Chapter 4
Miranda Cortez should have listened to her grandmother. The very thought came to mind as she hid in a thicket of bushes and small trees, trying to hide herself and calm her huffing and puffing from the running she had done before she hopped into the shrubbery. She tried to slowly and quietly wipe away the sweat on her face with the collar of her tank-top before trying to wipe the sweat off her arms onto her shorts as she cuddled herself into a small ball on the dirt floor. She tried pulling her bright, burgundy-red hair into a ponytail as well as she could with hair shorter than her shoulders to prevent loose hairs from falling and leading a trail to her. Some daemons were much more prone to sniffing people out by their body odor or hair, and since she only caught a glimpse of whatever type of giant beast it was before she stepped on a twig and alerted its attention, she didn’t want to risk getting caught.
Once she got as much of the sweat off of her as she could, she tried taking slower, deeper breaths to slow down her heart rate. There were daemons who were able to hear the heartbeat of their prey, and she would rather have been safe than sorry. She didn’t know if the beast had even been remotely interested in finding out where she might have gone to… but between hearing of the large demon the size of a housing hut that could fit twenty people that chose to ignore an entire small group of farmers, and a smaller daemon that size of a taller man that slit the throats of more than a dozen people before it was hunted down, she didn’t think it wise to take miscalculated guesses. Wouldn’t the fact that you walked beyond our property without my permission be a miscalculated mistake? She could hear her grandmother’s voice scolding her already, if she made it back in one piece that is.
It took a moment for Miranda’s breathing to slow down and for her to feel her perspiration subside, but she knew better than to move. According to the records her grandmother had left on one of the dozens of bookshelves she had, as well as the knowledge of the locals, some daemons were dumb enough to act on animalistic impulses without thought or reason. But at the same time, there were daemons who could be severe strategists, taking out entire groups of skilled hunters or warriors not through only strength, but with deception and craftiness that left people feeling uneasy. That was probably the scariest thing about daemons, Miranda concluded. The fact that no matter how many daemons you may face in your life, very few of them were similar in their characteristics, so it was hard to gauge what you might be in store for.
It was a whole five heart-wrenching minutes of silence aside from the small breeze, causing leaves and branches to give a dance of unrest, and Miranda had the inclination to move and look around, but something inside her told her that was foolish thinking. Yes, a savage daemon would have been ripping trees out of place to look for her by now, but the more calculated type may have been a patient monster waiting for her to give her location away. It wasn’t as if she had heard the vile creature move at all, which would be hard to miss seeing as the monster was nearly as big as half of the large house she and her grandmother lived in. From what she could see in the flash of vision she caught of the beast before turning around and running away, it seemed it had four large and well-muscled arms that were used to help walk on its fists like a gorilla, but its skin looked more reptile-like. Either way, the monster was far too big to simply walk away unnoticed. Miranda knew she would feel the shocking tremors of its footsteps in the ground by its massive weight, but she heard and felt nothing the whole time.
Another five minutes passed before she grew suspicious of the silence going on around her. Fear that the daemon may have had some sort of light-footed ability she wasn’t aware of made her start to mildly panic. What if this creature of death had made its way closer to her without her realizing? What if it was finding a way to track her down, and the fact that she was sitting in one place was only helping the monster find her? Miranda, as soon as she saw fit, slowly made way to her knees, only to stop immediately once she shuffled leaves next to her loudly. She opened her ears more, and tried to hear if anything else in the tropical forest had shifted or moved, but there was only the same consistent silence. She moved slower, doing all she could to remain silent, until her head was poking out of the bushes. She looked over in the area where the monster had been residing, and she no longer saw anything. She looked around, and saw nothing other than trees and the deepening forest to the left of her, and the forest begin to thin out and make way to the beach shores to her right. The daemon, and all signs of it ever existing, seemed to have vanished.
Until she had felt a big drop of water on her hand. At first, she thought it may have been a drop of the usual afternoon rain, but she noticed the droplet was much bigger than a regular rain drops. And when two more of the same size dropped on the same place, Miranda’s heart froze as she looked upward to see the daemon’s chameleon-looking head, drool dripping from its mouth and eyes locked onto her, and its body a shimmering outline that was otherwise invisible. When she locked eyes with it, it began to hiss softly and she saw it prepare its body to move in for the kill.
But before anything- before she could scream or run, before the monster could hop down and attack her- there was a heavy thud from up above her, and when she looked up once more, she had seen a large javelin sticking out of the daemon’s shoulder as it let out a loud roar. After the roar of the monster, she could hear the triumphant tribal war-cry of the local village of Pente her and her grandmother lived right outside of. A dozen men dressed in only boiled leather armor and sandals came charging from the beach end of the jungle and towards Miranda, who was frozen by the action until one of them called her name and yelled at her to start running. It took a second javelin to the beast and it’s cry of pain to snap Miranda out of it and get to her feet.
The distance between her and the men from the tribe had only been a short thirty feet or so, but the run from danger into safety seemed to be eternal. Her back was fully turned on the now-rampaging and upset daemon who already had eyes on her to eat, but she dared not look back at the chance of slowing herself down. She sprinted as fast as she could, eyes kept on the tribe, watching as two or three of them had their eyes locked on the daemon and arms positioned to launch more javelins if needed. She didn’t look anywhere else until she ran and dove into the arms of one of the men, relief filling her as the man’s arms roped around her in safety, pulling her back towards the rear-end of the group.
The daemon dropped from the trees, fully exposing its body, and let out a roar that could have been heard for miles. But the tribe responded in kind with two more javelins into the monster’s torso and a choir of their own roars and battle-cries. The daemon, appearing not sure whether to fight or flee, pounded a couple of its fists on the ground and gave another roar, attempting to appear ferocious. Two more javelins were tossed, but missed, and the tribe growled back in the same type of ferocity. The daemon eyed the number of people around and seemed to slowly dismiss the possibility of fighting and turned around to slowly escape at first and then falling into a full sprint into the forest when it knew the tribe wasn’t going to follow. The group of men cheered and howled at the monster’s weak surrender and congratulated each other on a bloodless battle with a daemon.
“Miranda,” Oscar, the man who lead the village’s warrior and scout division, and the man who caught her as she ran to the group, looked at her with concern, eyeing her body to see if there were any injuries. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, Oscar,” she said, winded. She could still feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins and her heart was beating like a hammer. “Thank you, guys. I definitely don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t show up.”
“What are you doing here all by yourself?” another one of the huntsmen questioned. “Does your grandmother know that you were out here?”
“Uhhhh...” was all Miranda could manage to say slowly and not sure how to respond without getting scolded, but the men already knew the answer she hid so poorly. The entire group of men sighed in either frustration or disappointment.
“Really, Miranda? You know your grandmother is the smartest woman in all the villages near us for the next fifty miles, maybe all of Paiyi, but you never seem to listen to her. Why do you go in search for danger so often?”
“I don’t look for danger,” she objected. “I simply want to go out and see the world for myself. All I ever get to see is the inside of my house, and only once a month do me and grandma head to the village to see if you guys need any help with repairs or medicine or anything. Do you think I want to be cooped up in a house for most of my life?”
“Better to be cooped up and alive then curious and dead.” another one of the huntsmen lectured.
“Yeah,” Oscar agreed. “I believe you know the words, ‘Curiosity killed the cat?’” he asked rhetorically.
“Yes, I know the words,” Miranda said before breaking out into a grin. “But what everybody seems to forget is that there’s a second part of the saying. ‘Curiosity killed the cat, but getting the answers brought it back.’ So...” Miranda gave a shrug and a sheepish smile that would extinguish the shame she felt from the huntsmen for not listening to her grandmother. Most of the men simply sighed at her thick-headed ways of never listening to anyone before saying they should all return back to home. The men agreed to head back to the village while Oscar offered to walk Miranda back to her home, as long as they walked along the beach. Even though there had been daemons found on the beaches and in the shallow waters before, it seemed a majority of them had come from the jungles and forests all over Paiyi, and their numbers grew vastly the more secluded the areas of the forests had been.
Miranda had given her goodbyes to the rest of the squad of hunters, and they all requested they send their regards to her grandmother. After they started to part ways, Miranda couldn’t help but sigh and give a sheepish look at Oscar.
“You guys probably think it’s pretty stupid that I went into the forest, huh?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t say ‘stupid’...” Oscar said with a small smile on his face as he looked for a less insulting description. “I mean, it’s not the wisest of decisions you’ve ever made, but you’re Eve’s granddaughter, which means you have somewhat of a decent head on your shoulders. You know more about daemons more than any other woman I’ve met, besides your grandmother. You’re probably also the person who’s seen more of them in person and lived to tell about it. We’ve been saving your skin from daemons for years, yet that doesn’t seem to stop you. There’s a type of bravery in searching for answers that you and your grandmother share, and I respect that.”
The compliment made Miranda blush a little. She had known how much all of the villagers revered her grandmother, and being compared to her by them was possibly one of the highest compliments they could ever give. But in all of her experiences with the people of the village and Miranda and her grandmother, she had to say it was a double-edge sword. On one hand, her and her grandmother were seen as types of saviors who provided plenty of services and materials that helped the village as much as they could. Her grandmother was originally a well-respected doctor and scientist in Ryn several decades ago, so she had the knowledge to give the people of Paiyi work around whatever their anti-technology and ascetical mentality as a nation had been. Ever since Adriel had nearly wiped the rest of the world out with the people of Paiyi thousands of years ago, they had made sure to keep their lives humble and simple, only becoming farmers, miners, hunters and gatherers to make and gather materials to house themselves, and all excess things they didn’t use were delivered to other nations to help them build their own cities. Miranda’s grandmother had been wise enough to not detour them from their philosophy, but was able to offer guidance in bettering their lives with the tools they allowed themselves to have.
But because she was the granddaughter of Eve, the great scientific mind who was born and raised in Ryn, the villagers had been friendly, yet Miranda could tell there was a distance between her and them. They were always kind and giving, always smiling and waving and inviting them to whatever local feasts they would put on, almost making them feel like they were a part of their group. But in the last ten years, ever since she was twelve and developing into a woman, it seemed like whenever she started to have a crush on any of the boys in the village, they would avoid her. At first, she thought it was all in her head, that she was imagining and exaggerating things much like young teens do. And then after six or seven boys doing the same thing back-to-back, she started to think that perhaps she was unattractive, and that was a feeling that held as truth for years.
But as she grew older, and her body started to fill out in all the right areas, and she started to find a fashion that both suited her sense of style, as well as compliment her curves, she started noticing the boys would catch secondary glances her way, but pretend they weren’t looking whenever Miranda looked back in their general direction. The older she got, the more and more Miranda had started to believe she was not only attractive, but beautiful even.
She started to compare her looks to others around her or what people had spoken about when the mentioned “beauty”. She had heard some of the drunken village gossip over campfires or a feast, men being men and talking about women in the village and their bodies in loud whispers they thought were quiet enough to not be heard. She had read romance novels and the description of the maidens that wooed men in the stories, and she had seen old fashion magazines her grandmother brought back from Ryn, and Miranda was noticing that these women didn’t have much more than her, and were considered to be the idols of beauty.
She didn’t understand what it was. She knew her breasts were full and perky enough, but not overly ample or disproportionate to her body size. Her backside was taut and tight, yet still had a firm roundness that she had thought seemed inviting when she studied herself in the mirror. Her hair wasn’t nearly as long as most of the women in the village, which was a cultural sense of attraction, but she had heard and seen plenty of men talk and ogle over woman who had shorter hair like her, and some of them even had the same shade of color. She had been nice and friendly, but not naively and gullible to fall for some of the jokes and tales the men liked to spread, and she always stood her ground if somebody had been mean or aimed to insult her for whatever reason. All in all, she thought she was a pretty good candidate for seduction, and yet nobody seemed to show interest in her outside of a platonic fashion, or at least nobody wouldn’t try to show it.
Miranda peeked at Oscar while he was looking off into the ocean, lost in thought. He was ten years her elder, but he was built broad and fit, his shoulders looking like large melons. The leather armor that covered him seemed to hug his body tightly, and not because the armor was small on a normal sized man. She peeked at the outline of his manhood, and as far as she could tell, it hung and swung as he moved more than most of the men she had paid attention to in the village. He had long, bright-red hair that was tied into a long ponytail to keep it out from his face, a long scar running over his left eye, and several more scars dressed his body from head to toe. Oscar was the type of hero that she read about in those romance novellas that saved the maiden and made love to her. And although Oscar wasn’t her favorite person to have long and meaningful talks with, the thought of him picking her up and throwing her in a bed of flowers and having his way with her was a fantasy that she was trying to stop herself from getting lost in.
As much as Miranda loved to learn, as many books and charts and graphs she had studied and consumed, as knowledgeable as she may have been, it seemed that both love and sex were two things she knew she couldn’t fully understand, and that made her want it all the more. Through all the romance books and philosophy, she had read on what love could be, there wasn’t a single opinion she could latch onto that made full sense to her. Some writers wrote as if love were to be a series of sexual escapades with a person you already enjoyed spending your time with. Some writers made it seem as if sex was only the icing on the cake, and having deep meaning talks and connecting on a special level had been what love was about. But she had made plenty of friends with whom she had a special connection with and had conversations that went from the beginning of an evening feast all the way until dawn broke. Yet, she didn’t think it was the same feeling as the books she read. Perhaps there was something about this whole “sex” thing that tied it all together? But it wasn’t like the men in the villages near her would give her a chance to find out for herself. She felt like she had to tie somebody down and force themselves into her for her to-
“You’re awfully quiet over there.” Oscar said after a couple minutes of them walking. “What are you thinking about.”
“Nothing!” she blurted out, blushing and trying to cover up the perverted thoughts that were running through her mind. She meant to look at him, but her eyes seemed to stumble, because she ended up looking directly at his manhood, which forced her to look away from him, her face as red as a beet. He looked at her in mild confusion, but he didn’t press further on the matter, something she was thankful for.
The two walked along the beach until the local lighthouse was within view a dozen miles along the coast, a landmark that helped the locals know they were close to home. The people of Paiyi had learned that it was wise to set up villages between the beaches and forests. Go too far onto the beach and your village risked being taken over by storms, tides, and water-based daemons, which was the heaviest fear. But if you went too far into the forest, it was easy to get lost and even easier to be tracked and taken down by one of the many daemons that lived and hid away in the forest. Villages wanted to be in enough shrubbery to help cover their village from eyes that were far away, and close enough to the beach to escape and fight foes in an area where there was nowhere to hide. Every village she ever visited with her grandmother while she dropped off medicine had been placed in the same distance away from the shores and the depths of the forest.
Miranda and Oscar walked away from the warm, white sands of the beach and onto the grass that lead them into a thicket of tree branches, leaves, and bushes. After making their way through all the plants, they finally found a web of subtle trails hiding in the tall grass, taking a true native to the area to know which path lead where. They found the familiar one that lead towards both her home and the villages and took it once they searched behind them and made sure they weren’t being tracked or followed. Miranda had thought of all the times she had gotten lost by following the wrong trail, thinking it would take her back home. One time she ended up in a village several miles away from the nearest village she could recognize. Another time it led her to the mouth of a rocky cave that seemed to dive downward into the ground, frigid cold air flowing from the depths. The dark and the cold were enough to give her the sense that going in alone was more than a bad idea.
It took nearly ten minutes before Miranda recognized the outskirts of the Pente, the village Oscar and the other huntsmen were from. But the outskirts of the village were all she was going to see; her own home had been a sharp turn away from the village and uphill one of the smaller hills that morphed into mountains half a day’s travel on horseback. The hill she looked on had been tucked away behind a family of trees so that those who may have been looking for their house wouldn’t find it until they were practically on her property. But the view of her home had overlooked not only Pente, but two other nearby villages as well as a face-front view of the crystal blue waters of the ocean. She was blessed with having the view of the sunrise to her left in the early mornings, and the sunset to her right when the rest of the village had started to head inside after finishing their daily chores and work.
It wasn’t until Oscar and Miranda passed away from Pente and started making way up the hill she lived on that made her realize how far away she had traveled from home by accident. She had only meant to go for a small ten-minute walk, maybe look around and soak in the nature that was around her, and head back. But, as much to her grandmother’s dismay, Miranda’s curiosity got the best of her, which is almost always did. There was something that was incredibly irritating that itched at the back of her mind whenever she grew curious about something and didn’t look into it. And that annoying itch wouldn’t go away for days, even weeks sometimes, before she finally gave in and went to search for answers. Curiosities that ranged from, “How many grapes can I fit into my mouth at once” type of questions, to, “What is the weirdest looking daemon that roams around our villages?” And even though some of the curiosities that inquired to her were more than dangerous, she felt that lacking an answer was just as harmful, but more in the way of the mind and spirit than the body. Her grandmother who was used to being a scientist searching for facts over opinions, she couldn’t argue with the inexplicable need to look into something and get answers.
The two climbed the hill, but Oscar stopped the moment they reached the top and reached the series of trees that surrounded the actually building. Miranda walked a little closer to her house before she realized he had stopped walking. She turned around, and saw him standing as if there were an invisible barrier separating them.
“Are you guys really that scared of my house?” she teased, giving him a wry grin.
“You know it’s not fear that keeps us away from your house. Your grandmother is allowed to use the tools and machines from her country in any fashion she wants as long as she doesn’t interfere with our rules of the land banishing use of advanced technology or sciences beyond what is useful. And we are more than welcome to aid you guys and welcome you into our village with open arms, so long as you are respectful of our rules, which you have been.” Oscar cracked a smile. “See, unlike you, I can let go of certain curiosities where I know it’s best to leave things be.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Oh, how boring your life must be.” Miranda teased again as Oscar turned to walk back down the hill, but he turned his head over his shoulder before he was out of view.
“So boring, it almost makes staying alive seem like it’s worth it.” he winked and disappeared beyond leaves and bushes that filled the pathway to her home.
Miranda smiled at Oscar’s last comment before turning around and taking in the view of her home. During this time of day when the sun begins to set and give the world a soft, orange hue. The small trees and tall hordes of bamboo that surrounded her house danced in the soft breeze, and the small garden that was peeking out from around her adobe-made home. The red clay material that covered her house made it look like a larger version of the huts that people lived in in the villages, but she knew that the actual build and mold of the house was a lot more modern and ventilated better. There had been an actual sturdy roof underneath all of the hay and other straw-like material that had covered the top. And while most of the houses in the village housed three or four people, and the largest of them holding up to ten people, her home was at least twice the size of the largest hut in any of the near-by villages, and that wasn’t counting the underground basement that her grandmother turned into a laboratory, the lab itself was as big and wide as the house, only it was three stories underground. As much as Miranda could guess what the villagers had imagined their home to look like, she knew they had no idea about the basement level of the house. She sometimes wondered what they would think about the idea of having rooms underground that were still safe, even without windows.
She headed inside of the house after punching in a code into an alarm system next to the front door. “1-3-5-7-9” was not only easier to remember with it being all of the prime numbers, but it also made the shape of an “Z” on the keypad. She heard the alarm pad peep, and the door unlocked as she let herself in and closed the door behind her. She scanned the large lobby that turned into a living room that connected to a kitchen and a hallway that lead to five other bedrooms, most of the interior was polished oak and pine. All of the floors, ceiling, walls and furniture that been a series of different shades of brown, tan, and gray. Although the bedrooms and laboratory had been furnished differently with different cloths, dyed materials and occasional metals, it seemed the areas where guest may come and be welcomed had been furnished with the most natural of substances to appease the Paiyian law. Something Miranda always thought was weird since they almost never had visitors. Miranda could count the number of people who had stepped through the front door on both of her hands with a few fingers to spare in the time she spent living here.
“Grandma, I’m home!” she called out, not exactly sure where her grandmother may have been. She waited for a response, and continued listening to the silence before she spoke again. “Grandma?” she called out again, this time moving to see where she might have been. She had checked the kitchen, which had been dressed with white-colored wooden cabinets and charcoal granite counter tops, a large stove and oven, and an even larger stainless-steel refrigerator, but no grandma. She had peered in all five of the bedrooms, including her own because her grandma could be a bit nosy and try to learn about the things in life Miranda may have kept secret in fear of it being too personal or embarrassing. But this time, she didn’t find her in any of the rooms, and even the bathroom wasn’t occupied. That could only mean one other place she could be: her lab.
Miranda walked toward one of the bookshelves that sat in the center of the living room wall, in between windows that let the sun in during sunset. She picked up a large green book that was supposed to be an entire encyclopedia on the biology and various families of mushrooms, but when Miranda skipped to the middle of the book, there was a square hole engraved in the pages, and another keypad. Miranda punched in the numbers “4-5-6-2-8-0”, numbers she knew her grandmother had chosen on purpose, but she didn’t know the story behind them. Her grandma was a woman shrouded in mystery, and all of Miranda’s life, it seemed like she never thought to try to act differently.
Once the numbers were pushed in, she closed the book and put it back in place quickly; if she didn’t, the door wouldn’t unlock or open. Her grandmother thought having just digits as a password was too easy, and figured she needed to through in some kind of hitch in the plans of anybody who may have tried breaking into the lab. It was something her grandmother always seemed to be worry about, but based off the reactions of the villager and Miranda’s home, and how much they avoided it like a plague, she couldn’t imagine who in the world would try to break into their home, let alone the lab.
The bookshelf pushed itself back into the wall a couple of feet before sliding upward into the ceiling, revealing a thick, iron, bullet-proof door, two feet thick of pure steel. That was something else Miranda didn’t understand about the lab: if anybody from Paiyi was going to try and break into the lab by force, Miranda didn’t see why it was necessary to have such a large and obnoxious door when all of the greatest and strongest warriors in the land used spears, clubs, bows and arrows, dull swords, and plenty of useless weapons against a door so large and secure. It was almost as if her grandmother was anticipating somebody from beyond Paiyi to break in or something. Miranda waited for the door to unlock itself and slowly swing open as part of the process to get in.
When she walked inside, there was a small hallway filled with darkness and a small light at the end of it. She walked confidently through the dark, remembering the years as a young girl being scared and alone in the middle of the night and having to find her grandmother working in her lab. She used to be so frightened of the unknown that laid in the dark, and there were a few times her grandmother found her cowering in the fetal position against the wall, in between the main door and the true entrance to the lab. It wasn’t even thirty feet long and a straight shot from point A to B, a fact that made Miranda laugh at her younger self for being so frightened over such a small feat. And she always had the same sense of small relief whenever she did make it into the light at the end of the tunnel, even now.
She looked down at what she could of the lab. Giant tubes and pipes had covered the ceiling and upper walls, Miranda unsure if they were used to bring in clean, breathable air or to send out potential toxins her grandmother would make every so often for her studies. There was a three-story descent from the top entrance to the ground floor of the lab, each story was built with metal scaffolding that felt like a fire escape which lead to a door, and each door lead to an identical looking hallway that held three or four different rooms. One room was filled with plants and spices from all over the world. One room held giant pods filled with some type of preservation liquid that was used for holding and preserving animals, and even a couple of small daemons after they were killed off. Some of the rooms were currently empty, but she was sure her grandmother would find a way to fill them up sooner rather than later.
Her grandmother was a constantly busy woman. So much so, that Miranda often wondered what it was that her grandmother might have been working toward. Every worker had a goal, and her grandmother’s goal was never mentioned or talked about, but she worked endless hours and rarely took a day off. Miranda for the longest time assumed her grandmother simply loved educating herself and learning. But she eventually learned that her grandmother wouldn’t do anything unless there was a very big reward at the end of it.
When she looked down from the top part of the metal stairs, she could see her grandmother working on the ground floor, her eye and ear protectors were currently on. Miranda wondered if it was for whatever work she was currently doing, or if the ear protectors were to cancel any sound Miranda might bring in with her if she were to visit. If there was one thing her grandmother hated more than anything- more than murder of innocent children and people, more than mass rapes found in war, more than uneducated and greedy idiots ruling over governments- it was being in the middle of an equation or important thought process in her head and being disturbed or distracted and forgetting what she was thinking of. More than a few times had Miranda been the one to accidentally catch her grandmother’s attention before she had written down any notes, and that she started smashing empty beakers and screaming at the top of her lungs in frustration from losing important information. Miranda and her grandmother learned it was best if Miranda was seen first, and her grandmother would remove her headphones to talk when she was at a good mental space to take a break and resume work later.
Miranda climbed down the small mountain of stairs and made her way in front of her grandmother when she got to the ground floor. Her grandmother’s eyes shifted upward when she sensed Miranda coming into her frame of view, but quickly went back down to a notepad she was scribbling in when she saw that it was Miranda standing in front of her, holding out a one finger for a moment to indicate that Miranda only had to wait a little while before it was fine to talk. Her grandmother had been a short woman, far shorter than any grown person she had ever seen who wasn’t a dwarf, but she didn’t lack the typical physical symmetry that dwarfs seemed to share in common. She looked like a regular woman, only she stood right below Miranda’s chest. She had long silver hair that she almost always tied into a tight bun that sat on top of her head, and she wore her favorite red lab coat. It wasn’t until Miranda saw an older photo of her grandmother when she was only a few years older than herself that Miranda learned she had used to be as tall as Miranda, but also always had silver hair, not just from old age. When she asked why her grandmother had shrunk in size by such an extravagant amount, her grandmother would simply shrug and say nothing more than, “Freak accident.”
Miranda watched as her grandmother wrote down notes, looked into a microscope and jotted down more things in her notepad. She repeated the process a handful of times before she slowly took off her headphones with a hefty sigh and rolled her neck and shoulders to relieve tension from standing and bending over so long. When she finished stretching out the sore spots of her neck, she looked at Miranda wryly.
“You’re still alive, I see.” her grandmother said, dryly half-joking.
“So kind of you to be worried.” Miranda playfully shot back.
“Well, when I went upstairs to find an empty house, I thought maybe you went to go bother some of the villagers like I’ve told you not to do without asking me first. But when Oscar’s sister, Isabel, had to come and knock on my door- and you know how much they hate getting close to the house- she said she saw you go into the forest and nobody had seen you for a while… something I’ve stressed even harder for you not to do because of daemons and poisonous plants all over. So, I asked her to ask her brother to look for you, and from what I can smell...” her grandmother stepped closer and took a big whiff of Miranda. “It seems like you got drooled on by one of those reptilian-based daemons that scour the jungles around here.”
“You can tell all that just from a smell?” Miranda didn’t hide her surprise, and took a sniff at herself. “How can you smell anything? I don’t smell anything but dirt and the sea water.”
“A trained nose, my dear.” was all she said with a shrug. And as if there was nothing more to discuss her grandmother started to head towards the stairs, heading back to the surface level of the house. “And with this trained nose, I know that you need to shower.” Miranda ignored the last part of her grandmother’s statement.
“You know, as somebody who made the rules that were put in place to save my life, you don’t seem all that worried that I was close enough to get drooled on by one of those monsters.”
“That’s because everything worked out in the end, didn’t it? Why would I expend my energy worrying about whether or not you’re alive when I can wait for the end results? Besides, I’ve told you for years and years, don’t go out in the forest alone, you know what kind of monsters are out there. So, if you did get killed by those awful beasts, it would be your own fault for not listening to me, isn’t it?”
“That’s a very grandmotherly way of looking at things...” Miranda said sarcastically. “I love you too.”
“You know I have too much on my plate to worry about anything other than what I can actually focus on in the moment. If somebody says you went missing, I’ll worry in a day or two if you can’t be found, because you’ve been out for more than a day by yourself before. Foolishly, I might add... but you always manage to take care of yourself, or have some of the villager do it for you like today.”
“So, that’s it then?” Miranda questioned. “No further ridicule or scolding from you?”
“Perhaps it’s time I’s realized that you’re a fully-grown woman at the age of 22, and perhaps I should treat you like it. Hell, I graduated top of my class of college at your age.”
“So, does that mean you think I’m old enough to know exactly what happened to my parents?” Miranda chose her words and tone carefully.
Her grandmother froze at the question, and hesitated before looking at Miranda with cold and hard eyes. The harshness in her grandmother’s gaze had nothing to do with Miranda and everything to do with the memories tied to whatever accident had taken the lives of Miranda’s parents and left her in her grandmother’s care. Growing up, her grandmother had always scolded her for asking, or at the very least, mentioned it was a terrible accident while ranting and raving about how that’s an inappropriate topic to discuss with a child. It seemed to be one of the only things that could draw her usually care-free and stoic grandmother into a fit of rage which she usually apologized immediately afterwards.
“I suppose you are finally old enough to know what happened…” her grandmother let out a heavy sigh after a lot of consideration. Miranda almost couldn’t believe the words she was hearing. The last time she had brought up this conversation wasn’t even six months ago, and her grandmother seemed to be even more upset and fussier about the conversation than ever before. To see her be so calm and poised at the mention of her parent’s death was crazy enough by itself, but for her to professionally tell her she was finally old enough to hear the news was other-worldly. “You are old enough, but today is not the day that you hear of this tale.”
“What!?” Miranda shrieked in such a high pitch her grandmother raised an eye brow that questioned whether all the noise was necessary to what was said. “You’re going to tell me for years and years that I don’t get to find out why my parents were killed, and you-”
“Killed? Who told you your parents were killed?” her grandmother’s voice had an edge to it, cold and icy, which for some reason filled Miranda with more fear for her than when she was raging and smashing things. “I’ve only told you they were in an accident.”
“But, Grandma, you’ve told me about some of the goriest and bloodiest things you’ve seen daemons do to humans, and told these stories to me ever since I was a little girl. To show me the dangers of these daemons, remember? What else am I supposed to think when you’re so carefree telling me of these demonic nightmares but explode at the mere mention of how my parents have died?”
For the first time in Miranda’s life, her grandmother looked at a loss for words. It was clear in her eyes that some of what Miranda was saying was true, and she couldn’t lie to her granddaughter about it. But she wasn’t about to just tell the entire story right now either.
“Listen, I understand that you think finding out about your parents is important, but you don’t understand the timeline you’re involved in yet.”
“‘Timeline I’m involved in’? What does that mean?”
“It means that WHOEVER IS IN MY HOUSE CAN COME OUT NOW!” her grandmother shouted as if trying to shout to somebody who may have been somewhere in her huge lab. There had been a moment of silence where he grandmother had scanned around to see if anybody else was coming out like she commanded, her ears perked for the sounds of anyone walking. “Please stop wasting all our times and come out now! I’ve been expecting you all afternoon, but my ditz of a granddaughter went out for a small brush with death! She’s here now and we can commence the ceremony!”
“‘Commence the ceremony?’ What the hell does that mean?” Miranda didn’t like the fact that her grandmother was shouting at nobodies, and her phrasing while speaking to the empty air that couldn’t help but remind Miranda of demonic cults and the fact that talked to spirits and demons nobody could see.
Her grandmother didn’t respond, but only kept waiting for somebody else to respond to her announcement. When a moment passed and nobody seemed to be there, her grandmother simply sighed, shook her head, and started heading towards the top of the stairs towards the door that lead back to the regular potion of the house. Miranda followed her, repeating the same questions her grandmother seemed to ignore. On the way back towards the surface level of the house from the lab floor, her grandmother double checked every possible room, door and lock between her home and her lab, as if she were expecting somebody to try to break in. When the two of them made it to the living room and the secret lab door hiding behind the bookcase was closed and sealed, Miranda looked at her grandmother who looked around the house in the same way she looked around her lab.
“Grandma, what are you looking for?”
“Shh.” she quickly silenced Miranda and continued to look around the house slowly, using her ears just as much as she used her eyes. She scanned corners and in closets that neither Miranda or her grandmother ever used very often. After the fifth or sixth spot of the house, Miranda thought her grandmother was playing a very odd game of hide-and-seek, but she didn’t know anybody who would feel comfortable coming into the house like this. After a couple more spots, including Miranda’s room, her grandmother gave a frustrated sigh and told Miranda to follow her.
The two stepped outside into the garden, and her grandmother made sure to lock the door behind them and check the other doors to make sure they were secure. Once the last door was checked and locked, her grandmother simply looked out at the ocean-view of their home, staring into the horizon just as the sun started to kiss the waters at the edge of the world.
“Grandma, what are you doing?” Miranda couldn’t help but give a nervous laugh at her grandmother’s odd and random behavior. Part of Miranda was starting to wonder if she was getting too old and starting to go senile, something she never had to consider before.
“If I could get five minutes without you asking me the same questions, maybe you’ll get your answers.” her grandmother snapped gently. Miranda decided to shut her mouth and be a silent observer.
Her grandmother seemed to just stare out at the ocean waters for a few moments before moving to another side of the house, and stood still and stared out into the horizon once more. She said nothing and did almost just as little other than occasionally looking around. If Miranda didn’t know any better, it seemed like her grandmother simply wanted to come out and enjoy nature. But Miranda knew her grandmother, and she knew the fierce look of determination in her eyes when she saw it, and she knew it wasn’t for no reason. A few moments later, and grandmother walked to another part of their property, and began to look around again.
“There. In the trees. This is where your love-life begins...” a voice whispered softly into Miranda’s ear, and when she turned around to see where the voice belonged to, there was nobody there. A part of her thought that maybe she was going crazy herself, until she looked into one of the trees that stood just on the edge of their garden. She wouldn’t have seen it herself if she didn’t have that voice telling her to look in the trees, but there was a person hiding behind a thicket of leaves.
“Ummm, grandma…? Were you expecting visitors today or something?” Miranda asked nervously, and her grandmother’s attention snapped right to her when she spoke.
“Why, where do you see someone?” her grandmother asked urgently.
“There… in the tree, do you see-”
Without hesitation, Miranda’s grandmother threw a small steel-looking ball at the tree. The moment the ball contacted the tree, a large burst of electricity exploded around the tree, zapping and frying anything that wasn’t a sturdy tree branch. Most of the leaves skipped the stages of burning and turned straight into ashes. Miranda stared at the ashy mess that used to be a beautiful tree just seconds before, but her grandmother quickly turned around, pulling a small handgun from one of her lab coat pockets, and pointed it at a man with deep maroon hair and one white streak of hair that hung in front of his face longer than the rest of his bangs. While his hair face seemed to be somewhat close to those who lived on Paiyi, the fancy suit and shoes he wore didn’t match anything that had ever existed in Paiyi at all. When grandmother had pointed the gun only inches away from the man’s face, he simply smirked casually, as if the gun showed no threat at all.
“So, you must be the great Lady Eve, I’ve heard so much about.” the man spoke with a heavy air of coolness, his hands retreating casually into his pockets. He looked at the charred tree and back at the little old lady. “You’re quite the firecracker, aren’t you?”
“And you’re the one responsible for getting my granddaughter to the ceremony, are you?” her grandmother didn’t move the gun at all, which only made the man grin after a while. “You people in the central government sure are getting sloppy with your espionage work.”
“I think you’re thinking of the Phantoms branch division of the central government, I’m simply an office worker working as a messenger for now. Trust me, if I were a Phantom, your granddaughter wouldn’t have made it inside without me taking her to the ceremony without so much a goodbye.”
“So, you just so happen to have knowledge of combat tactic and move around like a ninja and it’s not part of your job?” grandmother shook her head with a small smile as she finally lowered her weapon.
“What can I say?” the man gave a playful shrug. “I’m somewhat of an overachiever. Plus, you never know what’s lurking around the woods of Paiyi these days, am I right?” the man’s eyes finally turned towards Miranda as he gave a flirtatious wink. Miranda’s heart skipped a beat and she felt herself blush. This was the first time anybody had ever openly looked at her like that. As much as she enjoyed the attention, she didn’t know how she felt about how this man’s eyes seemed to scan her entire body, undressing her with his eyes, all while in front of her grandmother.
“Wha… what’s going on?” Miranda was finally able to ask. “What ceremony? What are you guys talking about?”
“Do you know anything about the Ceremony of the Moon?” he asked her.
“Yeah, I mean, I think everybody knows about the-”
“Then that will save a lot of time on explaining. All that you need to know is that you’re one of the chosen, we have one month to get to the center island of the world, and we have to leave now before anybody catches wind that you’re gone. Got that?”
“Yes. Am I able to grab a couple of things first?” she asked without hesitation, which caught the man and her grandmother off guard. They both nodded simultaneously, and Miranda dashed inside to find a small backpack and clothes to quickly fill it with. Yet despite what the man and her grandmother might have thought, she wasn’t very excited about being a part of the Ceremony, not really. Nor was she excited to be leaving on a random journey to see the world. It wasn’t even the attractive man who was giving her the first amount of sexualized attention she had ever received. The thing was one sentence by the same voice that seemed to fill her head, saying, “This is the journey you will find true love, don’t be scared of this marriage.”
