Chapter Text
Children stories of Meteor City were made of mud, hunger, shadows, and blood. Their songs whisper loss, death, fear, and revenge. Their princesses screamed curses, their angels abducted babies, and their clawed fairies craved flesh.
Every child knew the story of the Choking Hand that grew in your back, that silently reached for your face from behind, covered your mouth and nose until you died without a sound. Every kid sang the Rat King song, who’d send an army of rats to devour you in your sleep if you didn’t offer him your last bite of meat. They told the story of the Ravenous Beast, devourer of babies and young children, that couldn’t be seen until you felt its poisonous breath on the back of your neck. The youngsters sang the Blood Weepers’ song, who abducted children on their tenth birthday to turn their bones into flutes. The stories kept the children’s fears away. They were their warnings and their lessons, their comforts and their lullabies, their toys and their plushies. It was all they could bring along with them in their dreams, and for many of them, it was all they had.
“Crying in shadows, with ruby-like tears wept
The angels appeared while small children slept…”
Chrollo was whispering the Blood Weepers’ melody on his way for a quick errand in the shantytown. It was the storm season and it had rained hard this night. Drops were still running on the corrugated roofs, and the neighbors were chatting under the eaves. Chrollo’s bare feet slipped on the wet boards thrown over the street holes and dirt, and splashed in the tiny stream of rain and used water that murmured below. “Watch out kid!” he heard, and he adroitly dodged the soapy water a neighbor threw by their door. Freshly washed clothes were suspended between the shacks, and Chrollo jumped to slap a white sheet under the outraged swears of its owner.
Chrollo liked the days after hails. Everyone in the outer districts took advantage of the extra water to do the laundry, and the lanes were attired with colorful fabrics and fresh smells. A feverish agitation kept everyone busy - here a roof was damaged, there the rain flooded a shack - and the bands of orphan children were rushing to bring over a handful of nails, a piece of tarpaulin, or just giving a hand for exchange of a meal, a place to sleep, a shirt not too used, or a basin of clear rainwater and a bit of soap.
Chrollo didn’t join them today. He waved in and out the lanes, ran up the main street, jumped on the roofs below, escaped the grumpy man who was tired of kids jumping on his roof, and quickly reached the commercial street. By way of street, it was just an open space sprinkled of corrugated iron canopies supported by wooden posts that sold cheap pieces of metal, fabric, strings, or anything useful that they picked off the rubbish. A little brazier exhaled an appetising scent of perfectly roasted rats and seagulls. A nervous poacher was discreetly proposing fresh fish from the lake. Orphan kids were trying to sell tin cans of rainwater. Every storekeeper loudly praised the value of their merchandise and how cheap it was, they’d swap it just for a raw fabric, a wool ball, ten nails (non-rusted), an apple, 10 000 jennies, or half a meteorian coin.
Chrollo was starving, and the scent of perfumed rat (was it herbs he smelled?) was terribly tempting, but he was pretty good at hunting rats anyway and could get some for free. The fruits looked like a less appetizing but more reasonable option. He knew it was good for his health, and his growth. He read it in a book Crab gave him.
He asked the merchant for the price. One coin for three apples. That was expensive. Fruits were rare in meteor because trees can’t grow well on its polluted ground. Chrollo considered to steal some himself, but fruit trees were deep into the inner city. He’d had to run long, and maybe couldn’t even approach the orchard, for his clothes and lack of shoes would tell on him as an outer kid, or even a Wanderer. The inner-city inhabitants were relatively richer; all the inner kids had a family and they went to the only meteorian school. Even if they had little, they still had more than the other Meteorians. They grabbed hold of their small privileges and rarely felt like sharing. Chrollo didn’t want to risk arrest for apples only. Apples wouldn’t bring him as much as energy he’d spend to get them. Kids in Meteor City were good at this kind of calculation.
He was staring at the coins in his palm, like he was counting them again, as if he could have made some mistake going to “four.” He could never know when and how much Crab would bring him, so he couldn’t know if he was contemplating his day’s wealth, week’s budget, or month’s misery. He was standing as close as possible to the brazier to take the most of the heat. The wind was still cold and moist, and rustled his long bang. Chrollo flattened his hair on his forehead and shivered. He only had his shirt to cover him.
He was so concentrated on his calculations that he startled when a child came upon him, very excited and speaking so quickly that Chrollo couldn’t understand what he wanted. The kid was a bit younger than him, maybe eight, and he looked like a Wanderer. Chrollo never met him once in his life, but wasn’t surprised to be accosted. It happened all the time. He was easy to approach and get along with almost everyone, including adults. He was often under the impression that he didn’t know many people, but everybody knew him.
Chrollo just patiently waited for the boy to recover his breath and a semblance of calm, so he could understand what he was repeating: “You’re the child who knows how to read?”
Chrollo noded. The little boy beamed, and finally exploded, “Clémence cut the beast!”
“What beast?”
“The Ravenous Beast!” yelled the kid. The merchants and buyers turned to them in curiosity and incredulity.
Nonetheless, Chrollo believed the kid immediately. Clémence wouldn’t have sent a kid to him for anything less. Another piece of knowledge that Chrollo took from books was that every story had a part of truth.
He was surprised, though. Despite her name, Clémence was merciless and tougher than adult men. This beast must be as strong and hasty as the story told to survive her notorious knife. She was only fourteen, but already had a solid reputation. She was the head of a gang of children, all much younger than her, and her protector. She usually ignored Chrollo. Kids who already had a protector weren’t her business.
“Clémence wants something from me?” he asked.
“Yes! She says you can recognize prints of animals that don’t live here usually. You’ll know what to do. You read a lot of books about monsters, she says.”
“To do what? And I only read two.”
The little boy rolled his eyes. “With the beast, of course! We cornered it, but Clémence is wounded.”
“You mean we can see it?”
“Yes!” shouted the boy, literally shaking with excitement.
Chrollo looked at the tempting food and the coins in his hand. He pressed his growling stomach. Finally followed the little boy out of the district, to the dump, where there were no shacks, no shed, nothing but the crude remain of the world’s rejections.
They run passed the Ghosts: adults in protective clothes who picked out the most dangerous trash, who earned their nickname to their white protection and their extremely low life expectancy. They ran up dump hills, they passed alongside the secondary water reservoir, and finally Chrollo could see from a distance the colorful beanie Clémence wore no matter the weather, that was almost as famous as her knife.
Clémence was sat on a rusted container and didn’t look well. Her left face was bruised and puffed, her left eye was turning black and her lips were cut. She was lifting up half of her beanie: a shapeless piece of wool that used to be orange that hardly contained her impressive mass of black hair. Chrollo noticed, a bit amused, that even in this situation, when a child had to press a piece of cold metal to prevent a massive bump on her head, she didn’t take it off completely.
She was as - usual surrounded - by her protected kids. Chrollo’s little guide blended with them, yelling “I found him! I found him!” and all shushed him. They looked both frightened and excited. An inflamed debate was ongoing. More than a debate, it sounded like a series of accusations. “You go, you’re too weak to survive anyway”; “No way, you stole my rat last week, you traitor!”;”you mean and useless, I don’t care if the beast eat you!”;”You’re blind, why would you be afraid of darkness?”; ”Why can’t just wait Clémence feel better? She’ll kill the beast and we’ll eat it.” Obviously, they all had the firm certainty of all the children in the world, that it was possible to whisper and yell in the same time.
Chrollo turned to Clémence, “What happened?” he asked with his normal voice.
It was just as if the beast had loomed. The children startled, and shushed him. “Lower! Don’t anger the beast!” signed a little girl with authority. They pointed at a kind of cave dug into the dirt.
That happened sometimes. Bad weather and winds weakened the detritus hills that collapsed on itself, and sometimes created these caves. They were dangerous, for the ceiling can cede any time, and stinky, with all the humidity accumulated. No one could live in there. Except a beast.
Clémence swallowed a can of rainwater that was held by a little boy, and answered with a lower voice, “This little bastard. Robbing my traps for weeks. Stole three rats today. But I heard it. After the rain this night, hard to be silent, if you don’t know the right paths. I ambushed it. But it’s so fast, so strong. It saw me. And it hit me,” she said raising her hand to her sore face. “Just one hit. Almost knocked-out. I just cut it, and it screamed, damn, it screamed.” The kids around except for the imperious girl shivered at this memory. “ I told the kids to follow the blood trail. Stops here. And too weak to fight. Not against that. Not now.”
Chrollo looked more carefully at the cave entrance. A blood streak was stretched to the thick shadows inside. “How does it look like?”
Clémence initiates a head shake but quickly stopped, grinning in pain. “Hard to say. Didn’t have the time.”
“How do you know it’s the beast if you didn’t see it clearly?” he asked again.
The imperious little girl rolled her eyes. “Did you pay attention? The scream . It’s the scream they hear at night. You sure hear it too.”
Chrollo noded. When the wind came from the east, he could hear it too. The terrifying howling of the beast, charged with fury, anger, and loneliness.
“So, mister bookish,” said Clémence. “You’re fond of stories. We cornered one. What do you propose.”
“I’ll enter,” he said without hesitation.
The children held their breath. The little girl asked around what he just said. “You can’t do that!” she signed when she was told. “The beast gonna eat you! Eat you alive !”
“It’s wounded and trapped, it will try to frighten me, I don’t think it will attack me,” explained Chrollo.
“And if it does?” asked Clémence.
“Then I’ll die knowing.”
Clémence shrugged. “As you please.“
Chrollo gave her the four coins, ”Take this. I won’t need it if I die.”
Clémence glanced at it with her working eye, “Are you fucking kidding me.”
The jaw of the little girl fell off, “Is this… money? Real money?”
Chrollo nodded. A rare privilege in Meteor City. Everything landed here one day or another, including currencies. But wealth hoarded outside Meteor meant nothing. Only the meteorian currency was allowed, and gold and diamonds weren’t edible. Many rich people sought refuge here trying to disappear from the law, in general for the exact reason they became rich, and discovered that the Council of Meteor had a very specific idea of the word “equality.” They couldn’t bear that foreigners took advantage of their poverty to rule them. Their controlled misery was also their freedom.
”You’re so weird,” muttered Clémence, but she pocketed the money anyway.
But Chrollo didn’t hear her. He was already up to the dent entrance.
He was trying to maintain a cold observation, but it was hard. He did believe a weakened animal would try nothing more than chase him away, but it was a logical deduction and - for all he knew - animals didn’t care about logic.
He had heard about the Beast for so long. The south Wanderers were the first ones being attacked. They sought refuge in the nearby districts and spread the story. They talked about the devastated south areas, the plundered henhouses, the eggs crashed, the rats eaten and deserting the area, the menacing famine; and above all, the crying abandoned babies that nothing remained of but a spot of blood by the time adults found them; the missing children, disappeared without a scream, without an alarm, until they were found dozens of miles away, the bloody shreds of their clothes and their cleaned bones carved by teeth marks.
Chrollo had found one of these child corpses by the lake two years ago, and even if he had seen dead bodies before, this sight had been repulsive enough to turn his stomach. He felt a vague nausea at this memory, while he bent over to look into the dent’s darkness.
The ceiling was low, and the cave deep. It was cold, humid and stinking like the dead corpse of a giant animal. Chrollo felt like he was entering the maw of a monster. The wind whistled between the sharp cracks in the walls like a difficult breathing. Chrollo listened carefully. No other sound besides the dent breathing, no move but his own shadow. He stepped inside. A whistle. He froze. A stone hit his forehead with a devilish precision.
That… was unexpected.
Chrollo rubbed his forehead and understood he made an easy target by standing backlit. He had to move forward deeper into the darkness.
“Hello?” he said, “ I mean you no harm.”
He escaped the second stone, now that he expected it and his eyes were accommodated to the darkness. “You’re seriously wounded. Do you know the story of the Choking Hand?”
Not a sound, neither a stone. “It’s a story from the Wanderers. If you’re cut, a strange hand slide into the wound, runs under your skin, grows in your back, and will kill you if you don’t cut one of your own limbs. Its compelled to replace it, and become inoffensive. It’s a story about gangrene. It teaches children that cutting off their limbs can save their life. It’s important. Every cut can turn to gangrene here. If you stay in this moist and dirty cave with an untreated injury, you’ll die.”
Chrollo escaped the third stone, but not the fourth one that came right after, and hit his shoulder.
“I’ll be right back with all you need to heal.”
The scream made him startle. He crouched down and covered his ears. It was unbearable, and the cave amplified the sound to an unsupportable level. Chrollo felt his arm hair bristling. And it stopped like it started.
“Errr.. O... Okay.” stuttered Chrollo, his breath slightly shortened. He walked backwards, attentive to any sign of attack.
He left and blinked at the sudden light. The kids were staring at him like he was a ghost. Most of them still had fingers in their ears. Chrollo walked to Clémence, ”Well I’m alive. Bring me back my money.”
“What money,” she said tit for tat.
Chrollo smiled. “Fair enough. Well, I’m going to the pharmacy. Do you need me to bring you something to heal you properly? Unless you’re ready to cut your own head off? You might be used to it now. “
“Fair enough,” she snorted, while handing him two coins. He was sure he gave her four, but said nothing.
He didn’t get along with Clémence that much, but he respected her like he respected everyone who was able to discern truth in stories. Clémence was only eight when she fell into a dirt pit, got stuck two days, then had been found again with a severely injured left arm and a fever that meant no good. She cut her arm off herself two days after, survived, and replaced it with a mechanism of leather and sharp blades that justified her reputation. As long as Chrollo knew, the Beast was the first entity to survive it.
The Beast or whatever that was.
Chrollo pocketed the two coins and started to walk back to his district. He heard Clémence behind him, “Did you see it. How does it look like. How can I kill it.”
“It has two hands, uses tools and likes stories” was what Chrollo thought. What he said was: “I don’t know. Where is the pharmacy today?”
Clémence shrugged, showing her ignorance.
The pharmacy was a big wheelbarrow with a fan sat on top protecting from sun and rain cases full of phials, bottles, dubious alcohol, soaps, bandages, and dressings. It was pushed by a man versed in medicine and his family, handing their knowledge in and there around the outer city. When Chrollo finally found him, the pharmacist asked him by whom the treatments were needed.
“Two kids,” answered Chrollo without a hesitation. “One is hurt at the head.”
“And the other?”
Chrollo thought fast. Two stones had been thrown one right after the other, both with precision, so it wasn’t wounded on its arm. It could see and aim well, so not the head. Chrollo almost slapped his forehead incomprehension. Of course. Clémence cut it after it hit her, she said she was almost knock-out, so she fell.
“The lower leg,” he said with assurance.
“Hum, a cut on lower leg bleeds a lot, in general, maybe it’s not as severe as it seems,” said the pharmacist, handing him bandages and phials. Chrollo, for a mysterious reason, felt relieved. “But if the bleeding doesn’t stop, bring the guy here. My wife will take care of them,” he said pointing a woman with vivid pink hair in the back, waving bandages with dexterity, with her little girl as alike as two peas in a pod who watched her work with concentration.
“Your wife is the best, she saved my foot. Thank you mister, good afternoon madam, bye Machi!” Crab had told him how important politeness could be, and Chrollo put effort into remembering names.
He was out of breath and more hungry than ever when he came back to the den. Clémence had carefully kept the kids away from the cave. Chrollo gave her an ointment, a phial of disinfectant, a little dressing for her lips, cut the soap in two and gave her one half.
“What will you do with the second half,” she asked. Chrollo already had noticed her specific way of speaking. She never asked questions, she ordered you to answer.
“It’s for me. My commission.”
“You took a lot,” she said eyeing at his paper bag.
“The pharmacist didn’t have change, I had to take for two coins.”
Clémence looked at him deeply in his eyes, with a bright look that made him uncomfortable. “You know the beast had eaten many kids, right.”
“Right.”
“You know it leaves our reserve dry. It’s starving my kids. It’s dangerous. It needs to die.”
“I know.”
“Don’t try to approach it. It will kill you.”
“I’m not under your responsibility. By the way, the pharmacist said if you faint or vomit, you’ll probably die.”
“Won’t happen,” she said, standing up. She staggered a little, but kept her balance. “I owe you one.” By these words, she recognized that Chrollo was allowed to ask her a favor later. It was a tacit rule in Meteor, and Clémence always respected her words.
She gathered the kids and led them to her territory, where nobody but them were allowed to come into. Chrollo suddenly thought the Beast was pretty courageous to steal Clémence’s food. Or really hungry.
He came by the den entrance, bending over. “They’re gone, now. You can show up.” He didn’t expect the Beast to do so, but it cost nothing to try.
Not a move in the darkness. Neither a stone. “Here. You can throw stones, so you can hold things. You listen to stories, so you can understand instructions. I brought you soap, you need to wash your hands first. And disinfectant. It burns, don’t swallow it or pour it in your eyes or anything. The dressing needs to be changed every day. Tell me if you need anything else.” Chrollo didn’t expect an answer either. But he wanted to know if the beast could speak. “I’m coming back tomorrow.” He didn’t plan to say that, it just uttered by itself. But he surprisingly realized he meant it.
He walked backwards slowly and hid behind the rusted container where Clémence sat a minute ago. He waited long. When he started to feel impatient, he recounted his time tables because Crab told him it was important, and then he thought about the story he made in his head about a family of twelve children that lived adventures and the adventures always changed. He started to feel pins and needles in his legs, he really wanted to move but forced himself to stay still. And it was rewarded. After maybe an hour, a little blurry grey shadow troubled the darkness at the entrance. It lasted the time of a blink. But the bag with aids had disappeared.
Chrollo was feeling light and happy when he came back home - came back to the place he called home. It was nothing but three walls and a roof, and a heavy curtain as a door. It was just a separation in space, barely more tangible than the words “inside” and “outside”, and didn’t mean anything else. It protected him from the wind, but not cold; from the sun, but not heat. But it was a space of his own, and it was a luxury. A luxury he owed to Crab.
Chrollo had been found as a baby, floating on a little raft of braided twigs in the middle on the old main water reservoir. Some mothers did this, to be sure their child will be found quickly, and to protect them from the rats and insects. Nothing explained why Crab decided to take care of Chrollo. It wasn’t a thing from people here. Children organized on their own. They were called “the Wanderers” because they lived in the dump itself, outside every district, even the more excentered, moving from place to place according to their needs. Sometimes a child was adopted, but it was rare. Locals who were ready to start a family in this place often already had a family of their own.
Chrollo had lived the Wanderer life, fed by pregnant women, then by his peers, until he reached four. Then Crab took him along with him in what Chrollo called “home.” He didn’t know how Crab called it. He didn’t know many things about Crab. He didn’t even know how he lost his pinkies and ring fingers, giving to his hands the shape of pincers. Chrollo didn’t even know his real name, or what he was doing all day.
But he sure knew what he was drinking. When he entered the hut, the stench of alcoholic sweat seized his throat. Crab was already snoring on the table. Chrollo smiled, and covered him with a curtain. He was relieved. Crab wasn’t pleasant to be around when he was drunk, and he was always drunk.
The hut was big enough for a small table, a stool, and a crate pushed under the table that Chrollo used as a chair when Crab was at home. There was also his bed, a mattress put right on the beaten earth, that was already too small when he was six. Crab didn’t have one. He hardly slept at home. Weeks could pass without Chrollo seeing him.
Chrollo silently opened the crate. Under the high pile of worthless foreigner banknotes that Crab kept for whatever reason, a couple of hard corn biscuits were going stale in the bottom. Chrollo knew he’d feel hunger more cruelly if they ate them. It was still early, but the sun was sinking, he couldn’t hunt, so he’d rather go to bed with an empty stomach.
Chrollo took the candle under his mattress, and a book he had already read seventeen times that missed a dozen of pages. Chrollo liked to imagine what happened during the missing pages. He built up stories where the kids in the books temporarily lost their home, their parents, and had to live in a dump, with no one to love them, and he fell asleep and dreamed of the Ravenous Beast.
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He was awakened by an appetizing scent on the hunt. He started to salivate before he even opened his eyes. He swallowed, his stomach rumbling.
“Meat.”
He jumped on his feet and sat on the crate, eagerly staring at Crab who was chewing a rat leg. Chrollo’s tongue was playing in his mouth, as he was already eating.
“What are you looking at, with this stupid face?” asked Crab.
“Are you going to eat the whole rat?”
“Maybe.”
Chrollo waited. He hated when Crab did that. He knew they had to put him in a good mood.
“It’s a big rat. Nice catch,” he flattered him.
“I only need to take it off the floor. It was in a box, behind the curtain. All clean, already cleared. The box was closed by a bandage, though. Drenched with blood. Disgusting,” he said, sucking a bone.
Chrollo blinked. “It’s mine.”
Crab snorted. “What next? I found it, so it’s mine.”
“It’s a gift.”
“Yep, a gift from the gods for the good man I am to deal with you,” ended Crab. But he left the back of the rat for Chrollo who pounced on it. He ate it all in a few bites, and regretted he did so fast when he finished. It was too little. It was always too little. Licking his lips, he looked around in the hope there would be another rat. Clémence had said the beast stole three. But obviously it was all.
Crab chucked three books on the table, without a word. Chrollo looked at the covers. One was an old crime fiction, the second the user’s guide for a water heater, and Chrollo squinted on the third. “I can’t read this language.”
Crab shrugged. “Then learn it or use the book to light the fire.”
“Do you want me to tell you what happened in the fiction?”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t read.”
“If it interested me, I learnt,” he said, picking from his pocket an exhausted harmonica, drawing on whining notes. It was the signal the conversation was over. Chrollo held back a sigh of relief. Crab hated to talk, but hated it even more when Chrollo didn’t try. Adults were mysterious.
He took the biscuits off the crate, ate them quickly, and ran out the hunt. A gust of wind almost pushed him back. A solid storm was on the way. He crossed the outer districts, passed the secondary water reservoir and rushed to the beast dent, entering with no care, and shouted, “Thanks for the rat!” He waited a couple of seconds, catching his breath. He didn’t say Crab had eaten the most. “It’s very kind of you.” And indeed, it was. In Meteor City, when a service was done, and the helped one said nothing, the benefit was lost and nothing should be expected in return. The Beast didn’t say anything, so….
“Wait,” understood Chrollo. “You can’t speak, can you?”
Chrollo listened. Not a sound in the dent, but the furious winds whistles. Maybe the beast was gone. Maybe it wasn’t even their dent, they just seek refuge in it when they saw it. Chrollo brushed his long bang back to clear his eyes and looked deeper in the darkness. A stormy wind was rising, and the difficult breath of the cave was even more strident. The sun was on his back, unlike the evening before, his long shadow was walking on the walls, he could see more clearer, and he guessed, in the darkest side, two reflections that were probably eyes.
“Are you a beast for real? You know the language here, for you understood my explanations yesterday. But you can’t speak. Is it your mouth? Your maw?”
A muffled groan came from the darker side.
“Yeah, I understand, it’s none of my business. Sorry I didn’t mean to be rude.”
The groan slowly faded down. Chrollo sat leg crossed at the entrance.
“Why do you scream at night?”
Chrollo let a pause. For politeness, since the Beast cared about it.
“I used to scream too when I was little. Especially at stormy nights, when Crab wasn’t here. Crab is the guy who gives me food and sometimes sleeps at the same place as me. I still don’t like thunder, but at least I stopped screaming.”
He looked at the darkest place. The eyes had moved a little aside. The vague fury silhouette was hard to be deciphered. Chrollo smiled: “I don’t know how you found out where I live, but now that you know, you can sleep at home sometimes. You can come tonight, a storm is coming, I’d like to have a little company. Crab probably won't be here, he never sleeps at home two nights in a row, and even if he does, I don’t think he would notice your presence before the morning.” Now that he was thinking about it, he never saw Crab having a sober sleep. “There is no door at my place, as you saw it. I know how scary it is to let yourself go to sleep when you don’t know where the danger will come from. I won’t be scared of you.” He said the last sentence to be polite, and realized he meant it. He wasn't afraid at all.
“I’m going to look for a thing or two to eat. Maybe I’ll push to the orchard. Do you know where the orchard is? Do you want fruits? Do you eat fruit? How are your teeth? Are they long and pointy, or large and flat? Or both? Can you show me your teeth if you can’t speak? I can recognize animals regimen by looking at their teeth. I read a book about it. Everybody outside Meteor seems to throw out their books. I wonder why.”
A stone flew far above his head, thrown in a bell curve, landing outside the dent. Chrollo understood, “You’re telling me to go. To the orchard, or to go in general because you don’t want to see me?”
Another stone rolled gently to Chrollo’s feet. He beamed and stood excitedly. “Okay, I’ll be right back with fruits! Do you want water too? It rained a lot lately, all the reservoirs may be full. You know where the reservoirs are? Do you have your own? The secondary one if not that far but with your damaged leg it may be difficult. Clémence has her own nearby but it’s not a good idea to steal her…” A stone flew in his direction, not with a lot of force, so Chrollo dodged it easily, but it was undoubtedly aiming his head. Chrollo giggled. “Ok, I get it, I’m going. Wait for me!”
Chrollo ran outside the dent, and came back a couple of seconds after. “I’m glad we’re friends!” he shouted, before running again.
In the dent obscurity, nothing was to be seen, but the shining reflection of black eyes, that blinked and moved ahead. A silhouette silently walked on three, dragging a leg, with fluid and quick gestures that imperceptibly rustled a thick fur of the exact color of the cave walls. The silhouette came closer to the dent entrance, keeping an eye out, unmoving, waiting, the sunrise carving shadows under their eyebrows, frown in circumspection.
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There were stories, and there were legends. Stories were about the present. They had no real beginning, no real end. They warned about danger, they expressed fears, stupefaction, they reminded the listeners that not everything in this world was understandable.
Legends were about the past. Legend lays in their end. A protagonist becomes a hero only if they die. An adventure becomes a saga when everyone is back home.
The Starving Beast would become a legend, when the dent, shaken by the stormy winds, would collapse on itself, not leaving any survivors.