GATHERING EXPEDITION (5/50)
"Troia!" Pantalaimon cried out to the other xyn. Troia turned her head ever so slightly to face them.
"What's happening?" she asked, gruffly. Anytime Pantalaimon got like this, it was typically to guilt other xyns into helping with something that was relatively trivial (to her, at least) when they felt like asking alone wasn't enough. They were excellent at conjuring crocodile's tears on the fly, but the emotional manipulation never really worked on her- it was the noise alone that always bothered her.
"It's my Puffle!" Pantalaimon bawled. "It vanished somewhere and I can't find it!"
"Where was it last?" she asked. "Did you notice anything strange about it?"
"Well..." Pantalaimon paused their crying, and sniffed, teary-eyed. "It was in my home, of course, and it looked puffier than before. Especially so. It could barely waddle around from the weight of its own puffiness... poor thing! I was going to take it to the vet to see if it was sick, b-b-but when I turned my back on it, it vanished! I nearly tore my home down trying to find it and it was simply nowhere to be found! Oh, my poor baby!"
Pantalaimon started bawling again. Troia stared blankly at them, shaking her head and shrugging. She might as well help them to stop their incessant crying- it was beginning to grate on her ears.
"Fine... I'll help you find your Puffle," she sighed- trying her best not to show her mild irritation. She was terrible with thinking of how to verbally comfort others, so taking direct action and being a dependable xyn was the best way she could show her support. It was also usually the fastest way to get Pantalaimon to shut up.
Pantalaimon, as predicted, immediately brightened up. "Really? Aww, thank you Troia- Thank you!" They bounded up to her masked cheek to lick it happily, and she had to control herself from recoiling.
"Of course," she replied. They stepped away, wagging their tail rapidly, and she wiped her cheek with the stinger of her tail in an attempt to clean it.
"Let's get moving," said Pantalaimon, "If we gather enough of my Puffle's favorite treats and set them around, maybe we can gradually lure it out from where it's hiding. If it's sick, it'll want to be somewhere peaceful and quiet... and it can't have gone far outside of Moonreach."
Troia and Pantalaimon spent their afternoon on the outskirts of Moonreach's city, picking Dawnberries from a copse of trees, placing each berry into a knapsack that they carried. Their branches, laden with golden-red foliage, swayed gently in the autumn breeze; once Troia had picked enough Dawnberries from the ground, Pantalaimon flew up to the higher branches and picked several more; including a Dawnberry flower, which they placed between their horns.
Their Puffle loved to treat itself to the berries during this time of year, and especially loved to play with Dawnberry flowers... but if it was sick, Pantalaimon thought, glumly, it may not have much of an appetite to come out from hiding, if it was missing…
“Where do you want to start looking for your Puffle?” asked Troia.
Pantalaimon looked around, and sniffed the air, trying to see if they could detect any whiff of their Puffle’s scent… but the autumn air was too laden with the scent of the surrounding trees for them to detect any trace of it. “We might as well start here,” they admitted. “My gut instinct tells me that it’s peaceful enough; it’s only just far away from the city without being too distant. And, it’s cozy enough to hide in a copse without the hassle of getting lost in an entire forest of trees. My Puffle makes ‘meep’-ing sounds if it sees dawnberries; it absolutely loves those.”
“Okay.” Troia and began to take out some of the berries from her knapsack with her magic, laying them by the trunks of the trees and the bushes surrounding them. Pantalaimon followed suit, carefully investigating their surroundings as they did so; and soon, the ground of the copse was scattered with freshly picked dawnberries, twinkling in the moonlight.
The both of them finished, and Pantalaimon laid down, resting their head between their paws; Troia sat on her haunches to observe their surroundings watchfully. There was little else to do but wait.
“Meep!” Came a sound, muffled, from somewhere nearby. Two more “meeps!” followed suit. Pantalaimon’s head shot up immediately, and they swiveled their winged ears to follow the source of the sound.
“Did you hear that?” They whispered to Troia. She nodded, silently. Pantalaimon crept to the source of the sound, slowly, and Troia used her dark magic to vanish, so that she could not startle whatever was making that sound.
They both approached the trunk of an old Dawnberry tree that they had dropped some berries by. Pantalaimon brushed aside a cascading branch at the base of the tree; revealing an exposed hollow in the trunk, and something soft and fluffy hiding inside.
It was Pantalaimon’s Puffle. It rolled onto it’s side- revealing two baby Puffles snuggling deep into it’s fluff, sleeping peacefully. Each baby was about the size of a young butternut- and they had already developed their characteristic cream colored fuzz to keep them warm and dry, much like a chick right after hatching.
Pantalaimon erupted into crying once more- but this time, it was not out of despair. “Troia, they’re so cute! I can’t do it!” They sobbed, and sniffled, bringing their snout gently to the trunk’s hollow to baby-talk their Puffle inside.
“You were an expecting parent this entire time…?” they asked gently, teary eyed. “I didn’t know you were going to have babies! You should have let me take you to someplace safe myself so I wouldn’t have to fret over you like this! Please come out now- you and your little ones need to come home with me so I can care for you! Come along! You can do it!”
They brought a few dawnberries out from their knapsack, gently pushing them inside the hollow’s trunk, one by one, to encourage their Puffle to step out. The Puffle made a “Meep!”, reaching for a dawnberry to nip at it, then reaching for a second dawnberry to eat it too. It was clearly hungry and not doing well from a lack of food.
Once it was fed, it grabbed each baby puffle one by one, and trotted out of the hollow to set each down by Pantalaimon’s paws. The babies were too young to be awake and walk on their own, and each one felt as soft as the downy feathers on Pantalaimon’s chest.
Pantalaimon panted happily, and nuzzled each baby, and their puffle, happily. “Thank you, Troia! Let’s go home now!”
“Alright,” said Troia. She felt satisfied, and content- knowing that Pantalaimon could finally quiet down now, and that their Puffle (and babies) were safe.
