Hydra Heart

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter 13: Your Girlfriend Calls Me Brutus the Way I Stick It In Her Backside

They crept through the patch of forest separating them from Alogos. Within a few minutes, Molly nearly wretched.

"Damn! This is..." She clasped her hand to her mouth and mumbled out, "So disgusting. I feel like I'm gonna drop my guts on the floor." She was trying not to look at a rotting mountain lion, dead in front of her. Its muscles were stiff. Flies flocked to its eyes and the open wound on its back, the blood from which had been consumed almost entirely. It's teeth hung in a permanent snarl. The insects would slowly erase even its outraged expression.

The husks of forest creatures littered the ground: foxes, lizards, wolverines, squirrels, racoons. They festered, but did not bleed. The abundance of ticks was to blame. The insects were swollen to disgusting proportions that made Shay's breathing pick up.

As they got into denser woods, the amount of carcasses only increased. It became hazardous for them to not check every step for a tick. Molly had found out, in the worst way, that poking the ticks made pus pour out, not blood, which interested her.

In spite of this, they eventually came to the border of the city, marked by the first of an expanse of skyscrapers.

"Now," Tenra began, "We'll be meeting and staying with a guy named Maro, he and I go way back. He's a little different from us, but he's offered to give us room in exchange for nothing at all." He checked to see if Shay was listening.

She had her headphones in.

--

February 11, 2060. Outskirts of Helena.

Bilran Molly wandered the forest outside of her home on her eighth birthday. Twenty miles from Nidus, a town named Helena existed. Helena was well hidden; a single clearing amongst miles of forest. Molly's parents lived there, alongside some three thousand other citizens.

Molly liked her town well enough, but she had a pension for exploring. She had wandered a few miles in the direction of Nidus, all alone. She was easily distracted from her shivering by admiring the snow-covered trees -- green needles stuck through blankets of white. She sauntered blissfully, losing track of time with no consideration for the worries of the adult world.

She came across a patch of dirt that intrigued her, because it wasn't covered in snow. The muddy area seemed loosely rectangular, and had only smaller plants growing on it, which was unusual for such dense forest.

The discovery made Molly jump up and down. Her starry eyes scanned the surrounding area for something to dig with, and soon she found an old stick buried in the snow. She jabbed at the earth for some time, getting a few feet down into the ground. Just as she was beginning to feel dismayed, her stick struck something solid. She poked down again and again, and noticed that it made too much of a sound to be rock. She eagerly cast aside her gloves and began scooping aside the cold dirt and stones with her own hands. Soon, she had cleared out an area well enough to see what she was poking at: wood.

Confused, and tired from all the digging, the girl decided to just hit it with a stick a few times. She knew nothing was coming of it, and decided to revisit the area the next day. But first, she would rest. She sat on the rim of her creation, dangling her boots into the hole.

"Hello," came a monotone voice from behind her.

She turned to face the stranger. He was wearing odd robes, and seemed unbothered by the fact that he was barefoot on snow. His face was hardly visible beneath his hood. Molly was wary, but curious as to who the man was.

"Hi," Molly replied.

"I believe this belongs to you," the strange man said.

Molly noticed two other figures looking very intrigued, standing around thirty feet behind the robed man who was talking to her. The two grownups in the background looked to be husband and wife, huddling against each other for fun and for fighting the cold. They were dressed poorly for the season, and must have been dragged out of the house by the girl's appearance.