Elaikim: Chapter 1
He swam through the swampy waters, looking for his next meal. The extra lids over his eyes allowed him to see underwater clearly. The only thing that obscured his vision was the mud that floated by in brown clouds. He could see quick movements of silver through some of the murk. He had not eaten fish in a long time, and was looking forward to sinking his teeth into the cold flesh. For nearly the past six nights he had consumed nothing but fruits, leaves and bugs from the various plants in the forest. A craving for fish had grown in him, and was now so great it was all he thought about. He had to catch two tonight, one for himself, and one for his daughter, Shria.
He moved his arms and fins gently through the water, remaining in one place as he watched for a clear shot at his prey. He breathed in a calm, steady manner as he waited. In an instant, he moved like a blue-green streak of lightning through the waters. He clasped a fish in one of his claws, and reached for another with his other hand. The other fish escaped, but the first one was caught, it’s blood spilling out as clouds into the brown waters.
He surfaced and saw his daughter sitting on the edge of the marsh waiting. She stood up when she saw her father’s head pop out of the water. “Did you catch one?” she asked in her high pitched childish voice.
“Yes,” her father said as he raised one of his claws to show off his victim. It was still flopping back and forth, its silver skin shining in the sun light.
He lived with just his daughter. He had other children before, nearly a hundred now, and had several mates who bore them to him, but they were not like him and his daughter. The rest of his family lived their lives based on their animal instincts. They could not speak, or reason, or live in a complex community. He would live with his mate as the children grew and developed, and protect them. Then he would move on. Every year he was drawn to a different mate to procreate with them. He never felt very attached to them, and would never mate with the same person twice. He often thought about what it would be like to find and mate with a female that could think and reason. Would it be any different? Shria was the only child of his who showed the same ability to speak and think as Elaikim. He took her under his wing, cared for her, and helped her grow and learn the things he knew; like what his mother had done for him.
“Here, Shria, you can have this one, I’ll find another one.”
He swam to the shore and handed her the fish, which, by then, had stopped struggling in his hand. She took the fish, and bit into it with her sharp teeth. Shria was not yet fully grown, and was about half the height of her father. Her underdeveloped arm fins prevented her from swimming as well as her father and the other full-grown members of her people. However, her legs and arms were almost as good as Elaikim’s for walking and climbing in the forest. She had a much smaller build than her father, like most of the females of her species. There was no hair on her body, and the gills on her neck were closed, since they had not yet fully grown.
Elaikim swam back out into the marsh and dove underneath the water, still breathing through his gills, as he searched for more fish. He saw another school far off, and began to approach them slowly. They were feeding on the little organisms that float in the water, as well as small pieces of the plant life that grew in the swamp. The water was much clearer in this area, so he could examine all of the fish from afar, and see which one was the fattest.
He saw a large fish in the center of a school, its silver skin spotted with red. It was feeding as others swam around it. The very sight of the massive fish made Elaikim’s stomach grumble and long for it. He glided closer to the school cautious to make no sudden motions.
Soon he was at the point where the closest fish to him was just out of reach. He was still eyeing his prize, though, willing to settle for nothing less. He waited and waited for the fish to get closer to him. When the time was right, he darted forward in a blue-green blur and snatched it in both hands. It took all of his strength to keep it from breaking free and swimming away. He dug his claws into its flesh as far as they would go, drawing out the red blood of the fish. He swam to the surface holding the fish out of water so it would soon suffocate.
He placed the animal in his mouth as he swam back to the shore where his daughter had been. When he climbed out of the marsh, however, he did not see her anywhere. “Shria?” he called into the forests after pulling the fish out of his mouth. “Shria where are you?” His heart was beginning to race as he feared the worst. He took some steps out towards the forest dropped his barely touched dinner on the ground and began to search and call franticly. The green and red leaves of the trees hung over head, and the small shrubs blocked his path as he proceeded deeper into the woods.
Her fish was nowhere to be seen, but she could have eaten it all while she was waiting for him to return from hunting. He began to move off into the woods leaving his fish flopping lazily on the ground.
“Shria!” He was frantic now. Where did she go? Did another animal take her? It was very possible. Though they were high up in the food chain, their species was not at the top. There were still a few other animals in the woods that would feed on them. He had lost children to animals like those before, but they had never been intelligent children. They had been animalistic. Shria was not like them. She was different, she had the potential to know and see more than her father had ever experienced. Elaikim could take loosing children that acted like animals to predators, because that was the way of nature, but he could not even stand the thought of loosing Shria to a predator. He would never forgive himself if something happened to her, if he lost her.
He was straining his eyes as far as they could see as he moved among the tall trees and shrubs of the forest floor. The plants were starting to bloom with the beginnings of spring; blue flowers hung from low branches, and pink and red blossoms from some of the smaller shrubs. Tears began to well up in his eyes as he called her name, seeing in his mind his daughter killed or eaten, and lying mutilated amid these very flowers.
“Yes?” he heard her soft voice ask as he moved quickly though the woods.
“Shria!” he said as he let out a sigh of relief. “Where are you?”
“Over here,” she said. He heard the direction of her voice and turned towards it. He could see a little blue head a ways off, hiding in some shrubs. Around the head were light pink flowers of spring and leaves nearly as large as himself.
“Shria, what are you doing all the way out here?” Elaikim asked as he walked towards her.
She lifted her hand to her face and took another bite out of her half eaten fish. “I just wanted to see the pretty flowers,” she said as she picked one of the pink orchids and put it behind her large flat ear. She smiled at her father and gave a little laugh. She came out of the bushes and approached him.
“You should never do that again,” Elaikim said in a stern voice, one that struck the smile from his daughters face. “You had me thinking that you had been killed.”
Tears began to well in his daughter’s eyes as she looked at her angered father. “I-I didn’t mean to,” she said after a length of time, staring at him with her bright tear-filled yellow eyes.
He was not mad at her. How could he be? He bent down and scooped her up in his arms. “Don’t cry,” he said softly to her as he held her. “I’m not angry with you. You just scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said as a few of her tears began to fall onto her father’s shoulders.
“Come on,” he said as he began to walk back to the marsh where he had been fishing. “We will finish our meal, and then look for a safe place to rest for tonight.” He made his way back holding his daughter tight. He did not want to let her go.
When they reached the shore of the marsh, Elaikim’s fish was missing. He sighed as he set his daughter down. “Where is your fish?” Shria asked.
“I don’t know,” he said as he pawed through the leaves where his fish had been. It was a lie. He had a good idea where the fish went: another animal most likely came by and saw the free meal he had dropped.
“Are you going to get another one?” she asked. “I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”
“No, I think I will just find some other food,” he said looking on the ground for some large insects he could eat.
“Do you want some of mine?” she asked as she held up her half eaten fish to her father.
“No, you eat yours. You need it more than me. You want to grow up big and strong, so you need to eat it,” he said with a smile as he looked down at his daughter.
“But I am not hungry anymore. You can have it.” She looked up at him with her bright, shining, yellow eyes, still holding up the silver and red fish. “It was too big for me.”
Elaikim took the rest of his daughter’s dinner. It was only the tail and part of the body that was left, but a little bit was better than none. “Thank you, Shria,” he said, and then took a bite. There was not much left to fill him, but he ate it gladly. He finished it in three bites and thanked his daughter again.
“We should find a place to stay for the night, it is getting dark,” Elaikim said as he took Shria by the hand and began to look for a suitable resting spot for the night.
As they walked, his daughter asked him a question. “Where is mother?” She inquired, “How come I never get to see her anymore?”
It was a question Elaikim had hoped she would never ask, because he did not know how to explain it to her at such a young age. “I don’t know,” he said. It was not a lie; he had not seen her mother since they parted ways at the end of the last mating season.
“Will I ever get to see her?” Shria looked up at Elaikim again as they walked through the forest.
“You might,” Elaikim said looking down at his daughter.
“Do I have any brothers or sisters?”
“Now what makes you ask that?” Elaikim asked.
“Well I have seen other animals with lots of babies. I found a nest one time and in it were lots of little birdies,” Shria explained. “As I was eating them, I began to wonder if there were any babies like me. Where are the others like us?”
There was no way to avoid answering her. He knew he had to tell her the truth no matter how hard it would be. He could remember when his mother first told him the truth. It was tough on him, and he knew it would be far from easy for Shria to accept reality. He stopped walking, and knelt down to look his daughter in the eyes.
“Shria, there is something I have to explain to you.” He waited as he tried to piece together his words. His daughter looked up at him with longing eyes waiting to hear what he had to say next. “Your mother and brothers and sisters are not like us. They act like the wild animals you see around the forests. They move and do actions based on their instincts.”
Her yellow eyes were filled with confusion. “What do you mean? I want to talk to my mother.”
“Shria, you will never be able to speak with your mother,” Elaikim tried to explain. “She won’t understand you. She never will. Neither will your brothers or sisters. I am not sure why life is like this, it just is. However, there are others like us. We meet every year, when winter changes to spring. Last time we met, you were still at an age when you could stay with your mother. I went to the meeting then came back and took you under my care.”
Shria did not know what to say. All of this was too shocking and confusing for her young mind to make sense of it. “I know it will take time to understand,” Elaikim said looking at his daughter. “But I will never leave you. You will always have me to talk with, and maybe one day you will have a child of your own who will be able to speak and reason.”
Her eyes glistened with tears, and she said, “But I want to talk with my mother. I want to see her! Where is she?” Her question began to grow into a demand. “Where is mother? I want to talk to her! Show me where mother is!”
The commands she threw at her father were hard for him to hear. What was he to do? How could he show his daughter her mother if he did not know where she was?
An Idea came to him.
“If you want to see your mother and family, come with me.” His voice and face were stern and unmoving as he led his daughter back through the woods.
The sun was getting low in the sky, and Elaikim knew that the nocturnal animals would soon be out in force. Night was an unsafe time on his world; there were many dangers seen and unseen in the forests at night. The sun was barely visible through the trees in the east as they came upon a clearing in the woods. This was the place where Elaikim knew that some of his people, the animalistic ones, would come to sleep in pacts.
There were about twenty of them there that evening. Shria saw them as she came closer. “This is your family,” Elaikim said to his daughter. The truth was that he had no idea if they were related to her or not. Some of them could be family; cousins, siblings, maybe even her mother, but most likely they were just other members of their species.
Shria walked out into the clearing and began to approach the blue-green animals. “Mother?” she called out into the group as she approached in a cautious manner. None of the animals responded. Why would they? They could not understand her calls. “Mother, where are you?” she called again.
She neared one of the animals that was laying down, its head on its hands, and its legs tucked underneath its body. It looked up at her and hissed, showing its sharp, yellow-brown teeth. Shria gasped and jumped back in fear. “Why did you do that?” she asked the creature as it began to lie its head back down.
“It is no use,” Elaikim said as he began to walk into the clearing grabbing his daughter’s shoulder. “He can’t understand you. I told you, they live off of their instincts. If you approach him again, he will most likely attack you. Come on, Shria, we’re not wanted here.”
“No, I want to find mother!” she cried breaking free and running further into the mass of creatures. The animals gave cries of protest as Shria ran by them, stepping on some, kicking dirt and leaves accidentally onto others.
“Shria! Come back here!” Elaikim called.
His daughter ignored him and kept searching futilely for her mother. The pack of creatures began to stir awake with groans and hissing as Shira made her way through them. One of the larger members of this pack stood up and placed himself directly in Shria’s path. She ran into him and looked up at it. “Where’s my mother?” she screamed at the creature.
It growled at her, and struck her across the face with his large claw. Instantly, Elaikim was by his daughter’s side, his claws at the other creatures throat. He was about the same size as the creature, so it was almost a fair fight, but Elaikim still held an upper hand.
The creature was making a rasping sound as it tried to breath and struggled to get out of Elaikim’s firm grip. Shria was crying beside him, but he was too focused on harming this beast to notice. Blood welled up beneath Elaikim’s claws as he dug deeper into the animal’s flesh.
“Stop!” she screamed.
The word caused Elaikim to relax his grip just long enough for the beast to break free and run away. “I want to go,” she said softly, still crying. Elaikim looked down at her, saw her tears mixing with the blue blood from the scratch across her face. The other animals all around him were looking at him, either scared of him, or preparing to attack, he could not tell. I shouldn’t have done that, he realized.
“Let’s go,” he said taking her hand and leading her out of the clearing. She followed without protest.
The sun was gone, but some of the light remained. They came upon a small cave in the bottom of a little hill beside a shallow creek. “This will be good for tonight,” Elaikim said. The cave was too small to be comfortable, but they did not have much choice. Darkness was approaching fast, and soon they would risk running into a nocturnal predator.
“Let’s clean you off a little before sleep,” Elaikim said guiding her to the creek. They sat down beside the icy waters, and Elaikim moistened his hands and began rubbing off some of the dried blood on her cheeks. Tears were still falling from her eyes, but she wasn’t making a sound.
“I am sorry,” he said in a soft voice to his daughter.
She didn’t respond. Why’d I react that way? What sort of monster does she think I am? he wondered as he continued to clean her wounds.
“All better,” he said when the dried blood was all gone. “We should go inside the cave before it gets too dark,” Elaikim told his daughter.
Shria climbed into the cave first, and Elaikim followed. Without a word she curled up into a small ball and waited. Her father climbed in behind her, with his arms around her. He held her close in darkness of the cave. Why wasn’t she able to just accept what he told her, like how he responded when his mother told him the truth. His mother might have known better how to handle that situation. I wish she were still here. His mother had died nearly a year before Shira was born. One of the nocturnal predators had attacked her in the night. Elaikim came across her remains a few days later after returning from one of his longer expeditions for food and shelter. The images still haunted him some nights.
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