Elayra growled in her throat at Ghent’s rejoinder of why her own corpse wasn’t floating downriver alongside the rock beast’s stones. She winced as the sound irked her still recovering throat. The sting of the wounds at her neck began to throb as the rush of adrenaline from the attack ebbed. She scowled and did her best to ignore the sensation.
	“I suppose even jesters have their useful moments,” she responded, smirking.
	She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as Ghent’s tone sobered. She had no clue how long she’d been under for. Logic told her it couldn’t have been more than a minute, if that. But it had felt like an eternity.
	She shook her head at Ghent’s last question, not bothering to check that he’d seen the motion. Drawing her legs in from the water, she rose to her hands and knees. “I’m fine.”
	Elayra reached up and tenderly brushed her finger over her stinging thorn wounds. She winced as her touch agitated the cuts. Watery crimson coated her fingertips as she pulled them away.
	“Thank you, Ghent,” she muttered. Disbelief tinted the words. Words that, despite all odds, she had said twice to him now.
	She glanced up to where the female rock beast had vanished, its form consumed by the thicker trees of the woods.
	“At least you know how to clean up your messes, Featherhead.” Elayra amended her thanks with an irate snort.
	She got shakily to her feet. Her body felt heavy from more than her drenched clothes, as if the weightlessness of the water called to her, trying to coax her back to its depths.
	“Those were terraflames.” She stepped to her and Drust’s bags, which sat a bit more upstream from where she and Ghent had resurfaced. “They’re attracted to strong emotions not tainted by the Curse.”
	She sighed heavily as she knelt between her and Drust’s packs. She opened hers, and reached inside, rummaging around within its gaping, seemingly endless insides.
	“Drust told me they were kept as pets once. They were docile, and fed on any negative emotions, making their households a [i]happy[/i] one.” The word ‘happy’ rolled from her tongue as if unaccustomed to forming it, incapable of believing that something ‘docile’ could exist in the wild. It was a fairy tale to her, nothing more. “Now… well.” She snorted a humorless chortle. “You saw. They’ll consume anything that’s attracted their attention. Flesh and all.”
	She paused a moment, arm sunk in her pack to the elbow. An uneasy expression settled over her face as she looked again after the female terraflame.
	“I’ve never seen them this far from Mount Crone, though,” she continued distantly, more to herself than to Ghent. “They must be getting desperate.”
	She shook her head slightly. She could think about that later. Right now, both she and Ghent were wounded and soaking wet, neither of which would do them any good in town.