She feared there was something wrong with her eyes.
Once she had fled from the monster and made sure it wasn’t going to follow her back to her home, she had made her way back and looked through the Pages. While most of the Pages had no pictures in them, they were magic and the words helped to create a picture in her mind. But no matter how hard she looked through the Pages with pictures she couldn''t find the monster’s match.
There were far too many Pages to search them all, but she also failed to remember any that had words that made her picture the monster either. She had gotten a clear view of the monster, why was it so hard to find a match? The closest she could find was a picture of a being known as moose, though the picture did not match the monster very well at all.
Both were large creatures with lots of hair, but the monster bothering her didn’t have the large horns that the picture depicted. It also differed in the way it stood and the picture didn’t show the hands and feet, so there were many parts that didn’t fit or she was unsure about.
Still, it was her best guess as to the monster’s identity. It had nearly cornered her in the rain room, which she now understood was where it liked to stay. The Pages mentioned it liked water and was big enough to not be stopped, which seemed to fit with what she had observed. She would need to watch it some more to see if she could get a better idea of whether it fit what she saw in the Pages.
Fortunately, the Pages mentioned the moose ate grass and other plants in the water. She had no idea what a grass or other plant was, but if it ate things in the rain room then she would not be eaten if she avoided getting trapped again or just stayed outside of it. That just left the danger of getting in its way, though that would be fine so long as she was out of sight of the monster.
While she had only seen one monster so far, the noises indicated there were many more. Perhaps if she could stay near enough to the first monster it would scare off the others and she could simply learn how to not get in its way. A monster that ate in one place and could be avoided easily was much better than dealing with an attempt to learn about all the monsters.
She would learn all she could. Maybe, if she learned enough, she could even make her home safe again.
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Something definitely was wrong.
She had spent as long as she could watching the monster to the best of her abilities. She had even found little nooks and small spaces to sleep when she grew tired. Even then she had yet to see the monster rest. It had disappeared several times so it could have rested then, but she had seen it doing something, went to rest herself, only to return and it be doing the same thing.
It seemed the monster truly was a moose, too big to be stopped, even by tiredness. It also visited the rain room several times during her observations, so clearly the Pages had been right about where it ate.
Still, her excitement at learning the monster’s true identity was washed away when she had found the food places empty. She had known that the food place she had always visited before was running low, but she thought she would be ok when she had found the second food place with a full sack of powder. Now both food places lacked the powder and she was too afraid of encountering other monsters to venture out to find more.
It seemed she had guessed right about the other monsters, the moose monster seemed to scare all of them away, as the noises stayed far away when it was nearby. It seemed the other monsters were only scared of it when it was active though. When it disappeared, the noises returned and she guessed that the other monsters were growing desperate for food.
Eating all the powder so quickly meant that she was not safe anymore anywhere that the moose monster wasn’t active. She did manage to scavenge strange floppy disks in the food place. They were probably scraps left from the other monsters, as they only appeared when the moose monster disappeared, but they were enough to get by for now. They tasted good enough she could also save her treats.
She didn’t know what the scraps were or how long they would last, so saving all her treats for the time they disappeared for good seemed the best idea. Unfortunately, that meant going to all her stashes and moving them to hiding spots in the moose monster’s area. She wanted to move them all into her home, but if her home was invaded while she was away she would lose everything.
Best to keep a few stashes close by but protected in the area. She only moved them when the moose monster disappeared though. Anytime she could find it, she watched it as closely as she could without being caught. It might not eat her outside the rain room, but if it cornered her somewhere she couldn’t get away she doubted it would even notice her as it crashed though whatever else was in the way.
All of her observations had led to some useful discoveries though. Aside from the magic to push away the dark, it also seemed to be able to move parts of the wall with little waves of its hand. It also seemed interested in the words on the walls. The colors seemed to mean something she had never been able to figure out but the words were pointless. Still, the monster seemed hypnotized by them, staring at them for large periods of time.Stolen novel; please report.
Interesting as that was, the important bit she had learned from it was that the monster sat down on the floor and stopped moving. Stopped for long periods of time no less. She had worked up the courage to get close to the monster a couple of the times it stopped. Still much farther away than when it had almost caught her in the rain room, but close enough to make out its eyes as it stared at the words. Every time she had managed the feat she could hear quite rumblings coming from the monster, the sound so deep it rattled her breath. Every time she had to slink away, quiet as she could, unable to outlast the monster and needing sleep.
Maybe that was how it rested? Could she have mistaken the open eyes as it being awake? Maybe, just maybe it would be safe enough to get close when it was sitting, staring at the walls. She wondered what she would be able to learn then, when she might be able to get close enough to touch it. Something to consider next time she caught it in its strange task.
Until then, she had another stash to move and needed to get some sleep. All the learning and pondering tiring her mind and body, somehow. She turned a corner and paused. There on the floor in another tunnel was one of her treats. Her mind screamed that something was wrong, but she was tired enough she couldn’t figure out what. She also couldn’t leave the treat here, it would just be eaten by a monster.
Carefully she padded closer, trying to figure out what was going on. She needed to check the corner before she walked fully out into the tunnel her treat was in, but listening as hard as she could she still heard nothing alarming. Creeping close to the corner she tried to look as far around it as possible but saw nothing close enough to her treat to be a problem. Her treat was close enough, she didn’t need to fully enter the tunnel, so she reached out to pick up the treat and blinked in surprise.
Her body reacted before her mind could figure out how the treat had run away and raced to catch it, only for her to stop as abruptly as she had started. There sat the moose monster, her treat in its hand. Again, her body reacted before her mind as she saw it crush the treat, her hand going out and her foot moving forward.
What was happening to her, why was her body moving without her?
She was about to turn and run, wanting to flee before it could stand, but a strange movement with its hand and there was her treat once more, the inedible outside gone.
Magic.
She had read of it in the Pages, it was how she knew her trinket had some. She had thought she understood. She knew the moose monster had magic as well since it pushed back the dark and could open walls, but this was well beyond what she had thought she understood.
Too far beyond.
To crush her treat to nothing and suddenly be holding it whole with its other hand was a great magic straight from the Pages, something she had never managed to grasp. While her mind grappled with this new information, her body once more moved without her input. She sprang forward to try and grab the treat. The monster was sitting down and they weren’t in the rain room, if she was to stand any chance, now was it, the treats were too important to just leave without trying.
She failed though, watching in despair as the monster swallowed the treat whole. Unfortunately for her, her body had tried too hard to snatch the treat and crashed headfirst into the monster’s bulk. Slightly disoriented and unable to get her legs under her, she turned so her back was touching the monster, brought her legs into a better position and attempted to spring forward once more, it was time to escape.
It seemed that her luck had run out however. As all of that was happening, she felt a strange warmth passing through her. Looking down in horror, she watched as the monster’s hand pulled another treat from her belly. It…
It was trying to steal one of the treats she had already eaten!
The strange feeling pushed her limbs forward once more before her mind had time to fully process what she had just lost. She grabbed the monster’s hand and took the treat for herself, stuffing it into her mouth as quickly as possible before the monster could swallow it whole as well.
She wouldn’t…
she would……
Her mind went blank and the warm feeling from before returned. Only it returned so much stronger and brought with it pleasant tingles that fell all the way down her back.
She wanted to panic, to kick and scream and run away.
Her body refused her. It wanted nothing more than to wallow in the warm tingles.
Her mind eventually conquered her body though and she managed to spring from the monster’s grasp. She landed on her knees and had to scramble to get back to her feet and run away, though as she rounded the corner and looked back to where the monster was, the look on its face caused more warmth to spread through her body and brought back the recent memories of the tingles.
Before her body tried to rebel again, she started running as quickly as she could. It was not her fastest or quickest escape, but she had gotten away…
Right?
As her body ran towards safety, her mind tried to replay what had happened.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that the monster had gotten exactly what it wanted.
Whatever it had wanted.
It was clear she had had magic used on her. If the warmth wasn’t enough to convince her, the rest of the encounter did. She had managed to take back control of her body at the end, so she had gotten stronger, but it was a near thing. She didn’t want to imagine what would have happened had she simply allowed it to continue or failed to break free. With some more practice she may even be able to resist every magic the monster had, though it would be a dangerous thing to try.
Maybe, just maybe, she could even tame the monster.
If she could control the monster, she would be safe from everything else and wouldn’t even need to worry about being crushed. Maybe she could even learn how to use its magic herself.
Warmth spread through her at her next thought, as she considered if training the monster to follow commands would let her feel the tingles anytime she wanted.