I’m trying out a new format where I will write and post a fantasy flash fiction or short story each Thursday. It might not work out this way every Thursday, but I do want to try.
Kingdom Short
Nooreh’s Friend
“Why don’t you make yourself useful instead of sitting around,” Nooreh’s father said, taking a big bite of chicken. Elhima had killed and plucked the chicken. Aya had cooked it and seasoned it. Nooreh had just finished scrubbing the floors, but their father was a member of the Blackraddle city watch, an important man. He couldn’t be plucking his own chickens. How would that look?
“Stand up, you wretch!” as always, Mother caught Nooreh by surprise, managing to find her the instant she sat down. “Mydrahag has cursed my womb with a lazy child! Go! Fetch the stanchen herbs so that I may boil them and soothe your poor father’s tired feet!”
At six years old, little Nooreh wasn’t one to argue. She got up and made her way out of the family’s hut. Once she was outside, she sat down in the dirt for a moment to catch her breath. Sure, life didn’t seem fair, but that was not the good in her talking, that was the wicked temptation of the dragon god of sloth and anger.”
Rise and do your duty, Nooreh. The girl said to herself. She always spoke to herself like she was a separate person whom she was chastising.
She walked her usual path to the foothills, over to the shrubs where she usually harvested her blue herbs. As she began harvesting, the front of her sandal tapped against something that moved and shook the shrub.
“Hello? Is someone in there?”
Someone emerged from the bush; a small, white creature with a long body, a brown helmet for a head and six small legs. It was about two chickens long. A grub.
“Hello, little stranger,” she bent over and stroked the grub on its helmet head. It quivered like it enjoyed the contact. She forgot the herbs and took the grub home with her, because he seemed lost and lonely.
Her mother yelled at her and hit her with sticks because she forgot to bring home the blue herbs, but once that was done, she made her grub friend a little bed of straw in the shed. He curled up and made a small whistling sound before going to sleep. Once she saw that he was asleep, she curled up next to him and slept as well.
She spent the next morning trying to find him something to eat. He didn’t eat leaves, or sticks, or even berries, but when she brought him some of the waste scraps from the last chicken meal, he gobbled them up with his tiny mandibles.
“So it seems you are a meat eater, little Toot.” she said, for that is what she had named him.
As the days went by, Nooreh did her best to hide Toot from her family and the people of her village. This became more and more difficult, because Toot began growing larger and larger the more she fed him. He was a growing boy, but what exactly was he growing into?
—
One day, on his way to meet with the other city watchmen, her father saw Nooreh walking with Toot. She had the large grub draped over her shoulder like a scarf.
“My daughter, caring for a monster of the wild?” He had half a mind to take his knife and tear the creature to pieces in front of her, but, since he was already on his way to the meeting hall, he did not deviate.
—
That night, her father returned from his meeting along with inspector Rhymos. Both were armed with knives, crossbows and leather armor. They searched the whole house and farm carefully, but saw no sign of the creature, so the two of them called Nooreh aside and spoke to her.
Her father said he would beat her if he found that she was keeping a beast as a pet. Inspector Rhymos, who was of a calmer disposition, informed her that the creature she had been seen with was the larval form of a terror beetle.
“When it grows up, it will become a massive, black monster, bent only on destruction. Terror beetles kill and eat humans like your father and I. A swarm of them is vicious enough to extinguish an entire village.”
The girl didn’t say anything, but nodded.
“I know you think this creature is your friend, but the terror grub and its family would kill and eat your family in an instant, without a thought.”
“You must choose.” her father glowered, “The worm, or your family.”
—
Twelve years later-
A young woman with flowing, unkempt hair sat crouched atop of jagged stone. She took a sharp pebble in her hand and beat it against the mountain-top in a rhythmic pattern.
Several loud clicks shot back at her from the woods below.
She lifted her head and whistled loudly into the wind, then leapt, seemingly to her death hundreds of claw below.
A huge black shape, glimmering in the bright sunlight, rushed up through the air and caught her on its back. The creature was humanoid in shape, though ten times as large. Its body was covered in smooth, black plates, and its large head bore massive, hornlike jaws. It whistled, then trumpeted.
“Toot,” Nooreh kissed the back of his head, then looked back as twelve other massive creatures soared up on huge translucent wings. The terror beetles. Her new family.
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