Bel awoke with a splitting headache to the sound of a growing argument.
“So loud,” she complained.
“Bel’s back,” Orseis shouted in a voice ten times louder than necessary. “She’ll be able to explain these scrattes better than I can.”
Bel hesitantly cracked her eye open and slowly moved her head to take in her surroundings. The remaining gorgons were clustered around a sleeping Craupadine, with Oculaire still gently holding her hand. Cress was standing between the other three gorgons and the scrattes while Fortuit worked over Papilloun’s body, carefully removing pieces of the gorgon and adding them to her new egg. Escalope stood over her protectively.
That leaves Manipule.
Bel turned her head the other way and was unsurprised to find Manipule holding onto her hand, acting like it was completely normal behavior. She smiled when Bel looked at her.
“Welcome back,” she said in a thoughtfully quiet voice.
Bel nodded thankfully. “What’s been happening?”
Manipule’s snakes twined around her neck as she collected her thoughts into Bel’s language. “There was a small panic, and then Orseis calmed everyone. Then the scrattes were getting too close to Fortuit. Things were tense, but Orseis figured out that they were just curious.”
“I’m super clever, right?” Orseis interrupted.
Bel resisted rolling her eyes, and instead gave Orseis a thumbs-up. The cuttle-girl swelled with pride. “The gorgons were going all silly, but the scrattes were just interested in making their own portable body holders. I showed them how to use the dhvaras’ helmets as their own little gorgon eggs.”
Bel grimaced at the though and did her best to avoid looking behind her, although several of her snakes twisted to get a better view. She could almost feel the gruesome work on the scrattes pressing down upon her back.
“Thank Lempo you’re back with us,” Cress called out, breaking Bel out of her increasingly morbid imagination. “Most of us survived, but we’ve got some problems.”
“Like what?”
Cress tilted her maul, gesturing at the shaman and the rest of the scrattes. “These things,” she said. “They aren’t popular in the underworld. They’re usually kill on sight, actually.”
Bel nodded slowly. “Yeah. The same in Satrap.”
Cress narrowed her eyes. “So why are you friendly with these ones?”
Hearing the ongoing conversation, Fortuit made her way over to the rest of the group and began to translate from Bel’s tongue for the other gorgons.
Bel shrugged. “Because they’re followers of Lempo.”
“They’re what?” Cress’ eyes widened in shock. “Your mother? Why?”
Bel held up her hands to her ears. “Not so loud, please. The scrattes are, uh, plants, I guess. They want to go to the surface to make better, um, saplings, or something?”
Cress stared, her mouth slightly ajar. “Saplings? You know how they reproduce, right? They’re stuffing helmets full of dhvaras right now.”
Cress pointed at the scrattes, who were busy hauling the corpses of the dhvaras over to a single butchering location.
Against her better judgement, Bel looked. She was impressed with how large the shaman’s group had grown. She was less impressed by the growing mound of dhvaras parts and the way the scrattes lapped up their pooling blood.
“Well, it doesn’t look good,” Bel admitted. “But what you – we – do with gorgon body parts and eggs looks bad too.”
Bel gestured at Fortuit, whose hands were soaked in blood.
“What’s wrong with what we do?” Cress asked.
“It’s a matter of perspective,” Bel explained. “Everything seems reasonable to the person doing it. Besides, maybe the scrattes won’t need bodies when they’re on the surface. My mother is all about change, you know?”
Cress’ lips twisted as she thought about it. “So they won’t attack us if we leave, right?”
“Oh, no,” Bel said quickly, “we can’t leave them. We need to travel to the surface together.”
She looked around at the group of confused and dismayed gorgons. They even asked for Fortuit to translate Bel’s words a second time, just in case there had been some misunderstanding. Orseis rolled her eyes and lifted her chin with an air of superiority at the gorgons’ squeamishness.
“It’s to get to the surface faster,” Bel explained. “And we’ll also be safer with a larger group.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“A larger group that could decide to eat us,” Cress quipped.
“They’re completely safe,” Bel insisted. “Orseis and I walked for days with these scrattes on our way down.”
Cress slumped. “Is that so? I guess we could travel with them.”
She looked at the rest of the gorgons and straightened her back. “I shouldn’t make this decision for the entire group though. I’ve failed at leading a group before, and it’s because I didn’t keep track of everyone’s opinions.”
She switched back to the gorgon tongue, and now Manipule translated for Bel’s sake.
“Bel says that she’s travelled with these scrattes before, and that going with them again will allow us to reach the Overworld of Olympos more quickly and with less danger,” Cress began. “She has successfully made this journey once before, so her words carry weight. I will not force anyone in this, as I know our animosity towards the shriveled ones runs deep. We will discuss this until we reach consensus.”
Cress held up a small dagger that looked as dull as a spoon. She offered it hilt first to the other gorgons. One of them quickly grabbed and gave her own opinion. “I swear by the temples of the Old World, travelling with these creatures will only invite death. I object.”
Bel thought the objecting gorgon’s name was Sotil, although they didn’t speak the same tongue and had never held a conversation. She was a muscular gorgon with a thick nest of deep green snakes upon her head. In Bel’s experience she was friendly enough; when Sotil was drunk she sang bawdy songs that Cress refused to translate and challenged her fellow gorgons to arm wrestling and drinking contests.
Sotil held out the dagger and Manipule’s and Oculaire’s hands went up. She handed it over to Oculaire.
“I think we should trust them,” the winged gorgon responded. She placed a hand on Craupadine’s shoulder, gently holding on to sleeping gorgon. “They’ve already helped us, and if Bel and the tentacled child have travelled with them in the past we know that they won’t turn on us.”
Manipule raised her hand again, but Sotil snatched the dagger back. “And lead them straight to the land where we intend to raise our young?” Sotil objected.
“They intend to raise their young there, too,” Manipule spoke. “Maybe they desire a peaceful life just as much as ourselves?”
“The egg mothers do not participate in a consensus, Manipule,” Sotil said hesitantly. The gorgon glanced down at the dull dagger in her hand before casting a questioning look at their leader. “Right?”
Cress looked between Manipule and Sotil. “She has newly assumed her role, so it’s–”
“No, I haven’t forgotten my new role,” Manipule said forcefully. “But I think I should be able to speak.”
“That is…” Cress trailed off awkwardly. “Only adult gorgons without mothering responsibilities join in a consensus.”
“Wait,” Orseis interrupted. “So I don’t get a vote?”
The gorgons looked at Orseis, blinking in surprise.
“What do you guys usually do when you’re travelling with people who aren’t gorgons?” Bel asked.
They turned to Bel and then turned to one another in apparent confusion.
“We do travel with other people,” Cress replied slowly, “but only if we happen to be going the same way. Most people avoid us, and we avoid them too.”
“So, since I’m travelling with you, I get a vote, right?” Orseis pressed.
“You are a child,” Sotil responded after a moment of silence.
“Not among my people.”
Bel put her head in her heads, flashbacks of the arguments between Hanti, Robète, and the rest of the council in the Golden Plains replaying in her mind. Her headache grew worse.
“Hey,” she snapped, “you all want change, right? Since the goddess of change was the first deity to accept gorgons in however long, maybe you should try embracing her ways too.”
The gorgons’ snakes curled with uncertainty as they uncomfortably shifted under Bel’s gaze.
Cress clicked her tongue. “Bel, we don’t know much about Lempo. I met her once, which is certainly more times than most people meet their deities, but I don’t really know any more about her than what you’ve told us. And most of your stories you tell are actually about that old priest who died saving you, or about James and Beth, rather than about Lempo.”
“Oh.” Bel remembered Lempo’s complaints about the lack of prayers from the gorgons. “Are any of you praying to her?”
The gorgons looked back at her, their expressions blank.
“Pray?”
“You know, like… oh, I guess you wouldn’t have had anyone to pray to.”
Bel looked up at the ceiling and tried to remember one of Ventas’ lessons. “Well, you see, if someone is stuck in a place, or a situation, or a whatever, and they pray to Lempo for help, she’ll give them the power to get unstuck.”
Wow, I’m bad at explaining things. Did Ventas use examples? He did, didn’t he?
“Stuck?” a gorgon asked.
“Like in prison?” another added.
“Sure,” Bel nodded.
“And Lempo would strike down our captors?”
“Well…” Bel tilted to the side, slumping as she tried to give a proper reply. She reached up to tug nervously at her snakes, agitating the twisting braid of serpents. “Lempo prefers if people help themselves.”
“But what if your captors were too strong?” Sotil asked.
The other gorgons nodded along with the question.
“Lempo would find a way to help. She could make you stronger, sure, but maybe she would give you an ability to talk so well that you convince your captors to let you go.”
Orseis raised a tentacle. “Or maybe she would make you smell so bad that they had to kick you out of the dungeon!”
Bel wrinkled her nose. “Uh, I suppose so. Or maybe Lempo would give you something to trade with someone else so that you could get what you wanted without violence.”
Bel gestured at the scrattes, hoping that her sister gorgons would fill in the blanks.
“What are we trading with the scrattes?” Cress asked.
“Excellent question,” Bel answered with enthusiasm. “I think that they can get to the surface without us, but they wouldn’t do well there. The humans in Satrap would react to them like they react to all scrattes, and scrattes aren’t very good at strategy. However…”
Bel pointed to the rest of the gorgons and then at the scrates. “We can talk! They can’t! We just need to make sure that the scrattes only attack Technis’ people and convince the other humans that they’re okay.”
Bel smiled. “With how desperate the things are on the surface, we’ll probably be tolerated, or maybe even welcomed,” Bel proclaimed with growing enthusiasm. “Then we get a home, the scrattes get a home, and the humans don’t get wiped out. We all win!”
She looked around at the gorgons. “So, are you all convinced?”
The gorgons shrugged. “What about who gets to vote?”
“Yes,” Manipule added, “that’s important. Orseis and I – and Fortuit and Escalope too – we should all get a vote.”
Bel shriveled. She could see the beginning of a long, drawn-out discussion.
She surreptitiously moved her hand towards her box of books that was to Manipule’s side, but halfway there the other gorgon intercepted her hand. Manipule gripped Bel’s hand for moral support as she argued her case. Bel could feel trembles moving down Manipule’s arm, and she realized that arguing with the others must have been difficult for the normally friendly and reserved gorgon.
And now she probably thinks that I was trying to support her when I was actually ignoring her feelings and reaching for my books. I think that James would call me a callous jerk, wouldn’t he?