The Elder was very happy on his way home from the Sisters of Mercy Convent. The Abbess had given him more than enough spices and salt to finish the cure on the fresh slaughter.

'Not that it's going to help much with our financial situation.If I can only find the means to get those truffles into a city I am sure they are going to sell.' The dump truck crunched its way down the gravel driveway. 'Smoothe as a baby's ȧss.This is how the other half lives… I should have joined the church.' The Elder muttered under his breath as he reached the boundary of the property.

Jeffy was downing large gulps of rotgut whiskey out of a blue inflatable child's wading pool adorned with little yellow ducks. The wounds on his side's were bleeding more profusely as the liquor had thinned his blood.

"It feels impolite to ask but do you mind if I catch some of that I'd hate to let it go to waste." The Tinker was eyeballing all the blood as it was seeping into the shop floor.

'Yeah feel free to. Fair warning, it's not fit for human consumption as is. Your mind would turn into mush with the amount of qi inside of it. Yes I can read all of your thoughts.The one you call Grubworm might be able to withstand some of the energy because his thick skull would help contain it.' Jeffy sent over an x-ray view of Joe's cranium. It was almost a 6:1 ratio of skull to brain in size. 'Quite frankly it's a wonder the boy is capable of higher thought. His brain is practically almost identical in structure to a reptile's brain.'

"So he might be a descendant of a draconic bloodline?" Jimbo gasped aloud.

Jeffy let out a few short ree rees 'Not in the least think more along the lines of a Sedentary Silt Lizard.'

"What's a Sedentary Silt Lizard?" Jimbo asked while picturing a small gray lizard that lounged on a muddy river bank sunning himself on a rock while perfectly still with his mouth open waiting for flies.

'That's exactly what they look like. The are so lazy they are almost extinct too lazy to fuċk much. I'm getting peckish what do you have to eat old man?'

"I did have a pimento cheese sandwich until a  little fisherwoman came by to take it."

'I knew I smelled mackerel in this place. You are holding out on me old man where is that fish… I'm not picky in the least.' Jeffy scanned Jimbo's mind to get the answers he sought. Images from this morning left him speechless, the probing caught him up to the events that had came to pass over these past few days.

Jimbo grinned "Yeah never really a quiet day around here."

'I'll get some squirrels to bring us some walnuts and pine nuts. You starving bastard the horrors you endure in this place… my condolences I'll contact NATTO to send an aid package.'

Jeffy lifted his front hoof placing it down on tje Tinker's shoulder. The force of a simple pat dislocated the bones. Tears welled in the Tinker's eyes but he bit back the pain.

"Jeffy please don't do that again. I need to get some painkillers now."

'I got the cure my friend. Just need to find a walnut tree.'

Ethel had made it back to an empty house,she scrounged around in the milk crates that served as impromptu shelving inside the house until she found some Clerex bleach. She carefully measured about 1 ounce of bleach into a galvanized mop pail. She took the bucket and added water to it from the rain barrel out back.

She stripped her leathers off and cleaned the wound on her leg with the solution and a rag she found by a wash basin inside. When she was done she tore up a spare bedsheet that didn't smell too bad to use as a bandage for her leg and a made a splint with some small sticks and another piece of sheet for her forearm. She laid down on the Elder's bed to take a well deserved nap. 'Not the bed I dreamed of but it's good enough to have a dream in today.'