Chapter 2: Pritouritze Planinata

I must have fallen asleep again, because suddenly there was a sun hanging in the sky. It was summer, thank God, but that didn’t mean the nights weren’t somewhat cold. And my clothes, now damp from dew, didn’t help much.

With a slight shiver I forced myself to my knees. I was still clutching my brother’s pajama’s button, so I pocketed it and made sure it wouldn’t fall out through some hidden hole or something.

And that was it. I had no idea what to do next. As I had said, I was in some kind of meadow located who knows where. I had no rational idea of how I got here, except that it had to be some supernatural forces that had caused this.

And most importantly, I had no idea where my brother was.

But I had to begin somewhere. And I began by searching my immediate vicinity in the light of the now dawning sun. I started by searching for any footsteps other than mine, but I wasn’t a tracker nor a hunter, so that wasn’t going too well. But it was all I could do.

The meadow was quite large, so the search took a good portion of the day. The meadow itself was then surrounded by a forest.

I had found nothing. The tracks didn’t reveal anything about my brother ever being there. Except for the little button from his pajamas, there was no trace of him in this meadow. He had to be somewhere else.

I concluded my search with a final holler of his name. Nothing but the sound of startled deer and the echo of my own voice greeted me.

I climbed to the middle of the meadow, which was basically a small hill. While I couldn’t see over the treetops where the forest had ended, I could see mountains jutting out from the ground a few kilometers from this place. And that was where I was headed just a moment later.

Good thing I still had my slippers on. I had no idea how they stayed on my feet all this time, but I didn’t care. The important thing was that I still had them. Otherwise going through this forest would have been painful as hell. It was actually painful even with them on, as the slippers had soft soles.

The forest itself looked somewhat different, unnatural. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was definitely something strange about it. And that got on my nerves really quickly. Every crack of twigs, every groan of trees in the wind would cause me to jump a little and start to frantically look all around me in panic.

To hell with this forest, I thought. It was also hard to keep my directions and not stray from my, well, path, for the lack of better word. It wasn’t like I knew where I was going. I just hoped that I was still headed to the mountains, as they would give me a focal point from which I could oversee the nearby lands, and perhaps find some signs of civilization with people that would hopefully help me. Or at least spot a river or something.

There were also a lot of wild animals prancing about. I had seen a few deer, rabbits, squirrels, and a lot of birds. They had all run away the moment they set their eyes on me.

By the time I left the canopy of trees and entered another meadow at the foot of one of the mountains, my throat was perched, my stomach had been eating itself, and my feet hurt. I still had the climb up the mountain ahead of me.

Then I focused on the mountain itself. Without the tree canopy blocking my view and with the sun framing the mountain in beautiful, golden light, I noticed something. I could see smoke rising from somewhere between two mountains – a small mountain valley. It was either a natural fire, or someone had been camping there, perhaps even living there.

Swearing like a sailor, while also filled with hope, I started the horrendous climb up the not-so-steep mountain to where the smoke was coming from, hopefully. The mountain wasn’t that tall, but I guessed it would take me the rest of the day before I got up there.

As I was climbing, I noticed that the area seemed to be heavily populated by birds. I mean, there was a whole lot of them up in the sky, fighting against each other and stuff. A fear of accidently stumbling across a nest and get attacked by birds made my throat clench even more. A long time ago, when I was a kid, I had seen a horror where a guy got attacked by crows and had his eyes pecked out. Not the greatest thing to see as a child, and as children usually are, I had a huge imagination. That horror movie, and that scene in particular, became THE nightmare of my childhood. So yes, I got pretty uneasy all of the sudden when I realized what monstrous beings occupied this mountain.

I had to take frequent breaks, not just to look at the sky all the time because of fear of being attacked by birds, but because my legs were hurting like hell. My stomach must have eaten itself by now, because I was getting a lot of cramps from my abdomen area. Not to mention it was hard to swallow even my own spit. At last the cramps got unbearable, so I had found a nice rock to sit upon and rest for a moment. I was getting serious thoughts of eating the grass and plants that grew in the rocky terrain here and there.

A nice sleep would do me some good, my mind told me, and my body listened happily to the alluring song of wind ringing throughout the mountains. As I looked upon the lands below, a beautiful view, outlined in the light of a setting sun, said hello to my tired eyes. Even the huge rock I had nestled on was really soft all of the sudden. And just before my sleepiness took me to a place where pain was nonexistent, I noticed the birds getting closer. And my last thought was of how huge they appeared to be.

My dreams were filled with sorrow.

The song of wind was replaced by the soothing crackling of fire. The coldness was replaced by warmness of home. And sleep; sleep gave way to a reawakened dull ache spreading throughout my body.

Rested, but still slightly tired, I forced my eyes to open as my mind finally noticed the difference between where I had been before I had fallen asleep and where I was now.

I’ve been lying on something soft compared to a rock and upon closer inspection, I discovered that I was lying on a neatly spread hay covered with a not-so-neat blanket. What caught my attention, however, was how big this prominent bed was. Three people could fit in here. This told me something else.

I was no longer outside, but rather in some cottage. It seemed like it was one of those one-room-only houses, like in the Middle Ages. I could see something that looked like a stove, except that there was a hole in it where an oven should have been, filled with ash and burning wood. A neatly carved table stood some ways away from it against a wall; four chairs made of the same wood stood spread around it. From my position, I couldn’t see anything else, as there was a wooden wall blocking my view. Actually, everything but the stove and a small space under the stove had been made of would.

What more I could see, though, was a cord hanging by the ceiling going from one corner of the room to the next. And from the cord hung strips upon strips of dried meat. I must say, the saliva I had produced at the beautiful sight could fill a reservoir. There was also a wooden bowl of water sitting on a small table – that looked more like a nightstand – near the “bed” I was now sitting on. Before a second passed, the bowl was empty and a dozen strips of meat were missing from the cord. I know, not the nicest thing one could do to some generous soul that had pulled me all the way to where I was now from the middle of nowhere and had borrowed his bed to me. But my satisfied stomach said otherwise.

I had lain down on the bed once more and had begun to doze off once again, when someone started to talk right next to me. I almost yelped out in surprise. Almost.

Another voice, more feminine and angry, answered the first. They spoke in hushed whispers, probably trying not to wake me up. What struck me as odd was the language, though. It was like nothing I had ever heard. It included a lot of clicking, chirping, and gutturally spoken vowels. I couldn’t imagine a human making these noises.

I kept my eyes close and my body from moving so I wouldn’t draw any attention to myself. The woman sounded especially angry, and I had a nagging suspicion that it was because of me.

Someone huffed and started to walk away, which sounded like he or she was walking on all fours.

The man muttered something under his breath and I could hear a squeal of wood as someone heavy had seated themselves on one of the wooden chairs. An irritating pang between my shoulder blades told me that his eyes were on me, watching me. Judging me. With the female gone, I thought it was the high time to “wake up”.

I yawned, stretched and rolled over so I could look at my host. I expected to see a heavily bearded, two meters tall lumberjack. Instead I got something far more surprising.

I yelped as I saw the terrifying visage of something alien before me. There, on a chair, sat not a man, but a creature that was a cross between a bird and a lion. My mind immediately conjured the term “gryphon”. But how could it be?

By this moment I knew I wasn’t sleeping. Could the prolonged starvation and thirst have caused this? But it didn’t really look like a hallucination. Though, I couldn’t tell, as I had never hallucinated before.

I mean, a mythical creature was sitting right there, staring at me with the same surprised expression as me! Wait, what?

It was looking at me with what I thought of as a dumbstruck expression, its beak open a little, eyes bulging. I couldn’t tell, honestly. Its “face” looked really different from a human’s. What I knew was that it didn’t look like a dumb animal. Its eyes shone with unbidden sapience.

When I finally decided to pick my jaw off the floor, I did the only thing my over-loaded brain could do.

“Umm… hello,” I said while weakly waving my right hand at him.

It moved its beak a little, before it said something in the same guttural voice accompanied with some hissing and clicking of its beak. It took me a while to process that it was talking to me. At least I hoped it was talking to me. For all I knew, it could have been chanting a sacrificial ritual dedicated to some blood god it was worshipping.

“I… I don’t understand,” I explained before realizing it didn’t really understand me, either.

The gryphon got out of its surprise quicker than me, and it started to use body language and gestures instead of words. It pointed at the cord where a dozen strips of dried meat used to hang, and then at a bowl which used to be filled with water. And not just some water. When I first took a sip of it, I almost chocked on it. It had been like pure awesomeness condensed into a drinkable beverage.

Not really understanding what it was asking, I decided to nod, and then I clapped my hands together and bowed a little, hopefully expressing my gratitude and not accidentally challenging him to a duel or something.

While our languages and bodies were completely different, it seemed that we could get across that language barrier through a bit of gesturing, because a smile graced his, ugh, beak – yeah, I don’t know how that worked; it also looked really weird and freaky – and he nodded back.

Yes, I accept your challenge to duel to death. Where and when?

A long, awkward silence fell heavy upon the room. He was just sitting there, looking at me, unsure of what to do, and I was sitting across from him on the bed – which now had a reason for being so large in my mind – in the same situation. Nothing was happening for a while before I stood up, walked across the room to him and… started to stroke the soft plumage on his head.

Holy shit, it really isn’t a hallucination.

I didn’t notice the look on his face, but if I were him, it would be something akin to “What the hell?” He suddenly stood up and walked away, my hand still hanging in the air where his head used to be. He was not as big as I had expected, his head maybe coming up to my chest. Mind you, he was on all fours; if he had been standing on his back legs, he would probably be two heads taller than me.

I didn’t ask him where he was going, as I knew it would be futile. We couldn’t understand each other. And most importantly, my mind was still recovering from the shock. While I had seen lot of movies and played a lot of video games, seeing something so… magical in person, right in front of my own eyes, and being able to touch it…

Now THAT was something.