Annotated 17-6
My original notes for Fr’Nj:
She’s a druidic healer, so Syr’Nj leaves the injured Scipio with her (I’m still super into that idea unless and until you persuade me otherwise). But she’s also a “nature-talker,” someone who believes plants and animals reply to her verbal communication. This cannot be proven, and while Syr’Nj accepts magic, that’s because magic is provable. This issue divides them, which is a shame, because of all the ‘Njs, Fr’Nj is the closest to Syr’Nj’s worldview in other ways. Syr’Nj can trust her, for example, not to kill a human in her care simply because he’s a filthy human.
So you can see Syr’Nj sort of trying to skate past that difference in their beliefs in the last panel. It wouldn’t be as much of an issue as I thought, because once Fr’Nj gets into combat, her abilities– which are better developed than they were when Syr’Nj left her– will be pretty inarguably provable. And we’d kind of done the “improvable super-powers” idea to death already with Frigg a few chapters back.
Look, I swear to God all the squirrel references in Guilded Age before Erica took the Squirrel Girl gig are just coincidence.
A squirrel and a girl. Gr’zl would be so confused.
“What’s that, Timmi? Lassie’s got rabies? Don’t worry, nothing I can’t handle.”
…
“What, you didn’t expect me to shoot Lassie, did you? I’m a druid! This is high fantasy, not a western.”
They may be a coincidence, but they can be a HAPPY coincidence!
Be that as it may, Fr’Nj is still her own kind of squirrel guirrel. ^_^
Seems like that would be pretty easy to prove even if Fr’Nj didn’t have her combat abilities. Especially if the animals can carry complex information like this squirrel did.
Agreed, and Syr with her science oriented thinking could probably come up with some tests–for the animals at least–to make the attempt.