Raising a finger, Yumi continued her explanation. “For instance,” she said, “say you’re considering that this was indeed the work of a dire goat just like Master Severin suspected. The first thing you need to do is get into the proper mind set. You need to, um, think and act like a dire goat. Yeah, that’s right! And once you have that down, you can go even deeper. And the deeper you go, the more successful you’ll be in bagging the critter.”
Keeping her hands up and close to her chest, she proceeded to hop around like a kangaroo, completely forgetting, it seemed, that dire goats were quadrupeds, even as she expounded, “Think like a dire goat. Act like a dire goat. Be the dire goat!”
Eyes watery with gleeful tears, the others exhibited a tremendous amount of self-control. They remained tight-lipped and said nothing although an amused smile did manage to escape from the corner of Sven's mouth.
Yumi stopped. She looked to the right and then to the left, her eyes narrowing shrewdly. “So here you are,” she said thus, “the dire goat. You've traveled far and you are tired and thirsty and hungry. You've been following the scent of your favorite food lingering in the air for days and there it is now standing in front of you.” She gestured to the nearby bush.
She hopped on over to the bush whereupon she grabbed a handful of blood berries and before Rolf or Sven could utter a word of warning, she crammed them into her mouth.
“Yumi, no...” Rolf finally managed to say.
“Mmmmm, berries!” Yumi went as she chewed with gusto, bright red berry juice dribbling down her chin.
Presently, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. A torrent of juice, pulp, and saliva gushed out of her mouth. “Bleeeccchhh! So bitter!”
Sven turned to Rolf and murmured, “Guess she should've put herself in the shoes of blood berry bush first.”
Rolf could not help himself and grinned in response.
Yumi then covered her mouth with her right hand and clutched at her stomach with the other. “Woooghhh,” she mumbled, “I don’t feel so good...”
“I knew it,” Rolf said. “I knew you were in no shape at all to go out on a job. You’re still drunk, aren’t you? And those berries just made things worse. If you’re going to barf, I suggest--”
Just then there was a loud growling noise, so loud that it seemed to reverberate across the moonlit field of blood berry bushes. It came from Yumi’s stomach.
Sven nearly keeled over with surprise and disbelief.
While Rolf, on the other hand, could only stare incredulously. After a moment of silence, Rolf muttered, “Yumi...”
“What?” Yumi asked. “I’m hungry. Those berries can really stimulate the appetite and I haven’t had anything to eat since, well, since the tavern.”
“Yumi, that was only a couple of hours ago!” Rolf exclaimed.
“I can’t help it!” Yumi cried. “I’m hungry! What? Don’t look at me like that! I’m still a growing girl, dang it!”
“Still a growing...? What the heck are you talking about? You’re already twen--”
Rolf was interrupted a loud crash of branches and timber breaking and rustling of leaves that seemed to sound from the far end of the field. It was shortly followed by monstrous, angry bellowing.
Whelp. They were now sure of one thing. Whatever it was, it was definitely not a dire goat.
“Say,” Sven wondered out loud as they all ran towards the source of the sound, “what the heck is a berry snake?”
No comments:
Post a Comment