15

(Said The Sky, Diamond Eyes- Mountains)

Adam

“Hail!” I raised my hand toward the wagon that was being pulled by the strange creatures.

They were long, six-legged creatures with ears like elephants and heads like squirrels with elongated, flat-toothed jaws. Their legs were long and thick, with three little fingers on each paw. They had long fur, one brown with white speckles, and one a solid milk chocolate color.

The wagon stopped and a man who looked like a sky blue person with a tall head and a long, gilled neck. He rose from the driver’s seat, standing taller than me. He stood up straight, with a wide gait and long translucent, shimmering pearlescent hair tendrils that were tied behind his head. They draped out in rows from underneath segments of ridged bone which rose to soft peaks, then a layer of tendrils, then a bone segment from under that and so on, all the way to the back of his neck like waves. His arms were abnormally long and incredibly muscular, with extra joints like he had two elbows per arm. No palms, three fingers and a thumb emerging from the wrist. His eyes and mouth were large, with a short and wide hooked nose. As he stepped down toward me, I could see that he had a second bend in each of his legs as well, a second knee below his first knee, but in bending the opposite way. His boots were large and much wider than normal. He wore a bright orange half plate with no sleeves, and long off-white pants. Whoever he was, he had a lot of money or a lot of influence. Or maybe he just gave off an air of import. Everything about this guy was startling to me at first, until I heard him speak.

“A jinian? Why do you hail? We have little time to spare.” His voice was deep and rolling, rising and falling like waves.

Jinian? What does that mean?

“We are travelers in search of a meadow with blue flowers, near a large fissure in the ground. We ask if you have seen one, and how far it was?” I tried to be as polite and respectful as possible so as to not insult him, but if I was missing some kind of honorific or title, I would definitely learn quickly.

“Oh, what have we stopped for now?” A woman’s sharp voice burst from the wagon. A face appeared from within, of a woman with warm tanned and freckled skin. She pulled a strand of her neck length chestnut hair back and shoved it into a braid that curled from above her forehead, down the right side, to the back of her head, just to scowl at us with her piercing orange eyes. “Who are these peop- is that a jinian? A nyadin? Out here? What have we stopped for?!”

“Milady, they were inquiring about directions from the road we have passed down.” She groaned and retreated back into the wagon. He turned his attention back to us. “The location you seek will be nearly two days of walking to reach. Beyond that was several days of riding to Vehfirn. Did you come from Poikla Village? How far might it be.”

“Ay, we did. We have been walking for about a day. So very quickly for you. Thank you for the information. We do not have much to repay you, but we hope you will accept this as a token of our gratitude.”

I pulled one of the green fruits from my pack and presented it to him. His stoic face changed for the first time in this short conversation, as he looked genuinely surprised at the gesture and very curious.

“A pomi fruit? Where around here did-”

The woman yelled to him. “Andris! Make haste!”

He apologetically lowered his head toward her. “Alas, fair travels to you, kind wanderers.” He politely smiled and whipped the reins to the wagon.

“Fair travels.” I let myself relax for a moment while the creatures began their jaunt. I didn’t think I had ever been so stressed before, but we finally had a successful interaction with a local since arriving here, so that had to be some kind of win.

Maybe that “pomi” isn’t native to this area, because his reaction was more than I expected. Maybe I’m not supposed to be native to this area. Jinian and nyadin, whichever one of those I am.

I directed us toward the side of the dirt road and pulled another pomi out of my bag. I set the fruit down and readied to crack it while the others drank some water. I swung down onto the fruit and my blade glanced off of its shell. I turned my sword on its side to try crushing it like garlic, and sure enough the fruit burst open, filling the air with a sweet, nectary aroma. The fruit inside looked like pink banana flesh that was dripping with juice. I cut the pieces up as best I could and passed it around.

Each of us hesitantly bit little pieces off of the fruit. It was the best damn fruit I had ever tasted. It had the sweetness of a pomegranate with a punch of nectar to make every bite almost a little overwhelming on the tongue, and a tart aftertaste. By the time I looked up, everyone had finished and was holding the little pieces of shell in their hands. I wanted to open another up, but Brenden and Desmond the fun police said we didn’t have enough resources.

The day went until sunset with little change to the terrain. The forest was immense and it felt stifling to walk past so many trees without finding anything new. About an hour before sunset, we stopped by a small stream that looked like it had fresh water in it. We camped there for the night, unaware of the dark clouds that were closing in.

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The sky opened up on us just as night fell. Rain poured down in sheets, and the best shelter we had were a few trees to rest under. It was a long, tedious night. None of us got to sleep because of the cold summer rain that was berating us. At times of the night, we thought it was going to stop and tried to set up some kind of shelter with branches and leaves, but the wind and rain would pick back up and destroy what we had.

Nobody spoke during that cold and dreary night aside from occasionally whispering some kind of curse when the rain resumed its assault. During a light spell, Desmond spotted some kind of creature in the woods and launched an arrow at it. A yelp resounded through the darkness and disappeared. He cursed, slamming his bow against the tree and yelling that he couldn’t track its scent in the rain. That blow to our morale hurt, and a mild misery steeped the atmosphere. Brenden showed us all the fire sigil, which was apparently safe to use, so we spent the night huddled around our own hands for warmth.

* * * * *

After the miserable night and an uneventful day of rainy travel, we were running out of food. The rain gave us a chance to refill our water, but we were soaked to the bone and exhausted. It continued the same way for the night after that, except we had grown used to the constant rain and the mud that turned the ground into slop. There was no place to find shelter aside from trying to dry ourselves off under some trees to avoid getting trench foot. Had it not been for Brenden’s fire, we would have definitely been in worse condition. Not that having almost no sleep for two days was a good thing, but we were at least able to stay partly dry. We couldn’t keep relying on him though. Brenden couldn’t focus on his hand the whole time, and there was no dry wood for a fire. That night, our meat and bread ran out. We had to eat two of the pomi fruits when day broke for what we were hoping was the last day. One pomi was all we had left unless we could hunt something, but nevertheless, we had to make it to this Geren guy.

Slogging through the muddy dirt road was slow and draining. We didn’t tire easily, but each of us were covered with mud in different places after slipping into the pools that would form on the road or tripping from the sink holes that drenched our boots.

Brenden muttered to himself, hiding his waterlogged book under his equally as soaked cloak, trying to preserve the pages. “This fireblood better be worth an absolute fuckton if my feet are gonna rot off on the way there.”

Desmond trudged along in a tired trance. “They’re farmers there. They’ll have shit for us even if it ain’t money.”

I glanced up at them. “They’ll probably give us stuff if they don’t have money. We started here with a wagon and it got broken, so maybe we can convince them to give us one of those and one of those six-legged… things.”

“Okay yeah,” Brenden seemed like something clicked for him. “What the fuck was that thing? I wasn’t trying to seem surprised by it because I don’t want to seem like an idiot to everyone in this world, but that thing ain’t normal.”

“What? Things from a not normal world aren’t normal? Crazy,” Desmond snarked. “They probably taste great, though.” Just after he finished saying that, he stopped and listened through the rain. “I hear metal.”

All of us stopped to search around for the metal sound. I picked up my head and cracked my neck, realizing I had been looking at the ground for almost the entire day just to keep focused on walking. We were surrounded by a thin mist, but all around us was a flat, grassy plain. It was littered by tall, thin blue flowers with long stalks that diverged into two blue spirals of DNA-like petal formations about halfway up. The air smelled of damp earth, evergreen trees and a buttery floral aroma.

Everyone’s spirits noticeably lifted at the sight of all of this. We all looked to Desmond, who was scanning the field to our right. He couldn’t see over the flowers, so I lifted him onto my shoulders and sure enough, he spotted something a few hundred feet away. Sighs of elation came from everyone when he announced it, and our feet were invigorated with spryness as we all jogged off into the field of flowers.

The cabin was along the treeline of this meadow, peeking through the thick haze and rain as if it were ethereal. The old, worn down cabin looked like a hunting shack with two or three rooms inside. Outside of it were around 20 metal cages of varying sizes. Gazing through rain into the mess of iron and rust yielded little answers about their functionality, but that wasn’t my priority at the moment. Deeper into the field was a wooden fence of some kind, but I couldn’t see through the fog well enough to see beyond it.

We approached the door and let Desmond knock, not wanting to make too strong of an impression on this guy by letting the massive tusked one appear at his doorstep. No answer came. Desmond knocked again and listened in.

“Maybe he’s not home right now?” Brenden leaned against the house, trying to use the little bit of overhang from the roof to get some respite from the rain.

I felt a twinge of irritation building inside of me. “Dude, if we have to wait for this guy to get home from who-knows-where, I’m just gonna break down his door myself.”

Desmond shushed us. “I think I can hear something inside, but I can’t hear it well through all this rain.” He seemed a little frustrated, but eager to get a response out of whoever was inside. He knocked again and not even before he could finish knocking, the door swung open.

We should have been able to tell by the unusually large door, but what answered was almost as tall as me and unlike any creature I had ever seen. It had short, but toned legs that were almost shaped like a dog’s hind legs. Those led into a long, muscular torso with thick arms that reached to the ground. It leaned on them almost like how a gorilla walks on its knuckels. Its flesh was pale pink and wrinkled, with long, peacock-like white feathers on its head and shorter white feathers sparsely covering its arms, poking out from the chest of its shirt. It wore earthy green robes that only covered its torso and a brown leather shawl. Its face was elongated, like a birds, with a heavily scarred flesh beak. Cracking old lips exposed its jagged, gnarled teeth. Its round, completely gray eyes gazed down at us. Desmond almost fell backward when the creature casually opened the door.

“You are…?” It’s wheezy, whispery voice took over our attention. It was waiting for a response, but none of us spoke out of what I assumed was surprise and fear. “I can wait. I’m not in rain.”

After a second of gathering my bearings, I mustered enough courage to speak. “We were sent this way in search of a fellow named Geren.”

The creature’s face turned to me, and its massive mouth curled into a wrinkled smile, exposing its entire jagged maw. “I am no ‘fellow’, but,” it took a deep, wheezing breath, “I am Geren. Who sent you?”

“We were sent to you by Mother Yeline,” I was talking like I was reporting to a drill sergeant. “She said you could help us capture a scouriad fireblood.”

“Help? Too old. Instruct? Perhaps. Come into home? You are drenched… I hate for flesh to… slop off bones on porch.” Every time he spoke, it was like he ran out of breath by the fifth word, struggling for enough to continue.

He stepped out of the way, holding a hand toward the interior of his home, warmly lit by crystals and enticing us to step out of the gray, gloomy downpour.