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Child in the Forest

Two stories of different worlds

By Alexander AlbertsonPublished about a year ago 10 min read
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Taking chances. Double or nothing.

Story #1

It is done. We all made it.

Harmond! There must be another way. We cannot-

Please Baila! Please. This is our best guess, so far, our only way.

Someone will find out! People talk and then someone will hear. And they will cry our callousness to do such a thing!

Balia, silence. Please. We have been all over the village, and a few even rode out to surrounding farms. No one knows where the little one came from. There is no mother, there is no father. An orphan, looking for reasons in our homes.

Balia’s face showed anxiety, grief and despair as only a mothers could.

And… we found one. Like they said. I love you dearest. I’m sorry, we did find one, but I will not apologize for what we did. Elder Marmuk was sure. He wrote the numbers and looked at his lists and after much consideration he said this would work. He said it would work, at least for now.

What do you mean at least for now Harmond! What did that witch crier tell them?

Balia was moved from just grief, into grief-stricken rage. Her tears in the damp hut firelight glistened under the crinkled, worn eyes.

Elder Marmuk told us that he looked at his numbers and his day charts and said it appears that… that as those taken… as they get younger, the attacks are less frequent. They are further along the weeks. Gardier had an idea, and I and the men, Balia please, the men too, we thought it made sense. We had to try something. We cannot let a beast like this pull us into shreds and do nothing!

Harmond…

Balia sobbing quietly in the dancing firelight looked the picture of a legend to Harmond. Her grief a display of something finalized, a sorrow after a heroic act made sure, but for much cost of the heart. An act the mothers of the heroes of tales have done before they went out on their adventures. Or after they did not return. Harmond blinked the crushing his chest felt, and the moistening of his eyes.

Balia. If this does not do the thing, we will all cry your sadness. He held her tightly between the smell of damp thatch and the bright firelight dance.

~~~

Zariela was a creature of magnificent composure. Armored in scales, gigantic talons and teeth a brilliant pearl, his molten breath a thing of terror. Occasionally Zariela would loom his gigantic head over a nest of this creature or that, and allow globules of molten spittle to drip from his smirking maw. Tiny squeals and smoke would rise, and then he would stamp out the torture with his colossal, gratuitously taloned forelimb. Treasures in the wood for him to savor.

And then one day, after mindlessly smoking out a squealing den of boney piglings in wooden nests, the piglings began to send… well there was no other way to consider it. They began to send bits of the forest and meadow back to itself.

Zariela’s nesting zone was large and intentionally apparent, but apparently it crossed a wetherway the piglets had been using to run along. Where the river and the path and the charred corners of his warmed and softened nest lay, they brought little bundles of… something.

Grass pods heated and worked or watered into bricks. Chunks of what remained from the local goat herds cut into sections and wrapped. Bulbous gourds filled with something that was not stream or river water. Flowers from the meadow. Bits of yellow rockish disc. All neatly arranged in a pile where the creek and the path and his charred nest met.

Zariela’s gigantic nostrils breathed in the flavors of the ramshackle pile. It smelled like goat and piglings and fields. Their pigling stink was over all of it. Zariela breathed into his great body and dribbled out a lazy stream of molten bubbles of fire and stone. It landed on the assorted stack of nonsense and immediately burned through most of it. The stink of burning grass pod meal and goat meat reminded him he had a clutch of smoked elk he had been saving behind the rocky section of his forest charred lair. It was suddenly time for some feasting right now, and the village was too far away.

Weeks after Zariela had made other peckish forays into the pigling's forest of wooden nests for his snacking, there was a surprise at his ‘door’.

At the crossroads of the charred nest and river and pigling path, there was a pigling tied up, making noise, and apparently all alone. Zariela had never feared ambush, yet his colossal amber eyes flitted suspiciously about the crossroads area.

The trees he hadn’t yet knocked over were not thick enough to hide a horde of piglings, which is what would have taken to at least surprise him. Zariela could and did flatten trees aplenty when he was bored. There was not a structure he could not immediately make into rubble except that of natural earthen rock.

Zariela gazed his gigantic amber eyes at the wiggling fair haired pigling, and pushed out a tuft of fire and smoke on the high pitched, noisy creature. Immediately the noisy sound stopped and the luxurious smell of cooked meat wafted into his nose. A tasty treat.

Zariela had begun to make something of a habit of stopping by the wooden nests for a gluttonous snack in the odd hours of his day. Normally he made short work of entire herds of elk or caribou or goats during feedings. Yet after perching on a clifftop and watching the activity of the piglings after his visits, he decided to entertain himself more. And they obliged. They did taste very different.

It seemed that, after a visit to the collection of wooden, squarish nests, an increasing amount of goat flavored packages arrived. They were small, numerous, and impossible to eat with his gigantic snout and fangs, but they did smell nice, all smoked and arranged, there by the riverside.

Eventually two shrieking noisy piglings were laid out before him and he indulged himself in a bite. Buttery. These were not the same flavors of meat as he was used to, usually something of the hoofed and running variety. Was he missing out on a trace delicacy just next door?

Not terribly long after, there was another offering at his riverside doorstep. This one was curious, much smaller, much quieter. Not even a morsel. Vaguely, Zariela saw that this was maybe a youth or an underdeveloped pigling. Not even an aromantic, had he decided to smoke it for ambiance.

These incursive deposits were declining in volume and quality. His colossal nostrils snorted fire and smoke in judgement. Maybe Zariela liked the smell of smoked pine, cedar, iron and wheatgrass after all.

Story #2

Pristine woods became filled with the crying exhalations of a toddler’s terror and vicious lung capacity. The baby was screaming and screaming even as he toddled drunkenly along the forest path, deeper and deeper into the dragonwood. There was so much wrong with the situation, he was mad, and cold and hungry and lost and tired and excited but mostly mad and hungry and lost and there was NO ONE attending to these feelings. Such rage he would feel for the first living thing he saw, the first squirrel, the first sparrow the first… how dare they abandon and bereave him of any-

Maelkliniadies!

The toddler stopped and snapped his fat, uncoordinated head as fast as a youngling body such as his could.

The visage of a hugely gigantic green dragon overlooked him, invisible to his undeveloped eyes in the contest of the forest foliage. Enormous teeth came visible as the dragon slightly creased its jaw in a smile.

Mal, you look… different. Very cute. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be that small.

Tiny huffs of smokey soot shunted out of the nostrils towards him.

Shut your flamehole Hieronova! I can’t fucking figure out what fucking happened, the damn, unfinished… brain. can’t… even...

Mal tipped over, fomenting in a collapse such impossible thoughts for a human toddler brought.

Awwww.

Heir poured out a jet of light smoke, enveloping Mal.

Baby got a problem? You are so cute when you are mad. You were always sweet when you were mad.

Mal struggled onto his back, writhing and screaming.

GOD DAMN IT I AM STILL A CREATURE OF FLAME AND HATE, I NEED-

Quiet, small creature, there are others in this forest who lurk.

Mal suddenly ceases crying and fussing and becomes stoney, still plastered on the trail dirt.

Hieronova expels a jet blast of smoke and flame out of her nostrils.

We have hunters in our midst. I don’t yet know if they are dragon-kind seekers.

Her deep breathing becomes steady and intentional, her amber eyes surveying the forest with lazy cunning.

You can’t just leave me here, Heir!

The small human toddler exclaims physically.

They will not know the difference between us, I cannot go inhabit a dwelling of huma-

SILENCE.

Heironova barks a command across their dragonlink.

Maelkliniadies is silenced but still wiggling and squawking.

Heir, you know I am just, THIS, right? I have no talons or fangs or fire and-

I SAID-

A sudden flash and flurry of movement behind them fills the air with arrows and cries of human warriors.

Hieronova roars and both wings come up in a shielding motion, covering her head and Mal. Arrows bounce off her impenetrable scales and her strong but lean wing membrane.

MAL! They do not know you are not their folly, you must be ready to accept their rescue!

Mal knowingly screams draconic slurs, infernal swears and other fatigues of the spirit.

Hooded and forest color clad warriors climb out of the flora of the trail where Heir and Mal are stopped.

Cries of war and axe and death are heard as they strike her scaled, dragon carapace with arrows and thrown implements, the vast majority doing nothing.

MAL CONDUCT YOURSELF. I cannot hold forever against these attackers, eventually they will find their way into my weakness. I could destroy them… but who would be left to care for you…

HEIR YOU CANNOT LEAVE ME LIKE THIS

Mal, even if I wanted to save you… maybe this will be good for you.

Mal felt a gentle, sardonic trickle of humor over their draconic connection.

Hier felt a twinge of guilt and fleeting excitement over their connection as she unfurled her wings and began to extricate herself from the encounter. Errant attackers flung unceremoniously from their assault positions on her flanks as she rises with gust and power.

Mal felt an incredible dirth of dirt and sound as Heironova unfurled her draconic wingspan and blasted the assailants back with air, irritant and muscle. Practically leaping into the sky, reflecting odd arrows, she cleared the tree cover and sailed off to the south, towards their communal ethnic nest.

Cheers could be heard from the entirely intact and unharmed band of warriors who had filled her clearing as she rose into the sky.

Mal cursed rot to himself.

Hier could have taken me back, wrapped in cloth and a strange story to be told but there could still have been some-

Again, an interruption to him, as the main man of the cheering warriors hoiseted Mal up and held him to his chest weeping in joy and triumph.

Mal, beside himself with a curious mix of rage and acquiescence.

Motherfucking humans, no one died, or wounded, you think this was a victory? You don’t ask why not? GODDAMN IT THERE WOULD BE SOME-

Whoooo is a sweet brave boy in the foresttt, whoooo he cried loud and whoooo a sweeeeetie good boy yes yes that’s you my boy weeee will be home soon my little love!!!

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