chaosorc

The Alligator woke from a nap when they drew close to the dark pond. A pair of creatures balancing on two legs like birds but with more meat on them. One stopped the other with the back of an outstretched arm, it clutched a rock on a metal string it wore around its neck and spoke in a language that the alligator did not understand. Then they turned and left. They could not have seen it but after a minute of thought it set a toe on the pond floor and pulled slowly a foot further in just in case. It took a deep breath and wondered what the two beings were before falling back into its afternoon slumber.

---

What was that

He touched the stone at his neck again, I'm not sure.

They were walking through the thicket and approaching the road, their pace slowed.

I didn't see anything

You usually don't

She scoffed.

He turned and smiled, nearly tripped.

The first fence post at the pumpkin patch was coming up and they stopped to stare at the orange and green field thick with vines and gourds.

You can't even see the mounds

What a season

Bougupp is going to have Jerry recruit the whole town for this harvest

He's probably out there looking for us right now

-—

The estate took up nearly a quarter of the edge of town and was ringed with signs that espoused, everyone works together. Only one edge of the property was separated from the rest by more than a low farm fence and that was iron, it bore an archway with a padlocked gate. On one side was the pumpkin farm, the other was the general town and the road where the small town began.

•

Bamburg ate an apple while a bearded man clipped his hair and pushed an ear out of the way of the long shears. The boy was shrouded in a waxed burlap tarp except for his tiny head and one pale arm that he used to eat his breakfast which rested on a tall workbench in the shed.

The man made faces at a young girl who also ate breakfast, her legs splayed on a leather work mat, she was surrounded by small nails and cotter pins and wires and and grommets, playing out an orc war on the shoproom floor, waiting her turn for her haircut.

I'll never get what you two want in a shaved head

Orcs

We're orcs, Fruig

How many times must we tell you

Fruig crumpled his face and stopped cutting, seeming to drift off to sleep for a moment, then winked at the girl and said, all done then, orc one.

She jammed the apple in her teeth and crab walked sideways to the chair and grunted, nearly toppling the workbench.

Bamberg put the core in a tin bin at his side and then twisted the tarp around before throwing it on the girl like a net.

Erb, Erb, Erb, he chants

Fruig wiped down the shears with his handkerchief as he waited for the next child.

Impossibly loud footsteps crunched the dead leaves and pebbles and the three fell silent in the shack. Bamberg was close to Fruig and Erb, in crab position by the hollow in the workbench where you could put your legs. Then a knock at the shop door.

The knock came again and the man lowered the scissors and yelled, what now

The handle wiggled and the door silently opened, a man unusually tall and too big to fit without craning down. He hunched and stared in. His face was wide, all his features packed into a small area, framed by long strands of greasy brown hair. His beard wiggled and a deep voice said, a cut.

They stood there for a moment unsure how to continue before the eldest stammered, Farb Witherbranch.

Dain.

Pleased to meet you.

Same, he looked around the shop without stepping in.

This ain't a barber, Dain

So?

They stared at eachother and Dain locked eyes with ERb.

She's almost done, then my turn

Farb resumed trimming and was the only one who was not fixated on the trapper who turned scraping his back on the door frame to step into the shop. His head among the rafters, wild urine and bitter stink of the dead animals he wore draped about his body.

He removed a slick overcoat and his belt outside and when it was finally his turn he crouched and held his toes while the three wrapped the tarp and used a pick comb to pull all the hair through the opening.

Just a little off the top

They all laughed, then Farb took a deep breath and the kids spider-walked back to better vantage points as strips of hair began to fall.