The Hidden World

Chapter 8

Hobbit got Maverick from the backyard. Borealis had been welcomed into the yard as well and Kendra and Brendan fetched her as well. Brendan had been doubting Hobbit actually meant to lead them around the Hidden World and instead just lead them right back to the force field or whatever they had passed through to get here. But she proved true to her word. She started for the third corner.

"I want to show you an old friend. He lives in one of the small villages around the Marketplace but if we went straight up to the market we'd have to cross all the way over to his village and that would take a while. This is much faster."

There was a main highway that turned from dirt to cracked cement, to cobblestone, to dirt again. There was plenty of interesting things to look at on the road. No one gawked or goggled at a giant goose or a dragon. In fact, lots of people had dragons, some even had giant geese like Hobbit. The main highway was at least ten times larger than a large highway. It expanded out so far that people on the left side who wanted to talk to people on the right had to shout.

Kendra took in everything around her. An old woman leading a large green lizard that had a sack of flour lashed to it's long back with rope, A person who had a peculiar shade of green for skin and hair that stuck straight up like prairie grass leading a dog of some sort that seemed to be made of wind, an old woman wearing a cloak that had designs that seemed to move looking very small atop a full grown Akori Ice dragon, a man atop a large stone lion who had several children bouncing on his back, and a girl holding the lead reins to five huge tropical birds. The road was crowded, despite it's width, but there was not pushing or shoving. Occasionally a bird would swak as a Griffin  stepped on it's toe or a dragon would let out a burst of steam as a phoenix bumped it but other than that it was uneventful.

Not that nothing was happening. A man accidentally knocked into a boy holding a crate of racing pigions. The crate's door fell open and sent a flurry of white and gray into the sky. It took almost ten minutes of complete chous to get them all back in their cage. Another time a old woman's silk blue cloak seemed to have attracted a green dragons attention. When the dragon's owner's eyes were diverted from his steed half of the woman's cloak got torn off. That resulted and several minutes of hysterical laughter from some parts of the crowd and screaming from the woman as well as the dragon's owner's voice added to the general din, No no, Humphry! It might look like a blueberry but it isn't actually fruit! And one time two creatures, only about the hight of some of the shorter people's knees, came sprinting out of the forest cackling maddly. The sped through the crowd causing disarray by making loud noises, stepping on people's toes, and pushing people with their nobbly fingers which seemed to be quite strong despite their appearance. This caused a lot of squeals of pain, yells, and smoke as dragon's snorted indignatly. The creatures were finally dragged away by two elvish type creatures wearing a blue crest.

"What were those things?" Brendan asked as soon as the blue crest people had gotten the craziness sorted out.

"Imps, to be vague," Hobbit replied. "That type has been classified though. They are the Nudnik."

"What?" Brendan asked. He had never heard of a nudnik if it was a thing, and if it wasn't he didn't know what it was. 

"Basically," Hobbit said, "they are classified a world class pain in the butt." Brendan nodded several times.

"Do they ever...seriously hurt anyone?" Kendra asked. Hobbit shook her head.

"Not usually, no. I guess the worst incident was back in 1812. Some guy got hurt. Was crippled for life. Though we thought it might have been another tribe of Imp. There are a lot of them. We think it might have been the Rampagers. Real nasty creatures." Brendan looked confused again.