Bloo had been wandering around the swampy region of L'hatzif for a while now. Having left his old home a while ago, he had quickly found that living alone- was more tricky than one would think at first. He had been in other regions, too- Rekes, which was *the worst* place the blue belemoid could've imagined, and Issiq, which had instantly become his second least favourite place. Deserts, he had quickly decided, were no home for him either. So back he came, to his old home. He had never quite liked it there- and while had no doubt that his parents would not allow him back into their group, it still strangely felt like home. He was pretty sure he would only use it as a temporary stop before moving further north, into Mireh. But nonetheless the warm, swampy region was better than both places he had previously visited. He sighed, deciding he might as well go for a snack while contemplating where exactly to go next. Maybe the coast would be nice? Set up a nice little shelter on a beach or cliff face. Lucky for him, he had just spotted a nice, tasty looking mushroom just a tiny

bit further, growing in-between some tree roots As he approached, mouth agape with the full intention to just chomp it straight out of the ground, he suddenly heard a shout from behind him. "DON'T!" he jumped back in surprise, not having realized he wasn't alone. "Oh- uh- did you want it?" he stammered awkwardly at the two brown Tsabhua who he had stumbled upon. "What? No, of course not." The first, dark-brown tsab said, to which the light-brown nodded. "If you ate that, you wouldn't have even woken up tomorrow- what were you thinking?" the Dark-Brown groaned, gesturing angrily at the mushroom. "Are you sure?" Bloo asked, eyebrow raised. "I used to have these all the time." he then frowned, rolling his eyes "Look, if you want it you can just ask. There's multiple here, we could've easily shared." The two looked at him, dumbfounded. "They're quite nice, I promise. Used to make soup out of them, if you'd rather I-" He was cut of by an annoyed groan. "We do not want the poisonous mushroom soup!" The Dark-Brown spoke. "And," the Light-Brown started, "if you're hungry we can show you some you *can* eat. It's not even far away.

Just- don't eat that." Bloo frowned, but decided it wasn't really worth the trouble anyways. If they were trying to feed him *actually* poisonous mushrooms, he was sure he'd be able to tell. It wasn't much later that the small group sat in the fungal forest, happily munching on some mushrooms they had foraged. They had gone out to forage for a bit, Dark-Brown introducing himself as Roam and Light-Brown as Fawn. As they had looked for the mushrooms to munch on, the two had been kind enough to point him to some other mushrooms that they had deemed "safe to eat". Much to Bloo's dismay, they had also shown him multiple mushrooms they decided *weren't* safe to eat, which Bloo pretended to have already known regardless. The two seemed to see right trough him though, and rolled their eyes at his theatrics. They had also, eventually, found the mushroom he had meant to eat, and he quickly found out that the mushroom he had nearly put in his mouth was a near exact lookalike. While he pretended to not care, the quick foraging lesson did somewhat warm his heart. It felt nice to know that these used-to-be strangers cared

enough to give him the time of day, and it almost saddened him that he had no way to pay them back properly. Maybe when they met up again later he could pay the two back. "Oh and also-" Fawn spoke, just as the three were about to part ways again "If you're not 200% sure something is edible, please, please ask before putting it in your mouth." Bloo was quite flustered at that, but mumbled a quick "Ah- yea, will do." as he wandered on to his next adventure, he hoped he would stumble upon the two friendly faces again in the future.