Her body wanted to run and hide, her mind full of nothing but panic and frustration.


    She had rushed to her home, her trinket faithfully lighting the way despite its brush with the moose monster. While she knew the Pages would likely have an answer to her current problems, she didn’t have the time to look through them all.


    She had turned to the People in the box and intended to ask for their help, but no matter how she manipulated the box the People remained trapped and would not respond to her questions. She was pacing about now, the People babbling in the background, trying her hardest not to panic.


    She really had only two choices.


    Let the moose monster have its way or find another source of magic to beat back the emptiness. Even now she could feel it slowly draining from her, the cold beginning to take hold again. Even if she now knew that the magic didn’t change her mind, she was still reluctant to simply let the moose monster do whatever it wanted with her.


    She sunk to the floor and stared to look through the Pages once again. All the times she had looked before she had sought to tame the monster and become its master. Having a monster with magic like that doing as she told it would make everything trivial.


    Now, she wasn’t so sure that the monster lacked enough intelligence to be tamed. If it was like the Others or the trapped People and could simply outsmart her, she wouldn’t be able to tame it. She knew that the Pages mentioned trading between people, but she had never seen a people outside of the box. While the Others may be close enough, they seemed just as trapped as she had been before the wall cracked open and the box People even now.


    Was that where they had gone, they had been trapped and found a way to escape just like her?


    Maybe she could find where they had been trapped and escape that way?


    No, that would never work, she still needed the moose monster for its magic. She had to find a way to keep it close without letting it do anything that popped into its head. If this ‘trading’ worked between people, maybe she could modify it to work with the moose monster as well. She just had to find enough examples to understand it. If she could establish trade with the moose monster, she might be able to trade her cooperation in holding the magic it wanted with its cooperation in helping her the rest of the time.


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    Moose’s were supposed to be slow and lazy monsters and her moose seemed to fit that part at least. It might not like doing everything she wanted it too, but it may find that keeping her close and compliant was less work than trapping her whenever it wanted to eat the magic in her.


    It seemed like a good trade to her, she didn’t want to give up the magic and wanted the monster to do things for her, the monster wanted to eat the magic and be lazy. They both gave up something they wanted and got something that was almost as good.


    At least so long as the monster wanted the magic more than being lazy, it was hard to tell at this point.


    Sheer panic gripped her and she whirled around when she heard the monsters rumble. The panic faded to confusion as she looked at the opening to her home, finding it just the way she left it when she came in. More rumbling made the confusion worse as she looked around and found nothing moving. All of that faded as she turned towards the trapped box.


    There was a people she had never seen before and as she watched, it rumbled in a similar way to the monster.


    This… the People in the box had never spoken like that before. Always they had spoken in a high chirp, not the low rumble the monster used.


    Was this what it was looking for?


    It had been looking at words the whole time she had seen it, always staring and rumbling to itself. Had the box trapped something the monster wanted?


    Maybe, was the box a safe place as well as a trap?


    It could explain why the People in the box never tried to escape, always seeming happy to stay right where they were. What could she get from the moose monster if she traded it this box?


    Its magic might even be powerful enough to free the People inside.


    Trading it would mean letting the monster into her home though. The box was far too big for her to bring it to the monster. She still sat and listened though. If she could manage to learn the secrets of how the monster rumbled like that, she would be in a much better position to get what she needed in a trade. This new people she had never seen before rumbled for quite a long time and she managed to grasp a lot of the words it was trying to…teach?


    It seemed like it was teaching at least. She couldn’t tell who or what it was teaching but that seemed like the overall goal.


    With her new words and a plan to trade herself for the monster, to the monster, she set out to find said monster. Even she understood it was a terrible plan at this point, but the magic insider her had faded enough to be uncomfortable and she needed to try something. Anything that would change the situation she was in and give her more options to work with. Something to help push forward……


    If only she could find the monster.