“I don’t think I’m going to stay that long, to be honest brother, I appreciate it,” I said as a look of disappointment came over the look of my brother’s face.
“Are you planning to part ways after you help me find Derium’s head?”
“I haven’t said I was going to help you, I said I would think about it,” I said getting angered a little.
“I have to take this outside and clean it out,” Mylicious said and grabbed the digestive tract of the fish, “Alone!’” he added as he took the digestive tract up the entrance that led to the lake.
I stood in silence and looked at the rest of the fish for a minute, then heard Yura, “He’s really wanted you to find Derium for a while now. He’s been talking like it being an adventure for you two.”
“Did he ever tell you what Derium did to me?” I asked. Something told me the complete story wasn’t told.
“No he didn’t, all he said was Derium had done you wrong,” Yura said.
“Have a seat, I have a story to tell you.” I said and motioned to the bench by the fire.
I told her my story, told her everything and she listened like Noemi listened. The only difference was, when I finished my story with Yura, she had tears in her eyes.
“Mylicious didn’t tell me all that,” she said.
“Because it’s hard for me to,” he said, as he appeared through the doorway, “I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing it up, Roldian.”
“If you wouldn’t have left it out, I wouldn’t have had to tell her,” I said and raised an eyebrow, while narrowing my eyes.
He shook his head and tossed the emptied digestive track next to the fish skins and threw his hands up, “I’m gong to lie down, you’ve given me an ache in my head.”
He disappeared down the middle tunnel and that left me with Yura, “I thought you were tired?” I asked.
“I was, but I didn’t want to be rude to the guest. You’re interesting to me,” she smiled.
“As you are to me, I don’t seem very interesting to Kallik,”
She took a deep breath, the mere name seemed to bother her, “I don’t like Kallik, during the last full moon he cornered me and if not for Mylicious, who knows what would have happened. He can mate with any female, I need a bond to mate,” she looked at me with a sparkle in her eye, but I dismissed it.
“How old are you?” she asked suddenly.
I had never thought about before, I can’t remember any type of acknowledgement for my age, I remembered being young and then I just stopped aging, “I don’t know, I’ve been down here for close to two-hundred-years. Yourself?”
“I believe I’m in my sixties now,” she said, shocking me.
“You don’t look a day over twenty,” I joked.
“That’s when I stopped aging, I could pick it back up if I wanted to, but I’m happy at this age.”
“Pick it back up?”
“Mylicious won’t age ever because he chooses not to. If I want to look like my age, I can change that, but once I go forward with age, I can’t go back.”
“That’s different,” I said, wondering why Mylicious never told me he could age if he wanted to. These choices they got that I didn’t was really starting to get to me.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’ll never be okay,” I said. I got up and put some more wood on the fire and looked at the two large chunks of fish, just lying on the iced ground. Their pink meat seemed almost transparent in spots.
“I guess he didn’t want to finish the fish, you got him really riled up,” she laughed a little. She walked over and grabbed the long knife that Mylicious was using and cut the two, four-foot fish sections down to, eight, one-foot sections. “Can you help me carry these?”
I got up and grabbed half of the pieces of fish and took them to the freezer. Yura smelled her hands and cringed up her face, “I take it he didn’t show you where to wash up?”
“No, I just kind of started helping out,” I said, noticing the smelling emanating from myself.
“Follow me,” she said, and I followed her down and around to the second tunnel. It was carved out straight. There were torches spaced every three feet, but I didn’t understand why they needed them, they could see perfectly fine in the dark. At the end of the tunnel, there was a smaller, rounded room. There was a large stone basin in the middle, with burnt logs and ash under it, next to it, was a cauldron of sorts. It was rough, like there was a coating to it that hadn’t been sanded down.
“Let me guess, Mylicious made that?”
“He’s made just about everything. This was his prison at one point in time, he locked himself in here for many of years, before seeking out Mila and the rest of us. Then, when he and Mila fell in love, he added things, like the bath,” she said and pointed to big stone basin, “We fill it up, heat it up and bathe, naturally the females draw the baths for the males..”
“What? They can’t get their own water and light the fire?”
“That’s just the way it is,” she said.
“No, it ‘s not!” I said, a little angered at that fact.
“It’s been that way for many of moon. I don’t mind either. The females draw their own bath and Mylicious makes sure the males don’t bother us, even with his own kids, Amaruq isn’t allowed in here. If you like I can draw you bath tomorrow?”
“Just show me how to do
