#I love her. I have no idea how foundlings in this world work. I'm doin' my best here. now go attach yourself to your new dad

[landfilloftrash]

Nightmares and Night-Lights

***

Bayou-bayoushkji- bayou,

Seedjit kotjik na kriyou,

Her feet ached. Why did they ache. She hadn’t moved. Or maybe she’d moved too much, instead. Warm, too. It was too warm. The wind was too soft for the heat around her. Too wet. Familiar– not water. Thicker. Blood. On her. On the cobbles. On their faces. Her claws. Felt heavy and uncomfortable. Mom was split in half. She knew it was mom, despite her insides now decorating the ground, because that was the necklace she wore and opened to lull them all to sleep. It was open now. It was playing the tune softly, without pause or break like it would when mom played it; mama’s voice floated nearby. 

On nje bedjin nje bahat,

Oo njevo yestj m’noho rebjat

That might be Riik, laying next to it, with their eyes next to a smashed head and torn up body. Their eyes were facing her. Riik did tend to stare a lot. She wasn’t sure, but the way they were curled reminded her of how they’d fall asleep. Mama was nowhere to be seen, but from the corpses strewn all over the broken buildings, she felt numb with the certainty that she could find her. The voice that sounded like her provided only that same dread that she was gone.

Vcje pah lallichkum seedjatj

Kashou smasljetsum yedjatj.

There were others, even closer to her, but the way they were torn she couldn’t tell what creature they were. How long had she been standing here? She’d watched this. Right? She’d seen familiar faces and not rush around her and die. She thinks that was death. It reminded her too closely of when she caught a mouse or vole. But it was so loud. It still was. Why hadn’t it quieted? The insides were everywhere. She always hated when it was loud. Where was Ahky? Where was mama? She was holding a hand. It wasn’t connected to anything. 

She could taste the heavy pennies in her mouth. 

Bayou-bayoushkji- bayou.

Eno jolted to the side with a distressed cry. 

The room she found herself in was dark, shadow-filled room, the pale light that would barely give a human’s eye a fragment of information filling the room the dark but defined shapes of beds and desks and lumps filling the beds for the young owlin’s eyes; it was confusingly disorienting, as though she expected to be somewhere else.

But overwhelmingly familiar.

. . . Oh. She was in the church.

She blinked and peered around the room a secondary time, her heart thumping loudly in the pin-drop quiet– no one seemed to awaken at her call, which she was pretty happy about, since if one kid started groaning, it usually wasn’t long before the entire room started talking, shushing, and groaning alongside them.

That was just how her fellows functioned. She usually joined in on the shushing, if she did at all. 

(A pillow over one's head did wonders, especially with her experience with her siblings.)

A pillow over her head wasn’t a sure way to stop the nightmares, however, and she rubbed her eyes to blink away the afterimages of torn up bodies of her family and her friends like the aftermath of house cats finding a den of rats.

It made her tremble in the summer heat.

She– no. She couldn’t go down that road of thought. If she started thinking about if it were truly a ‘prophecy’ like what the ‘pastors’ talked about, she would start crying– and crying would wake everyone and ask her what’s wrong, and she’d have to explain her nightmare, and she’d have to tell about who she saw— 

Mister Rollo!

Her head snapped up as one of the faces that haunted her sleep, covered in gore, flashed in her vision.

That was how she knew it was a dream. It had to be. Mister Rollo was too big to be taken down by anything short of a dragon. Unless the monster was sneaky. Or perhaps dragon shaped. Then maybe it could have gotten him without anyone knowing. Oh, shoot– what if it was one of those ‘prophecy dreams’ or whatever they were called and Mister Rollo was in trouble?

There was only one way to make sure.

Shuffling from laying on her side, (she slept on her belly, but her nightmare had apparently gotten her to toss and turn onto her side) she hopped off the bed and armed herself with blanket and pillow, and began to hustle her way into the dark of the hallways.

Part of the challenge was making sure no one saw or heard her, because even when she was small, (Well. Smaller.), she recognized that adults didn’t seem all too thrilled when you were up and about after they called ‘lights out’. She wasn’t particularly sure on the hows or whys of it, but she knew that much! So that was her main goal in the darkness of the church— aside from trying to wrack her scattered, wired brain into remembering where his room actually was.

She just.. Had to ignore the lingering taste of copper in her mouth was all, and the noises from the woods outside the windows that reminded her too closely of screams or calls for help.

That’s all.

It took a couple false starts and a couple incorrect room-peekings, but she eventually remembered her way in the monotonous hallways. Landmarks weren’t really a thing, so she tried navigating via the feelings around her. Not really a sure choice, but so far her gut hadn’t really steered her wrong!

Besides she was pretty sure wolves couldn’t get in the building, so she was okay to take her time and find her way through.

Clicking quietly on the tile and wood, she let herself stand there for a moment and feel the silent air. Incorrect feeling. Mister Saint Rollo had a weird energy to him, but it was a nice one; made her feel comfortable. So it wasn’t any of these— and she made her way through like that.

At some point, her head decided to remind itself that she had a map of the building that she had been working on for the past few weeks and that it would probably be really useful right now. But it was all the way back at the creche and what if she got caught on her way back out?? It was under her mattress anyways so she couldn’t get at it without a bit of effort on her part. So all in all, it took longer than she liked while sneaking, but suddenly at one point her feet stopped and she stared at them. She didn’t think to stop walking. Turning her head to the door next to her she peered up at it. This one?

Some doors, when you open them, have a creaky feature. This feature varies; some creak when you open them slowly. Some creak when you open them too fast. Some don’t creak at either speeds and only creak when you open them at a vaguely normal pace. Eno had been listening to the doors throughout her stay and found them to be of the first variety— mostly, at least. After gently grabbing the handle she moved the door swiftly to avoid the slow opening creak and peered in. 

The small mountain on the bed was a promising sign however. But she knew illusions existed. Monsters could use magic. And Dragons were powerful magical creatures; She would not be fooled. Ducking into the shallow gap between the door and its frame, she dragged her weapons of choice in with her before she closed the door once more.

Creeping closer to the bed Eno noted that, yes, it did look like an asleep Mister Rollo but she wasn’t completely convinced. She wasn’t sure how she was going to be convinced, but she knew that she needed to find that proof. By the time she was standing right next to him, she had completely assured herself that she’d figure it out, and then go back to bed. 

Now. If it were an illusionary spell, casted by a monster as either a disguise or a stand-in for something that wasn’t there; would it start to fail if she stared at it too hard? She wasn’t quite sure about how magic worked. It didn’t sound right, but she knew from the way some fancy dressed people complained in town, or even some of the bigger kids in the church, that magic was extremely ‘finicky’ and ‘could make no sense’, so she was hazarding that something to that effect might happen, but it wasn’t a completely assured thing. So as she stared intently, she tried to take note of anything that could be categorized as ‘off’ or ‘very-definitely-not-what-it-seems’. 

Not as easy as it sounded. 

Maybe she should just wake him up and see if it was actually him? No, because if it was then she’d just be interrupting his sleep— she didn’t want that— but if it wasn’t actually him, then it’d be no harm, right?

Eno stood there debating, and studying, moving her position slightly so her legs didn’t ache too bad and to get a new perspective, and doing more debating about that studying, for an unidentified amount of time. Mostly because she wasn’t paying attention and had no inclination to.

(It was nearly an hour.)

But as she was finally settling into the idea that he was what he appeared to be, and that she could leave, she noticed a slight shifting– well. Stronger shifting than he had been doing for the time she’d been watching, and she paused in all her processes to tune back in and see.

His eyes slowly blinked partially open— and then seemed to jolt into awareness and onto an elbow as his eyes widened and looked back at her, blinking rapidly.

A couple seconds passed as the Goliath visibly strung together coherent thoughts, and a quiet sleep-slurred voice greeted her; “….Hello, Enososin.”

Well that was ‘fortuitous’ timing. Mom liked that phrase.

“Are you real?” She demanded, quietly, but getting straight to the point of her debate.

In the dark, Rollo’s expression flashed to one she had absolutely no idea how to categorize; just in general— (and if she could, she’dve labeled it as ‘having a brief existential crisis’)— before he slowly nodded at her. “…I believe so, yes.”

She poked the closest thing to her— his arm— with suspicion. It felt real, but nighttime always had secrets.

Hm. Well. It sounded like him, looked like him, and probably by all accounts was him. Besides, she was already planning on sneaking away the second before he woke up, so, for now, it was safe to assume it was, in fact, Mister Saint Rollo. But in case it wasn’t, or she had been pre-emptive in her checking in on him…

She nodded to herself as she finally concluded her deliberation. “Goi’g to be making sure.”

“‘Making sure’?” He echoed.

She dropped down to her belly and swiftly crawled underneath the bed with all the confidence of a child who played in crawl spaces, dragging her blanket and pillow underneath it with her.

There was a brief moment of silence as she got herself settled into her little spot before she heard the bed creak above her— what she presumed to be Rollo to be laying back down; and she was right! Up to a point. 

In the dark she saw a shape peek where she was, bright whites of his eyes squinted slightly in the shadows; he had laid back down to peer under the bed and look at her.

“Enososin,” he quietly, but gently— not mad then, just seemed to be confused— asked into the slight echo, “what are you doing?”

“Maki’g sure!” She whispered. She’d already told him but that was fine. He just seemed to be a bit slow to wake up!

More silence. “Making sure of what, little owlette?”

“It took you a long time to wake up while I was looking at you!” She fiercely whispered her explanation, “If a monster creeps in, you won’t know! I’m making sure that doesn’t happen!”

Another moment of silence, and she allowed it, because he seemed… actually, she had no idea what that expression was. His face was strange, in the best of ways she could possibly enunciate in her limited vocabulary, but nonetheless she couldn’t parse some expressions yet. This one looked… at the very least soft, but the widened eyes and the creased brow confused her. Those meant a lot of different things with humanoid faces.

Eno wasn’t about to ask what was up with his face, so she waited patiently for him to either go back to sleep or continue talking. Eventually after a couple more moments he sighed, quietly, but she saw him slump a bit with closed eyes and a small smile on his lips. “Alright, little savior,” he quietly chuffed to her, “you plan to defend me as I sleep?”

She chirped an affirmative with a little headbob.

“Well,” he hummed, and there was shifting above her and suddenly one of his hands reached down below and offered itself to her, “I have an idea for your quest.”

She looked at his hand and chirred at him in interest. “What’s the idea?”

He wiggled his fingers at her, and as he did, his tattoos started to glow ever so slightly as a spell manifested like water filling a cup in his palm, glowing softly in the night. “To give you my power to defend against the mightiest beasts, should they choose to go against a defender of your caliber.”

‘Oh !’ Her eyes widened, ‘Magic!’ That would absolutely help in her mission. And if it was some of Mister Rollo’s magic… She reached for his hand and the orb of light floating within the little presenting curve of his palm and touched it. 

Upon her touch, the orb didn’t quite shatter, but it did break apart into little bright pieces, swirling her finger– hand— arm— before sinking onto it like vines on a branch. A warmth accompanied the swirling magic like instead of touching an orb of soft light, she’d grabbed a very pleasantly hot mug of cocoa filled her hand raced through her arm, settling nicely throughout her bones and leaving a warm center in the middle of her chest as she blinked in slight surprise. She hadn’t been sure what was going to happen, but that had been really cool. She chirped in quiet excitement as she pulled her hand away, looking at it in curiosity.

“That should be able to tide you over,” he murmured with a yawn, drawing her attention back to the receding hand and tired face– right. She’d woken him up. Well now she definitely had to make it up to him. “You sure you’ll be alright down there?” 

Eno chirped another quiet affirmative. No need to be loud when he was clearly sleepy. “Nothin’ will get you while I here!” 

“I’m sure it won’t,” he hummed again, a different kind of smile on his face as it disappeared, once more going back to laying down, indicated to her by the slight creaking and shuffling of the bed’s frame above her, “be careful down there, little one.”  

She waited until his own shuffling had stopped and waited patiently for the now familiar sound of sleep from him. Once she was sure of it, she began shuffling her blanket into a position where she could watch the door and window with no real issues. Making sure it was spread out as much as it could go, she layed on her belly and settled on her blanket, and then methodically pulled the edges over her legs, left side, and then right. The last step was simply pulling her pillow closer to her as she settled her chin on it.

Tonight, she was the wolf that would bite if anyone got close to the edge.

Pulling a– what had Mama called it–? An all-nighter, wasn’t exactly new to the owlin, but it had been a long time since she had done so. Eno mused to herself that she hadn’t done this since mom’s birthday, all her siblings having wanted to surprise her with breakfast and all their little gifts. Admittedly, she had volunteered to wake them up, so she had no one to blame but herself for the boredom that ensued, but the mere fact she had been put on duty to wake the others so they could get breakfast ready kept her strong throughout the night. Minus a couple of nod-offs that she had quickly rectified with pinching herself. She had stayed awake ‘till daybreak, done her job by quietly waking the others, but had passed out as everyone else made breakfast. 

She yearned to be able to do that again— to wake others to surprise their collective loved one. Even if she went to sleep afterwards, her mom had come by while she was still trying to fight sleep and chided her gently for the all-nighter, claiming that she wasn’t built for being a ‘night-owl’, before giving her kisses and a thank you for the gift. Then told her to sleep and that she would wake her for lunch. That had been nice. She missed that.

Maybe they’d come back. She’d like to introduce her moms to Mister Rollo. He was very nice, and even if they didn’t like the church surely they’d get along fine with him? Mama would probably have a joke stowed away that would make him laugh. Mom might comment on something he was wearing and usher him away to ‘fix him up’, considering that was her job. Mom liked clothes.

She had no idea how her siblings would react to him. Okay, that was a lie; she could make a very smart guess at it. They’d probably start various climbing techniques to investigate him. Odus would probably see what was in his pockets. If he had any. She didn’t know, and was not in a position to ask. Maybe later. Zofaas would be the only one of them to ask smart questions– Kinzon would try to copy, but none of their brains worked as good as Zoe in that regard. Ahky would maybe whisper to her about whether or not he was as nice as she was claiming (sometimes she lied about someone’s niceness, but she would whisper to her twin what was the real deal) and she’d be able to tell him that he was as nice as she claimed. Oo, Frul might not get along with him but they’d certainly like Ms. Saint Celestine. They liked stars. So did Riik. 

Riik…

She hoped they’d come back. Or whatever had taken them would give them all back. Was this what it felt to be on the receiving end of a scavenger hunt? They didn’t steal people, but if this is what it was like she never wanted to do it again. But if something stole them, wouldn’t there have been some kind of sign? Did she miss it? Should she check the house again? And if it wasn’t being taken, when would they come back? She hoped they missed her as much as she missed them. Or at least thought about her. Even thinking would be nice.

It was thoughts and wants like that that kept her awake as she peered between the entry points with critical eyes. The shadows moved slowly, the night methodical in its plodding through time, but she didn’t give into the soft call of sleep. It had its chance and decided to give her nightmares, so she was preventing them and that preventing was making sure the sounds her ears picked up throughout the night stayed away.

She didn’t want to move in case something happened while her back was to the entry points, but occasionally, to wake herself up a bit, she gently patted the bed above her to make sure the weight of a goliath was still resting on it. Eno guarded the room with critical eyes until the morning birds were singing and her own eyes were like candles, burned down to slits. No one was getting her family without warning again.

Eno suddenly rapidly blinked as she saw something moving in front of her, getting her to raise her head from her scrunched pillow, before realizing that Mister Rollo had gotten up. Getting up. Process of being awake. Whatever. He was ok. She’d done what she set out to do. She made a soft sound of delight. 

His feet shifted suddenly at her sound, and it took a couple of moments but then he was kneeling and looking under the bed again, this time on the floor with her.

“You’re still down there?” He whispered to her. The quiet sound of ‘bafflement’ was very much present there, Eno thought with a quiet giggle.

“Mhm,” she chirred back, “I tol’ you I’d keep watch.”

“So you did,” he whispered back, “so you did.” And she was too tired to see what his face did as she let herself slowly blink, but when she was looking at him again, he was gesturing gently for her to move towards him. She quietly trilled at him in confusion. He only gestured again with slightly squintier eyes. Happy? Too tired. Sleepily, she figured it couldn’t hurt, so she gently shook herself free of her blanket before crawling forward with her weapons of choice.

Rollo backed up as she crawled from under the bed, and she didn't really process why his hands were slowly approaching her– clearly meaning to grab her but she didn’t really mind. She knew he was safe. Then she was gently scooped from the floor and placed on the bed. Oh.

“Why don’t you go to sleep, now, little owlette?” He murmured to her, “Even mighty protectors need to rest.”

Her brain was. Sloshing in her skull like– like? Soup. Yeah, soup. She liked soup, but not this soup. She was already partially gone. But she nodded as the words processed. Yeah. “Had to make sure y’were okay,” she slurred a little bit, curling once more with her blanket, “tha’wuz my job.”

“And you did beautifully,” he chuckled. She felt him gently pet her head as she shut her eyes. “Now sleep, Eno. You’re safe in the light.”

And she was out like a candle.

***

Prologue; One - Two - Three (you're here!) - Four

High Seas; It Begins - Something's Wrong