When Given a Lemon

Part 20

Despite the death looks I’m giving out to everyone, at least two are idiotic or fearless enough to approach us. I may be completely harmless, but my looks can be deceiving; and I have been told that I look a lot stronger and tougher than I really am.

I learned this over years of disappointing people who thought they could count on me for brute strength.

They don't stand out from the rest of them, two middling-age people wearing heavy vests and thick gloves just like the rest of the workers. The materials and colors of their clothing are reminiscent of their environment. The juniper berries, hematite likely found in the creek beds, and bark made up a large portion of their color scheme. I’m guessing based on my experience helping mix fabric dyes back home. They are the perfect pigments for hunting, since they blend in so well.

“You missed it,” one started, waving at our captain. “We just scared away a whole handful of them monsters trying to infiltrate our town!”

“Yeah, by the river!” The second nodded rapidly in agreement, tapping the arm of one of the gigantic spoons, cocked and ready with a lethal sphere sitting inside it. I flinched, afraid their movements might actually set it free from its tethers. Not that it could hit me where I now stood, a fact that didn't stop my brain from panicking. I don't know if Lemon or the others are still out there so I'd rather not have more projectiles launched that way. “These babies have made such a difference!”

“We nearly got one right in the head!” He lightly popped himself in the noggin which for some reason only infuriated me more. I’m sure that I was the one they ‘almost got’. Someone from my group growled at that. It may have been me.

“We really appreciate your squads building these for us.” The first spoke up wholeheartedly.

Wait! What!?

These were built by us?? My neck snaps back to the big levered spoons.

Looking more closely now, I can see the wood these contraptions had been fashioned from looked the same as the wood I had helped to fell the first day we had arrived up here. I can't say where the raw material that made the metal is from but we did pass a forge on the road so I can assume they were able to smelt it here.

I feel my chest heat up at the thought of me pouring so much effort into harvesting that lumber. So much of it had gone to making tables, benches, and workstations for the medic tent and kitchens, the rest I thought went to other random things needed around the camp. I hadn't realized that some of it also had made the journey up here and been turned into these terrible rock flingers. I've been a contributor to this nightmare from the beginning!

The supplier to my own nearly-death machine!

I get a sudden feeling that there are eyes on me. So I try to turn my expression bland, but it’s already too late. I’m sure I’ve given myself away, at least to the captain who had already heard Bill’s story.

I do my best to not glance back up at the two workers. They too are looking at me now, probably in surprised recognition. I refuse to give them the opportunity to get my attention so I continue pretending they don’t exist while the captain replies to them as if he’s completely oblivious to what really happened.

Instead, I sneak away to look over the horrid contraptions. Eyeing the mechanisms that make it work, of which I don't really understand.

The only thing my brain seems able to compute is my imagination wishing I could break the things down with my eyes. The captain and the locals laugh about something I missed. I know he is being jovial with them, waving away the compliments about the death machines he has provided regular people, potentially turning them into future murders of the very same people they are so graciously thanking!