Where The Beastmen Begun

Finding Food

 The sun was brighter than what I remember. I lifted my hand to cover the sun from my eyes as we exited the caves top entrance. Abios didn't seem bothered by the heat or the light of the morning sun. When my eyes adjusted to the light difference, the trees in the surrounding area were still dead but not as scary as they were at night.

"The storm from last night made the ground gross, I don't want you stepping in it." Abois said, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I was still there. My eyes met his for just a second before I turned my attention down to the ground. Every step Abois made was light enough to make sure his tarsus didn't sink into the decaying mud.

"I don't mind getting dirty." I spoke softly and regretted my choice of words. Abois didn't comment back but I could hear a low disgruntled sigh come from him. I didn't belong in this world but I still wanted to run far away from here, from Abois.

"So, how far do we have to go to find a chicken?" I asked, watching the trees above us. In some sick way I felt like the trees were watching and waiting to break and strike down at us at any given moment.

"There's a village not too far from here that will hopefully have a few chickens. Though I'm sure they'll try to put up a fight. Not like they'd win." Abois tried to maneuver around the trees so we wouldn't have to keep ducking out of the way of branches.

"A village, like with people?" I could almost leap with joy on the thought of there being other people around.

"Well yeah. You said you wanted chicken for food, did you not?" Abois struggled to fight his way through a few close trees, resulting in him breaking off a couple large branches and throwing them to the side. Why did Abois make it seem like the chicken were the ones living in the village? I tried to stay away from asking too many questions so as to not make Abois mad or maybe trigger him to take me back to that cave of his.

Once we started to make our way out of the dead pine forest, the light from the sun seemed to not be as intense and rested just above a distant mountain. At the top of a high hill side, Abois stopped and looked around. I managed to look around him and see a small village between us and the mountain on the other side.

"Is that the village?" I asked, trying to see if there was anyone active moving around. Unfortunately we were too high to see any clear figure. Abois looked in the direction I pointed in and nodded but continued back to looking around. What was he trying to look for?

"Is there anyone even there, I can barely see anybody." I covered the top of my eye to see if shielding the sun would do me any good but it didn't.

"Don't make a sound until we get into the village." Abois focused on the village now. I felt my stomach sink into an endless pit. Why was he not wanting me to talk? Was he getting tired of hearing me ask questions or was there something else that he was worried about?

Abois was quick about getting down the hill as quietly as possible. As he walked us down the side of the hill, there was something in the distance that he kept glancing at and when he'd look in that direction he'd stop moving and just listen.

"It's okay to talk now." Abois said once we started to walk into the village. There were people that walked around and once they noticed Abois they froze and seemed like they wanted to hide and run. I felt confused and could hear some people whispering to others.

"Abois..." I whispered just watching as we passed everyone. Women in the village had children and others had small baskets of eggs and baby chicks. All these young chickens and I haven't yet seen one adult hen or rooster.

"Abois why are all these women carrying around baskets with baby chickens?" I whispered now trying not to start at the village natives. Abois chuckled under his breath and glanced back at me.