—Orion—

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself, clenching my fist so the uneasy jitters wouldn't be visible. I waited until I finally felt ready to take on the most difficult task I could imagine, I took a step forwards and knocked on the front door.

  Sally's plan—while risky—did have a better outcome than anything I could come up with. If I managed to succeed, of course. I understand that I'm the only one of the two of us capable of completing this role, but it did not make my task any less daunting.

  It took a minute of stubborn knocking from me for the owner of the house to finally appear, and the sickly-looking mother threw the door open aggressively. She squinted when the sunlight landed on her face, her eyes failing to adjust and caused her discomfort until she stepped out back into the shadows of her home.

  It had been just under an hour since I’d seen her talking to the monster, and I was still angry at her—there was no doubt in my mind about what this emotion was. While I was not that familiar with it, what else could the dizzying jitters mean? The fraying nerves that demanded I do something. The prickling in my eyes and trouble stabilising my fuzzy mind.

  As soon as the door was fully opened, and the woman saw who'd been knocking, she immediately tried to slam it back shut. I jumped forwards, kicking my boot into the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor, which jammed it open.

  The one thing that I had to do—the most important component of this plan—was keep her occupied. If I couldn't, the situation would spiral out of control. Though, as we held eye contact for what Sally had taught me was too long for normal people, my mentally recited scripts fell apart upon first contact with Aylin’s mother. I struggled to even formulate a basic sentence with how tense the situation was.

  "We need to talk." I eventually decided to say. The code phrase Sally had given me to signal that it was safe for him to creep in through a window wasn't meant to be used straight away. But I… had panicked.

  "W-what do you want?" She scowled at me. I was about to answer when I heard the creak of the unoiled hinges, and realised that Sally had already made his entrance.

  "Well?" She scowled again, and I struggled not to let my face shift from its typical arrangement. I felt confused whenever I looked at her. Her appearance was sickly, starved, and the growing deformations of her face and body only inspired the same pity and sadness a diseased animal would make me feel. But her actions flummoxed those instincts, her treatment of Aylin spoiled any goodwill I had for her.

  "I… Wanted to ask you a few questions." I aimlessly rambled, pulling whatever threads my mind managed to supply me to continue the conversation. I put aside my personal feelings as I tried to brainstorm some actual questions that wouldn't make her suspicious of why I was here.

  "No! Leave me be monster." She hissed at me as she tried to slam the door shut again, barely shifting my foot as it caught the wooden barrier.

  But she calls me a monster? I did not find the insinuation particularly insulting in isolation, as there were some valid arguments—as much as I know otherwise—to be made for that. It's just that she was talking with a real monster, and was planning to feed her daughter to it. The reminder of her plans incensed me, but it made me far more curious than—as Sally would say—pissed.

  "I'm not leaving until you agree to answer." I pressed. After one more fruitless attempt to shut the door, she gave up on trying to expel me through strength.

  "Fine! If it'll make you leave faster." She spat, leaving flecks of spit on me as she kept pushing the door as far shut as she could.

  "Why do you think that I'm a monster?" I asked. While it was not what I initially intended to talk about to distract her, it could still work, and I was curious about her answer.

  In the dark hallways behind the woman I caught a glimpse of a flash of scales, my hearing just able to pick out the scraping of Sally’s claws against the floor.

  I leaned slightly, and saw Sally creeping along the floorboards. He was systematically sticking his head into each room, until he saw something that caught his interest. After a sudden start that almost knocked over a broom leaning against the wall, the slightly clumsy dragonling had to wrap his tail around it to stop it from falling over.

  "I!?… You heard that?" She asked back, her tone laced with… anger? I returned my attention back towards the woman as Sally steadied the wooden pole and slipped into the room.

  She was irritated? Was it directed towards me for hearing her insults?

  "I was standing next to you when you said it."

  "… Nevermind. But why did I call you a monster? Because it's obvious that you aren't human." She hissed. I blinked in confusion.

  What had led her to that conclusion? And even if she did believe that I was an inhuman creature, it did not cancel out the contradiction that was her relationship with the Wendigo.

  "Why?" I couldn't help but reply.

  "Your snake eyes don't belong in a human. They come from a fey-thing, and nothing else." She answered. It took a few seconds for me to remember the mutation that I'd received in the caves. I had not gotten the opportunity to see my face clearly enough to see any changes in my eyes yet.

  I wondered what they looked like now.

  "And that's enough for you to think that I'm not a person?" I earnestly responded. This would be important information for the future, especially if we travel to other settlements.

  "You're obviously tainted by something. Or… you only ever pretended to be human." She hissed, her body bulging in a way that strangely reminded me of an agitated rat.

  But I was distracted as I saw Sally behind the woman again, the gold-tinged silver body darting into the hall with Aylin following close behind.

  "Well? Which are you?" She asked. The action of her sharply pointing at me with a long cracked nail reminded me that I needed to distract her.

  "Does it matter?" I answered, genuinely uncaring how the answer came across. Human or otherwise, as long as I was still myself, I did not care for the label by which other referred to me. Unless it affected me—or Sally—negatively I suppose.

  I glanced behind her again, and watched as Sally jumped up and knocked open a window at the other side of the house. The dragonling then gestured with his head for Aylin to follow him, but the little girl only managed to get her hands on the rim. Her legs flailing wildly as she tried and failed to pull herself up.

  I panicked when I saw her frown, her eyes glancing to the side in time with one of Aylin's struggles, presumably hearing it this time.

  "But why would you care?" I quickly asked before she could turn around, recapturing her attention.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  In the background, Sally jumped back down, his diminutive form smaller than Aylin's. As he began to push her upwards, I renewed my efforts to distract Aylin's mother.

  "Given the company you keep." I continued when she didn't respond. It was something of a shot in the dark to get her attention, but when her eyes locked onto me with a twitchy, feverish intensity, I knew my gamble had succeeded.

  "… What?" She whispered, her pallid face scrunching up as her jaw began to shiver. Her two large front teeth chattering the loudest.

  I didn't bother to answer her as I watched Aylin succeed, her body making it up to the windowsill. With a surprisingly quiet roll, she tumbled through, landing on the other side without any loud noises. I then saw Sally follow behind her, jumping up onto the ledge and turning around to give me a spiky thumbs up. He then followed after Aylin, leaping out of the musty house.

  When I saw them both finally make it through the window, I smiled and took a step backwards. The woman I'd been occupying froze for a few seconds, glancing between my face and feet. She then slammed the door in my face, the force behind it strangely vigorous for such a sickly woman.

  “Should’ve known he was just like the rest… just cruel words…” I barely heard the partial murmurs of the woman’s voice. But I ignored it as I rushed around the back of the building, eager to catch up with Sally. Before Aylin's mother caught up at least.

  I slid around the back of the house and moved towards the edge of the village, where we'd decided to meet if the plan succeeded. But as I shimmied between a small gap between two buildings, a ticking from my jacket caught my attention.

  The noise caught me off guard, and it was sudden enough an interrupting that the clicking put me on edge. To reassure myself I paused to do a quick check of my safety, and gave the rustic urban surroundings around me a scan for any threats. However, with nothing around or above me, I finished moving through the gap between houses, and reached into the pocket that contained the source of the ticking.

  What I held in my hand when I brought it out was the watch. The broken device that was given to me by the Moon god. I re-examined the item, and found nothing new about its cracked-glass surface, leather wrist-strap, or its unmoving, static mechanisms.

  I decided to deal with the phantom ticking later as I put the item back in its pocket and ran towards Sally and Aylin. They were waiting for me, and I didn't want to make them wait unnecessarily.

  ***

  It did not take long to spot them after stepping out of the maze of houses. The colourful pair were easy to spot among the sea of green vegetation. I walked up to them, noticing Aylin's prone body and Sally's attempts to get her back up and moving, his claws nudging her side incessantly. The girl's heavy breathing a clear sign of her exhaustion, as was her limp body lying face down on the grass.

  I was surprised that she seemed so exhausted by a short run, but a glance at her body both explained it and confused me even more. She seemed to have put on more weight since I last saw her.

  "I'm here." I greeted them. Sally turned around with what I was becoming certain was an exasperated expression. Both the current irritation from [Animal Companionship] and my familiarity with the twisting of his face was enough to conclude his mood.

  "Can you g-het her moving? We should go into the for-hest." She, he complained, the slight lisp in his voice was… I did not feel like it was a negative thing to listen to.

  But I nodded to Sally's request all the same, and crouched by the exhausted girl.

  "Dragon… can… talk?" Aylin asked between pants, and I nodded as I considered how to move her.

  "Would you like to ride on my back?" I asked her, and that seemed to put a bit of life back into her. When she nodded her head enthusiastically, I offered my back to her, and she clambered on.

  We walked through the forest, the heavier-than-expected girl's arms wrapped around my neck as I tried not to let my discomfort from her sweaty skin touching mine show. After a few minutes of walking, we came across a clearing, and with the village out of sight and hearing range, this was as suitable a place to rest as any.

  "Let's stop here." I suggested while looking at Sally, waiting for his approval of the location before I placed Aylin down.

  The dragon gave the clearing a cursory glance, and gave it his assent with a nod. I then gently let Aylin onto the ground, and wiped her sweat off my neck as soon as I could.

  Once the girl was sitting and breathing smoothly enough to talk normally, I sat down next to Sally and waited for him to begin his questions.

  "Aylin, I want to ah-sk you about a few th-hings." Sally asked. But Aylin's open mouth made me suspect something was wrong.

  "You can talk?" She asked again, the young girl preoccupied by what was probably a world-changing reveal for her.

  "Y-hes, I can." He answered, his chest puffing out like a pigeon's. I did not know how—or why he did—that movement.

  "Cool! Are you actually a dragon?" She ecstatically replied, leaning forwards while clapping her hands.

  "You didn't think I wha-s before?" Sally said, and I could feel… disappointment through the [Emergence].

  "I was playing a game! It was a lot more fun if I pretended you were a real dragon!" Aylin answered, the little girl giggling as I felt Sally's mood worsen.

  I automatically reached over to touch Sally's back, to attempt to ease her mood, but stopped just before I made contact. I knew that Sally disliked it unless he was forced to—to stay 'normal', as he put it. I don't understand why he'd want to be a human sort of 'normal' when he was no longer one, but his instructions were clear, even if I couldn't grasp why.

  I retracted my hand before Sally could notice, and tried to think of another way to improve Sally's feelings. At least I knew the source of his distress, which was Aylin's disbelief of his dragon-hood.

  "But you know now that Sally's a dragon." I told Aylin, the girl enthusiastically nodding along to my sentence. Her agreement almost immediately fixed Sally's mood, turning my anxiousness about intervening into the relaxation of my tense muscles.

  I noted that Sally liked it when people affirmed his status as a dragon, and disliked getting told otherwise. An important thing to re-affirm when we were around people who knew about Sally’s true nature. Which… I suppose Aylin is now. I… I’ll ask Sally later why it was safe to tell Aylin that.

  "Anyw-hays Aylin, I wanted to ask you about sh-ome stuff about the missing people." Sally questioned the girl.

  "Okay!"

  "Ah-fter the hunting trip disappear-ed, when did people start going m-hiss-hing again?" Sally asked.

  "Like… like a day ago?" The girl shrugged in response.

  "And how m-hany s-hinc-e the-hen?"

  "Like loads! At least half the village!" Aylin answered, leaving me confused. Assuming the information the [Quest] was giving us was accurate, the Wendigo had eaten less than ten people—otherwise we would’ve failed part two of it. But half the village must be at least a few dozen people, which I was certain was more than ten.

  So… where had the rest gone?

  "Did they all leave?" I asked, struggling to remember seeing such an exodus of people depart.

  "I dunno? A lot of people have started acting weird as well." She elaborated, stroking an imaginary beard with her pudgy hand.

  "W-ha… wh-a-t…" Sally tried to say, his throat exhausted for the day as he failed to wheeze another word.

  "Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'weird'?" I asked for him, the dragon looking at me with an emotion I couldn't recognise.

  "Hmm… They stop playing with me, and stay inside all the time… Like-like Chester!" Aylin explained, and it took a few seconds to remember the boy I'd seen on the first day we'd arrived here, the Old Chief's grandson.

  He had been extremely emaciated when I saw him, but the only other time I’d seen—or rather heard—him was the visit to the Chief's house earlier. The Elder had said he was sick and staying upstairs.

  "Could you explain what happened to Chester?"

  "He was—like—the first person who got sick… and since then he's been all… weird!"

  "Sick how?"

  "He, like, doesn’t like to talk anymore, and won’t play with me either. And stopped showing up to anything with other kids. And didn't like light. And kept being all weird with my mom." Aylin continued, leaving me baffled as to what he was suffering from. It sounded like every illness I had ever heard of, and none at the same time.

  "What was he talking to your mother about?" I asked, Aylin scrunching her face up with annoyance.

  "He kept on bringing food for me to eat, and my mom made me eat it! I'm like—like… like a ball now!" She said, explaining how she got so fat. But that still raised the question of where Chester got the food from. If they had been struggling for so long, why was meat suddenly so abundant now?

  "Aylin, what-" "STEP AWAY FROM HER!" A booming voice cried out, jerking me back into awareness of my surroundings.

  I turned towards the voice, instinctively whipping out my hunting knife as I searched for the threat. But I froze as I laid my eyes upon what a stray thought suggested might be Gandalf in a new set of clothes.

  He was an older man, with long, pearl-white hair tied back in long braids, standing tall and proud with a small cloth bag sitting in an open palm. While wrinkled, his body was unbroken by the passage of time, wiry muscles standing firm, unlike the Old Chief’s crippled form.

  He had an elaborate neck-piece of beads and feathers that trailed down to his midsection, and the finest leather clothes I’d seen in the whole village. Around his waist was a belt carrying all sorts of glass and ceramic bottles, and many more bags of unknown materials. On his back was a large backpack of what I presumed was camping gear.

  "I am the Medicine-Man Icaro. And why are you with my granddaughter? In the middle of the forest? Alone?" He asked, one white eyebrow raised as he talked.