Sketcher's Row [Prototype]

Act I / Chapter IV

Now that Soal could see his stomach, he could also feel it.

"Please, ma'am," he wandered to the exasperated announcer. "I would... I would like some food."

"You didn't need food before," she yawned.

"Well... now I do," Soal's insides churned. He had not eaten in a week -- even then, he had not truly eaten; he had only turned back the clock on his once nonexistent hunger. "Things change. Please; it's... very painful."

"The change is painful?"

"...Yes, ma'am," Soal gulped down sharply.

"If you keep looking around," the announcer advised, "you'll find ewyk and charks alike who will make all that change end for good -- rest assured. All it takes is one more 'very painful' change."

"Is it worth it?" Soal asked naively.

"Usually."

*     *     *

Henrab this occasion reckoned himself to be the premier judge of his "digging tool"-dependent operation. His ownership of the mine and its surroundings was ostensibly absolute. Technically, it rested on grounds inaccessible to Qorkas; a disastrous riot of forty years past had assured that. As a result, what happened there was fully his responsibility.

If a vandal were to sabotage an expensive piece of property, it was Henrab's responsibility -- not that of knowledgeable law enforcement agencies -- to identify the vandal. The primary step of this process would be to investigate the rest of his property.

"...Henrab... please excuse me... Is there something I've done?" Soal inquired meekly, ignoring his starvation, as he was met inside Henrab's comparatively luxurious compound with the countenance of intimidation itself.

"Answer yourself," the bird gruffly proposed, "before I have to answer for you."

"No... all I've done is look for sillingrocks."

"Only this?"

"Only that; I cannot lie."

"Charks can lie... charks will lie; I know firsthand," Henrab struck a lowering gaze. "I must digress... Is it wrong to kill, little one?"

"Yes, of course!" Soal decided without hesitation -- decided, not recognized. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, how can that be? Who tells you this drivel?"

"Mr. Henrab, you can't mean you don't think murder is wrong."

Henrab grabbed a deformed-looking mushroom and began to chew. "You're missing the point. Is it still murder if there was an inanimate victim? One always lacking in life?"

Soal kept quiet.

"Is it?"

Still.

"Hmm?"

"...I suppose so."

"Took you long enough!" Henrab chuckled. "Say; you seem like an impressionable little one. Too much so to be taken over by the throes of mad necessity in however long you've been here. I must offer my congratulations."

"...Impressionable?" Despite the abundance of complex phrases in Henrab's speech, Soal could not help but isolate a single one to define.

"It means 'very smart'," Henrab clarified. "That's what you are. Because you never killed that chark friend of yours... Okay, now fetch me someone else. Preferably someone less impressionable. And don't come back unless I expressly tell you that you should -- that way, you could even get something you greatly wish for. Understand?"