5 months later

Location: Dónal office

Φ Sitting over his desk, Dónal holds his hands against his head in full despair. “What am I going to do, what am I going to do.”

Looking down at the paper in front of him, he says, “The delivery of those special goods will be any day now, and I don’t have the manpower to deal with them. Everyone has gone back home for Imbolc, and they haven’t come back yet.”

Due to his cowardice when all the workers asked for an extra two months off during the Imbolc celebration, he said yes even though just like Samhain it left him to be the only worker left in the plantation.

“I SHOULD HAVE PUT MY FOOT DOWN!”

Suddenly an idea pops into Dónal head which causes him to say, “Wait that might work.”

Grabbing his hands, he puts them against his head and says, “No, this work is specifically supposed to be handled by the Tuatha de Dann on the plantation, if I let them help it would be a vile abuse of my position.

And when all the other workers do come back, what excuse am I going to use to explain what I have been doing? I could just keep them on leave, but that only costs more problems for me overall.”

Rubbing his hands against his head even faster, Dónal screams, “CHARLES SAVE ME!”

Looking around, I realize it is only me around, so I say, “It is not like I have any other option, and I have already broken our laws once what’s a second time(Criminal logic). I just got to go with it!”

-Break-

A few days later

Location: Far east of the River Lúide, inside a nearby forest

Φ In the middle of the forest Charles, Nero, and Mariana look at the projections of the omega owl and take down notes.

Charles looks curious and interested, and Nero looks relaxed as if the words being said make perfect sense to him. At the same time, Mariana is shaking with frustration as most of it goes over her head.

As her frustration reaches its max, Mariana slams her hands against the ground and screams, “I DON’T GET IT!”

Charles looks at Nero and says, “It’s happening again.”

Letting out a giant, sigh Nero says, “Just ignore her if you do she should get back to studying like normal.”

As Mariana throws a fit beside them, she eventually notices they aren’t paying any attention to her, so she throws a rock right at the Omega owl.

This causes the omega owl, to run towards Charles's arms, and Nero to turn around in frustration saying, “What’s wrong with you.”

“Sorry I can’t hear your wines, I need you to spea-.” Before Mariana can finish Charles throws some of the mud around right into her face.

With a playful smile, Nero says, “Oh sorry I don’t speak mud monster, so could you speak up!”

A smile matching Nero appears on her face, and she says, “Well if that’s how you want to play it let’s go.”

Picking up mud, Marina throws is directly at Charles.

-Break-

Location: Campsite

As the three return from their day at work, Charles looks over to the two covered in mud, and says, “Bad job,” While sticking up his thumb.

“WE KNOW,” Both Charles and Mariana say in unison.

Seeing all three kids at the entrance, Edward waves to them, and says, “How you guys doing?”

Seeing Edward Nero, says, “Horribly!”

“Well, that is strange considering I didn’t see you guys at all during the castle construction today. But yet you do all look ragged, so can you finally tell me where you have all been scurrying off to?”

Pointing at Edward, Mariana says, “If you ask too many questions we will be forced to ground you permanently!"

With a piece of sweat, trickling down his face, Edward says, “Ok, ok. I like being alive.”

Turning his face to Charles, he says, “Where sharing stories over there, do you want to come along, I can tell you more about our home country?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Charles putting up both his arms in joy says, “Yes.”

As Charles walks away with Gheorge both me and Mariana head towards the other direction.

Ever since Samhain, everyone around the campsite is a lot friendlier with each other and it isn’t as tense as it used to be. Now after work, a lot of people simply sit down and talk to each other.

Talking with each other would have been hard if the beastkin were still around, but ever since the end of the first month of the year all the beastkin have disappeared and things are like how they were when Samhain was going on with only Dónal around.

And this has benefits, like us getting to walk around the campsite all we want after work, but also things like this.

In front of me and Mariana are buckets filled with water.

Instead of the beastkin simply splashing us with water now buckets are simply left out for us to use to splash ourselves.

Walking away from the bucket, a woman by the name of Sandra says, “You guys are really dirty, what happened.”

“NERO THREW DIRT AT ME!”

“MARIANA STARTED IT!”

After letting out a little laugh, Sandra says, “Almost everyone has had a bath, so don’t worry about using as much water as you need.” With that, Sandra walks away.

If this had been before Samhain, we would have all been fighting over who gets to use the most water, it would have been hell. But since all of us are on rather good terms, it is nice like this.

Still, with every new victory, we get a new problem, like the girl next to me. “So Mariana would you like to tell me what that whole freak out was about.”

“It was about the fact that nothing is making sense to me.”

“When we first started you were ahead of both me and Charles but since then you have steadily started to fall behind the both of us.”

“Don’t you think I know that already! It is really just getting boring and no longer sticking in my mind. I can’t be like Charles who gets excited over every new thing he sees, my passion is dying as we speak.”

“I get what you mean, while he struggles to understand he constantly shows an interest and is constantly excited while learning.”

“Well, then what about you Nero, what makes you work so hard that you even surpass Charles's speed in learning.”

With a thoughtful look, Nero says, “Simple, I would like to give both you and Charles a better life.”

Surprised Mariana says, “Huh? That can’t really be your reason.”

“It might be hard to believe but it really is all I can think about. I noticed that by simply doing this little bit of studying I might one day be able to take all of us out of here and to somewhere a bit better.”

Mariana blushes then she moves her face completely out of the direction of Nero.

Concerned Nero asks, “Is something wrong?”

“NOTHING!” Mariana screams.

“Ok then!?” Nero says surprised.

Realizing something, Mariana says, “Well there is actually a question I want to ask you.”

“Go ahead,” I say while using water to clean one of my dirty arms.

“Do you think it is even necessary to still learn their language?”

Stopping my action, I look at Mariana and say, “What are you on about you know why we have to do this?”

“I know that, but in all honesty, we both know that the amount of Beastkin watching us has decreased drastically, ever since Dónal became the boss. The only thing keeping any of us here are the Merarks that are at certain points in the plantation.”

The fact that the amount of beastkin not only watching us but in general has dropped isn’t something that has escaped the notice of any of us. Quite probably due to Dónal’s shitty leadership.

“So what Mariana, what do you want us to do try and run for it?

Getting up and moving close to my face, she says, “That’s exactly it. We could all just make a break for it and run away. Animals are dumb we should be able to outsmart them.”

“Stop right there Mariana. Wonderbeasts are not like any other animals, they are fiercely good at hunting their prey. I know you didn’t have many on your island, but my clan has had to deal with lots of them and they aren’t easy.”

“We could just learn their patterns instead, with that information we would be able to make a break for it. Dónal is incompetent, and we have a lot more allies than we used to so it could be possible.”

“Then we still run into a similar issue from before; we don’t know where the hell we are even going to go. For all we know we could run into another beastkin plantation that’s why using their language to gain info was our number one strategy.

We haven’t brought anyone else into our strategy due to safety issues, and I doubt any of them would be willing to bet their lives on an insane plan like that especially when we have other options.”

“Still, we have an opportunity now that might not exist in the future. So shouldn’t we capitalise on it?”

“We made a promise to pick the safer option already, we can’t put Charles's safety at risk.”

“For all we know Dónal might get transferred out of here because of his horrible leadership, and when that happens we could get someone a lot worse than him in his place and that would be the end of all our benefits!”

“We already discussed this, so why are you even turning this into a fight.”

“Because I suck!”

“Huh?”

“I don’t get the material, and then when I struggle I make sure to ruin both you and Charles's concentration. I was the one who proposed this plan yet I am the one who is struggling the most it is so pathetic!”

“STOP BEING A MORON!” Nero shouts at Mariana.

Shocked by his loud tone Mariana instantly quiets down, and as she does Nero says, “You are the only reason I am even trying this hard, if it wasn’t for you giving me hope I wouldn’t even have tried to learn their language, I would deem it too dangerous and leave it at that.

Not only that but thanks to you everyone in the plantation has been able to become friends, in the entire time we were here I haven’t been able to do anything of the sort.

Charles and everyone else is a lot happier thanks to you, so shut your stupid face and don’t talk down about the person who gave me hope, you fool!”

As Nero stops his rant to regain his breath, him and Mariana just start to stare at each other, until both of them turn red.

Suddenly Mariana jumps up and grabs a bucket of water, causing Nero to ask, “WHERE ARE YOU GOING!”

“BACK TO THE HUT!”

“WHY!?”

“TO BATHE!”

“HAVE A GOOD ONE!”

“YOU TO!”

As Mariana walks away Nero starts to take off his clothes, but then from behind him, he feels someone blow into his ear.

Moving forward with a blush he turns around, and says, “Mariana what is that for!?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if you wanted to take a bath with me?”

As Nero goes bright red he says, “LIKE HELL I WOULD WANT TO.”

“Well, that’s too bad see you,” Mariana says with a victorious smile.

As Mariana leaves, Nero crouches down, and as he does a man named Pluso walks up to him and says, “Bath time, bath time. Huh, Nero what are you doing?”

“CROUCHING DOWN!”

Taken aback, Pluso says, “I know that, but why?”

“Because if I stand up, a certain part of myself will become very visible!”