Potto may have been dead, but he wasn't dead dead. Clover rushed to his side. She had just found one of her prophesied saviours and he now looked very dead dead. Very dead dead indeed, and she really had no reason to think he wasn't.

Aye didn't react at all, simply because he couldn't. Besides calling him by a pet name, he didn't know Potto well at all, but the stabbing had happened so fast and unexpectedly that he was quite stunned. Even more than usual.

"What have you done?" cried Clover. 

"You want to escape, don't you?" Pannick replied. "I have done this before, silly girl. I did not cut into anything vital." She then left the room quickly and quietly. 

The confusion that all of this had caused was quite intentional on her part. Clover tried to (unsuccessfully) cover the wound with her filthy hands. Aye still stood there staring blankly. The shock had worn off and had turned to confusion. Both shock and confusion were feelings he knew well and was quite comfortable with. The Yaygher head had finally passed on with a huge ridiculous grin on its hideous dead face, making it look like they were all being mocked by a jack-o-lantern made of meat that had been left out on the porch for several unkind years. 

Pannick ran back into the brig and tossed a ball of bandage to Clover through the bars of the cell. She unlocked the cell doors, and then smashed her face into one of them hard and knocked herself clean out. Aye's confusion had doubled and turned into flabbergastery.  

Teeg, Gekko and Clory were soon in the chamber and from that point on things happened so fast that Aye didn't have time to comprehend any of it, and probably wouldn't for the rest of his life. (Though to be fair, he probably wouldn't think about it much ever again.)

Teeg took the bandages from a sobbing Clover and let Potto bleed on them, making his wound look even worse than it was. Potto's torso was soon wrapped in the bloody bandage, and Clory lifted his body with her viney arms and they left as fast as they had arrived. Clover grabbed Aye's hand and followed. 

They rushed out of the stockade and into the main throne room taking K'ween by surprise. 

"He tried to escape! He may have killed Pannick! He went crazy! The only way we could stop him was by force, but now we need to get him to a surgeon before he dies and is worthless to us!" Teeg yelled to K'ween. "We'll take him to the medical unit, but we have to be quick!"

The commotion of the situation, mixed with K'ween's concern for her favourite (Pannick) and a realization that she could lose The Node's great reward kept her from even noticing Aye or Clover following them, or questioning why Teeg, Gekko and Clory had been in the stockade to begin with. They had been counting on this. By the time she did realize something wasn't right, all were safely on The Muse. 

~~~

Potto wasn't aware that he was still alive, nor did it occur to him that he might be dead dead. 

In his head he was sitting around a bonfire. He was with his imaginary wee fairy friend Bundle and a beautiful woman. He did not know this woman, but he desperately wished he did. 

Bundle flew about his head. "We ran out of marshmallows," she announced.

This was sad news, for marshmallows were an Earth confection and he knew not when he would be back to the great mall planet to get more. This sadness quickly passed as he predictably forgot what a marshmallow was.

He did not remember much about anything, but he inherently knew he liked camping, and he marvelled at the wonderful spot they were presently enjoying. It was between a forest of deep blue trees dimly glowing with phosphorescent loom fruit and the rock wall of a cliff side, which sheltered them from any wind that might want to ruin their perfect evening or send loose ember sparks through the air intent on singeing holes in pant legs. 

"How is this working?" Bundle asked. "Helping you remember anything? Do you remember this night?"

"No, but I am loving it!" he beamed. "Who is this lovely woman?"

Bundle seemed saddened by this question. "Please try. Look at her. Look deep into her eyes."

"She is so pretty," he added. The woman smiled at him, a big, sweet, loving smile that made Potto feel like he was wrapped in a big, soft, warm pastry. 

"Thank you, babe," she returned with a flirty wink. 

"Nothing??" Bundle asked, getting a tad frustrated. 

"Oh, I wish it did!" he answered.

"Good memories not working. Got it. Let's try something a little stronger. Something not-so-good, shall we?"

"You're the boss!" Potto offered cheerily.

"Hon, you've got to hang up the rest of the food. I heard the howls of northern neglies earlier," the woman said to Potto.

"Right! Good idea!" Potto agreed, getting up and absentmindedly picking up a rucksack of food from beside him. He grabbed a rope from another sack and let the fruit of the trees light his way through the forest. 

A short distance from the fire he found the perfect tree. It had almost called out to him "I have the perfect branch for all your food-hanging needs, my gorgeous friend." He seemed to instinctively know what he was doing. Before hoisting the bag up, he grabbed himself a protein bar and quickly devoured it. He started to choke immediately, which he simply chalked up to not remembering how to eat. It wasn't the first time.

He was quickly distracted from the choking by a small space ship crashing high up on the cliff above the camp site. That's when he noticed he magically had a pair of binoculars around his neck. 

He watched as a second ship landed properly behind it like a police hover car pulling over a drunk civilian hover car driver. A figure got out of the wreck of the first ship and made a run for it. Two large figures got out of the second and fired laser pistols at the first but missed, sending the lasers upward, hitting nothing. The first fired back. The first missed as well but hit a section of rock causing a landslide down the cliff. 

Potto watched helplessly as Bundle and the woman by the campfire were crushed under a boulder. The fire was covered as well and all seemed so very dark. The phosphorescent fruit immediately started rotting on the vine and the glow seemed dimmed to a sad, murky and dull misery. 

The two large figures caught the first and dragged him back to their ship and took off. The first ship was just left to burn into the quiet night.

Potto could not move. The protein bar he had been choking on took pity on him and slid down his throat with ease. He was alone in the dark and even the northern neglies were silent. He slowly wandered back to the camp site trying to remember how to breathe through shock. 

All that was left of his camp company was a bloody hand jetting out from under the rocks. He sat next to it on the ground and held it tight. There was a ring on one of the fingers that looked all too familiar. Tri-coloured gems set in platinum. He remembered buying it for her. He remembered. 

"I had a wife," he said to no one in particular. "Galago. Her name was Galago. My sweet, sweet Galago," he muttered quietly. Potto then started crying as hard as anyone ever had in the universe. He remembered all right, and it hurt like hell.

~~~

To improve Potto's chances, and much to the surprise to everyone aboard The Muse, Clory had taken over. She still held Potto's unconscious body in her branches, and had one vine (one that seemed to sprout from what she had that closest resembled a head) buried deep inside Potto's chest wound.

"What is she doing?" asked Aye, astonished by his own concern. 

"I don't know, but at least it's causing a reaction other than vegetable," Teeg replied, pointing out that wet seemed to be pouring out of Potto's face. She could communicate with Clory telepathically, but Clory's mind was occupied and would not verbalize. She could only make out blurry pictures. Pictures of extreme light and energy and warmth. She could hear sweet music. Whatever Clory was doing, it seemed to be in the realm of healing.

"They are from the same planet. Perhaps she knows something about Quarols that we don't," she added. 

This was indeed the case. Quarols and Sentaphylls were the two dominant species on Quarolode and they were spiritually linked. The Sentaphylls were seen as gods to the nature-loving Quarols for many reasons, but healing their minds was one of the biggest.

They could take away anxiety, panic and depression. They could dissolve worry and grief. They could calm any mental storm, and they could absorb hatred and expel it through roots into the soil. In fact, there only existed one desert on all of Quarolode, and it was caused by this "hate dumping". It was avoided by all but Sentaphylls "unloading", and was called the Anguishing Grounds. 

Clory didn't dump the misery, however. Many centuries ago she had been exiled from her forest home and she decided then to hold onto all the pain and let it affect her, which it did horribly. Though she now had a handle on it thanks to her time with the strong women of Barbohd, she didn't always. It had made her quite mad for a spell. A spell which led to the pesky slaughter of that entire village of Quarols that had her then kicked off the entire planet. Luckily, for her, before the planet went missing.

She knew the importance of Potto's life to Teeg, and she trusted Teeg implicitly, so although she hadn't practised this bonding in decades, it was like riding a bike. A big misshapen weird-looking bike that somehow fits tree people. 

~~~

Pannick awoke on the floor of K'ween's brig, with K'ween herself standing over her. 

"What happened?" K'ween asked flatly.

"I--I don't know. I killed the Yaygher like you ordered, but while fetching the head for your trophy room, one of them got the jump on me. I won't let it happen again. Where are they?" she asked, playing innocent. 

"They escaped with Teeg and her crew. They are now dead to me. We will find them and make them dead to everybody else as well." 

K'ween was a master at not showing her feelings, which was coming in handy at the moment because she felt betrayed. She felt hurt and angry and vengeful. She also realized that perhaps Teeg had been onto something. If the crew of The Muse was willing to cross her, especially after all that she had done for them, then this might be bigger than she thought. She would find Teeg. She would kill Teeg. She would then, as Teeg had first suggested, keep the idiots and find out why they were wanted and possibly hold out for even more of a reward. Perhaps she would become a new Node.

Pannick helped her ready her ship, feeling safe. The secret message she had sent to Teeg with a rescue plan for Potto and Aye had been well encrypted, and the chances of being found out were slim to none. She felt that she had done her part and could put the situation behind her and go back to metaphorically shutting her eyes and blindly serving her K'ween again. Well, perhaps with one eye open just a crack.

~~~

Alone in the dark, Potto sat next to the hand of his dead wife, holding onto it as if he could magically bring her back to life by rocking his body back and forth in sorrow.

He still wasn't remembering everything, but images of laughing, kissing, love-making, and holding Galago swirled around in his head, kicking at his skull and forcing his eyes to leak even harder. They were fused shut with wet grief. He only forced them open when he heard music coming from the woods. 

"Hello?" he asked, hoping someone would emerge and give him all the hugs in the universe. He was only answered with continued music. It was as if a clarinet, flute, piccolo, oboe and bassoon were humping away madly, merging and morphing into a woman's beautifully wailing voice. It was both bassy and shrill, soft and reedy, haunted and warm. It was filled with layer upon layer of musical honey, dripping from every fruit, giving life back to them, making them glow again.

He found a handkerchief in his pocket and wiped his eyes. He loudly blew his nose and walked into the trees as if hypnotised. He could hear Clory's healing music, and it pulled him through the forest, distracting him from the heartbreak.

"Sorry I had to do that, but you really left me no choice," Bundle said from an overhead branch, perhaps hoping to startle him with her triumphant return. It didn't work. The music was too calming and serene. He didn't even seem to notice the sting in his throat from where some oddly metallic and sharp ingredient in the protein bar had scraped his gullet.

"Do what?" he asked. 

"Damnit!!" Bundle cursed. "Damn Sentaphyll! I had you remembering and then she took it away. Damn, damn, damn!!"

"Sentaphyll?" Potto murmured, still in a sweet malaise. 

"Fuckity, fuck, fuck," was Bundle's answer. "Well, might as well enjoy it," she added. Clory's music was starting to affect her as well. "Want to dance?" she said, magically growing to his height.

And they danced in the light of the loom fruit, both dazed by the beauty of life and drunk on the sweet sway of complete ignorance.