City of Monsters
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The dark forest lay behind her now as Dee slipped from shadow to shadow, her every sense alert for the monsters who lived in this strange city. She should have been tired from her long flight, but her nerves tingled with excitement and her ears twitched in the direction of even the smallest noise. There was music floating with the chill breeze, and a glorious mixture of floral scents that made her want to dash out into the open and dance through the air, but there were far too many terrifying monsters running around the city to even consider it. Flying was not an option, even though she could see no owls lurking in the darkness. In their place as predators, some of the bigger monsters were perfectly at home in the night sky, swooping and darting down on the little monsters who fled away with shrieks of panic. She would have to be more cautious than she ever had been before if she was going to sneak into this mysterious city and survive the experience.
As she crept through bushes and shadows to enter the city, she slowed her approach, using all of her skills to remain unseen and unheard while still trying to see everything going on ahead of her. Intense observation revealed that no two monsters were alike, even though the little ones clustered together in happy mismatched hunting packs to assault the strange angular dens where the monsters lived. They surrounded an entrance and screamed wildly until a bigger monster opened the door, and then instead of using their superior numbers to swarm inside and ravage the dwelling like a pack of fangweasels, they just stood there and shouted until the bigger monster gave them some food.
And what wonderful food it was, too. Dee had spotted one such little white offering discarded by the side of the road, and had waited until there were no monsters within sight before darting out to grab it in her sharp teeth and dashing back into the bushes. It was a fruit of some sort, with a tough rind and the most amazing flavor inside. She chewed happily until only the dry rind was left and spit it out before stalking away in search of more. The little monsters must have loved the bits of food just as much as Dee did, because they used empty animal skins as bags to carry as much of the food as possible. The only bits of fruit she could find were the rinds, discarded by the little monsters as they screeched and screamed while running as fast as they could from monster den to monster den.
The sheer numbers of monsters in the city kept Dee on the tips of her unusually hard toes, but as she peered out from under bushes, she could not help but notice how all of the monsters seemed so different from The Folk. Only some of the monsters had wings, but they were broad feathered limbs like owls that seemed so odd when compared to her own membranous wings or those of her mother. The rest were wingless, some with a slim pointed horn sticking out of the top of their head that seemed both familiar and frightening. Whenever one of the monsters with a horn made it glow, Dee cringed farther back into the bushes until she could barely see. Strange memories swirled around her as the monsters caused things to float without touching them, or made a bright light that caused her eyes to hurt.
One of the small horned monsters even looked under the bush where Dee was hiding, but she slipped out the other side and darted away before the little monster could spot her. After that scary encounter, Dee kept her distance as she slipped through the back alleys and shadowed bushes of the monster's city to where the big monsters were playing terrifying games.
Wriggling and sneaking through the shadows, Dee managed to find an upper-story ledge with several plants growing on it which provided enough cover for her to peer out at the open area where the big monsters were gathered. All across the area, lights like bright stars were tied together on vines draped from den to den, illuminating the bodies of small dead bats who had been smashed flat and… faces.
It took forever, huddling on the ledge behind a few thin flowers and peeking out of a crack, before the thin faces hanging on the vines began to make sense. They stared at her in identical cold glares, their unblinking oval eyes looking so much like her own reflected in the still water of a quiet pool with the moon overhead. The dark shapes mimicked the dark shadow that draped across the shining orb in the sky, as if the monsters of the city were either worshiping the being in the darkened moon or decorating their city with symbols of the dark horned creature in the hopes that it would protect them, much like the shrikes put the severed heads of intruders on thornbushes to mark their territory.
The darkness that spread across the moon's shining surface never felt so close as it did tonight, staring down at Dee as if it were calling out to the monsters, telling them where she was hiding and promising them her blood and meat. She trembled as she hunkered lower, a dark shadow in a shadow, invisible to even the keenest eye as she continued to watch the big monsters and their eerie rituals. Here, a monster wrapped entirely in strips of white attempted to drown himself in a huge tub of water. There, another monster flung paralyzed spiders at a web. A horrible crash sounded as a monster used a monstrous machine to fling some lumpy vegetable through the air and splatter it into orange goo against a wall painted in strange patterns.
Even more terrifying was the way a monster flew overhead, scooting a dark cloud across the sky. It had to be a cloud, because there were no tentacles hanging from it like a floating boomeesh, but the flying monster still managed to hold the wispy cloud together somehow, riding on top of it like some sleek razorsnail carrying its own cover for ambushing prey. The feathery-winged creature crouched under the cloudstuff, peering out with reddish eyes as it sought a small monster below, then descended from behind until almost on top of its victim. Once situated, the monster lifted up its front legs and slammed them down on the cloud, causing a crash of thunder that made the little monsters below scream in terror and flee, and made Dee cower even deeper into her concealment.
She had hoped that she could find the source of those delicious little bits of food, but all of the little monsters carrying lumpy bags of the food through the crowd were being very careful about keeping them close. Even while being afraid, it was so frustrating. Small flecks of the delicious food were still wedged in the cracks in Dee's teeth and the sweet lingering taste made her empty tummy rumble. She had slipped away from The Folk very early this evening, before the hunting had really started. Starting so early in the wan moonlit dawn and flying straight here had not even given her a chance to grab a stinkfruit from a treetop or catch one of the delicious powdermoths as they rose from feeding on the forest blooms.
She was getting nothing done hiding on this ledge except for trembling and starving. The flowers just in front of her nose were so tempting, even if they were her only protection from those terrible eyes, but when she flitted away into the darkness again, she took with her a mouthful of the delicious blossoms. It only whetted her appetite for the elusive delicious food, and Dee screwed up her courage to take a daring step. If she could not find any of the food outside of the monster's lairs, she would slip inside and steal it from right under their noses. She faded into the shadows, attempting to trail the little monsters back to a vulnerable lair with fewer big monsters, but every one of the strange lairs was lit up as bright as the moon, and the holes in the sides covered in the strangest substance she had ever felt, much like ice, only warm.
It took a while, but she eventually found one of the monster lairs that was hidden away from the city in a small shadowed nook fairly close to her familiar forest. The little monsters did not seem to pay this odd house much attention, probably because it looked more like a lump of the forest surrounded by sleeping animals than one of the monster's lairs in the city. There were no lights shining in the strange openings, guarded by transparent ice and sleeping animals, but there was a bowl filled with the delicious food by the door. Dee slipped through the shadows, avoiding the few animals who were still awake as she stalked towards the bowl and the heap of delicious food that threatened to flow over the sides. She stayed curled up under the bridge as another pack of small monsters stampeded up to the monster's lair with screams and screeches, then stampeded back in the direction of the city.
It was quiet. Now was her chance.
Dee slipped from shadow to shadow, with eyes only for the bowl of delicious food, until she was curled up in a shadow at the very edge of the door. She reached a stiff limb out for the food, dipping it into the bowl and extracting one of the delicious fruits, which she devoured almost immediately, even swallowing the tasteless tough rind. Her green eyes grew even larger as she saw the huge number of the strange fruits filling the bowl, in so many colors and shapes. She could take one of each home to plant and grow her own forest of delicious fruit in order to share with the rest of The Folk. If they stayed fresh in their thick rinds, Dee could take the whole bowl back Home to eat all winter and still have some to plant in the spring.
Maybe that was what the monsters were doing. During every season of cold and the snow, Dee had remained awake and alert while all of The Folk huddled together and slept. Even Mama could barely open her dark eyes and give Dee an occasional lick, provided Dee could even find her in the warm pile that all of The Folk formed once the weather got too cold to fly. Winter had been a terribly lonely time for her every season, sneaking out into the chilly world turned into a crystalline wonderland in the hopes of finding a few frozen berries or a hibernating creature of some sort that had not dug their burrow deep enough. If the little monsters were like her, they could gorge themselves on the delicious food while the big monsters slumbered. There would be no need to scrounge for scarce food in the snow, or huddle shivering and hungry while waiting for their monster Mamas to wake up.
As her mind swam with visions of winter snacking, she reached out for the bowl again, only this time a small rabbit hopped out of concealment and rapped her rather painfully on the wrist with a gnarled stick.
Dee blinked, clutching her wrist as the rabbit held up a wide white leaf with black markings on it, but that was not what made Dee hesitate. It was the realization that the white rabbit was pretending to be a monster, dressed in some sort of grey outfit with some long white hair attached to its chin. Dee's stomach growled at the sight of the bunny, but she kept her distance as the rabbit planted himself firmly in front of the bowl with both forepaws on the tiny staff, raised it over its head, and slammed the butt end into the ground with a tiny little 'click' as if to declare that no creature would pass.
Her stomach growled again and saliva began to run down the back of her throat. There was plenty of time to take the delicious food in the bowl later. Right now, there was a juicy and fat rabbit standing right there within easy grabbing distance.
She pounced.
This was no ordinary rabbit. It dodged Dee's attack with almost contemptuous ease, smacking her in the nose with a rear paw while skittering for safety. She snapped at the delicious snack as it used her head as a platform to jump higher, then snapped again as it rebounded off the monster's lair and past her, leaving the grey costume behind in Dee's mouth. She spit out the tasteless fur and lunged again before the rabbit vanished inside the monster's lair, only realizing too late that just because there were no signs of life inside the lair, did not mean the monster was sleeping or away.
Something made of pink and yellow lunged at Dee, shouting as the little batling backwinged as fast as she could flap, and lunging after her as Dee shot out into the night as fast as she had ever flown before. The animals around the lair burst into furious activity at the sound with the flutter of wings and the annoyed squawks of angry beasts, all directing their ire at the fleeing batling.
It was a long time before Dee found a safe place to hide, secure in the leafy foliage of a tree with several small bats of a colorful hue tucked under the branches. They were not smart like The Folk, and only looked at her oddly when she tried to talk with them, but they made no objections to her nibbling on the leftover fruit in the trees. The pulpy centers of the red fruits were a little tacky, only making her think more about the piles of delicious fruits being wasted in town and hoarded by the insidious little white rabbit. She gobbled down three of the overripe red fruits before the growling in her tummy quieted and the urge for fresh rabbit faded to a dull ache.
She still planned on sneaking back to the food bowl and doing away with the rabbit, but those plans were delayed by the sounds of little monsters all trooping along in a wobbly line as they marched by her tree. Each of them carried a bulging bag of the delicious food and chattered with their fellow monsters as they walked, allowing Dee to slip out of the tree and follow them through the shadows. With this much of the delicious food, there were certainly going to be a few pieces lost here and there. Perhaps even one of their stuffed animal skins filled with fruit would be left too close to a shadowed bush and Dee could sneak away with it.
Trying not to drool, Dee found a shadow under a bush where she could watch all of the little monsters and the few big monsters who seemed to be herding them together in the clearing. She could hardly take her eyes off the bulging bags of delicious food, although as more and more of the little monsters began to fill up the clearing, the reality of her situation began to soak in. She was far too close, and yet the only way for her to slip away from her hiding place involved crossing an exposed area without any cover.
Her hunger forgotten, she trembled as the larger monsters moved between her and the little monsters, fortunately with their hairy tails towards her. If they turned around, they would see her for certain, and she would become food. She could hardly breathe as the monsters grunted and screeched among themselves, which was made even worse when she looked up.
An even larger and scarier monster loomed over every monster in the clearing, glaring down as if she ruled over every one of the monsters, and that at the slightest provocation, she was going to swoop down and gobble them all up. Her oval eyes pierced the darkness to stare directly into Dee's hiding place, seeming just like the strange thin faces staring into nothingness in the center of the monster's city. They locked eyes and stared at each other for what seemed like forever as the sounds of monsters faded away. It was certainly the ruler of the monstrous city, but it remained prenaturally still and unmoving until Dee realized that it was a creature made out of stone, much as if it had fought a stonebird or rocklizard and lost.
The monsters seemed to treat the creature as their alpha monster, and left a growing pile of the wondrous food in front of the immobile queen, perhaps trying to coax it back into life to rule over their terrifying city. Then they left, with big monsters herding the little monsters along until the clearing was nearly empty. The last monster to leave, a hideous beast with a huge clump of hair all the colors of the rainbow on its head and a giant red nose, paused as if it had heard something.
The monster walked back towards the huge stone monster with long, slow steps, passing right by Dee's hiding spot. It looked in all directions, once nearly directly at Dee, and circled the stone monster very slowly, as if it were stalking something. Then it paused and ducked its head down, nipping a piece of the wonderful food out of the pile from directly under the cold stone nose of the giant monster.
Dee could not look. She expected at any moment to hear the giant monster's fierce growl as it dropped the stony disguise and gobbled up the foolish monster who had stolen from it. Instead, all she heard was the delighted sounds of the smaller monster chewing, fading away as it traveled up the path and back to the city with the rest of the monsters.
The moon filled the empty clearing with a silvery sheen so different from that in Dee's forest home. No powdermoths rose up into the light to be gobbled up by The Folk, or singing sweetflowers opened their blooms, calling out for unsuspecting creatures to be lured in by their sweet nectar and devoured. It was nearly silent, with only the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees, which made Dee hunker down deeper into her hiding spot.
It was far too quiet and peaceful to be real. She could have sworn the terrifying monster had moved while Dee had looked away, and was just waiting patiently until she could be gobbled up more easily.
The pile of delicious fruits was obviously bait, and exceedingly tempting bait too, as the gentle breeze that circulated around the clearing brought new and tantalizing scents wafting to her nose. She was torn, wanting nothing more than to flee through the forest on the long flight to Home and fling herself into Mama's warm embrace, if not for the sweet perfume of the fruits making her mouth water so much that a thin trail of drool trickled down the corner of her lips.
The delicious fruits were obviously meant to draw Dee into a deadly ambush, but her rumbling tummy drove her ever so slowly out of her concealing bush. Twig by twig, leaf by leaf, Dee crept closer to the fruits, keeping a close eye on the towering stone monster above her. The shadows moving over its stone surface made her twitch with every breeze, and Dee almost jumped out of her dark grey skin as one of her malformed hands touched the pile of fruits with a rustling noise.
Slowly and carefully, Dee lifted one of the fruits off the pile and moved it to her mouth, ready at any instant to dart away into the forest. Then she bit down, and all thoughts of caution vanished.
Sticky juice ran down her chest as she chewed, lost in the ecstasy of the flavors and unable to resist a low groan of pleasure. She finished it off, including the rind, before grabbing another and shoving it in her face. And then another, and another, until her cheeks were bulged out and her little wings rose up on their own to quiver in joy. Some of the fruits were long and thin, sticking to her teeth like tree sap, while others were hard little lumps like pits that only dissolved a tiny bit at a time while she sucked on them. Every new fruit was an explosion of taste in her mouth that made her grab for more and more. In the middle of the pile of fruits there was even one of the empty animal skins of some sort, into which she stuffed her abundance of riches until it bulged on all sides. After consideration, she dumped the entire skin of fruits out and began packing it with only the most delicious fruits, keeping a wary eye on the huge stone monster looming above her. There would be plenty of fruits left for the big monster, even if Dee were to find several of the carrying skins and waddle back into the sky with all of the fruit she could stuff into them.
Her dreams of flapping laboriously through the air towards home with giant sacks of delicious food were abruptly smashed by a loud cry. Several surprised monsters behind her had slipped down into the clearing with large empty animal skins, just the right size to stuff a small batling into. She grabbed her own half-filled bag in her teeth and dashed away into the woods, darting between the trees as bright glows lit the forest behind her.
Dee flew as she had never flown before, with every crash and crackle of broken branches behind her urging her wings to greater effort. It was terrifying and yet somehow exhilarating beyond anything she had ever done before as the thin twigs whipped against her skin while she ducked under branches and darted around hanging vines. Joy filled her chest and her pounding wings as she looped up and around while she flew, darting between the trees and dancing through the forest while the sensation of tingling fire seemed to crawl down her wings and across her rump. She would have burst into laughter if not for the animal skin full of fruits she held clenched in her jaws. As it was, several of the precious fruits spilled out of the bag as she flung herself through the air on the long journey, but by the time she swung up to perch on a lightning-struck tree just outside of home, there were still plenty of the fruits inside.
She had found the hole last winter, occupied by a tasty squirrel with quite a few delicious nuts, and had used it since for her own odd habit. The rest of The Folk did not understand just why Dee insisted that the sparkly pebbles and interesting shells that she collected should not be shared around until they wound up scattered all over Home, and they would certainly gobble up the tasty food if she brought it with her. It was difficult, but memories of cold and hungry winters provided Dee enough mental strength to put the entire skin of fruits into the small hollow after taking out just one fruit to be tucked into her tangled hair and shared with Mama later.
She paused before stuffing the bag into the bottom of the wooden hollow, tracing one warped foreclaw over the image that had been stained onto the side of the bag somehow. It was the strange oval-eyed monster from the city, who seemed to be looking back at Dee in a sympathetic fashion as if she were a Mama looking at her little batling. Dee traced the strange long horn rising from the dark monster's head, then ran her warped foreclaw downwards until it rested on the odd images below. It reminded her of something or someone, back when she had been a very little batling and Mama had first brought her into Home. She had been so different than The Folk then, unable even to cling to Mama's back the way the other batlings did without clamping her jaws into Mama's thick coat as they flew together through the night.
There was something different to Dee's coat tonight also, as she peered at the strange stain that had appeared on both sides of her rump and would not come off no matter how hard it was licked. It seemed to look somewhat like her membranous wing, and after due examination of her new mark and her wing, she passed it off as something she must have brushed up against while in the middle of the strange city, even though it continued to bother her.
Dee held her misshapen foreclaw up to the moonlight and looked at the curved hardness of it, so similar to all of the monsters of the distant city. In so many ways, the monsters all had looked far more like Dee than The Folk she had grown up with. Despite being monsters, for a moment she considered just what would have happened if she had come out into their moonlight city and joined them. Would one of the monster Mamas have brought her into her lair to be snuggled up with all of the other little monsters during the day and play with them all night? Or would they have gobbled her up as she feared, and left Mama without her only little batling?
A faraway cloud swept a shadow over Dee and her treetop hiding spot, making her dart behind the blackened tree trunk and scan the sky for the constant dangers that flew by night. It was not safe out here for a little batling to be lost in thought, and she quickly packed the rest of her treasures into the hollow and stuffed the old squirrel nest on top of it to keep them dry.
The bright moonlight surrounded her on all sides as Dee flung herself up into the air, sweeping along the breeze while keeping a sharp eye out for Owls. It took a very short time before she spotted the wheeling and darting dives of The Folk, and was able to pick Mama out of the crowd.
"Mama!" she squeaked, sweeping up to her mother and giving her an affectionate lick across the nose.
"Dee!" squeaked her Mama in return, tumbling through the sky with her only child until they both pulled out of their dive towards the forest floor and swooped back up into the air. "You smell like fruit," said Mama, licking her lips. "Did you spoil your dinner? The powdermoths are rising tonight, and they are delicious." She gave a short sneeze and wiped her muzzle on her hairy chest before sneezing again.
"No, Mama. I didn't spoil my dinner. Much," added Dee, in a much quieter squeak that was low enough that Mama could not hear. Probably.
"Good. You must eat well during this chill time, for the awful cold approaches, and you always look so skinny during the greening afterwards." Mama nuzzled her little batling across the short ears and the unusually long hair that ran down the back of her daughter's neck, and gave a playful snap at the long flow of hair that trailed from her weird tail, so unlike the stubby and nearly hairless tails of the rest of The Folk.
"I know, Mama. I'll eat as much as I can so I'll get nice and fat. Starting with that moth right there!"
Dee plunged out of the air, followed almost immediately by Mama. She laughed as they darted and wheeled through the moonlit sky, sweeping through the rest of The Folk in a whirling dance of happiness. It was a glorious feeling, of being loved and loving that swelled in her chest. She didn't care that she was so different than them, looking more like the monsters that lived in the strange city. She only cared that they could fly together, even though that joy was muted when she looked at the moon and thought about the strange stone statue back in the city of monsters.
That was behind her now. For tonight, she rose into the starry sky with her Mama by her side, rejoicing in the feeling of the crisp air on her face and the sharp cries of The Folk around.
She was home.
