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I just wonder what could possibly be running through his mind.
“Like a dozen of our men, maybe more, all missing,” he mutters to himself.
Making my way back toward camp and reaching the tents, I’m shaken by idle chatter coming from all directions. I get back to weaving, pretending that I wasn’t absent. I’m glad to see that I wasn’t missed.
“Poor Will lost a father and a grandfather yesterday,” Abrihon, a rather brutally built guard, says.
“And nobody has any idea what did it?”
Abrihon shakes his head, protected from the sweltering heat by one of the tents. I can already feel sweat forming on my brow.
“Nobody even found the bodies,” the other man, who I don’t recognize, says.
“So how do we know they didn’t just take off across the ocean?”
“Nobody’s ruling it out. We know they were fighting, not too long ago. But I just don’t see much motivation for that.”
Abrihon shakes his head. My hands are creating baskets nimbly without any thought.
“No motivation,” Abrihon asks. “Care to elaborate?”
“You’re wasting your time,” a strange, distraught voice says. Looking up, I see a disheveled dark elf, who walks into the conversation uninvited. Abrihon looks offended, but the other man looks vaguely fearful of the turn in conversation. “You won’t find either of them. They’ve been eaten whole by the Yaccarres Beast.”
Abrihon looks between the two men, and I stab myself with a piece of straw as I lose my focus.
“You’re not seriously considering this, Aldorn? This guy’s a loon! Why is he even welcome back among us?”
“Will’s family ran the most successful fishing enterprise in all of Yaccarres,” Aldorn says. “And we have been seeing a lot of disappearances lately…”
Abrihon stares in disbelief, before aggressively turning his back and walking in the opposite direction.
“Eight massive tentacles, beak like a bird, and a row of tentacles for teeth!”
I jump in place, not prepared to hear an accurate description of the creature I just imagined in the grove.
The old man calls out after Abrihon, who refuses to even acknowledge him as he continues walking, passing by me without saying a word.
“If you don’t fear the Yaccarres Beast, you’ll be food, too! I’m warning you!”
I look back at my basket, ready for my day to be over.
Something has defiled my cove with its presence. It used to be a safe haven, the one place where I could gather my thoughts and find even a small amount of peace. Now, it’s been occupied by a creature whose mentality and way of being I can’t possibly comprehend.
I want to look whatever this creature is in the eyes. Perhaps, if this is a monster as they claim and not simply some undiscovered creature of the depths, I might be able to reason with it. To understand what it wants.
Whenever I get the chance, I’m going to need to escape again. I can’t simply wait for nightfall – I need to be on my guard. I can’t risk showing up so late at night after everyone else has fallen asleep. I can’t risk falling asleep myself in front of a murderous creature.
Why didn’t he eat me, too?
There has to be a reason, and my eyes are peeled, looking for the earliest escape opportunity available.
4
LAIKEN
It takes me a while to place the obsession.
The woman should be no more than a footnote in my memory with her weak body and fragile mind. She’s delicate and soft. She is not cut out for the world that surrounds us, and she should be nothing more than a meal or a short piece of entertainment. She is alien, with her smooth skin, long hair, and big eyes that cannot see. At the end of each thin arm is a slender finger that carries no weapons. Her nails are bitten down to the quick, and she isweak.
