The Non-Human Society

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty One - Renn - Merit and Sofia

      Merit was a very small girl... or well, woman.

She sat across the oddly shaped table from me, and was just barely able to put her arms onto the table. The chair was too small for her, and even though there was as taller one a few feet away... she hadn't seemed willing to go get it.

"I'm telling you, she'd be perfect for the bank, look at her! She'd make all those perverted old merchants salivate, especially if she wore this stuff!" Sofia said. She reached over to lift one of the little hooks on my left shoulder, where my backpack could attach to if I wanted it to rest on my left shoulder and not my right.

"And that's why you want to stay out of the bank, Renn. You'll become a product to be sold," Merit said. My ears twitched because of her voice. It was so... childlike. I heard a young girl speaking, yet she spoke with the monotone of a tired old woman. It made my senses go haywire.

"Please. She's just saying no because she's not tall enough to see over the counters," Sofia said. Sofia looked like a middle-aged woman, but had a beautiful smile. The kind that drew eyes. She also seemed able to look in different directions with her eyes without issue, which was really odd and off putting... but I didn't want to say that out loud.

Merit glared at Sofia, but only for a moment. "You're a predator Renn, be a guard. You get to stab people," Merit said.

I laughed a little, but was starting to realize that Merit was being completely serious.

She was supposedly a guard after all... even though she looked just like a little girl.

"Just don't work the depot, Renn... really. The people there are boring," Sofia said with a sigh.

"She'd distract the human workers. She's too pretty," Merit said with her emotionless tone.

"Where does Brandy work?" I asked.

The two went quiet and looked at one another. Sofia leaned closer to me, to rest her shoulder onto my own. "Brandy's a boss, Renn. She's the bookkeeper. She works wherever she wants to," she told me.

"I see."

"Is that who you're here to see?" Merit asked.

"Vim wants me to meet her," I admitted.

"Hm..." The two hummed as they thought about it.

Sofia turned to look at me, and I had to focus on the eye that stared at me. The other was looking at Merit. "Maybe she's not going to stay here?" Sofia asked.

"Who knows? Vim's always scheming stuff," Merit said.

I glanced at the white haired Merit, and wondered why she'd say that. Vim? Scheming? Honestly he hadn't seemed like such a man, from my experience. He had plans, sure... but it seemed he never really tried to put them into motion. Or if he did, he did so very slowly over the course of years and years.

"Speaking of schemes, did you see the way Herra glared at her?" Sofia leaned forward onto the table to whisper to her friend.

Merit nodded, and tried to lean forward too... but wasn't able to get very far. She was just too short. "I did," she said.

"What was that about you think?" Sofia asked.

"I'd like to know too," I said as I leaned forward to whisper with them.

Merit scooted upward, and I watched as she pulled her legs up under her as to kneel on the chair instead of sit. She was now able to lean across the table, to get close like Sofia and I. She glanced around for a moment before speaking.

As she looked around, I noticed her white hair flopped around in flocks... as if some parts of her hair were thicker and heavier than others. Yet they didn't look braided or bound by anything, like pins or ribbons... though maybe it had something to do with her bloodline. After all, her hair was a silver-white color. It was honestly pretty.