Arrival

In Tesfield, it was a normal day. The Bovates went about their market business, buying and selling grain, nose rings, the controversial red capes, horn sharpeners, and, in shadowy corners, buckets and jars of milk. Just an ordinary day-and it would stay that way.
In neighboring Jesville, however, nothing would be ordinary for quite a time.
At midday, in the center of the market, a strange storm, made of the 5 basic forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and magic) arose from nowhere. It caused on-lookers awe, and the strange, indescribable feeling of having an itchy spleen.
Two unconscious hairless monkey man sorts fell from one of the clouds.
The awe grew.
When the storm had passed moments later, the village’s Medicine Bove (Dr. Taurii, M.B.) jumped into action and lifted the two figures. He carried them back to his hut-all medicine givers in all cultures on The Third World live in huts, no matter how "advanced" the society-and set to work trying to revive them.
Their bodies were far too warm. The fact that they weren’t sweating bothered him. On account of the lack of sweat, he decided it would be wise to delay cooling them down until it was absolutely necessary. For three days he applied various ointments, and herbs (mainly through teas,) to their bodies. Nothing worked, though at one point the scrawny one who was most likely male rolled over and vomited. Dr. Taurii, M.B. decided it was wise not to give them Hemlock tea anymore.
On the third night, the one who seemed female, even if her udders were too high up, began to sweat terribly, and move her mouth strangely. Dr. Taurii, M.B., leaned in to hear what she was saying. It sounded like it was in a strange dialect of Esperanto.
Dr. Taurii, M.B., had never learned to speak Esperanto. The medicine had taken up too much of his time. But he had picked up enough from rambling patients and his translators to pick out the words "no," "hell," and "bread."
As she spoke, across the Undeniable Sea, the first Sandwich Flambé was accidentally invented. It added a smoky flavor that mere toasting couldn’t achieve. They became an instant fad, and remained a popular item on menus Third Worldwide for at least a decade to come.
The words that he could catch concerned Dr. Taurii, M.B. He stepped up his efforts instantly, and decided within an hour that he would have to try to break their fevers.
He sent his apprentice, an inept calf named Bean, to fetch a translator. Dr. Taurii, M.B., shook his head as Bean stumbled out. The calf didn’t deserve to be a medical apprentice; but those damn fates (who didn’t know anything about anything, by the way) had commanded it. And if he disobeyed those damn fates, the Bovates would exile him, and then who would he medicinalize?
While Bean was fetching the translator, Dr. Taurii, M.B., fetched the wash basin. Feeling in a lazy mood, he summoned water to fill it rapidly. It would have taken at least twenty minutes to carry all the water he needed from the well, so this was much simpler. The water was cleaner than well water, too. That would probably be good for the strangers. Or so Dr. Taurii, M.B., hoped. He then conjured up a simple cooling enchantment, which turned the water in the basin to ice. He then conjured a striking blow-mostly made of very fast moving air particles-to shatter the ice; it turned into a bath of ice water.
He let it thaw a bit more, so that it would be more water than ice, just for the comfort, while he waited for Bean and the translator. They finally got there twenty minutes after the initial summons, and there were only a few significant chunks of ice left. Mostly there were what could be roughly described as ice cubes.
The Jesville translator was named Toraphrate. He was a stern Bove, with no time for silliness, and especially not for wackiness. He wore ridiculous looking glasses, which pointed him out instantly as the stern Bove that he was. He wore a specially tailored suit, that just added to his overall sternness. He had a magnificent gift for tongues. Some suggested that in his youth, he had accidentally been cursed to speak all languages when he unknowingly ate the tongue of Merlin’s dead parrot. But it’s hard to imagine this could have happened by accident, as Bovates rarely eat tongue. He looked at the hairless monkey men disdainfully.
"What are you going to do with them, Taurii?" He said slowly but not dumbly.
"I’m going to wake them up, Toraphrate, and I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Dr. Taurii."
Bean watched on dumbly and hopefully. Dr. Taurii, M.B., frowned internally when he thought of Bean. The boy was doomed to never do anything well. It was just a waste of both of their time for him to watch this. But those damned fates, and such.
"And why do you need me here?" Toraphrate said in the same slow, dulcet tone.
"I doubt very much that they speak Bovian, and I need someone who can translate it. One of them said something in Esperanto a while back. Something about Hell Bread."
Toraphrate grunted. "I very much doubt it. Hairless Monkey Men are rarely smart enough to learn Esperanto. Or any of our languages."
"The one with poorly placed udders did!" Toraphrate always did this to Dr. Taurii, M.B. He threw him into a rage before they could get anything done. And this was the one thing that Bean was good for.
"Wouldnna bezear t’jus’ wakenup th things?"
"Yes, I think it would," Dr. Taurii, M.B. said quickly, while Toraphrate was still trying to translate from Idiot. "Bean, Toraphrate, please stand back. She may get violent."
He lifted the female up, and carried her carefully to the wash basin. The brownish hair on top of her head-the only hair that any of them could see on her-shone with a little bit of gold just before it touched the water. The thought of having hair on only the top of the head made both Toraphrate and Bean a little bit sick, especially hair that color.
Dr. Taurii, M.B., slowly lowered her into the water.
And she quickly shot up.
Of course, quickly shooting up out of the arms of a Bovate Bove often means that you’re going to injure yourself on its horns. She hit her nose on his horns, and fell back into the water, still conscious, causing all three Bovates in the room to scuttle back in confusion. She shot back up to standing, and did not hit her head on anything this time. She looked around, dripping wet and freezing. She screamed something.
Toraphrate looked even more shocked now. He stuttered a little, but responded to her. She looked around in abject terror. Toraphrate calmed his voice, and Dr. Taurii, M.B., could tell that he was explaining to her why she was soaking wet and shivering. He approached the wash basin, and she stumbled backwards. He took another step towards it, and she hopped out, with some difficulty because her clothes were now so heavy. Bean almost charged at her, but Dr. Taurii, M.B., shook his head to stop him. Toraphrate stepped slowly around the basin towards her; she grabbed a broom left casually leaning against the wall, and began to wave it threateningly at him. She turned a couple of times to the other two. Toraphrate waved his hand towards Dr. Taurii, M.B. Well, Dr. Taurii, M.B., thought that he was waving his hand towards him, but actually, he was pointing to the Hairless Monkey Man Male. The female with the broom suddenly stopped cold. Toraphrate noticed that her nose had become crooked and was bleeding a little. She looked at the male, hesitated for a moment, dropped the broom, and ran to him. She began to shake him gently, whispering something.
Toraphrate watched this with complete bemusement, and was further confounded by Dr. Taurii, M.B.’s relative calm in the situation. All he had done was back away from the female.

Summer had dreamed.
Her dreams were about something horrible. Something that she thought was real. And something that she could never remember after.
It was directly caused by the horrors she had seen before she fell asleep. And she couldn’t quite remember those either. But she knew the moment she woke up there was one person that she had to call for.
The awakening was violent. Well, it wasn’t so much violent on its own as cold. And wet. And then she hit her head on something bony, and got even colder and wetter. She stood and screamed.
"Dawn! Dawn, where are you?!"
Suddenly she noticed the bull standing in front of her on its hind legs. It stuttered, and began to speak in slightly damaged English.
"You are safe," it began. "You are safe if you are safe, yes?" Summer looked around, not understanding. It calmed down and stopped stuttering. "You were sleeping for three… uh… Sunrises. You would not wake up, yes? And you were very hot. So the… Doctor? Wanted to make you less hot to wake up. yes? You need to be dry now, yes? And warm, no?" The bull stepped towards her, and she stumbled backwards through the cold water. That was almost painful. A clomping sound to the right of the bull startled her; she saw that it was a smaller bull, getting ready to charge. Then it stopped. The big bull in front of her took another step, and she stumbled out over the edge of the basin. She left a dripping train of frigid water as she backed into the wall. The larger bull began to circle around the cold water tub she had just come out of. She splayed her arms out, in a traditional symbol of "oh crap, I’m about to die and I’m out of room to retreat," and accidentally came across a stick. She grabbed it, and began waving it at the two bulls.
"Stay Back! Stay back, I’m warning you!" She screamed stutteringly. Then she saw the third bull, and shook it at him a little too. "You too! All of you! Where’s Dawn? Where’s Seth?"
"You were sleeping for three sunrises," the large bull repeated. "You… got here with one other… of you." Summer followed his hoof to a point just to the side of the third bull. Lying there, sleeping, probably uncomfortably, on a wooden bed, was Seth.
She stopped where she was. A small drop of blood fell from her nose and mixed with the water dripping from her clothes. She looked at Seth, pondered, dropped the broom, and ran to him.
"Seth, Seth, wake up, I need you," She whispered as she shook him, looking around paranoidly. "Come on, Seth, Seth, I need you…" A drop of freezing cold water fell from her hair onto his throat, and another onto the bridge of his nose. A small drop of blood from her nose fell onto his chin. It’s unclear which of these woke him up, if any. But he opened his eyes and grimaced.
"Jesus that’s cold!" he whimpered loudly. The first thing he saw was Summer, smiling with great relief, but holding panic in her eyes.
"Seth, you’re alright!"
"Oh, no… Oh, no, I just remembered it all… Oh, Summer, you… and I… We made it! But… Where’s Dawn?"
Summer’s relieved smile flickered. "I don’t know. And right now, I’m more concerned with where we are."
Seth shut his eyes, turned his head, opened his eyes, turned his head again, and finally realized that he was in a small hut surrounded by bulls.
"Ah, shit," he squealed loudly