Chapter Nine
Talli jumped up, wide awake. She could hear yowls, yelps, hisses and snapping sounds from near the water. Jumping up, she looked around. The others weren’t awake yet.
“Get up!” Talli yelled, afraid and worried. “Get your weapons out and those who don’t have them…” She looked around desperately, “Um… um…” She spotted the smoldering coals of last night’s fire, “Get a stick and light it on fire or something!”
“What?” Briar asked, alarmed.
“Fighting sounds, from the beach! Whatever’s out there we have to be ready!”
Everyone was wide awake then, moods a mixture of worried and scared.
Talli took a deep breath, pulled out her machete, and walked out of the entrance to their camp.
Before her the shore was chaos. The terrifying lobster creatures Ben had talked about screeched and hissed, and in the middle of it all was a creature that looked like a smaller version of the Wolfcoon Briar had killed.
“What is going on?!” Briar asked.
“I don’t know!” Talli shouted back.
The Wolfcoon growled and hissed, snapping at the lobster things, which kept clacking their claws, tauntingly. It lunged, grabbing one of the monster’s legs and snapping it with it’s strong jaws.
“It’s small… the poor creature.” Ashelea said, watching the Wolfcoon.
“But… did you…” Dylan spluttered, “But… Look at what it did to that thing’s leg!”
“Look at what those things did to Ben’s arm,” Talli said, pointing to the barely-healed scar on Ben’s forearm, “And that was just a glancing blow, too, I imagine.” She added, and Ben nodded.
“Well… but…” Dylan protested, then changed the subject “Look! Those things are running off! I bet that Wolf thing’ll attack us next. We have to--“
“Oh, stop your worrying” Ashelea inturrupted, annoyed. “Look, I bet this thing is a pup, an orphaned one. And it’s probably the pup of that Wolfcoon you killed. It’s certainly too small to be an adult. And it’s no harm to any of you. Look at it, it’s scared. It’s defending itself, not charging in there to fight for the fun of it.”
Dylan stared suspiciously at the creature, as it backed away from the lobster things which were retreating as well, clacking their claws together and hissing ‘shreeeeiiissssssshhhkkkkkkk’.
“Look, they’re going back into the ocean!” Dylan said, “And that thing’s coming over here, cub or not!” Drawing his weapon, he held it shakily in front of him, frightened.
Talli pushed his weapon down, forcing him to lower it. “Hold on, Ashelea’s right.” Then, thinking, she wondered aloud, “Should we try and help it? It’s our fault it’s an orphan, after all.” And without waiting for the other’s opinion, she slowly walked over to where the creature had been fighting, and where some of the armored legs and ripped off pieces of tail from the fight still lay. Picking up a severed, insect-like leg, she gingerly cracked off the hard, armor-like exoskeleton one piece at a time. Then, with the meat underneath exposed, thoughts buzzing and mind-gears whizzing all the time as she wondered and put things together and created theories, she held it out to the young, fuzzy Wolfcoon cub. It backed away, cowering, ears flat and tail between it’s legs – body language much like a dog, she mused to herself – then, slowly, it grew friendlier, and inched forwards just enough to snap at the food Talli held out to it. Talli smiled, and let it take another cautious bite, darting forwards to take some of the food and then jumping back. After a few minutes, it realized that Talli was less of a threat than it first expected. Talli also realized the young cub was less of a threat, and while the others also inched closer, just like the cub, she knew they were realizing it, too. She didn’t want to nurse this creature back to health, but it felt like it was the right thing to do, to try and help it, since it was they who’d killed it’s mother. Picking up a piece of tail this time, she peeled away the much softer, more flexible exoskeleton on the tail, and offered it the cub. This time it inched even closer, the chunk of food being offered being much shorter than the last. Quickly, it darted forwards, pulling so fiercely on the chunk of meat that Talli lost her grip, and the cub retreated several yards to eat in peace.
“Well, then, okay.” She said, getting up from where she was crouching and backing away a few steps. “I don’t see why you couldn’t feed yourself, but at least you won’t attack us, right?” She muttered.
Walking back to the others, who’d come a bit closer gradually, she stretched, relaxing the cramped muscles in her back and arms.
“See? No danger. And it seems like it’s old enough to eat solid food, even if it can’t figure out how to get to it.” She said, watching Dylan’s expressionless face for any sign of emotion.
“This.” Briar announced suddenly, “Has been a weird day.”
Talli chuckled, “Indeed it has been.”
No comments:
Post a Comment