perizou
patreon
Energy Eater - Chapter 90 - Single Day
🕑 Added 2025-03-15 02:08:51 +0000 UTCI only managed to talk to Astrid early next morning. And thankfully, it didn't take much convincing for her to agree that things were not quite right in this place. While the story about marrying the lake was the nail on the coffin, the Frosted Lumberjack had also uncovered a few suspicious details. For instance, the big construction project that they were having was a canal that connected smaller ponds to the Flathead Lake. But that really didn't make much sense. There was no actual benefit in doing that unless there was something in the lake that was consuming too much food and connecting the other ponds would be a way to give it a new food source. Sure, there might be other reasons for a project like that, but that was the only one I could think of.
In addition, she accepted that Pamela's sister had been kidnapped or swapped much quicker than I did. The idea that she would just leave her sister behind never seemed to pass through the Frosted Lumberjack's mind. That was somewhat sweet but a little troubling at the same time. After all, my friend Astrid was a bit more trusting than I was. Then again, maybe that's exactly what our little act as a pair needed. Someone who was very trusting and someone who didn't trust anyone.
Aside from the channels connecting to the main lake, there was one more aspect of the construction that I found very strange. According to Astrid, it had been over a decade since they last new house was built. One of the men mentioned that every time the village got too full, someone would leave. Naturally, of course. No one was forced out, but the fact that it was so coincidental and constant was worrying. People leaving on opportunities once or twice could happen. Ten years in a row without ever needing to build a new house felt like too much of a stretch. But unfortunately, it wasn't enough to be considered evidence. It was suspicious, of course, but that was about it.
Deciding to go out on a limb, I snuck out before the festival committee was supposed to meet to talk to Michael. From what I understood, he was the newest member of the village, aside from us. But he stayed here for a couple of weeks already, meaning that he might have noticed some of the oddities while still being capable of recognizing that the events were strange.
It didn't take long to find him as the man was by the lake helping the fisherman gather one of the nets that they were using to catch some trout. But in order not to attract any attention to what I was doing, I had to employ a rather unfortunate strategy. The people of the village had a very outdated way of thinking in a lot of aspects. Such as expecting married women to take care of the kids. Or that men were the ones supposed to fish and build things. Astrid was only allowed to help because it was impossible to ignore her physique. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if even in the old world they were considered old-fashioned. And the best way to make sure people like that wouldn't care about what I was doing was to act exactly like they wanted to.
"Hey Michael," I approached with a large smile, swaying slightly from side to side with both arms behind my back.
"Hey Cass," the man replied. "Is everything okay?"
"Better now," I said while batting my eyelashes. "I was hoping you could spare a few minutes to talk. Just the two of us."
A few of the men who were pretending to work nearby just to listen to our conversation started to giggle and shout praises to the Hawaiian man.
"Yeah sure." He turned back to the rest of the fisherman. "I'm going to use the docs for a couple minutes. Is that okay?"
"That's fine, but if you're only taking a couple minutes you're doing something wrong," one of the older man replied while laughing.
Okay, maybe they were not that old-fashioned.
Michael started walking, and I made a point of holding onto his hand and moving while almost skipping, as if I was the luckiest girl in the entire world. Even if the very notion of acting like this made my stomach turn.
The docs were split into two parts. There was the pier where a few of the boats were tied to poles and the main building where the fisherman would keep their gear during the evening. Michael was kind enough to take us inside the building instead of just staying outside on the pier for this conversation.
"Look. I don't know how to say this, but-" Michael scratched the back of his head once the door to the storehouse was closed, but I cut him off almost instantly.
"Then don't. I just needed a moment to talk to you, and don't think this is about us hooking up. Sorry I had to act like that. I just figured it was the quickest way to get you alone."
He paused, surprised by my confession, and let out a sigh, "I don't think that was great for my ego, but sure. Why do you need to talk to me alone?"
"I need to ask you a question about this village. I know you got here not that long ago, but do you mind telling me if you saw or heard anything weird?"
"What do you mean, weird?" he asked.
"Look. It's hard to explain, so first let me ask this. Do you trust the people who live here?"
"Trust? Yeah. I do. Why, what that has to do with anything?"
"Okay, but what if you figure out that the people who live here do something absolutely horrible? Would you just accept it, or would you be upset?"
Michael frowned. "How horrible are we talking about? Is it a putting the rice first and then the beans kind of thing or I use the bones of children to make furniture kind of thing?"
"It's more the second. And what do you mean putting the rice first is wrong? You do that so the beans can flavor everything. Gravity will make them cover the rice."
"What? Are you crazy? You put the beans first that way you can make a pool for the rice to go on top. Then you coat the entire rice with the beans, not just the top."
"You're the crazy one," I scoffed, but shook my head. "Let's focus on what really matters for now. What if you figure out that they were making furniture out of children's bones?"
"I mean, that's a hard sell. Even if they are only doing that with bones of dead children, it is a hard sell. I will probably just pick up my stuff and leave. In that case, they're not really harming anyone. Unless they're taking the bones out of living children, but that's a whole different situation."
"And what if they were?" I pressed. "What if they were taking the bones out of living children?"
"Then I guess I would either try to stop them if I figure out it's just a small group of them or just leave. If there's too many people, there's so much you can do, you know? But what is this all about?" Michael frowned.
"Okay then, I do need your help with something, but it's probably not something you're going to be able to forget or to pretend you didn't know about."
Michael stared at me for a moment before shrugging. "I really am not that invested in this place. Despite what it looks like. I'm just trying to make friends. What is it so strange about this that is making you act like this?"
I explained the situation with Pamela and her sister and all the oddities I heard about the actual festival. By the end of my story, Michael had crossed his arms and seemed to be trying to process that information.
"But are you sure she didn't just get sick of her sister and left?"
"It's possible. I kind of believe Pamela when she says that her sister wouldn't do that. At least without getting some sort of satisfaction first. Besides, do you really think someone is just going to say, hey I'm leaving and I'm not telling you anything about that now? I get if this was the old world where people could be confident they would have a chance to see each other in the future, but here? When you don't know if you're going to step outside a safe place and be killed by an Eater, a monster, or a bandit? I find it a bit hard to swallow."
"That is a very fair point," Michael nodded. "But what happened there? Do you think the people in this village had something to do with it?"
"Honestly, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. That's what I was hoping you could help find out. You've been here for a while. You might have stumbled on a few of the answers to those questions."
"Sorry to say I don't think I did. No one really talks to me about the important stuff. Only random gossip like 'Mr. Troubat doesn't like his wife's cherry pie.' Or 'something, something, someone has a crush.' And they talk about the things we have to do on a daily basis. But that's about it."
I scratched the back of my head, "Have you heard about any weird story or something like that?"
"I can't say I have. Everything they tell me is pretty mundane. The wildest thing anyone ever did here. Or at least that they told me was spending a night near one of the lakes outside the village."
I let out a sigh. "Great. So I still have nothing to go off of."
"I'll try to talk to some people. Maybe someone is willing to tell me a bit more," Michael said, gaining a smile from me. He was about to leave the storehouse when he stopped and turned in my direction.
"Real quick. Why did you say I shouldn't bother with the idea of dating you? Do you think I'm not attractive? Or is my personality that bad?" Michael asked.
I frowned at him. "What? No. You're cute. Handsome. And you are a cool guy."
Michael rolled his eyes. "Right, and that's why you wouldn't date me."
"Dude, I lost my entire village less than a month ago. Do you really think that my mind would be on boys right now?" I spoke while crossing my arms.
Michael paused, giving me a long stare. "I did not know that. Noted. Sorry about it. Bad self-esteem does that with people. But that's not an excuse. And you're completely fine. I'm not upset or anything. It makes complete sense for you not to want to date anymore. That very idea made me physically sick for a few weeks after my parents died."
"I don't know if I would say that much, but yeah, I'm not about to go dating someone. Anyway, you think you can get some information about that? About the people who married the lake and then left."
The man nodded. "I can try. Can't promise I'll get anything, but I'll see if there's anyone willing to talk it out."
"Thanks. I know it's a bit on short notice since the festival is tomorrow, but let me know if you hear anything else. I'll do my best to do the same. Oh, if anyone asks, just say that we hooked up in here. That way is easier if you need to vanish for a while so we can talk."
Michael nodded. "Got it."
I turned around and walked out of the small warehouse, rushing out of it while holding my mouth and giggling. Maybe it was overselling it a little bit, but it was better than to have people starting to get suspicious. After all, we had no idea what we were dealing with.
Unfortunately, despite the plan being somewhat solid, we didn't have enough time to put it into practice. I was only able to talk to Carlota, asking a few more details about marrying the lake and what happened afterwards. But the conversation ended up going nowhere. I didn't manage to get any extra information that showed me if there was something more nefarious going on. Astrid also tried to talk with people about this, but finding someone who could understand her was already difficult enough. Finding someone who could understand her and give proper answers was almost impossible. And in the end, we went to bed while still being stuck in the same place we were in the morning.
Once we woke up, it was the day of the festival. This time, the committee was going to wake up early to prepare the decorations, but since I had just gotten there, they opted for not having me around. It would be too much to babysit someone who didn't understand where everything was supposed to go while preparing for such a big event. This left me with even more spare time. Time that I used trying to find some answers for Pamela. But there were none. No one knew what happened to her sister, and no one knew anything about the swap.
A little before it was time for the festival to start, I gathered with Astrid and Michael to exchange information just to know what else they had discovered during the day. But just like me, they got nothing. Everyone they tried to talk to gave more or less the same answers. But it wasn't as if everyone was reading from the same script, which confirmed this wasn't an intricate lie being told by all the people in the village. But something that either only a few people were aware of, or there was nothing going on. The whole 'marrying the lake' and 'my sister is missing' issues were just that. A culture shock and a pair of siblings that reached their breaking point and one of them decided to run away instead of telling her sister what was going on.
There was nothing else we could. The only option now was to try to find answers during the festivities.
