The Beasts of Rainfall

Chapter 3- Star Stories

Night crept up on Clio just as she completed the last trap. She had spent the first half of the day getting far enough into the woods. The Beast’s legs were long, and could cover distance easily, allowing them to have a base far into the woods, and still run out on long hunting trips, some times to the village. They did not hunt animals there.

       Some Banes were positioned in the village, but they were more guards then Banes. Sure, they were taught the Beasts strengths and weaknesses, how to fight them and how to kill, but in the end, they were just defending the people. The true Banes were the hunters.

       So after a long day of trekking through the forest, Clio had set up traps and set up camp. Clio was very skilled at making traps, but she almost never used scraps of meat and bone as bait. Most Banes did, and it puzzled them still why it often took so long to catch the Beasts. But Clio’s mother had told her to never, ever use meat scraps in a trap, because the Beasts expected that.

       And the Beasts were smart. Eerily smart.

       So as Clio crept back through the woods to where she had made camp, she smiled to herself as she remembered the little music box she had left, along with the woven cloak, and the old doll. This would be the bait that she used to capture the beasts.

       Clio nibbled on an apple and some dried meat as she squinted up at the stars. She knew that soon, she would have to climb up the tree she had chosen to sleep in and call it a night, but she always loved watching the stars. She used to make up constellations with her father when she was little, and then tell a story for each. There was the Caffeinated Squirrel, and the Lazy Dragon, and when she was only seven years old, she had told her father a story about a little Beast named Yip the Small.

            Clio was sixteen now, but she still remembered the story very clearly.

       “Yip the Small was really small.” She had started, which made her father laugh, and say “I had thought she was really big. All buff and ripped, and--“

       “Shh, Daddy, you're ruining it!” she had complained, and her father had fallen silent with a smile. “Anyways, Yip the Small was really small, and she never really liked playing roughly with all the other young Beasts.” At this, her father’s dark eyes had narrowed with surprise, and he had looked  at her sternly. But Clio had kept talking.

“Yip wanted a doll. Like, a person doll. So one day, Yip snucked out to find one. She snucked through all of the entire woods, and then, she found a doll, just lying there on the ground! She was so surprised, but also happy. So she ran up to grab it.” Clio remembered smiling up at her father, saying, “That’s when mommy came.”

Her father had stared at her blankly. “Excuse me?”

Clio had beamed her special smile, and said “It was a trap. A net swept Yip up, and then Mommy came out. But she didn’t hurt Yip, because Yip wasn’t like all the others. Instead, she spoke to Yip, and Yip wasn’t afraid anymore. And then, neither was Mommy. So they talked a while, about bad things and good things, and maybe they even made star stories like we do.” Clio had sighed a tiny, wistful little girl sigh. “Then Yip showed her doll to all the Beasts, and they decided not to eat people any more, and we decided not to kill them, and Yip became my best friend because she smiled like me and--”

“Clio.” Her father’s stern voice had brought her out of her happy, impossible story. Her father had told her that such a thing could never happen, that to even think of it was ridiculous, that it was in the Beast’s nature to kill and to eat, that it couldn’t be helped. Crushed, Clio had mumbled an apology gone to bed.

The next day, an official messenger had come, bringing news of both of her older brother’s deaths. They had both been Banes, both brought down by Beasts. There had not been enough of their bodies left to bury.

Clio had never told star stories with her father again.