#(34/40 M!A - Lycan Mushrooms)

[just-wishes-and-faeries]

hmmmm... okay uh - what did you have to do for cyan to make him owe you a favor?

She looks surprised, but then looks around. "Is 'not sure' an okay answer if I'm actually not sure?" Cyan flutters over, landing on their shoulder. "I can answer that for you." "...Alright. I guess you'd know better than I would."

"I suppose I should start in the beginning. My siblings and I came to the Mortal Realm to collect the shed needles from the Tree of Life, as we do every year. Normally, they are simply lying around for us to find, or in the hands of scouts for The Dealmaker, so we chased down Shy Anon when we had found them with two of the three Life Needles. There was a problem, though, when we were trying to get the Needles back. You see, while these Needles do grant power to their bearers, they also cause a lack of stability in form. They become goopy and almost liquid. With two Needles, they had become capable of morphing their body into a container for one of the Needles while carrying the other. The removal of one Needle would cause their body to reject the second, expelling it, but we were only capable of breaking their link to it without distancing them from it. This is where Helico helped us. She carried it away while we kept them from going after it. Without them, we would be unable to return home. That, or we would have had to cause irreparable damage to Shy Anon to get the Needle out."

There is a moment of silence from the corner of the room that Cyan came from, before... "...what." "...What?" "Is that why Shy Anon has been avoiding all of us? Because you've been terrorizing them this whole time beforehand? Are you kidding me, Iere?" "I... thought we had to. It was all I knew to do." "You could have talked to them, Iri. You and I both know that. I know you're under stress, and maybe that's been getting to you, but you can't just take that out on random people, even if it means we'd be here for longer." "...I was just worried about you." "I know. I'm worried about you, too. But please..." they mutter in... seemingly a different language? "Just make sure you don't hurt people over such small things."

Cyan and Yellow flutter slowly back to the basket, seemingly to talk things over with the rest of their siblings. A heavy silence weighs over the table, but Cube and Lycan come over with snacks to break it. "Who are we on now?" Lycan asks.