They made it back to the cabin eventually, and Gen stood in the yard staring at 1000 pounds of fish wondering where exactly the translation had broken down.
He had been very clear.
He remembered being very clear.
He had said a day’s worth of food, one day, for 7 people, and he had even counted on his fingers to make sure the message landed.
Groova had nodded along, the aspen dryad had given her usual blank acknowledgment, and Gen had felt confident that the hunting party understood the assignment.
They had each come back with a 500 pound fish.
Gen looked at the fish.
He looked at Groova.
He looked at the aspen dryad.
He looked back at the fish.
1000 pounds of dead freshwater giant, enough meat to feed the entire settlement for a week, sitting in his yard because two dryads had apparently heard “a day’s worth of food” and decided that meant “a day’s worth of food for each of us, individually.”
“Groova,” he said slowly, “I asked for one day of food.”
“Yes,” Groova said, nodding.
“This is one day of food.”
“For everyone.”
“Yes. Groova can eat all of it if Groova wants. Groova eat big.”
The aspen dryad, who had been silent the whole walk back, finally spoke up.
Her voice was flat and dry.
“Groova big.”
Groova beamed.
She took it as a compliment, straight to the heart, and puffed up her chest with pride.
“Yes! Groova big and strong!”
The aspen dryad said nothing else.
She just stood there, looking off into the middle distance with the barest hint of something on her face.
Groova’s smile slowly faded.
Her head tilted.
Somewhere behind her eyes, a set of gears had started turning, slowly, laboriously, the wheels spinning while the hamster running them had long since passed away and been replaced by a memorial plaque.
A full 30 seconds crawled by before the machinery finally produced a result.
“DID PALE ONE CALL GROOVA FAT!”
The aspen dryad looked away.
From Gen’s angle, he could see the corner of her mouth twitching, and she was definitely, unmistakably holding in a laugh.
It was the most expression he had ever gotten out of her outside of a kill.
“Groova is not fat!” Groova jabbed a claw at her own stomach, pointing at the faint lines of muscle just visible under the gray skin.
“See! Abs! Groova is strong, not fat! Strong!” She paused, and her voice wobbled.
“…Right?”
She spun to Gen and closed the distance in one bound, dropping to her knees in front of him and grabbing him by the shoulders.
Her red eyes were huge and teary.
“I-i-is Groova… fat? Tell Groova the truth! Groova can handle it! Groova is strong! Strong girls can handle the truth!”
Gen put his hands on her face and squished her cheeks gently.
“Groova. You look beautiful. You have always looked beautiful. You are the strongest, most beautiful woman I have ever met, and there is not a single thing wrong with how you look.”
Groova sniffled.
Then she sniffled again.
Then she buried her face in his chest and made a sound like a deflating balloon, her whole body sagging against him while he patted her head.
The aspen dryad met it with complete, unconcerned blankness.
Gen let Groova cling to him for another minute before he started looking at the actual problem, which was that he now had 1000 pounds of fish and no practical way to cook any of it.
The fireplace in the cabin was small, built for heating and the occasional pot of stew, not for roasting something the size of a small boat.
He had no oven, no roasting pit big enough, and the kiln he had just built was for clay, not for food.
He could spend hours hacking pieces off and cooking them one at a time over the fire, and he would be there until sundown.
He turned to Vyxia.
He gave her “The Face.”
Vyxia stared back at him.
Her expression was flat and waiting, the look of someone who had been around this human long enough to know he was about to ask for something.
“What?”
Gen gave her “The Face.”
“I do not know what that face means, human. Use your words.”
Gen gave her “The Face” harder.
Vyxia’s eye twitched.
She crossed her arms, tapped her foot, and went through a visible internal debate about whether to keep pretending she did not understand or to cave and find out.
Her pride lost.
“What do you need?”
Gen did “The Face” again, and pointed at the fish.
Vyxia stared at the fish.
Then at Gen.
Then at the fish again.
Then back at Gen, and the realization hit her like a bucket of cold water, and her face went from confused to outraged in under a second.
“I AM NOT BECOMING YOUR OVEN, YOU STUPID HUMAN!” Her voice climbed into a shriek.
“I SHOULD BURN YOU AT THE STAKE FOR EVEN SUGGESTING SUCH A PEASANT TASK TO A PRINCESS OF ELRÄÄNG-”
Gen gave her “The Face”.
Vyxia’s mouth snapped shut.
She stared at him, her whole face burning red, a war raging behind her eyes between every ounce of dragon pride she possessed and the simple, undeniable fact that she had already lost this argument and she knew it.
Her jaw worked.
Her hands clenched and unclenched.
For a moment Gen genuinely thought she might breathe fire at him, and then she let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a sigh, thrust one hand out, and pointed it at the nearest fish.
A jet of flame roared out of her palm.
The fish’s exterior charred instantly, blackened skin cracking and peeling.
“Perfect!” Gen said.
“Now inside!”
He grabbed her hand before she could pull it back, and pressed it against the fish’s flank.
“It needs to cook internally. The outside is just going to burn while the middle stays raw. You have to push the heat through the meat, not just scorch the surface.”
Vyxia’s mouth fell open.
She stared at her hand, pressed wrist deep into the side of a giant dead fish, coated in fish slime and charred scales and whatever else had been on that thing when it came out of the lake.
She looked at Gen.
“I,” she said, very quietly, “am going to murder you.”
But she did not pull her hand out.
Her anger simmered, building, her face going redder and redder as the slime worked its way up her forearm, and then her hand went white hot, a controlled blaze that she poured into the fish with all the fury of a woman taking out her frustrations on the only target available.
The fish’s flesh began to cook from the inside, sweet steam rising off the meat, the aroma filling the yard.
“Cooking it too much!” Gen yanked her hand out of the fish.
Vyxia stared at her hand.
It was steaming.
It was covered in cooked fish and grease.
Her pristine, royal, never-been-soiled-in-985-years hand.
She pouted, spun on her heel, and stormed off toward the cabin, muttering a stream of Elräängan curses under her breath that Gen was very glad he could not understand.
“Okay,” Gen said, turning back to the yard.
“So we’ve got one cooked fish, which is great. The raw one is for Baegun and Heugun, but they can’t finish a whole 500 pound fish by themselves, so I’m hoping you two can help them out with it.”
Groova gave him a thumbs up, beaming.
“Groova can eat the entire thing!”
The aspen dryad looked at Groova.
Then at the fish.
Then back at Groova, and the corner of her mouth twitched again.
“Fat.”
“GROOVA DOES NOT CARE!” Groova stomped, whipping around to face her.
“Gen likes Groova like this! Gen said Groova is beautiful! So there! Groova is beautiful and strong and she can eat the whole fish and pale one is just jealous because she cannot eat as much as Groova!”
The aspen dryad said nothing.
She did not need to.
Her silence was somehow more insulting than any words she could have produced, and Groova was still sputtering when Gen’s attention drifted.
He looked at the aspen dryad.
Really looked at her, for the first time in a while.
Pale bark white skin, black streaked hair, red eyes, standing in his yard like she had always been there.
And it hit him that in all the weeks she had been living with them, sleeping in his house, hunting with Groova, fighting beside him, he had never once given her a name.
He had named Groova.
He had named Baegun and Heugun.
He had named the fruit.
He had named everything in his life, because that was what you did with things you cared about.
He had never named her.
Aspen in Korean was sasinamu.
Too long to say every day.
Sasi?
She was sassy enough to pull it off, but it did not feel right.
Namu?
No, that was just the word for tree.
Sina?
That sounded way too much like John Cena, and he was not about to introduce the most dangerous dryad in the forest as John Cena.
He was standing there muttering under his breath, cycling through options, when Groova bounced up beside him.
“Why not name pale one pale one?” she asked, tilting her head.
Gen laughed.
“That would be a lot easier, yeah. But she deserves a real name. Something based on aspen trees, since that’s what she is.”
Groova thought about it.
Hard.
Her face scrunched up, the gears grinding again, and after a long moment she brightened.
“What about… asp?”