Chapter 22 – A Glowing Pond Inside The Cave

The village elder had nothing else to say. He didn’t turn hostile, but he prevented anyone from speaking any further. Any question that Darya asked fell on deaf ears, and the only answers that anyone else gave ended up uselessly vague. Darya decided she had seen enough of this. She left Seris to write a letter of whatever to the grand church with the big seal of whatever to beg for funds.

She didn’t feel that a village so ready to abandon a kidnapped girl deserved any money, but she didn’t want to say that to impoverished people. They clearly had their own reasons, which they weren’t even comfortable speaking about. She never had to deal with people this scared back on Earth. Interns and juniors scared of the leads didn’t count. They weren’t using spiked whips on them in Amberlith. That would’ve been illegal.

Lurim shuffled after her as she left the house of the elders. He clung tightly to her dress when the elder shouted at him to stay where he was. Darya let the boy tag along just to spite the old man who had given her no information.

The crowd of children who had been spying on them through openings scattered like mice in all directions as she exited from the front entrance.

Wait. Why don’t I catch one of these older ones and make them talk instead?.

She picked Lurim up as they walked down the street. Every adult bowed out of the way on sight. She didn’t want to waste any more effort on talking with the adults.

“Do you see any of your friends here?” Darya asked Lurim as he awkwardly wrapped a tiny arm around her to cling on.

He looked at her as if he didn’t understand and shook his head from side to side.

“What? You don’t have friends?” she asked with a scoff.

Well, I should’ve seen that coming.

Lurim looked a bit too different from regular Merfolk children. He had lived with his sister all this time. Darya had to catch a child herself if she wanted to talk with one.

“Let’s go somewhere nice. Where do you want to go?” she asked Lurim.

He seemed to understand that question just fine. He pointed to their right and started doing a bunch of signs.

“Alright, that way,” Darya said.

The street wound up hill through decrepit buildings. She passed several makeshift houses with walls missing. Entire families eagerly got on their knees as she passed. Most of the houses nearest to the center were full of old people. Some of them were too old to even lift their heads from their beds.

Looks like the needy old people are closer to the house of elders. These houses are horrible. What do they do when it rains?

The answer was curtains. They had thick, handmade fabric made of thin ropes. While they could keep the rain and winds away, the floors were all unpleasantly wet and muddy. This village was clearly in desperate need of renovations. She wondered if the Dovarists could foot the bill for such a feat. It was unlikely. There had to be hundreds of other islands just like this.

The buildings uphill got worse and worse until they turned into a maze of abandoned ruins. Lurim pointed leftwards at a junction, and it was a path heading downhill.

“Aren’t we going back to the sea?” Darya asked.

Lurim insisted on this direction, pointing several times.

“Alright, you’re the boss.”

The darkening ocean loomed in the distance as she walked downhill. Dark clouds were swirling above the horizon, a sign of bad weather to come. If this storm were anything like the last one, they would be stuck on this island. She didn’t want to waste more time.

Surprisingly, she didn’t encounter any more people down this path. The buildings on either side looked calcified like a dead coral reef above ground.

She emerged from the street into one end of the shoreline cut off by a cliff. The pier and all the fishing boats were a few hundred meters away to her left. She could see the mast of the Desert Rose lurking above them.

Lurim nudged her to the right towards the rocky cliff. There was a stone path heading in that direction with wooden pillars for lanterns.

The path led up the slope that gradually turned from sand to soil and rock. It led up towards a triangular cave entrance on the cliff.

Lurim jumped off and ran inside. Darya followed him, ducking under the short entrance.

The cave interior was nothing like what she expected from the outside. There was no rock surface to be seen. The place could best be described as a wooden cocoon. Someone had gone to extreme lengths to convert a cave into a house a long time ago. Everything here was much better than the decrepit village, likely because it was well protected inside a cave.

This looks like the best place on the island. Why did he bring me here? I’d imagine a lot more people would want to live in a place like this, but there’s no one.

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“Is this really your house, Lurim?” Darya looked around.

The boy nodded eagerly and performed a bunch of signs. She took it as a yes.

It was dark inside the cave, but she could see just fine because of her Dovarist jewelry. This place could fit at least five families.

“Is it only you and your sister living here?” she asked. She saw several spaces that could be considered rooms, but they were more like blocks sectioned off with wooden walls.

Lurim shook his head, pointing at a larger section in the dryest corner of the cave. There was a tall bookshelf there along with a table, two chairs, and a bed. Long black robes hung from a hook on the wall.

Darya walked over, curious to see what sort of life they lived here.

Lurim excitedly pointed at a smaller section with a makeshift table and a chair, proudly pointing at himself afterwards.

“Ah, this is your room,” Darya nodded. He had his own little bookshelf, but it was full of pretty seashells, stones, hand-carved wooden figures, and other trinkets.

She assumed the larger section was his sister’s, but nothing about it looked even remotely girly. Apart from the black robes, she saw two pairs of tattered leather boots, a leather hat, and a harness.

Something on the table made her doubt whether this place belonged to a girl. There was a large pipe next to a rusty tin of tobacco.

Is she a cowboy? What the hell is this room?

Darya had assumed Lurim’s sister to be a teenager at best, not a forty-year-old rugged sailor or something. Granted, she wouldn’t have minded smoking a pipe herself as a hobby.