Lemming

This is from book two of my fantasy series.

Lemming was happy to be awake. That was strange for her.

She liked the world of dreams more than the world of awake. It felt more like home there.

Dreams showed her things. Things that had been. Things that were. Things to come.

Her dreams showed her secret things too, like the watchers. She saw the raven and the wolf and the one who sent them.

She, Vole, and Red Squirrel were huddled together beneath the small bush on Troll’s great shoulder. It was their favorite place. It was home.

Lemming knew what was about to happen. She had lived this moment before in a dream.

She yawned, then asked, as she knew she would, what Troll was thinking about.

She braced herself for the stench she knew was coming when he answered. Troll’s breath was like rotting leaves.

“The Jordvokter Aett Vidsyn IkkeVann,” said Troll with a kind of reverence. “That is what I am thinking of.”

Red Squirrel sat up and stretched.

“What is a jord vagga bagga boo or whatever you said?”

Troll explained.

“Wolves have packs. Birds have flocks. Deer are in herds. That,” Troll said, lifting a finger to stroke Red Squirrel’s bushy tail, “is what we trolls have.”

Lemming stepped away from the bush, making way for Red Squirrel. She had seen in the dream that he would crawl up into the bush for safety.

“Wolves eat squirrels,” he chittered to himself.

She knew why Red Squirrel was afraid of everything. His family was killed and eaten in front of him.

“Are the other trolls your family,” squeaked Vole, thumping Troll’s ear.

Vole lost her family the same way. Rather than hide from danger, she sought it out. Daring the world to get her too.

Lemming remembered his answer from the dream and mouthed the words as Troll said them.

“Maybe. We are so old no one remembers.”

His words stung. How could anyone forget their family?

She would never forget hers.

She lost her own mother while foraging. An owl killed her, then took to the sky with Lemming in her talons.

Lemming twisted and bit her way free and fell to the forest floor.

She was badly hurt.

Troll found her and cared for her.

Lemming had been with him ever since.

Lemming still saw her mother in the world of dreams. It was why Lemming slept so much.

It was her turn to speak.

“Where are the other trolls? Will we ever see them?”

Troll said the words she knew he would.

“We are throughout the land. Forests. Mountains. Grasslands. Even the desert.”

Vole climbed to the end of Troll’s nose, asked if there were even trolls in the water.

Troll shuddered.

Red Squirrel held on to the branches of the bush to keep from being thrown clear.

“No, no, no. Trolls do not mingle with The Wet. The water is... other.”

Even though she had dreamt it all before, Lemming could not understand why Troll clearly did not like the water.

Lemming asked one more question, but only because the dream said she would.

“Who cares for the water the way you care for us?”

Troll shuddered again. He even shook his hands.

He quickly answered, “the Wet can settle its own affairs.”

Lemming knew there was more to the water, but she had not dreamt that yet.

Lemming thought about how Troll did not answer her second question. He did not say whether they would ever see other trolls.

Lemming knew the answer, even if he didn’t.