Servants and Followers (The Legends of Arria, Volume 2) by Courtney Bowen Page A

to
him, as he doubted that they would stay with him then. He gave them
only enough knowledge to try and track the tiger down, with dim
scents and the estimations of locations he provided from his own
fuzzy knowledge. He promised them great reward for the capture of
the tiger and ordered that they should bring any suspected tiger to
Coe Doomba so that he could determine whether or not it was the
real tiger in person.
    However, it never was the real tiger.
Despite these limitations, at least he could now sense the real
tiger approaching, and he would be ready for it.
    As the Ghoulman wandered off to relay its
orders, it passed by a Trolla talking to its friends. “I don’t
understand it. I left the pickaxe on the ground, right by my feet.
Next thing I know, it’s gone. Impossible to figure out who stole
it.”
    “ It’s not that impossible,
it’s probably one of the animals stealing it.” One of its friends
remarked. “Have you checked them out?”
    “ I already have.” The
Trolla said. “It didn’t work, none of them will confess to any
crime. And the pickaxe was stolen right out from under me. Who
could have done such a thing without being noticed?”
     

Chapter 5: In Between
    The boy, he is lost and he is alone,
he
    Does not know where to go. To whom
    Does he turn to in his hour of need?
What
    Spell or god can protect him in his
hour of darkness?
    -- Proverb of
Manhood , Urso
     
    As had
become her habit, Habala snuck into her sons’ bedroom and picked out Basha’s copy
of Legends of
Arria , from which she
read:
     
    The Ocean Myth
    From the fissures of Day’s and Night’s
union, however, an egg had been dropped, and that egg contained
three sons and a daughter. Day and Night had not been male or
female, nor were their children completely fixed as such when their
genders could be changed. But three sons and a daughter had been
born because their genders had been fixed in the minds of the
people who heard the story, and in the minds of their children
afterward who were born and heard the story from them.
    The three sons were Popo, Loqwa, and
Menthar, born in that order, while the daughter was Mila, who was
either the oldest or the youngest, depending on what you believed.
Popo, Loqwa, Menthar and Mila fell into the ocean from the sky
while Day and Night mated. However, the children could not breathe
underwater, because they were born in the sky and breathed air,
while they could not swim because they had not learned how and it
was unnatural to them. And so they sank, drowning underwater; Day
and Night were unaware of what was happening below them, with the
children that were born, distracted and absorbed with their own
mating. The world did not exist for them yet, and they had no
knowledge of the consequences of their actions yet as the light was
not bright enough yet to illuminate everything.
    Meanwhile, the
children of Day and Night reacted differently to drowning,
depending on what they thought. Popo thundered with anger and fear.
He was certain that he was the oldest, and certain that he was
drowning, when he could not breathe and there was water all around
him. That made him angry; he was set against dying on principle,
because he knew that he would have to live to lead the others.
There was no one else besides him who could be the leader, as far
as he was aware of, and he knew that he would set a bad example for
his siblings, who were the only other beings that existed as far as
he knew, by dying before he got the chance to live. That made him
afraid when he didn’t know what else to do in this situation
except drown. He thundered because it was
in his power to do so, but it made no noise below water and was
useless otherwise.
    Menthar burned with
lightning and hatred. Lightning was his power, and he used it
because he did not want to waste it . H e had been given fire, and he
would burn it for as long as he was able, while it was in his
possession, because it belonged to him. He burned with fire