I am sososo glad you like it and that it went over so well! This was one of the most pivotal chapters in the series, and one that I still get tears in my eyes when I read it over, even when I’m just editing. Thanks!
He could bring you right to it after you describe it to him! He’s better than a metal detector on the beach if he can figure out how to lock onto the item in question (if he can’t, he gets a splitting headache).
I had to take a second to be intrigued/entertained by the “bathroom problem” terminology. A bathroom is not an inherent thing that all sentient people can be assumed to have. And, though we try to ignore the subject in polite conversation, organisms produce waste in natural processes. They need not be a problem for anyone.
I understand what you meant, though, so hopefully I can explain adequately without offending any sensibilities.
The wood sprites have stairs on their trees. They generally use those or simply glide down from their home branches to an area outside the main thoroughfare of the village. There, they can dig a small trench, do their business, cover it, and be on their way (a stop by the stream to wash off certainly wouldn’t be amiss, but they have water basins in their homes, too). This is not so different from what humans generally do if there’s not a bathroom available. Sadly, we haven’t always had indoor plumbing.
That’s how it’s done in Wellwood. There are some wood sprite communities out there that might keep a sort of “outhouse” structure on their home trees for households to share. It’s a bucket of dirt in a closed room that gets refreshed every so often. Five stars.
As far as potential “emergencies” go (Spirit save me), I’ll add that gastrointestinal issues among wood sprites are astronomically rare. Their metabolisms are incredibly efficient and robust, and honestly they can be like tiny living compost bins. They are able to digest many things that other mammals can’t (sugars like cellulose, which humans can’t digest), making their lives much easier in times of scarcity (they are literally surrounded by cellulose). Conveniently, it means they can control things like their regularity with greater ease. They also don’t vomit involuntarily, the lucky little guys.
Faster metabolism does mean that chemicals like alcohol and caffeine get distributed very quickly. Bowman got hyper very fast in Lich because of this. In his canon, you can see in Bowman of Wellwood that a few drinks of beer made him wobbly, much to his chagrin. Drunken sprite. They’re all lightweights.
I digress, anon.
In short, the “bathroom problem” isn’t truly a problem (and nor does it have much to do with an actual bathroom). But, I mean, kudos for thinking to ask the awkward questions. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have to go through answering that, but one big block of uncertainty has been removed from my life. Thanks, you’re a peach.
Playing along with the tiny kids, Dean moved his hand so it was directly against where his heart was hidden away in his chest. “How’s it sound from here?” He’d be lying if he wasn’t fascinated in the answer.
“Now I can really hear it!” the nestling confirmed. Now that they were closer, the young sprites shifted towards the huge wall that was Dean’s chest, tilting their heads towards it. They were fascinated by the sound, something they had never heard at such a scale before.
The little girl leaned her head against Dean briefly, her eyes widening at how much that amplified the sound of his heart beating away. The whole thing was bigger than the sprites there, possibly all of them together. The girl leaned back to stare straight up at him with a fascinated grin. “I can even feel it! Your heart is so big!”
The Earth Spirit, called the Lady of Life by her children the wood sprites, holds domain over life energy. A very powerful yet benign entity, She lends Her magic to the sprites when invoked with a Prayer. The wood sprites, Her cherished children, harbor a reverence for all manner of living things.
The Earth Spirit and Her five siblings do not manifest in the physical world. Their influence is limited to their spiritual connections with the sprites. While the sprites do not have magic of their own, they act as effective conduits for the Spirits’ magic. The Spirits communicate with their children through dreams. A dream from the Earth Spirit leaves one invigorated and filled with life.
My sprites (the earthbound sprites, not to be confused with nightmares’ Aeternum babies) all have a direct spiritual connection to the Spirit that made them. It is through these connections that a sprite can Pray, which is basically another word for incantation here. They borrow magic from their Spirit, and in the case of the wood sprites, they borrow magic from the Earth Spirit, the Lady of Life.
Sprites’ souls are essentially little pieces of the Spirit’s soul. Sam, as a human, has an entirely different kind of soul and thus no connection to the Spirit. He could try to Pray, but he doesn’t have any way to channel magic from the Lady of Life.
Cerul, one of the first wood sprites Sam meets in Brothers Asunder, has a gift called the Voice of the Spirit, which means that his connection to Her is the strongest it can be. The gift enables him to Pray much more without tiring, it gives him an empathy to the feelings, physical and emotional, of the living things around him, and it enables him to see where the Spirit’s influence flows. He would have been able to see right away that Sam does not have a connection to a Spirit.
Ooo, the horror story. Well, I don’t think Jacob is pleased that we’re all so interested in it…
The horror story is the 3rd story of Brothers Found. That means, it’ll only have a chance of appearing in the poll once we’ve gotten through the first and second stories of that AU. Jacob’s got his fingers crossed that we pick other choices.
Currently, we are working on editing the horror story, because it is actually the longest story we have written together. Beware!
Vel giggled along with the other kids, and then looked at his own hand. After a pause, he curled his fingers towards his palm and stuck out his thumb, which he then displayed for the humans to see. “Okay!” he said proudly.
Jacob chuckled. “Did Sam teach you about thumbs-up?” he asked, noting the way the little nestling held the gesture a little oddly.
Vel nodded. “Yeah! He told me it means ‘good.’ So, good!” He held up his other thumb before letting his hands drop to his lap again.
Brothers Apart 