Harm and Harmony

-Chapter 27-

Day: 4

Days Left: 5476

Lives Saved: 0

All of those monsters...

Corinna looked to the monster walking by her side, who attempted to smile back, her lip curling upwards revealing her sharp teeth. It then twitched and disappeared as Harmony was unable to hold it for long due to the pain from the two fangs that protruded out of her mouth, digging into her cheek. She adjusted her jaw until it felt comfortable again, then focused on walking.

They're all human...

Eventually, the sky grew dark, suffocating all of the light into submission. Holding up the metal lantern, Harmony led the way with the green wisp inside. It swirled inside, creating emerald spectral of light, causing Corinna and Harmony's shadows to move behind them.

The water nymphs...

Harmony walked in long strides, with a slight bounce to her steps. She clutched at her satchel, giddy about her new haul of objects that she had traded.

The imps...

Occasionally, the moon would come out of hiding behind a drifting cloud. The light it beamed merely cast darker shadows on the dead grass.

That creature from the cave...

Despite being far away, they could see the Land of the Lost. Every minute a small crack in the sky would open, sending another discarded and unwanted item down the mountainous pile.

The amphibian...

They walked along the beach, crossing over the rock spire's shadow. Harmony glanced back at the tower and up at the sky.

The chimaera...

They trudged up the slope that led up to the wooden house.

They are all human.

So consumed by her own thoughts, Corinna didn't even realise that she had entered the house. Her body had instinctively moved by itself. She blinked and rubbed her forehead to wake her mind to the physical world.

"So, what did you get?" she asked Harmony.

After locking the front door, the chimaera's head bobbed side to side and scampered to the fireplace and sat down, spilling the contents of her satchel onto the floor.

Corinna sat down beside her and watched as Harmony presented each and every item, sometimes offering a demonstration if it was a device or a piece of clothing. There was a garlic crusher, a pack of playing cards, a photo album with the front cover written in a foreign language, a sheet of smiley face stickers, coloured crayons (most of which were green), a pack of alphabet fridge magnets, and a beaded necklace.

Whilst Harmony was demonstrating how to wear a pair of safety goggles, she finally noticed Corinna with her head held in her hands, her fingers scrunching up her blonde hair.

The young woman breathed out, then slapped her hands on her knees. Once she had calmed herself, she raised her head and stared back at the chimaera, who was still wearing the safety goggles.

"I thought we went to trade with Ivette to get supplies?" Corinna glanced back down at the items before her, then back at the chimaera.

Harmony scratched the back of her neck, her other arm rubbing her shoulder.

"I thought that we needed supplies for tomorrow, for the blood moon?"

Hunched over, Harmony took off the whiteboard that hung around her neck and stared down at it, a green pen in a hesitating hand.

"I thought you were trading for something useful. Not this..." Corinna motioned to the items on the floor.

The chimaera's snake-tail curled around Harmony's leg as she cradled the whiteboard in her arms. She did not know what to write. She did not know how to make Corinna understand. Her eyes glanced up at the young woman. She was wearing that mask again, pretending to be calm, indifferent, her face vacant and expressionless, her voice flat and robotic.

"What are we going to do with a garlic crusher?" Corinna's mask almost broke, her voice cracking. "Are there even any garlic in the Eternal Abyss? Is there? Then what's the- what's the point, you know?" She picked up the garlic crusher. "How are we going to defend ourselves with this? Are we going- we going to threaten to crush a monster's little finger or something? What? What are going to do with this?" Corinna tossed it onto the floor, and it landed on top of the photo album. "And what about this? A photo album? What photos are we going to put in this?"

Harmony looked down at her whiteboard.

Corinna wrapped her arms around her legs. "You traded this for food."

Harmony saw the young woman's nail dig tighter into her knees.

"You traded this for food, Harmony." She looked up at the chimaera. "We need food, not any of this. You need food, especially. Just look at you, Harm. Are you supposed to look like that? You're wasting away."

The chimaera's eyes gazed down at her thin body, seeing the lines of her rib-cage through her skin. She picked up a pen and wrote on the whiteboard 'I need a lot of food. If I ate what I should we would run out of food in two days'.

"So trading away food is going to solve that?"

Her three-fingered paws clutching at the whiteboard, Harmony glanced at the trap-door that led down into the basement.

"You're going to end up starving to death. You shouldn't trade food away for stuff like this. Why did-" Corinna stopped upon seeing what Harmony had written on the whiteboard.

'I CAN'T DIE'.

"Because you heal too quickly? Still, I doubt anyone would endure the pain of starving even if they can't die. Regardless, the blood moon is tomorrow. How are we going to defend ourselves with any of this! I can't afford to die. My family is-"

The young woman paused once again after reading Harmony's writing. This time, her mask of detachment repaired itself, her eyes returning to a cold and distant gaze that fixated on the whiteboard.

"What do you mean 'no one can die here'?" she asked.

Corinna patiently waited for Harmony to write and read her explanation- how even if you are killed, drowned, starved, or torn apart, your body would eventually repair itself. How your wounds healed quicker. How your limbs would regrow. How the Eternal Abyss slowly returns you to the exact condition you arrived in. No ageing. No death.

Once Harmony had finished explaining, Corinna remained silent, her face never changing.

Covering her mouth, Corinna hid the smile forming on her lips.

She couldn't die.

She glanced down at her right wrist, where the magical contract was.

If she couldn't die, then that meant-

Corinna reserved that thought for another time. There was something more important that needed discussing at the moment.

"Is there anything else you haven't told me?" she asked the chimaera.

Harmony did not respond, only staring at the basement door over Corinna's shoulder.

"Anything else you've forgotten to tell me?" Corinna bit down on her bottom lip.

She knew it wasn't Harmony's fault. It was already difficult to communicate on a whiteboard, and she had only come up with the idea yesterday. But the fact that they couldn't die seemed like something important to tell someone.

"What else is there? You didn't tell me that you're human either."

It was unfair. But the words just continued to spill out.

"What else have you been hiding from me?"

Harmony continued staring at the trap-door.

"Harm?"

The chimaera stood up and climbed down into the basement. She closed the trap-door behind her, leaving the whiteboard on the surface.