Chapter 430: A Weapon for Heather?
Elmo wasn't sure about harvesting the teeth of the flowers that had been trying to eat them a moment before. While he understood the argument about maybe being either able to use them to tip their weapons or selling them, he didn't care for how they were paralyzing his hand, and, by extension, his arm the longer he held the teeth in his bare hand.
He'd have preferred to put them in a bag or something right away, but it was clear to him that he wasn't going to be allowed to do that until he got his portion of flowers 'picked.'
The only consolation was how Elin and Heather came by periodically to removed the paralysis on his hands and arm so he could continue working on it. As even after the sun went down and the area they were in got dark rather quickly, they were still working, though this time by firelight that someone had gotten together before Elmo had even noticed.
While it was a tedious task, it wasn't that difficult. Not after the flowers had been killed. Although, Elmo would still just as soon as leave these teeth be. Especially when a few of the teeth had been badly cracked or cut by something and weren't all there anymore. Part of Elmo worried that he'd be blamed for it while the other part of him was confident that they wouldn't try to pin it on him, given he really had nothing to do with that. Especially since he was one of the ones who had been using fire to defeat the flowers.
When Elmo finally finished extracting the teeth, he was bone tired. Largely because of the time of night rather than any physical activity he'd engaged in that day. Part of it was from how he knew that his spell casting hadn't cost him any stamina, but dealing with the teeth certainly had taken a lot of time.
As he looked up from the last flower, he was a little surprised to see that he was the last person who had been harvesting the flowers, although Heather was still there to heal him of his paralysis after he was able to put the flowers' teeth in a pouch that someone had gotten together for that purpose.
Elmo didn't care how many there were, just that it was over and he could go to sleep now.
"Do you think they'd notice if I took one or two?" Heather asked. "No one said we couldn't."
Elmo looked at her and felt like it took forever for the meaning of what she said to register in his mind. Though, when it did, he could only shrug. He was too tired to really care that much.