When Given a Lemon

Part 28

It’s too bad Lemon isn’t interested in how I feel about all this. They have already happily moved on to the next pile of broken belongings to dig through without any concern for how anyone might view their childish antics. Sometimes I really do wonder about them and their complete lack of care. Soon enough I am also wearing an object not meant to be a hat.

Against my will of course.

It seems ignoring them isn't working out in my favor. I have a heavy feeling it’s something usually cooked with.

Pretending they aren't only works for the rest of them until the sound of glass shattering has us all jumping out of our skin. We all turn to find Lemon has a pile of broken shards at their feet and is wearing a guilty expression. 

A vase that had somehow miraculously survived being chucked out of a crumbled house has been smashed apart by an irresponsible pest.

“Lemon!” I shout at said pest and they flinch, dropping to their knees to clean up the mess only to promptly cut themself. I heaved an exasperated sigh then stooped so I could help bandage their knees until my back threatened to reopen and Merryl made me step back.

It's these moments that I feel both inadequate and also like an older sibling more than a squad partner or tentmate. Merryl takes my place but this doesn't stop Lemon and I from squabbling over their beading cuts. I'm ashamed to admit that the bickering doesn't end there. Soon enough we move on to fighting about all the non-clothing items they draped over themself. The argument intensifies after I swat them away from me when they try dumping some gadget into my arms along with a soiled rug. By then everyone is fed up enough that Denyel physically separates us.

“Don't talk to each other, for fuck’s sake!” Merryl provides for Denyel, who nods in brisk agreement. I can only Hrmph, since I even hadn’t wanted to be a part of this in the first place, I just always get dragged into it somehow.

Stomping a few feet away I dump everything they've thrown at me into the ground when I suddenly remember where I am and why I'm here.

It wasn't until then that I realized how distracted I had been with their ludicrous antics that I had forgotten all about the abominable creature that was surely still on the loose somewhere out here, maybe even watching this nonsense play out! Anxiety suddenly filled my head with unsettling thoughts now that I wasn’t being bombarded by Lemon's antics to the point that I almost wished they were still pestering me.

While many of the other squads, specifically those consisting of the best trained soldiers, had gone out seeking the murderous beast, no updates on its whereabouts had been announced as of yet; regardless of where they looked.

There is no certainty really that it had even stuck around these parts either. After all, it had shown up out of the blue and disappeared just as quickly, so who's to say where it was now. I wish it left to go stalk some far away land, but somehow I am sure that the creature still lurked nearby. My luck isn't good enough for it to have skipped town.

There are probably teams out hunting for its trail as we speak, ones that might know how to combat creatures of that magnitude. I hope that the captain and Wilo are amongst those parties, being the only ones that I can say for a fact serve a real chance at taking that thing down. I know we don't.

I hope they find out what exactly it is and what else it has done around this area because I doubt that we were the first to encounter it even if it hasn't been mentioned in any of the previous reports. The one thing that I did hear since our unfortunate encounter with it was that after its sighting, several of those big terrible bugs have been found lurking in the area surrounding the village where they had previously avoided.