"Your eye?" Liya repeated, tying her hair back. Yoshi seemed to have forgotten about his own black eye and was looking at her as though she had two heads. "It looks like it hurts. Can I heal it for you?"

Yoshi merely stared at her. "You...want to?"

"Why not?" Now--" she raised a hand, already calling the power necessary up into her nerves. It lit through her skin coolly. "Hold still."

Yoshi flinched away from her hand at first, but she placed her palm on the side of his face; he scrunched his eyes shut, as though he expected it to hurt. The light arced from her nerves into the broken blood vessels around his eyes, setting to work repairing them. It only took a second. It was an easy wound to heal.

She drew back and the light around his eye faded to reveal that the swelling had gone down and the purple colors had faded. He opened his eyes again.

"There." Liya paused and bit her lip. She hadn't meant to make him uncomfortable, anyway. "Uh, sorry. I don't think I can heal someone without touching them.

Yoshi felt at his eye gingerly, not looking at her. An extremely nervous smile crossed his face. "Er...thank you."

"No problem," Liya said lightly.

Together they headed along the fence line, back around the edge of the pasture. A dappled grey elephant creature was pulling at its horns by the fence.

"How come Helly didn't heal it, though?" Liya asked at length.

"Oh," Yoshi said, "ne can only heal bones."

"Why--" Liya paused. "Wait, ne?"

"Yes?"

"What's that?"

"Well, Helly's a tree, isn't ne?" Yoshi answered, matter-of-fact. Liya shrugged.

"If you say so."

"'He' and 'she' would not make sense," Yoshi continued. "So we use that for nem instead."

"Oh." Liya chose not to pursue the subject. "Okay. What is that elephant thing?"

"That is a kuuv," Yoshi answered.

"Oh."

The sun had come out in full by now; it had to be close to midday. They walked the ash path around the pasture in silence for only a moment, before Liya thought of more questions to bombard Yoshi with.