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Description
The site Moena had chosen to rest and foil any pursuit was not the most familiar one to patrollers on Seraphis’ land, but known. Ormis, of course, had his favorite places, but Moena felt his preferences weren’t secret enough, and she had opted for one seldom visited.

Day or night, it had a forsaken look.

Noxious weeds which could sicken cattle abounded here and the herdsmen kept the animals well away. Stretches of bare rock meant the approach to this lonely spot could not be tracked, especially in the dark.

Bird’s nests and animal burrows decorated the area. Grassland mice with huge eyes scurried in the dark, darting from place to place, hot after crickets and other insects. This place still felt like wilderness; any security the men might have felt in a familiar place was gone. The patrollers slept with their backs to solid rock and kept their weapons nearby.

A man stirred from sleep, wriggled the feeling back into his numb arm and sank back into slumber.

Again, no fires were permitted.

Moena knew she was not asleep; her eyes were half-closed or perhaps open only to slits, but true sleep had not come. Some part of her mental state was restless.
Her right hand was clutched around her spear, but like her other limbs, it was part of a dormant body. The pulse on that wrist was slow, the tendons and muscles relaxed.

Her breathing was also that of a sleeper.

But somewhere in the darkened home of her own frame, a light burned. Some peculiar state of inactivity and detachment passed for slumber while the others who were not on watch sank into deep, oblivious rest. She had chosen the loudest snorers for sentry duty and if there were no alarms, those sentries should return shortly.

The flickering, shadow-caged awareness that externally looked like dozing had visited her before during times of tension. When Ormis turned sick and disruptive at home, his wanderings and attempts to escape occurred to her even when she imagined she was dreaming.

Since it was actually helpful, she didn’t remark about the extra amount of awareness and it didn’t take away from her own rest and recuperation even after tiring treks in the wilderness.

Hazz again. He was securely tied, but not asleep. He was fixated on testing his bonds, feeling sneakily for the knot that was well away from his fingers. He had been stripped and set down on a crude bed of grass. If he needed to relieve himself, he could do so without needing to be untied.

There had been mutterings about killing Hazz outright to make certain there would be no more trouble; Moena had considered this well. She had given orders to finish the prisoner, but preferred to handle the responsibility herself.

Where did he come from, Moena had wondered.

Between Hazz’ gropes for the knot and thoughts of escape, he had violent flights of fancy that might be accomplished with his bare hands, but he was also calculating how he might secure a blade.

The next time someone came to check on him, he would adjust his notions, if not try desperately to attack.

When she could not intuit specific thoughts, she felt his dark emotions the way she could feel moisture on her skin from a nearby waterfall.

Hazz fancied he could fool his captors by feigning fatigue until just the right moment. He was afraid of her most of all. The bite nagged him.

Moena could see all this without looking at him.

Complete freedom was not on his mind. Too much vengeance lay in the path of escape. Hazz was, however, eager to put his visions into effect before first light. He had a little under two hours to try such a thing and the passage of time was frustrating him, muddling what might have been a decent plan.

Meanwhile, the camp remained quiet and subdued, waiting for dawn like every other part of the pasturage.

She did not want to dwell on Hazz—either his past deeds or what he had planned—but for a long while, such thoughts were impossible to shrug. She made sure not to be in a place where he might see her; the spot she had chosen to relax was screened from the rest of the camp by rocks.

While there was plenty to report to Seraphis, other than the plain truth, she didn’t know what to tell him or how to tell him.

The stress was a slow killer to the patriarch.

What the news of incursion would do to him, Moena could only see it dragging him down into illness and speeding him to death. Still, he had to hear it and she had to tell him.

Around her, the little site in the shelter of the rocks was still except for the intermittent waves of the night breeze and the stirrings of small animals. Invertebrates crawled or winged in from every direction, most of them practically noiseless, but crickets roamed here too and silence never existed.

Exhausted, Hazz shut his eyes and drifted into a shallow sleep. He didn’t hear the stirrings in the dust nearby, but he wasn’t supposed to.

Moena heard them, but pretended not to, curious to discover if that would actually matter.

Three men patrolled in the dark, cloaked against the cold without helmets or armor and certainly without lights. Jarn was among them. Well removed from the secured camp, a long-burning decoy fire blazed in bright orange liveliness.

Bulky things, not stray cattle or even goats, tramped in the drying shrubs well beyond the fullest light of the fire. No eyeshine leapt back from the decoy fire.

Jarn felt only the merest alarm, realizing his turn on watch was almost over. The young guardsman readjusted his grip on his spear and let out a pent-up breath as slowly and quietly as he could.

He is too far away to see with my own eyes, Moena thought, clenching her fist. This could all be imagination. But I don’t think so. I CAN’T think so.

Though she was nowhere near, Moena sensed the little ripple of fear through Jarn and then sensed his cautious return to camp.

I am TOO aware, Moena thought. Whatever this is, it may mean I can never trust people outwardly. I am going to know what is in them, regardless of what they say or do. And how can anyone else trust me if they don’t have the same awareness?

Her clenched fist curled tighter. Tendons and veins stood out below her knuckles.

A creeping insect-like thing but with several times the amount of legs snaked among the pebbles a hundred paces from where Moena rested. Then she knew nothing more about it.

Something else—an owl—went from stillness to sudden motion high among the rocks behind her. In silence, it flapped beyond the perimeter of the camp and did not return. As soon as it was gone, Moena felt a tickle on the back of her fist and realized it was a mouse.

The mouse went from her hand to halfway up her sleeve in a sprint to seize a pale cricket she hadn’t known was there.

Well, SOME things went unknown, Moena consoled herself.

Concerned only with eating, the mouse took the cricket in its tiny paws and chewed the insect’s head away with a dozen rapid bites. Moena kept one eye on the mouse. Tiny as it was, she caught its own pungent odor and all the other smells it had brought with it on its foray.

In a trice, the mouse was taken away by a hand.

Moena should have been utterly startled, but wasn’t. The delayed reaction stretched on, but somehow didn’t make her oblivious to the fact that a fairly bulky stranger had approached without her sensing it.

No. Not just one, but TWO.

Given the night, the wilderness and the isolation, there could have been a whole pack of the outlandish things, but only a pair stood here now. Had she really seen them before? She could not tell. Their faces might have been extrapolations of hers in a few years.

Moena thought, they’re taunting me by showing off their similarity. But it’s a similarity only in the face. They don’t behave like me, or want to. She rose.

Despite their elaborately-braided hair, they made no effort to clothes their abbreviated human bodies which ended a distance below the waist. Antelope bodies sans neck and head constituted the remainder of their forms.

The night breeze blew from Moena to them.

Testing their apparent security, Moena approached and padded around them, unable to spook them into moving. One of them tightened a hind leg as if to stamp, but didn’t. The hoof on that leg never left the ground.

A tail flicked. If this was sign of agitation, Moena did not know. Asserting some bravery and eager to see if they would play the part of superior, Moena reached out her hand and stroked one of them on the back, feeling good muscle under taut hide. The hair was coarse and rippled under her fingers. Dust came up when she patted the spot she had been caressing.

“Will you become like me? Or will I become like you?”

When neither answered her question, she continued her walk around them.

“From birth, we were like this--” The one with the mouse began an explanation, but its companion interrupted.

“It seems she doesn’t believe we can be real.”

The two had blood-stained lips and chins. Moena instantly recollected the herdsmen who suspected her of mischief.

So far, the rest of the camp lay sleeping, unaware of these new intruders.

Clever, Moena noted, they were standing on bare rock, not in soft soil. Perhaps they had walked on dirt, but the prints would look like those of wild animals, not-—THESE.

“Real, but very strange,” Moena said, getting in the opportunity to make lingering eye contact with the one who had last spoken.” And very elusive. Where are the written accounts describing you? Where is the art...in pictures, sculpture or artifacts? Where are the bones of your dead? Why have the people of this pasturage never made you a subject of legend?”

At this, one of them stamped. Moena coldly noted the reaction, but let it go without comment.

Though they had arms, they did not gesture.

Moena quickly considered walking on and leading them to a spot to where their hooves would leave tracks if these two sneaks bolted before she had a chance to raise an alarm.

Raising an alarm was the last thing she felt like doing.

Relaxed in the presence of these strange creatures (or were they people?) Moena observed them as casually as she might ordinary men.

Smoothly, knowing she wasn’t dreaming, Moena shifted her feet, still holding her spear.

The one with the mouse dipped down to let the mouse jump to the ground and walk away. The dip was accomplished with bent legs rather than a bend at the waist. Neither one removed their gaze from Moena.

“We heard forms like YOU existed,” said the one who had taken the mouse, “but we never expected to see one...let alone talk to one.”

“Others are coming,” warned the other, not looking away.
“It may be wrong to meet this way,” the first one said. “But eventually, we must draw closer. Your awareness will not permit you continue on as you have with these people.”

“I am adept at coping,” Moena countered. She felt like lowering her head in grim acknowledgement, but remained stiff-necked and resolute.“I could not have a place among you,” Moena declared. “Now go.”

They had bitten Hazz, she knew. Drank his blood. But Hazz was still alive, weakened by blood loss. Too early to tell if that would make him easier to handle.

Moena did not point her spear, but she did bring the poll down sharply on the rocky ground. “I am of a civilization of justice and law—“

Boldly, she reached out her free hand to wipe blood from the mouth of the one nearest her. “I am responsible for the survival of a prisoner. A prisoner who must be alive to answer for many things. If such a view is a thing unknown in your society, we have little to say to one another.”

Unimpressed, the two maiden-beasts finally looked away from Moena to exchange a cool glance.

Moena went on, “As a sworn protector and guardian of these lands, I follow its laws and am fully against those who break them. I cannot harm others on a whim. How could I join a tribe of savages and wild interlopers?”

“Savages who have been here far longer than your two-legged society of herders and farmers! To us, you may be the ones who ignore the old ways!”

“Your claim requires proving-—at some other time.”

Even as she spoke, some of the sleeping men stirred and began to shake off their sleep. The first of the returning watch crunched his way through dry shrubs and called out a code word.

Ignoring the weird creatures just long enough to announce the other part of the code, Moena returned her attention to the beasts.

“Is that all the response you can give?” The nearer asked.

The one farthest away snorted. “Heh! You cannot remain as you are.” Finally, after having stood stock-still for so long, it broke into a walk as natural as any antelope, the sequence of legs lifting and lowering was uncanny in itself. “You have already been carried to the frontiers of our realm. The next steps you take into our realm will be closely accompanied. Be assured of that!”

“Your realm--and what is this realm known as?”

“That, we have yet to learn. And as you learn, so do we. Call us Lamia. In time, you will adopt the name yourself. Your place among mankind will shrink to patch.”
“You are in a space barely large enough to turn around even now.”
What Moena was going to say died in her gullet.

Jarn strode within a few paces of there they all stood. His foot came down on the dried stem of a shrub with a crackle.

And with that, the beasts turned tail and bounded off into the twilight.

Description
The site Moena had chosen to rest and foil any pursuit was not the most familiar one to patrollers on Seraphis’ land, but known. Ormis, of course, had his favorite places, but Moena felt his preferences weren’t secret enough, and she had opted for one seldom visited.

Day or night, it had a forsaken look.

Noxious weeds which could sicken cattle abounded here and the herdsmen kept the animals well away. Stretches of bare rock meant the approach to this lonely spot could not be tracked, especially in the dark.

Bird’s nests and animal burrows decorated the area. Grassland mice with huge eyes scurried in the dark, darting from place to place, hot after crickets and other insects. This place still felt like wilderness; any security the men might have felt in a familiar place was gone. The patrollers slept with their backs to solid rock and kept their weapons nearby.

A man stirred from sleep, wriggled the feeling back into his numb arm and sank back into slumber.

Again, no fires were permitted.

Moena knew she was not asleep; her eyes were half-closed or perhaps open only to slits, but true sleep had not come. Some part of her mental state was restless.
Her right hand was clutched around her spear, but like her other limbs, it was part of a dormant body. The pulse on that wrist was slow, the tendons and muscles relaxed.

Her breathing was also that of a sleeper.

But somewhere in the darkened home of her own frame, a light burned. Some peculiar state of inactivity and detachment passed for slumber while the others who were not on watch sank into deep, oblivious rest. She had chosen the loudest snorers for sentry duty and if there were no alarms, those sentries should return shortly.

The flickering, shadow-caged awareness that externally looked like dozing had visited her before during times of tension. When Ormis turned sick and disruptive at home, his wanderings and attempts to escape occurred to her even when she imagined she was dreaming.

Since it was actually helpful, she didn’t remark about the extra amount of awareness and it didn’t take away from her own rest and recuperation even after tiring treks in the wilderness.

Hazz again. He was securely tied, but not asleep. He was fixated on testing his bonds, feeling sneakily for the knot that was well away from his fingers. He had been stripped and set down on a crude bed of grass. If he needed to relieve himself, he could do so without needing to be untied.

There had been mutterings about killing Hazz outright to make certain there would be no more trouble; Moena had considered this well. She had given orders to finish the prisoner, but preferred to handle the responsibility herself.

Where did he come from, Moena had wondered.

Between Hazz’ gropes for the knot and thoughts of escape, he had violent flights of fancy that might be accomplished with his bare hands, but he was also calculating how he might secure a blade.

The next time someone came to check on him, he would adjust his notions, if not try desperately to attack.

When she could not intuit specific thoughts, she felt his dark emotions the way she could feel moisture on her skin from a nearby waterfall.

Hazz fancied he could fool his captors by feigning fatigue until just the right moment. He was afraid of her most of all. The bite nagged him.

Moena could see all this without looking at him.

Complete freedom was not on his mind. Too much vengeance lay in the path of escape. Hazz was, however, eager to put his visions into effect before first light. He had a little under two hours to try such a thing and the passage of time was frustrating him, muddling what might have been a decent plan.

Meanwhile, the camp remained quiet and subdued, waiting for dawn like every other part of the pasturage.

She did not want to dwell on Hazz—either his past deeds or what he had planned—but for a long while, such thoughts were impossible to shrug. She made sure not to be in a place where he might see her; the spot she had chosen to relax was screened from the rest of the camp by rocks.

While there was plenty to report to Seraphis, other than the plain truth, she didn’t know what to tell him or how to tell him.

The stress was a slow killer to the patriarch.

What the news of incursion would do to him, Moena could only see it dragging him down into illness and speeding him to death. Still, he had to hear it and she had to tell him.

Around her, the little site in the shelter of the rocks was still except for the intermittent waves of the night breeze and the stirrings of small animals. Invertebrates crawled or winged in from every direction, most of them practically noiseless, but crickets roamed here too and silence never existed.

Exhausted, Hazz shut his eyes and drifted into a shallow sleep. He didn’t hear the stirrings in the dust nearby, but he wasn’t supposed to.

Moena heard them, but pretended not to, curious to discover if that would actually matter.

Three men patrolled in the dark, cloaked against the cold without helmets or armor and certainly without lights. Jarn was among them. Well removed from the secured camp, a long-burning decoy fire blazed in bright orange liveliness.

Bulky things, not stray cattle or even goats, tramped in the drying shrubs well beyond the fullest light of the fire. No eyeshine leapt back from the decoy fire.

Jarn felt only the merest alarm, realizing his turn on watch was almost over. The young guardsman readjusted his grip on his spear and let out a pent-up breath as slowly and quietly as he could.

He is too far away to see with my own eyes, Moena thought, clenching her fist. This could all be imagination. But I don’t think so. I CAN’T think so.

Though she was nowhere near, Moena sensed the little ripple of fear through Jarn and then sensed his cautious return to camp.

I am TOO aware, Moena thought. Whatever this is, it may mean I can never trust people outwardly. I am going to know what is in them, regardless of what they say or do. And how can anyone else trust me if they don’t have the same awareness?

Her clenched fist curled tighter. Tendons and veins stood out below her knuckles.

A creeping insect-like thing but with several times the amount of legs snaked among the pebbles a hundred paces from where Moena rested. Then she knew nothing more about it.

Something else—an owl—went from stillness to sudden motion high among the rocks behind her. In silence, it flapped beyond the perimeter of the camp and did not return. As soon as it was gone, Moena felt a tickle on the back of her fist and realized it was a mouse.

The mouse went from her hand to halfway up her sleeve in a sprint to seize a pale cricket she hadn’t known was there.

Well, SOME things went unknown, Moena consoled herself.

Concerned only with eating, the mouse took the cricket in its tiny paws and chewed the insect’s head away with a dozen rapid bites. Moena kept one eye on the mouse. Tiny as it was, she caught its own pungent odor and all the other smells it had brought with it on its foray.

In a trice, the mouse was taken away by a hand.

Moena should have been utterly startled, but wasn’t. The delayed reaction stretched on, but somehow didn’t make her oblivious to the fact that a fairly bulky stranger had approached without her sensing it.

No. Not just one, but TWO.

Given the night, the wilderness and the isolation, there could have been a whole pack of the outlandish things, but only a pair stood here now. Had she really seen them before? She could not tell. Their faces might have been extrapolations of hers in a few years.

Moena thought, they’re taunting me by showing off their similarity. But it’s a similarity only in the face. They don’t behave like me, or want to. She rose.

Despite their elaborately-braided hair, they made no effort to clothes their abbreviated human bodies which ended a distance below the waist. Antelope bodies sans neck and head constituted the remainder of their forms.

The night breeze blew from Moena to them.

Testing their apparent security, Moena approached and padded around them, unable to spook them into moving. One of them tightened a hind leg as if to stamp, but didn’t. The hoof on that leg never left the ground.

A tail flicked. If this was sign of agitation, Moena did not know. Asserting some bravery and eager to see if they would play the part of superior, Moena reached out her hand and stroked one of them on the back, feeling good muscle under taut hide. The hair was coarse and rippled under her fingers. Dust came up when she patted the spot she had been caressing.

“Will you become like me? Or will I become like you?”

When neither answered her question, she continued her walk around them.

“From birth, we were like this--” The one with the mouse began an explanation, but its companion interrupted.

“It seems she doesn’t believe we can be real.”

The two had blood-stained lips and chins. Moena instantly recollected the herdsmen who suspected her of mischief.

So far, the rest of the camp lay sleeping, unaware of these new intruders.

Clever, Moena noted, they were standing on bare rock, not in soft soil. Perhaps they had walked on dirt, but the prints would look like those of wild animals, not-—THESE.

“Real, but very strange,” Moena said, getting in the opportunity to make lingering eye contact with the one who had last spoken.” And very elusive. Where are the written accounts describing you? Where is the art...in pictures, sculpture or artifacts? Where are the bones of your dead? Why have the people of this pasturage never made you a subject of legend?”

At this, one of them stamped. Moena coldly noted the reaction, but let it go without comment.

Though they had arms, they did not gesture.

Moena quickly considered walking on and leading them to a spot to where their hooves would leave tracks if these two sneaks bolted before she had a chance to raise an alarm.

Raising an alarm was the last thing she felt like doing.

Relaxed in the presence of these strange creatures (or were they people?) Moena observed them as casually as she might ordinary men.

Smoothly, knowing she wasn’t dreaming, Moena shifted her feet, still holding her spear.

The one with the mouse dipped down to let the mouse jump to the ground and walk away. The dip was accomplished with bent legs rather than a bend at the waist. Neither one removed their gaze from Moena.

“We heard forms like YOU existed,” said the one who had taken the mouse, “but we never expected to see one...let alone talk to one.”

“Others are coming,” warned the other, not looking away.
“It may be wrong to meet this way,” the first one said. “But eventually, we must draw closer. Your awareness will not permit you continue on as you have with these people.”

“I am adept at coping,” Moena countered. She felt like lowering her head in grim acknowledgement, but remained stiff-necked and resolute.“I could not have a place among you,” Moena declared. “Now go.”

They had bitten Hazz, she knew. Drank his blood. But Hazz was still alive, weakened by blood loss. Too early to tell if that would make him easier to handle.

Moena did not point her spear, but she did bring the poll down sharply on the rocky ground. “I am of a civilization of justice and law—“

Boldly, she reached out her free hand to wipe blood from the mouth of the one nearest her. “I am responsible for the survival of a prisoner. A prisoner who must be alive to answer for many things. If such a view is a thing unknown in your society, we have little to say to one another.”

Unimpressed, the two maiden-beasts finally looked away from Moena to exchange a cool glance.

Moena went on, “As a sworn protector and guardian of these lands, I follow its laws and am fully against those who break them. I cannot harm others on a whim. How could I join a tribe of savages and wild interlopers?”

“Savages who have been here far longer than your two-legged society of herders and farmers! To us, you may be the ones who ignore the old ways!”

“Your claim requires proving-—at some other time.”

Even as she spoke, some of the sleeping men stirred and began to shake off their sleep. The first of the returning watch crunched his way through dry shrubs and called out a code word.

Ignoring the weird creatures just long enough to announce the other part of the code, Moena returned her attention to the beasts.

“Is that all the response you can give?” The nearer asked.

The one farthest away snorted. “Heh! You cannot remain as you are.” Finally, after having stood stock-still for so long, it broke into a walk as natural as any antelope, the sequence of legs lifting and lowering was uncanny in itself. “You have already been carried to the frontiers of our realm. The next steps you take into our realm will be closely accompanied. Be assured of that!”

“Your realm--and what is this realm known as?”

“That, we have yet to learn. And as you learn, so do we. Call us Lamia. In time, you will adopt the name yourself. Your place among mankind will shrink to patch.”
“You are in a space barely large enough to turn around even now.”
What Moena was going to say died in her gullet.

Jarn strode within a few paces of there they all stood. His foot came down on the dried stem of a shrub with a crackle.

And with that, the beasts turned tail and bounded off into the twilight.