“I can’t believe you’re sick! After living in filth and decay for your whole life, you choose now to get sick!” Gole roars furiously, her tail swishing back and forth as Poole kneels beside Trouse, who lies in the sand, his skin orange.
“I don’t think he chose to get sick. He has Orange Skin.” Poole diagnoses, and Gole flings sand everywhere in her fury.
“I know that he didn’t choose to get sick! And I can see that his skin is orange!” She rumbles, and Poole gives her a sideways glance.
“I meant the disease. It’s called Orange Skin. Ever hear of it?”
“Why would I have heard about that disease when I’m covered in fur?” Gole retorts sharply, and Poole sighs,
“Of course. My mistake. We need to lay him in a patch of Hu Grass, it’ll cure him.” He says patiently with a tinge of sarcasm at the beginning and Gole growls lowly,
“It would happen right as reached the middle of a desert when there are no plants at all. I bet this is your horse’s fault. He was fine before you two tagged along.”
“Orange Skin can be transmitted by alterna, not horses.” Poole calmly explains, and Gole narrows her eyes at him,
“Well it’s not my fault I’m an alterna. I was born this way.”
“And it’s not my horse’s fault that it is a horse. She was born that way.” Poole counters, and Gole flicks her tail angrily.
“Can it, rem. Where’s this grass at?”
“We can find it in the desert luckily. It tends to grow around cacti.”
“Oh, lovely. That’s going to be a blast. Put Trouse on my back and let’s go look for some.” Gole replies, her voice dripping with disdain, and Poole grimaces at her.
“He won’t stay on your back. You run too often.”
“Well, what do you suggest? That we leave him here?” Gole growls, her voice threatening, and Poole huffs in annoyance.
“No, you oversized cat, I’m saying I should prop him up on the horse’s back so he doesn’t fall off every other step!”
“I’m not a cat, Pink Lance!” Gole snaps pettishly, and the rem pinches the bridge of his nose in irritation.
“Okay, fine. Can we please just get Trouse onto my horse and go find the grass? We’re losing daylight.”
“You started it.” Gole sulks but complies as she helps the rem boy lift Trouse onto the horse’s back, and he uses her to climb onto the horse’s back as well.
“Ok, you lead. This horse won’t listen to me. She’ll only follow you like she was ordered to,” Poole says once he is sitting on the horse’s back, with Trouse securely propped up so he doesn’t fall off, his eyes glazed over and his ears unaware that anything is transpiring around him.
“She was ordered to follow me?!” Gole exclaims, and Poole furrows his eyebrows at the female alterna.
“You haven’t figured that out by now? That’s what the town leader said, and she’s been stuck to you like a fly on honey.”
“Be quiet. I forgot he said that, so I thought that was your fault.” Gole mutters as she starts to walk, following the scent of the trapen, with the horse practically glued to her.
“Shouldn’t we be searching for the grass?” Poole asks from behind Gole, astride Erve, and Gole shoots daggers at him.
“If you happen to know where some grass is, please tell me. Until then, I am going to follow the trail of these worthless trapen.”
The two travel through the desert in silence for a couple of hours, the sand burning Gole’s pads of her paws as she walks, with the scorching wind pelting Poole and his horse’s faces unrelentingly with sand. Finally, Poole points off to a forest of tall cacti, and exclaims,
“In there! There must be some Hu Grass in there!”
Gole looks at the prickly forest hesitantly, and then back at Poole,
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says. Poole purses his lips,
“This isn’t going to be fun for either of us, but if you want to catch those trapen and bring your doub too, we have to do this,” he says, and Gole groans loudly before she musters up her courage and begins to jog towards the cacti forest, with Poole on his horse following right behind.
Building up speed, Gole races between two large cacti, the prickles reaching out trying to scratch her, but she remains unscathed as she twists and winds through the sandy forest until she reaches a patch of prickly dry grass waving in the wind, and turns to look at Poole.
“That’s it,” Poole says as he dismounts Erve, pulling Trouse off with him and dropping him unceremoniously in the tall grass.
“What if there are snakes in there?” Gole snaps.
“Snakes do not go near Hu Grass. It burns and blisters their scales due to the toxin it secretes. It’s this very toxin that makes it a cure for Orange Skin,” Poole informs the alterna dryly, and Gole scrunches up her nose.
“I’m not touching that grass.”
Suddenly, Trouse’s blonde head pokes out of the grass groggily, his skin a healthy tan color once again as he sneezes a couple of times before he wades out of the tall grass, rubbing his nose.
“I think I got some grass up my nose,” he says, tiredly, before he falls backwards into the grass, sound asleep.