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They've only been back from Fontaine for two days when Ifa knocks again on Ororon's door. Ororon is surprised, but only mildly; his radishes are flourishing right now, and if Ifa's in the area, probably he wants a few more.
It turns out, though, that this isn't about radishes.
Well, mostly not about radishes.
"If she wants radishes, she can have radishes, bro," Ifa says, leading Ororon down the hill from his house towards the drop-off below. "She's just gotta eat something. And she won't let us move her to the clinic. Chief Biram even asked that big guy, Claw, to try and convince her, but she doesn't wanna leave the spot her partner died."
He hops off the drop-off, Cacucu grabbing his hand to drag him gliding forward, and Ororon lets his cloak flare and follows. As soon as they're over a patch of Flammabomb trees, Ororon can see the Iktomisaurus Ifa has been talking about. She's covered all over with bandages, but the most visible injury is the half an ear with a bandaged edge.
She's standing in the middle of a battlefield. Ororon can sense the remnant impressions of a few fading souls here, and a few fragments of those utterly shattered by the Abyss. Nothing more, though. Granny would have cleaned out any still intact enough to save before the tribe put up the monument that sits at the center.
The Iktomisaurus sits in front of the monument, staring at it in a meditative trance. "Rise and shine, bro!" Cacucu shrieks in her intact ear. It twitches once, but her head doesn't turn.
"She's way underweight," Ifa says, gesturing as if Ororon can see under her furry coat and folded wings. Though even Ororon can see how limp and patchy her fur is, which he guesses isn't a good sign. "Since I can't get her back to the clinic for observation, and she's so close to your place... you can keep an eye on her, right? She hasn't touched the high-calorie feed we left yesterday, so go ahead and try your radishes. Or whatever else she wants to eat. Anything you can get into her would be great."
"Got it, bro," Ororon tells him, and grins when Ifa bumps his outheld fist.
Then, as Ifa hangs back, he walks slowly up to her and sets down the armful of radishes he'd brought. He crouches cautiously. Iktomisaurs don't usually like him much--something to do with his damaged soul, which they can sense in a way other saurians can't. But she doesn't even look his way.
"Try these," Ororon tells her. She ignores him and the radishes, which is rude to the radishes. Maybe once they're introduced, she'll be less rude? "My radishes are coming up really good this year. This one is named Stretch, because it's the biggest one that's grown so far. You'll like it."
Her ear twitches.
"And this one is Splits, because its stalk split in two directions."
Her ear twitches twice.
"And this one is Yashiro, because Granny was stomping around muttering under her breath about one of her light novels when it sprouted, and I thought the name fit."
She turns and looks straight at him. Ororon braces himself, just in case she's going to try and ice him. Instead she reaches down, picks up Yashiro, and nibbles on the stalk.
"Thanks for helping Yashiro fulfill its destiny," he tells her, and chooses now to back off.
"Way to go, bro," Ifa says when Ororon rejoins him, watching her eat with relief in his eyes. "You got enough radishes to keep her fed?"
"If I don't, I can plant more. I'll see if she likes anything else I'm growing, too."
"Thanks, bro," Ifa says, and exchanges one more fistbump. "I'll be by as often as I can to check in, okay?"
"You got this, bro!" Cacucu adds.
As long as this Iktomisaurus doesn't suddenly decide he's as creepy as the rest of them think, Ororon thinks he does. It isn't hard to pull up radishes.
***
She likes tomatoes, too, nipping a little hole in each one and sucking the gooey insides out before meditatively peeling the skin off and abandoning the solid flesh. Ororon takes that back for the squirrels whenever he brings more food. She doesn't like cabbages. While she'll eat the whole of a radish, she only likes the greens off carrots, so he takes those off and keeps the rest for his own meals.
She won't eat anything until he tells her its name. Ororon respects that.
Ifa visits a couple times a week, and is thrilled by the weight she's gaining. Slowly the bandages come off, one-by-one, as her wounds heal. Neither he nor Cacucu nor Chief Biram nor Claw can convince her to leave the monument, so Ororon digs up some of the canvas he uses to cover his crops in harsh storms and sets her up a little tent. She refuses to stand in it until he names it, too, then gives a little whistling chirp--the first sound from her--and walks right inside.
"I wish she'd come back to the tribe," Chief Biram says a few days later, examining Quenepa Peak (the canvas has faded to about that shade of blue, and it's peaked to keep it from catching rain), "but since she won't, this was a good choice."
"Maybe she doesn't feel like she fits in there, like me. She seems pretty introverted," Ororon adds, because Chief Biram is giving him the solemn guilty look that all the gramps and grannies in the tribe give him, the one that makes him feel as uncomfortable around them as the Iktomisaurs seem to be around him. It's not their fault Ororon didn't die the way he should have way back when.
"At least she's in good company," is all Chief Biram says before he leaves.
***
Three days of gentle drenching rain are great for his garden, but not, it turns out, for Ororon himself. By the third day his throat is ominously scratchy. On the fourth day he wakes up feverish and aching, with a headache so bad he can barely see and his throat so swollen that it hurts to breathe. His clothes and sheets are soaked with sweat.
He has to feed the Iktomisaurus, though, so he hauls himself out of bed, makes it out the front door, and passes out in the mud.
When he wakes up, something is tugging on him. He tries to bat at it and gets a low, scolding whistle for his trouble. He blinks until the blue haze in front of him clears into an Iktomisaurus with only one-and-a-half ears. She's dragging him across his floor.
"Thank you," Ororon tells her blearily as her eyes shimmer blue and he feels himself go weightless long enough for her to heave up into his bed. "The three radishes on the end of the third row should all be ready to pick. They're Legs, Splits the Second, and Bug Food. Bug Food's okay to eat, don't worry. Any tomatoes that are completely red should be okay to pick, too."
She pats him on the shoulder and trots out the door. She doesn't close it, but that's fine. Ororon squishes back into his sweat-soaked, now also mud-soaked sheets and concentrates on breathing. He's starting to haze out into sleep again when the Iktomisaurus suddenly looms over him again, opens her wings, and dumps what looks like every ripe tomato he'd had into the bed.
"Oh, right." Ororon tries to sit up a bit, swallowing stickily. "I don't name these til I pick them, because until then they're part of the plants. But I can do that now. Just give me a minute to think."
The Iktomisaurus shakes her head, levitates one up, and attempts to jam it directly into his mouth.
Ororon considers that for a moment. "These are for me? You sure you don't want them?"
She holds up a bundle of three radishes and nods, then mashes the tomato against his lips again.
"Thanks," Ororon says, touched, and takes the tomato.
The stingy-sweet taste of it manages to penetrate past the mucus as he eats, and the moment its watery pulp touches his tongue he realizes how dehydrated he'd been. Whether by accident or not, she'd picked the perfect food.
He manages to finish half the tomatoes, then manages to convince her to stop when she attempts to levitate another one directly into his mouth. With copious promises that he'll eat the rest later, he just doesn't want to throw up the ones he already ate, Ororon sinks back into his pillow. His head still hurts, but a little less, and Ifa would tell him that rest is the best medicine.
Actually, Ifa might really have medicine, and he should be swinging by today or tomorrow to check on the Iktomisaurus again. "Ifa's coming by soon," he tells her. "He'll check on me, if you want to go back to Quenepa Peak."
She whistles a negation, shakes her head to emphasize it, and flares her wings before settling back down, emphatically, on the floor beside his bed.
"If you want to hang out here, that's fine too," Ororon says, and closes his eyes, to her low quiet whistle of contentment.
Despite his burning throat and aching head, he smiles to himself. It's nice to know an Iktomisaurus who doesn't think he's too weird to hang out with. One who likes radishes just as much as he does, too, even if she doesn't appreciate cabbages properly. That's okay; they can both be a little weird.