Ode’s sun had set leaving the planet in darkness. Its larger moon, dressed in her evening gown of blood red, watched as the bog troll stumbled through the fog’s gray mist. Lowering his head with his prey slung over his shoulder, he entered the gaping mouth of his cave. Pet rats scurried over his hairy feet to greet him. Shuffling down twisting tunnels, he carried the little mountain troll’s limp body into the dark bowels of catacombs and lowered her onto the cavern floor. Shooing the rats out of a cage of willow branches, he carefully placed her inside and secured the latch. He stood still for a long moment mesmerized by the droplets of fog dripping from her black hair and sliding across her pale lips.
During the long journey to his cavern, the troll had carefully kept Laelia under the influence of a potent drug made from the bog’s blue lily. She lay for hours held in the drug’s tight claws, haunted by demonic nightmares. Cruel eyes leered from a dark face; strong hairy hands grabbed at her. Kaleidoscopic reds and purples raced through her mind. Rippling crimson veils swirled over her head, slipping down and tightening around her throat.
Struggling, she fought against the demon of sleep that held her body down. Hair reeking of a foul odor mixed with the suffocating scent of perfume drifted in and out of her senses. Finally escaping from her frightening dream, she awoke to a living nightmare. Lying still as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she found herself curled up in a tight circle covered with animal skins, trapped in a cage. The smell of damp dirt told her she was underground. All too soon, the scent was overpowered and lost in the odor of rotten meat. The stench summoned up memories of something dreadful from her younger years; fear gripped her throat.
A long shadow cast its presence, rearing dark and menacing on the wall of rock. Bear-like, it hovered over her as she again felt the warm rush of fear spreading throughout her body. Laelia watched the shadow transform into a hideous male troll standing so close to her cage she could see the sweat glistening on his skin. The little troll summoned all the courage her frantic mind could collect. She looked up into his face, carefully avoiding his eyes. She knew this troll. His name was Zote, the village nuisance who always announced his presence with a putrid smell. She remembered his growls and grins that flashed rotten teeth as he trotted through her village, frightening the young mountain trolls.
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As Laelia lay powerless in her cage, she thought of the tiny pygmy rabbits in the forest. When they are afraid, they just sit paralyzed, too frightened to move. Determined not to be like them, she reached with cold trembling hands for the strong branches of her prison and pulled her body up. All the while, her legs quivered as she tried to stand; she struggled bravely against her tears.
Flames of a flickering oil lantern illuminated Zote’s face. The eerie light cast grim shadows over his whiskers and wrinkled forehead. Laelia’s lavender eyes winced in horror as they took in the dirty, scrubby beard with a hole in it. This hole was his mouth! He had no apparent lips, only an orifice concealed in a matt of whiskers stained with saliva made red from the betel juice he spat or drooled. Within the hole in his beard, teeth were filed to jagged points and stained black from chewing the betel nut. The mouth was silent.
Stifling a cry, Laelia watched the bog troll unlock her cage. She noticed his pointed ears. The ear’s cartilage curved over and under like two tangled roots attached to his enormous head. In the lobe of these massive hairy ears, she saw earrings of carved flint. The flint piercing his ear lobes held dangling, dried lizards that glittered iridescent blue in the cave’s dim light. His earrings swung as he nodded his head in the direction of pooled water and baskets of food. The motion caused the pieces of flint in the earrings to strike each other, making small sparks. As he started to reach for her, the troll’s booming voice droned out of the hairy hole in his face, “Come out! Drink water! Eat fruit!”
Shrinking from his touch, she timidly stepped out onto the cave’s littered floor and moved toward the fruit and water. Now close to him, the stench of his warm breath was repulsive. Zote reached for the fruit and held it out to her with his wrinkled, monkey- like hands. She shook her head and backed away.
Shrugging his shoulders, he tossed the food to the cave floor where eager rats scrambled to claim it. He then turned and shuffled in his strange manner into the darkest corner of his cave.
In the dim light, Laelia watched Zote as he balanced himself on his rat-like tail, leaning back as if in a chair. His black eyes burned into hers. Grabbing the frayed end of his tail with its tuft of hair, he wiped the yellow snot running onto his beard. A necklace of gnarled brown bones hung from his neck; she was certain they were troll fingers. Laelia turned away.
Zote, amused by her delicate manner and the horrified look in her eyes, threw his hairy head back. His laughter, like a braying donkey, echoed throughout the cave’s chambers.