I'm on my way to you yeah. It's big, breaking trees, it's faster than me even while I'm singing. Hasn't said anything so probably not His Lordship.

Not clear what weapon works then, but Bonesaw has options if need be to make sure it regrets scaring her family.

Whatever it is, it's definitely going fast enough to catch up to Beka before she can get to Bonesaw!

That's why she's in the trees, so she's not easily snatched even if it's drawn level with her overland!

Well, eventually the beast will catch up with her. It's legs are thicker than the trunks of the trees it is smashing aside and it's back is covered with scaly spines so sharp they shred branches that get in it's way. But Beka may recognize its eyes....

"GRAWR!!"

She never took the spray bottle out of her compartment. She pulls it out as fast as she can.

Glaurung does not know who this strange creature is or what the bottle she is holding does! Possibly if he eats her his Bonesaw will be brough to him as a reward. 

"BAD dragon!" Spray!

"graaaa!" and the dragon is doing his level best to shield his face and chest and from the spray with his front claw which isn't even helping! And he's trying to push himself backwards and with his back claws but that's hard when he's trying to do something else with his front claws!

STOP!!!

"GO AWAY!"

Glaurung successfully manages to direct his flailing limbs to scootch himself backwards.

Hurts!! he sends the orf and orc, along with a sensory impression of pain and ow and crying and bad. 

Then learn to stop chasing me!

????

She's gonna be mad at you for coming here!

Beka can get sent a mix of horror and oh no and sad and Expectation Of Punishment And Fighting which is a single concept inside this dragon's head apparently. 

After a few more seconds she's calm enough to remember to tell Riley that it turned out to be Glaurung.

Oh. Uh, he shouldn't be able to smell you since I douse the tree house to hide it so the conditioning might not work like normal. If he licks you or you put something sweaty near him it should still work though. 

I had some spray left and that worked, I'm treed but he's not trying to eat me. I think he wants you.

Oh.

Soon enough Bonesaw reaches them, her legs a strange shade of red from the stimulants that have been pumping through them.

!!! he sends, happily.  

He's happy to see you. - I don't know if he has his own osanwë or if I can only hear him because of mine.

"I can hear him..."

Want up!

...Up?

He sends a bunch of images and feelings of being held by Bonesaw and being able to be up high and carried around and the feeling of her being warm while she held him.

And you looked for me to hold you up?

NO ONE ELSE!

This time his osanwë broadcast is accompanied by memories of when he tried to get other people to Up him and instead they went down and made a sound like [the sound of someone getting turned into a flesh pancake].

Ah.

Bonesaw gives a pleading sort of look at Beka, entirely unsure of what to do in this situation.

You're too big to get upped like that now, I think.

N'YOU!

He osanwës slowly and effortfully:

BOSAW UP ME

"He doesn't wanna talk to me," she says.

I can't pick you up anymore, since you needed to grow up Big and Strong. 

Maybe uh, Melkor can pick you up?

!!

Melkor greatest of the powers! He can up!

We're going to have to move, if he could find us, Beka says privately to Riley.

I could kill him before he goes back? Though I'm not sure that's a good idea.

Why wouldn't it - I guess maybe it makes us look like more of a threat? -

I'm not sure why... He's sort of like Kat maybe. Not all the way like her but a bit?

Kat never breathed fire on anybody.

She vomited on you that one time?

That didn't hurt at all, it was just messy.

I don't think that if she breathed fire on someone it would change anything about how I felt about her? Maybe if it was you.... Actually I don't really think it would change things even then. It would probably be my fault somehow anyways. 

Well if you don't want to kill him I guess we have to have a way to keep him without it being a huge problem, but he's really huge and that can all by itself be a problem.

I could kill him I guess....

Maybe you could shrink him? He's too big to feed but if he were littler and better trained...

Maybe but not quickly I think... I'd have to figure out how to handle adapting his brain in a way that didn't disconnect his soul but maybe I can figure out how to do that?

If it's not quick he's gonna get hungry...

I can keep him sleeping in the meantime and hook up a nutrient thing we can put biomatter into for him?

Any biomatter, like all those trees he knocked over? Maybe. But then we also have to get him to behave, not knocking down the whole forest we're trying to live in and not telling his lordship where we are and not breathing fire and stuff.

Oh I was thinking I could keep him sleeping until he's smaller.

Cool... still has to behave though.

Yeah... We could use more Pavlolvia or something? Or you can parent him like you do with Kat?

Parenting won't really work if the first time he makes a mistake his lordship knows how to find us!

Oh, you think he'd tell?

Maybe! Especially if they told him to before he left, or if they can talk to him from here.

Oh. 

I don't think I can prevent him from using osanwe. At least not in a way I'm sure about.

Oh.

Well that's pretty bad then.

Yeah.

I can kill him then.

Bonesaw does not look happy about this.

Menawhile, Glaurung is investigating a tree. He did stop to look at any thoroughly on the way here but now that's he found Bonesaw he can take a break to figure out what is up with the green bits and whether they are gems or food or prey. So far checking has consisted of licking them, poking them with his nose, and attempting to gather enough to hoard them.  

Unless you think you can make sure he won't do it, yeah.

Bonesaw nods, with some tears in her eyes.

Hey Glaurung.

!!

Sends Glaurung from where he is attempting to shake leaves out of a small tree he has uprooted.

Before you go back to Melkor can I give you a check-up? Make sure your teeth and things are growing properly!

Nod nod.

Haf to have checkups To Be A Dragon And Seek Dragon Greatness.... Bosaw checkup hurt? 

No it won't hurt.

Glaurung can stay a Very Still Dragon for it even if it does!

And Bonesaw can check around inside his mouth and get a syringe of liquid she has stored under a rib of hers and poke the needle in-between Glaurung's teeth and into the base of his skull. The dragon feels a strange sensation for a moment, and then the bacteria finishes consuming his brain. 

Beka can at least be solemn about it even if she wasn't as attached as Bonesaw was.

Bonesaw cries a little bit which is confusing but she can wipe away the tears and journey back to their home.

Beka starts packing. They don't really have luggage but she did keep the inside pocket of the smugglemonster which will hold most of the stuff they'd want to bring.

"Why are you packing?"

"- so we can go somewhere that doesn't have a ton of wrecked trees leading straight to it."

"But... but... I thought if Galurung died we wouldn't have to move and that's why we were doing it and and -" and now Bonesaw is sobbing, shaking and trying to hold herself as her silence from the walk back gives way to tears.