Unfortunately for the children, who wanted more than anything to talk over the incident in detail, they were called back to the head pike for dinner, almost immediately after the episode of the horse-hu and the eptill.

Dinner was rushed through. Then, without any intentional colluding, all the children excused themselves out of supposed sleepiness. They retired to the children’s cabin, where they gathered in the girl’s room and talked.

“Livia! I can’t believe you missed it all! I hope it was worth it, play time with baby Oskar,” Girselle began.

Everyone wanted to tell their version to Livia, a fresh audience, and the most likely person to really enjoy a good adventure story.

“You don’t know. You missed it all anyway,” Arlendr confronted Girselle.

“I saw enough. And, at least I wasn’t stupid enough to run after them and probably get kidnapped – stupid,” Girselle rebutted.

“Not stupid, brave – and actually there.”

En continued the story while Girselle and Arlendr glared at each other, “The intruders were real, and there were two of them. – Oh I wish I saw them better. They were so weird, like deformed.” Then, realizing that Solveis and Arlendr must have gotten a better look, En directed his questions at them, “What was wrong with the horse one? And the other one too, he ran so weird? What did they look like up close?”

Arlendr behaved taciturn and didn’t respond at all or answer. Instead, he got up and left the room.

In a rare moment, Solveis was the one who everyone wanted to hear from. She had the interesting report that they all cared about. Being inexperienced in such things, she became awkward and stuttered, “We-we-well. Uh – well”

“Spit it out, weirdo. It’s your turn. Don’t waste it,” Girselle commanded less than lovingly.

“Well, there was the horse-hu one. I think he was the boss.” She paused to collect her thoughts. They were still all looking at her waiting for her to continue. They hadn’t lost interest and started a new conversation when she was stuttering. Solveis gathered herself and continued, “Well he did look kinda deformed – or – that’s mean, but – he looked unusual anyway. Like his hips were too long – long maybe.” Solveis prized herself on being a good communicator, and here she was sputtering her way through something that she had first hand experience with. She should be able to communicate well. She decided to think more clearly and do better. “His back was crooked. At the bottom of his back, it angled way backwards, like way way backwards.”

“What about the other one? He was even weirder, the way he moved,” En asked, not particularly interested in a simple deformation of the back.

“That one was more. It was like he had two tails and no legs – but like snake tails. He – well he…” Solveis remembered and cringed at the memory of the slithering. “He slithered. – I bet, if we go back tomorrow, we can find track marks from where he had been.”

“Yes. We’ve got to do that. We have to have the whole story.” Girselle added.

“Who are you planning on telling the story to?” Solveis seriously questioned Girselle.

Solveis was worried about parents being told. She was uncomfortable with that. She herself was actually considering that maybe an adult should be notified, but still… She would talk to the old man, and if he advised so, then she would tell the parents. She wasn’t comfortable with what rules they might enforce, though, if they found out.

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“Not our parents, stupid. I just have to know the story. I’m not going to snitch. Anyway, let’s go explore there tomorrow.”

Arlendr marched back in the room. He held out a book and stared silently at them all. When they looked away and started to talk again, he opened to a page and announced, “Here. This. This is my intruder.” He joined the group and opened his mythology story book to a story about centaurs. It had illustrations of centaurs frolicking on a great green hill. He pointed to one of the centaurs, a brown-gray one.

“He does look something like that, his coloration does anyway, brow-gray and well tanned,” Solveis agreed.

“No,” Arlendr corrected. “He’s a centaur, a deformed one. He has all a horse’s body, except for its front legs. His humanus torso starts too early, so he’s deformed.” Arlendr spoke his version of reality into the air, defying the others to use reason against him.

They all enjoyed his version and didn’t want to challenge it. It was fantastic. It was a good story.

The children named their intruding horse-hu after the centaur in the story book. He was Barae the Centaur.

Barae the Centaur was a centaur who looked after his people. He guarded the borders of his land and watched for intruders. He was the fastest, and so it was his job to spot any danger and then run to the closest tower and sound the alarm. He grew lonely though, and his great strength withered under the strain of his life. His people offered him any one of many beautiful and important women to marry, but he didn’t want a partner who was a mere peacock or trophy, so he grew even more sorrowful at the shallowness and lack-of-purpose of his life. He grew ill in his sorrow. He was taken to a house to be cared for as he died of his sorrow. A nurse, about his own age and size was sent to care for him. She was chosen because she was strong and capable of caring for him. She was plain, but she had a sturdy, nurturing, genuine spirit. The simplicity and near poverty of her existence so far had given her a depth that none of Barae’s other companions had ever had. The two of them fell in love. She made him well, and then she and he took on the job of protecting the borders together. According to legend, they were the beginning of a line of superbly strong and fast centaurs who had princely position in society and who took great pride in their job as well as in their land.

During the conversation of Barae (the Barae of The Mountain, not the namesake from the story), Arlendr flipped his book again to a page with a story about sea people. “Here.” Arlendr interrupted his peers. “This is the other one.”

The page had an illustration of a great glistening shore with enormous gemstone rocks and shimmering sand. Among the mer-people, lizard-men, and eel-men in the illustration was one creature which did closely resemble the eptill man who they had seen on the island. The illustration was of an eel-man (normally, a mythical eel-man is just a merman who has the tail of an eel rather than of a fish) who had two eel-like tails rather than one.

The story was of an eel-man who was not satisfied with the position of power that he had among his people, so he had a magic doer give him two tails instead of one, so that he may walk among the ground dwellers and rule them as well. The eel legs were ill fitted for earth walking, and he ended up, after much struggle, going back to his own sea people and living out the rest of his life stripped of any position of importance. The story was meant to inform the beliefs of young minds, and to teach them to be grateful for what they have.

It influenced these youths to call the intruder by the character’s name, Alfis the Sea Satyr.

Solveis responded to her brother’s announcement loosely in the affirmative, “That does look a lot like him, except his legs were more snake-like than eel-like. It’s eerily close though. – Oh, and, the coloration is wrong. The one on our mountain was so pale, almost yellow. That one in the book is very green.”

“How come Alfis would come here?” Livia asked, enthralled in the story. “Does he want to rule our land too? Maybe he’s in the middle of the story, before he gets nice.”

The children discussed their two villains and the stories in the book from which they got their names. They ended up staying up deep into the night. When they were too tired to come up with any more theories, they took turns reading the two stories, as well as some others from the book. All the children ended up passing out and sleeping the whole night in the girls’ room.