NOVEL NEXT Chapter 21: Talking to the Moon
A’s POV
A cool breeze blew up from the river’s surface as I rested at its edge, and I let out a long stretch and a yawn. It was a beautiful morning. Erica had been true to her word, and yesterday she had carried me for almost three hours before we finally arrived at a run down convenience store. She made a beeline for the back of the store when we arrived, passing me several bags of jerky, which I’d devoured greedily, before she began scavenging for herself. After we’d had our little detour for food, we walked along the river before setting camp for the night.
Now, Erica was still asleep, and I was keeping watch as the sun began to rise. As the dawn wore on though, I was becoming increasingly aware of something watching me. I couldn’t be sure of what, but something was out there. I’d gotten Erica up a few hours ago to warn her, but after about 30 minutes of nothing, she’d eventually decided to go back to sleep. We couldn’t be sure of its intentions, but whatever was watching us seemed content to do nothing more than watch and wait. Now that dawn was breaking, it was time we got moving. I just had to hope that our mysterious new presence didn’t see fit to follow us. I shook Erica awake once again, we had a tense breakfast, and we walked.
Six hours later, and I was getting annoyed. Our stalker hadn’t gone anywhere, I could still feel their eyes on me, on both of us, but they still hadn’t acted. The waiting and the uncertainty was worse than anything, and if they were gonna try and hurt us, I’d much rather they just get it over with. Erica seemed to feel the same way. She’d been on edge ever since we’d heard something drop to the ground behind us two hours ago. There had been a few quick thuds, and while we’d rushed over to investigate, we hadn’t been able to find the sound’s source. Finally, after we’d both had enough of this, Erica and I came to a decision. At my nod, she stepped forwards and raised her voice.
“We know you’re out there! If you can hear this and you can understand me, come out! This is getting fucking old!”
If I was being entirely honest, I didn’t expect anything to come of this. The odds of the stalker actually understanding us were low, and the odds of them trusting a minotaur and a… whatever the hell I was were probably even lower, but we had to try. I expected that nothing would change, that they’d just keep following us until they’d finally decided to take action. I expected that the best outcome we could hope for was that they’d just wander off once they knew for sure that we’d noticed them. What I certainly didn’t expect was the sound of a shotgun being racked, or for the voice that followed it.
“Then put your hands up, both of you. I’m more than happy to talk, but I don’t particularly trust those horns.”
We both complied without hesitation, we may be more durable than we were as humans, but neither of us were particularly eager to test that against a gun. I just hoped we could talk this out. This was the first rational, sentient person Erica and I had encountered since all this went down, it’d be better for all of us if we could get along.
“Good, I knew you two were smart.” A single sharp whistle rang out from behind us, where the voice was coming from. “Come on out boys, we’re gonna have a talk with these two.”
The person behind us finally revealed himself, walking calmly out from behind a group of trees. He looked human, smelled human, everything about him screamed human to me, but his skin was rapidly shifting colors, changing to a lighter hue from the dark greens and browns it was currently. Other than the camouflage, he looked like a fairly ordinary man in his late fifties, but with an odd array of flasks and bottles strapped to his belt. His two companions revealed themselves shortly after, one dropping from the top of a nearby building, landing silently in a crouch, while the other stepped out from inside a tree, simply passing through it as though it wasn’t there. Again, in spite of the unusual abilities they seemed to possess, neither of these other men seemed like anything more than humans, and both of them had guns, the one who’d been on the roof was carrying a rifle, while the other had a handgun of some kind.
As the three began to approach, I spoke up.
“We don’t mean you any harm, I promise. I know we might look a little… different, but we’re good people. I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop aiming those things at us.”
The man who’d spoken up looked down at his shotgun, before chuckling softly.
“I suppose that’s fair enough. Diplomacy isn’t generally helped by threats. How about this, we’ll keep our guns in hand, but we won’t aim them at you as long as you agree to keep your distance. Don’t think I haven’t noticed those claws of yours, young lady.”
Young lady? And he was referring to me, right? I didn’t understand, not really. I was shorter, sure, and I knew that my voice and body had both gotten… softer, but I was sure I still looked like a guy. I could feel Erica staring down at me, she was probably worried about me, wondering how I’d react to being gendered this way. I wasn’t sure why, and it felt kind of painful to admit, but I think I liked it. It was confusing, and I felt like I wasn’t allowed to like it or that it was wrong somehow, but I did. If this old guy thought I was a “young lady”, I decided then and there that I would do nothing to dissuade him.
One of the other men seemed confused, looking over towards the guy with the shotgun.
“Rob, you can’t be serious. They’re monsters! We don’t know wha-”
Shotgun guy - I guess his name was Rob - cut him off.
“They’re people, Mick. Regardless of anything else, they’re people.” He lowered his gun and looked at us once again. “Sorry about that, we’ve just never met a talking monster before, and now all of a sudden there’s two of you! They’re just nervous, they’ll get over it.”
I finally started to relax as the other two followed his lead, their guns dropping to their sides. Maybe we could all be friends after all. I gave him my least threatening smile as I introduced myself.
“No harm done Rob. My name is A and you can call her Erica.” I gestured towards the minotaur by my side. “I have somewhere around a million questions, and you’ve probably got the same, but the one thing I need to know right now is what were you even following us for to begin with?”
Rob laughed again, he seemed like a pretty jovial guy, from the look of things.
“Ah that! Well it’s pretty simple! We’ve got ourselves a little settlement about two miles further down the river. A couple of dangerous looking gals like yourselves draws attention, especially when you’re heading straight towards our home. We had to make sure you wouldn’t be a threat, that’s all.”
A settlement?
Holy shit a settlement?!?
The implications of that single fact were astounding!
There was a whole community of people, living and working together after everything that happened! That enough people had survived to do that, and that they’d found each other was mind boggling! Finally, it seemed like things were starting to look up!
