I took in my body as I stood. What struck me first was how awful I felt. My body hadn’t moved in twenty five days and it showed. I’d entered a kind of, meditation almost after a while. Now that I could actually feel my body again, it felt almost, wrong. Like I’d been a soul shoved into a weird new fleshy form.

  I was skin and bones. Most of my major injuries were taken care of but something must have been far worse than I thought as I saw what could only be bandages around most of my body. The healer came up to me, croaking at me, but it’s not like I understood. I continued to examine my body as she talked, mostly to herself.

  The places of my body that had started to go green had fully turned green, but that was because there was now moss packed in. Slowly, carefully, the healer scraped those away and began to remove the bandages. When she was done, I saw a shocking amount of moss on me. It felt like more than a bit of it was growing inside me.

  She continued to peel and remove it as I stood, going around my body and doing the same. By the end of it, I looked scarred but whole. Most of my flesh had even returned. The scars were dark white though, causing an odd look on my brown golden skin. As the doctor continued to unravel everything, I realized with some extreme annoyance why I had been here for so long.

  I was healed. Well, as much as they could, but that wasn’t the point. They had fixed my arms, both of them. I could move them and even felt some strength in them. No matter the healing, there would have been a point where I was on the road to recovery and just needed time. They had kept me paralyzed during that recovery time, instead of letting me just, sleep in a bed or something.

  A doctor in Vega City would have bandaged me and healed me up, if they didn’t have a healing tank or I couldn’t afford one, and then told me to take it easy for a few weeks or months, depending on the healing. I’d have been in a cast but been alright to move about. The frog people paralyzed you till they were fully done. Even if that meant just waiting for you to be done healing naturally.

  I tried very hard not to grimace that I probably could’ve been up and moving sooner. It was over now. Even if I’d been bored out of my mind for so long that I never, ever, wanted to come back to this building.

  Finally, as she finished, I stretched and felt… good. Some pain returned and it felt like a shock of harsh ice to my previously numbed body. I took a single step-

  And fell over.

  One of the assistants caught me. I hadn’t even noticed them. She laughed at me.

  “Yeah yeah, I’m going to need a while to relearn how to walk.”

  Contrary to the belief that I was finally free now, the doctor then spent hours with me, forcing me to bend or walk certain ways. My poor body could barely do some of them. I was better but not fully healed. There must’ve been limits to what they could do. I needed to find a healing tank for the worst of it.

  She wasn’t happy. Not at all. But finally, she allowed me to leave.

  The second I walked out the door, I gaped again at the sight. Previously, I’d been on the shore, looking out. Now, I was on the crystal clear lake, on a lilypad, looking out everywhere. It was amazing. A whole floating village in somewhere so beautiful. I could see children laughing and swimming about, families moving around catching fish, all the while the glow of the moss made it seem like it was day. That hadn’t been the case last time. It was bright but not like this. I must’ve shown up at night.

  An assistant tapped me on the shoulder, handing me something.

  I blinked.

  It was underwear. I looked back up at the assistant. There was no real expression on her face, just, neutral. All the rest of the frogs and even my good buddy Battle Toad hadn’t worn anything, and didn’t show anything-

  Ah. This wasn’t for modesty was it? This was literally for protection. They’d noticed I had something that dangles and made something to help protect that.

  “Thank you so much.”

  She smiled and croaked back at me.

  Slipping on the pair of underwear, seemingly made purely from bandages (where did they get the cloth?), I finally felt a little closer to human. I was safe, healed, had clothing, and most importantly… clean.

  God I felt so clean that it brought a tear to my eye. I’d never take showers for granted again.

  I felt so much better that it was beyond understanding. I almost felt like I was on drugs and not just pain relief ones. Not all the infections or diseases were gone, parts of me were still sore or injured or even broken, and I was skin and bones from a liquid diet, but I was so much better.

  There was one thing I wanted to check though.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I glanced up, curiosity getting the better of me, and-

  [7]

  I grinned.

  It seems some rest and healing did me well.

  With a laugh, I jumped into the water. I felt it all around me, embracing me. I’d grown up on an island and even weak as I was, I knew how to swim. I hadn’t swam since… I hadn’t swam for a long long time. It felt good. My heart soared and I truly began to swim.

  The last time I swam I was at power level [1]. Now? I was over seven times stronger. I zoomed through the water like I was born to it. In many ways, I was. The sea was just as much a part of my home as my island had been and I’d missed it for too long. This lake was amazing. I swam through the water, feeling my body and soul seem to lighten up even further. I passed by the other frog people, looking at me with hints of weariness but also curiosity. I was unknown, new, dangerous. But also not a threat. I couldn’t take a whole village on. They might not have Vambrace’s but I’m sure they’d heard all about me from Battle Toad.

  Speaking of the man and myth himself, I noticed him swimming towards me with a smile. I swam towards him, getting closer and closer. His smile was practically splitting his face. He was so happy to see me.

  I decked him in the head.

  His head snapped back as a shocked expression came over his face. He rubbed where I’d hit him, feeling the blow.

  I held up my hand and pointed at it five times, with emphasis on the last two. And then crossed my arms. He hadn’t even seen me in the last ten days. He had the good grace to look guilty as he rubbed his head.

  We swam to the surface and I breathed in a fresh thing of air. This was great! I was safe, clean, healthy, could swim, this, this was yet another paradise. Who knew it was so close to such a hellish place? It felt so good to move my body after being stuck for so long. I’d thought I’d go insane just laying there. Clearly, frogs dealt with injuries completely different than I did. I didn’t intend to take any more damage for a while.

  I swam to the shore with my friend and was finally going to ask the most important question in the world.

  The second our feet landed, I pointed at myself.

  “Mutai.”

  The Battle Toad blinked at me, before raising an eyebrow and letting out a croak. I pointed at myself again.

  “Mutai. I am Mutai. Mutai.”

  He seemed to get it, before croaking at me. It sounded absolutely nothing like Mutai. But as he repeated it, I realized he was at least doing the same croak over and over again. Then he pointed at himself and made a different sound.

  I blinked at him. I couldn’t croak and he couldn’t speak Common.

  “Well… I have to call you something besides Battle Toad or my friend. Uh…” He continued to croak at himself and I said the first name that popped into my mind.

  “How about I call you Ragual?”

  He raised an eyebrow and I repeated the word a few times, before nodding. Then, he pointed at me, and made the same croaks from before. I didn’t even try to copy it, it sounded loud and deep though. I’d definitely remember it.

  I gave a thumbs up in reply.

  “Well alright, Ragual. Your village is amazing and lovely and just, so great. I love it here.”

  As I spoke I gestured to his whole village and gave two thumbs up. He got the point.

  He croaked, looking at me, gesturing to all of me, and then-

  Made a gesture of shrinkage.

  “Hey! It’s not my fault I haven’t eaten anything good for… god I need food.”

  The last good thing I ate was a hotdog with everything on it and that had been months ago. I could still taste it now. Cooked, not raw, not bloody, not disgusting, not putrid, not a dead rat. My stomach chose that moment to let out a loud grumble.

  Ragual laughed at my plight and then waved me forward as he walked towards his house.

  I had absolutely no idea what toads or frog people ate but if it wasn’t a rat, I was going to eat all of it.

  *****

  I devoured the food. Destroyed it, and asked for seconds. And thirds.

  It was vegetables. They ate some kind of watery vegetables. They were thin, stringy, and for the life of me, I swore they tasted exactly like waterlogged bananas. They were even sweet! Ragual never stopped giving me more. Hell, when I stopped, he seemed worried I wasn’t going to continue. After all, he ate far more than me.

  By the time I was done, my stomach felt like exploding. But I was happy.

  Ragual showed me around his house. I had no idea how they built things here but it was a real house alright. Someone had moved or carved it from rock and I honestly couldn’t say which. It had a table, chairs, even equipment for training. Not a lot of decorations though. It was the mostly modern kitchen that surprised me. Why did they even need pots and pans?

  Finally though, the day began to wind down. Me and Ragual talked more and more and I felt like we were developing a language all our own. We even began telling jokes through words. I wanted to cry. It’d been so long since I’d had a friend and I think it was the same for Ragual. I didn’t get the feeling he was ostracized but, he was different. Stronger. He had more responsibilities and duties. Far as I could tell, he was the guard captain, and had many stories to share about what had come down that tunnel. Mostly rats, though he swore up and down that he once fought a ‘baby chain wraith’. I didn’t believe it. Those things were truly horrifying. The glimmer in his eye told me he was fucking with me.

  When I began to get tired and the moss’s glow began to grow lighter, Ragual took me to a small room. He opened it and there, in all of its wonderful, amazing glory, was a bed. Just a bed. A normal bed. Sure, instead of a wood frame, it was rock and the mattress, pillow, and blanket seemed made up of the same cloth they used for bandages but for all intents and purposes, it was just a normal bed.

  I stumbled towards it and laid down.

  Before my head even touched the pillow, I was out like a light.

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