The Chimera

Chapter Thirty-Two: Kalila Meets the Sage

"Finally, young blood."

Kalila blinks at the speaker: short and stocky, and afflicted with patches of bright pink petals clustered on its chin, cheeks and forehead. Emerging from the sleeves of its shapeless dark robe are hands suffering from the same floral patches.

It's smiling: a feral sight. Kalila casts an uneasy glance behind them. Of course the door is gone. It had been completely mindless of her to impulsively yank them into this new, untamed world.

The stranger watches them with an expression shifting into impatience, hands on its hips. "I need some yard work done. Are you up for it, or not?"

"... No." Why would they do that?

The stranger clicks its tongue in disapproval. "What are you here for, then? Trust the chimera to send me the young, useless ones. You've never even stabbed a specter, I bet. Not like the pirate. She'd have my yard spotless by the evening, I'm sure."

"She wouldn't do your yardwork either." What Marikit would do, though, is be smart enough not to enter a door to another world unarmed. Kalila is painfully aware of the lack of defense amongst the three of them. Not that she's obtained much mastery over a knife, anyway.

With another dismissive glance, the stranger turns its back to them, striding into the gaping deep greenery of the woods that now surround them.

"Wait," Araceli calls out to it. "I wouldn't mind helping you with your yard."

"I know that already. It's the short one that's heartless," the stranger calls back over its shoulder. "Come along, then. It's right through these trees."

Kalila flushes. She isn't that short, it's only that Fallon and Araceli are taller. And heartless? She isn't the one demanding that a trio of young, lost strangers come clean her home.

A home that's currently under siege by-- Kalila shades her eyes with her hand to aid her vision-- at least a dozen small faeries, all composed of plaited twigs from the tops of their diminutive heads to the tips of their pointed wings.

Araceli gasps when she sees them. Kalila casts a glance at her. Dalmar and Zahara's cousin looks very little like them, but she carries their same familial sweetness, always bright-eyed and smiling. Even now, she sees beauty: "They're lovely."

Kalila frowns. One of the wicker faeries is yanking up plants in the already-meager garden. Another one is using a sharp rock to carve the image of a skull onto the front door of the stranger's cottage. A third sits on the roof, crooning a song about the sun finally killing the moon in a voice as melodic as a pile of rocks getting kicked around by steel-toed boots.

She'd hardly call them lovely.

The stranger throws out its hands to encapsulate the destructive faeries, the surrounding ivy-eaten trees where more sit perched as onlookers, and the general crumbling state of the cottage. "All right, have at it."

"You want us to get rid of them?" Araceli asks, brow furrowed. Optimist that she is, even she doesn't like the odds of three seventeen-year-olds against a horde of ill-tempered, winged creatures.

"Sure do. Feel free to light a couple on fire. I find that they scatter pretty quickly when you try it."

Araceli eyes turn wide and horrified. "I could never."

The stranger looks at her derisively, raising one of its hands to scratch savagely at the pink petal patch on its chin. "What did you think 'yard work' meant, if not pest control? I didn't ask the chimera to send me a little group made of a flower-planter, a baker, and a reader. I specifically requested one that knew its way around sharp objects."