“Two birds in a wiiire...”

Thank you for your adorable animation, Molly.

Mirasol for some reason I cannot see your images, I wonder what is wrong with my internet 🧐 I shall see those mysterious blue haired people one day

*crying into her breakfast cereal* @Mirasol , that's amazing!  I didn't really flesh out these characters, but you certainly did, and placed into a GAG ORDER IMPOSED TO PREVENT SPOILERS ! 
Team Leader discovers that you shouldn't make a threat unless you are fully prepared to carry it out, but fortunately Akka smiles upon them and lends them the colours of the sky for their teammates as a gift, not a punishment.  (nnooo, not the 'do you love the colours of the sky' meme)
You are very correct about the sketchiness of these, too - I actually didn't gift the leader with quite that cool of a hairstyle (the inside of the hood was only vaguely suggested, as was the hairstyle), but they look very very smart with your update.  Consider all of them canon.  As props for a joke (and the subtext which seems to have been sufficiently masked by the humour), none of these characters had names or backstories, so there's nothing to impede them gaining their own life elsewhere.

While I'm here, I keep my intrusion into the posting of the works to a minimum, but I am (as always) massively enjoying hosting your works. 
Jitter, I got a chuckle out of Reynir's confusion, but I also loved the evocation of the 'dawn chorus' of stirring birds, and then sevseres' audio on that score.  Utter marvel, the two of them together.  (shared the link of the audio with my daughter, and she loves it too)
Alkia's lovely forest and its happy traveller made me smile - both your and thegreyarea's poems fit so nicely.
Oh Grade E Cat, I adore missing scenes and totally canon back story!  I got a chuckle out of this one, all right.
I am always in awe of animation, and MollyVampiric, your gif is lovely in its simplicity.  Coming together, even if for a little while, sometimes is enough.
Róisín, you have outdone yourself with your tearjerker of poor old Möntti getting the relief we would all want for such an afflicted entity.  Together with Jitter's extra story, a fitting reminder of death as a vital stage in the renewal of life.  Then delightful moredhel further embellished Jitter's story with that lovely illustration, complete with Chekov's tooth!  All shall pass and be renewed again, even us.

none of these characters had names or backstories, so there's nothing to impede them gaining their own life elsewhere.

OC at dead run: "FREEDOM!!!!! At long last! To let that hair grow right down to my ankles!"

In this case special thanks to Jitter for convincing me to do this at all.

If anybody wants more details I have some versions with higher resolution.
You need a lot of patience for using these links, the upload works through my not so fast connection.
https://moredhel.is-a-geek.net/bear_better_res.png
https://moredhel.is-a-geek.net/bear_high_res.png
https://moredhel.is-a-geek.net/bear_insanely_high_res.png

That's one cool bear! It totally looks like the real deal.

I did google a lot for bear anatomy. The ring is magical. To kill something like a bear beast in my opinion takes as much cleverness, firepower and magic you can get.

I don't know about you, but having read through Vulpes' submission below, I appreciate these under-rated plants species even more!

---

Throughout the taiga, you will find lichen. It grows on every surface, from trees to soil to stone, and takes many forms. You may find broad, green patches like lettuce leaves growing on the trunks of birches, or leafy clumps wrapped around spruce branches, pale grey on top and inky black below. Shaggy grey-green beards hang in the shadowy depths, while on the forest floor a miniature forest of ghostly pale green rises from the fallen needles. In a clearing you might find a burst of colour, tiny red-tipped branches among the moss and sulphur-yellow crusts on a boulder.



“Onni…”

Onni sighed, but had to admit Reynir had been minimally irritating during the past hour or so, sometimes lending a hand as he strung wires between trees. “Yes?”

“These wires… you can tell when something touches them, right? But not exactly where?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“May I try something? While you take a short break?”

Onni shrugged and nodded, and sat down, took a flask of water and some bread from his pack.

Reynir handed him a short, stout stick with a rune painted on it.

“I’m going to paint a few runes back in the direction we came from. Once I’m out of sight, touch this stick to the wire and see what happens.”

Another shrug. Reynir beamed, pulled out a brush and pot of paint, and drew a rune on the last tree with the wire tied to it. He backtracked along the wire to the previous tree and painted the same rune. He continued back, tree by tree, rune by rune, until he was out of sight. Onni finished his bread and water, briefly considered tossing the rune stick into the underbrush, then decided to give the foreign mage a chance. Some of his stuff had worked, after all. He stood, reached out and touched the stick to the wire.

It was as though a map hung before him, showing the wire as a sulphur yellow line and the trees as diffuse yellow dots. Between two yellow dots was an orange spot, shimmering. Suddenly it vanished, only to reappear a bit closer, then began moving along the line toward him. He turned, and Reynir came in sight, trailing one hand on the wire. His anxious look melted into a huge grin when he saw the look of amazement on Onni’s face.

“It works! I knew our magics were compatible!”

“How…” began Onni. He shook his head, and much to Reynir’s surprise, laughed.

“Alright, what other tricks have you got up your sleeve? Come along with me, and talk.”



The crusts, the blades, the strands, the upright miniature trees, the spikes and cups, all are lichens, and each one is an amazing symbiosis. A lichen is not a single organism, it is a commensal relationship between a fungus and an alga. The fungal partner provides the structure. What you see is made of a tangle of mycelia, the threads that make up all fungi. Embedded in this mesh are single-celled green algae. They provide food, through photosynthesis. The fungus also spreads its mycelia across whatever the lichen is growing on, absorbing mineral nutrients to share with the algae.



Tuuri was working late, transcribing a particularly fascinating book. Sigrun came in.

“You still up, Fuzzy-Head? You should get some sleep.”

“I’ll go to sleep soon, Sigrun, but I want to finish this passage first. I won’t be able to sleep for wondering about it, anyway! But shouldn’t you be sleeping, too?”

Sigrun scratched her arm. “Having trouble sleeping. This stupid thing itches, it must be Mikkel’s lousy stitches.”

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, Tuuri making notes and Sigrun staring out the window.

“Hey Fuzzy-Head.”

“Mmm?”

“You read lots of books. Any of them about medicine?”

“I’ve read a little bit… but Mikkel’s the one with medical training, shouldn’t you ask him any medical questions?”

Sigrun snorted. “I wouldn’t be too sure about his having any actual training, you know? So, this thing itches like crazy, is there anything I can put on it?”

Tuuri thought for a moment. “Hm. My mother used to put peppermint oil on insect bites, but we don’t have any of that with us. Oh! But we have oatmeal!” She got up and started rummaging around.

“Wait, I’m itchy, not hungry!”

Tuuri laughed. “Not to eat! Grind it up fine, mix it into a paste, and put it on the itchy area.”

Sigrun looked skeptical. At this point, Reynir came through the door. “What’s going on? I woke up and heard voices.”

“Oh, sorry Reynir,” said Tuuri. “Sigrun and I were just talking about itchy skin cures. We’ll try to be quieter.”

Reynir brightened. “What kind of cure are you using? I think I might be able to help.”

“Fine oatmeal paste, held on with a bandage,” said Tuuri.

“Oh yes, I can make that work even better!”

It was Tuuri’s turn to look skeptical. But Sigrun was willing to try pretty much anything by that point, so after the wound was covered with oatmeal paste and wrapped in a bandage, Reynir carefully drew runes on the bandage.

“My arm isn’t going to burst into flame now, is it?” joked Sigrun.

“Maybe we shouldn’t mention to this to Mikkel,” said Tuuri, “he might be offended, you know?”

The others concurred, Sigrun agreeing to remove the bandage and oatmeal paste before having Mikkel check her healing progress.

Early in the morning, Lalli returned from scouting. Mikkel had to let him in, because Sigrun was sound asleep. She slept on, through the crashes and bangs that accompanied breakfast-making and preparations for the day. Finally the smell of breakfast roused her, and she came out, looking more rested than she had in days. She made eye contact with Tuuri and Reynir, grinned and gave them a thumbs-up.



Through their mutualism, lichens expand their opportunities. Cradled in a web of fungal mycelia, the tiny algae can live where their free-living cousins cannot. And the fungus, fed by the sugars the algae produce, can set up shop on bare rock or soil, where there is nothing for its decomposing fellow fungi to consume. Together, they become more than the sum of their parts.

Hmmm... guess it would be a smarter move to make heroes actually use some fungal/lichen madicine and/or use those in whatever whichcraft they make. Without it I just see two stories, weakly connected to each other. The stories themselves are nice though.