[A]She had grown tired of waiting for the moose monster to return.

  She had looked in all the normal pces she had seen it before, though she was beginning to think that they weren’t normal pces for the moose monster. When the monster had proven itself absent from anywhere she cared to look for it, she had returned to its ir.

  She had spent the rest of her time awake trying to scavenge the ir in search of the materials the monster had used in its craft. She didn’t find them, but she did find a small stash of treats. They were in one of the high spaces in the room, just as she had seen when the monster took out the powder, but there weren’t enough to move them elsewhere.

  ‘If there is a stash here, I don’t have to worry about my stashes.’

  That led to an intriguing thought though. She had not found anything in the low spaces in the room. If the monster simply didn’t look in them because they were too low to the ground, would her stashes be safe there?

  She spent a sleep thinking it over, but it was foolish not to try. She spent the remainder of her time before sleeping again going to the stashes of treats she felt were the least protected. The stash in her home was safe and the one near the rain room should be safe as well. The ones near the food pce and farther out needed to be relocated though. She also had to determine where the moose monster had marked out territory.

  The Pages said that living things had territory. They all marked them differently but if you knew what to look for you could find it. At first, she had thought an unstoppable moose monster wouldn’t care and that there was a mistake. But the moose monster had a ir and that was territory, right? Clearly territory wasn’t just to keep others out, it could have another meaning. The moose monster might not care if others came into its territory, since they couldn’t do anything to it, but if she made a big mess in its ir, she imagined that would cause it to be angry. Just like she would be if something made a mess in her home.

  Since she had a territory in her home and the moose monster clearly had a territory as well, the Pages were likely correct on this. It would be strange for something that big to have a small territory though, so there had to be some way it was marked. How did the other monsters know not to intrude on the moose monster?

  It was possible that the moose monster used magic to mark it, but she thought that was probably wrong. If something couldn’t sense the magic, like her when she first encountered the moose monster, it wouldn’t know to be afraid. It was possible smell was used, as she could smell the moose monster clearly in its ir. The tunnels seemed to whisk away all smell though, so something like that wouldn’t st long. While that could be why the moose monster was gone so often, she thought that a combination of things would work better in that case.

  If the words on the walls had not been there before the moose monster shown up she would be convinced that was how it marked things. It was possible that this area had belonged to another monster before though and the moose monster had simply taken it over. Things had changed drastically once the moose monster had come to the area. If that was true then everywhere was the moose monster’s territory and she was back to the beginning, if it was everywhere than no where was special. Since its ir was special there had to be a limit.

  The only way forward was to find another monster.

  If she could see what it did to be afraid of the moose monster, she would know what to look for. She could think of only two ways to accomplish that though. She either had to use herself as bait, most likely in the food pce, to lure the monsters in and see what happened or she had to wait in the moose monster’s ir.

  She had no interest in the first way. Not only did her curse of light make it impossible to not see her anywhere but the moose monster’s ir, it made it difficult to see what was stalking her. If she was to make herself the bait, she would only draw in monsters that needed food and couldn’t find it. If a monster was that desperate it might not be afraid of anything other than the actual moose monster.

  Since she only had one good option to choose it would have to be what she did. Using the bnket with the opening made moving her treats all at once fairly easy. She found a low space that seemed unused and made her first stash there. Just to be safe and make sure the moose monster didn’t get them all, she made another stash in a room nearby.

  Once her task was complete, she left her small bnket on the floor near the opening and crawled under the bnkets in the moose monster’s nest. It smelled the strongest of the moose monster, so she felt it should hide her. Combined with the darkness in the moose monster’s ir and she felt well hidden. It gave her a sense of comfort and a strange wiggly sensation once she had settled in.

  ‘If all the darkness feels this good then the light really is a curse.’

  She could understand why the moose monster allowed the darkness into its ir.

  Once the light lost interest and fled the darkness in the tunnel she began the slow part of her pn. She didn’t know how long she would need to wait, but she hoped she would hear the monsters before they came to the opening. She didn’t know if she could keep quiet if they surprised her.

  Of course, it didn’t take long for her first mistake to make itself known.

  As she y there waiting, the warmth grew more and more. With the softness of the floor and the warmth from the moose monster’s nest, she began to feel the tingles she associated with magic.

  ‘Of course the moose monster’s nest has magic in it!’

  She was torn. She really had no other idea to test and if she stopped now she may never be strong enough to try again. If she didn’t stop though she may well fall into a haze and not notice another monster invading the ir. She felt safe enough, shrouded in the darkness, but if she couldn’t react than no where was truly safe.

  She debated too long though, the decision stolen from her as the warmth pulled her into sleep.

  [B]He had put his full attention on the books, but he probably should have paid more attention to the girl. As he set down his own makeshift sack of goodies to move toward the books he was assaulted by a verbal deluge. It seemed the girl had a lot to say all of a sudden.

  He didn’t understand a bit of it of course, nothing more than chirps and squeaks entering his ears. He wasn’t sure why she was using that nguage and not her rumbly voice, as he had never indicated he could understand it, but it was still the most he had heard her talk. When she picked up one of the books he became a lot more interested though.

  He turned the lights up a little, they were still at a quite dim setting from the attempt to acclimate the girl to the dark, since it seemed they would be doing a bit of reading and he didn’t want to bother with eye strain. It had the side effect of derailing the girls monologue though. She seemed to brace then get confused and forgot whatever she had been babbling about.

  Her bout of confusion ended with another round of being excitable though, as she opened the book and turned it to him. She also seemed to be pointing at the other book as well, even if he was still processing. The book he could see seemed to be some kind of nature book with a picture of a moose in it. He recognized the lettering but couldn’t read the words. The heartbreakingly low number of words indicated it was either a children’s book or a picture book of some kind. Not really helpful, as he had a way of working out the individual characters, what he needed were the rules for grammar and structure. It wasn’t a total waste of time, but it was more of a sideways move.

  “Moose.”

  Going off a whim and trying to get the girl to find a point he could understand, he tried to get her focused on the book in her hand. His word made her stop and think for a moment at least. As he went to point and say it again she actually beat him to it. Pointing at the book and copying him, she was clearly getting better at speaking. Her word was understandable the first time, even if she ruined it a little trying to make her voice low. As he hummed his approval and was about to congratute her, she surprised him again. She pointed at him and said “Moose” all on her own.

  It took him a second to figure out she thought he was a moose, so he pointed at himself and tilted his head in question. He wasn’t really sure why she thought he looked simir to something that had antlers, but her chirp and repeating of the word seemed to confirm she was quite sure of it. He checked his own head to see if something had grown since the st time he looked, though all he got was a handful of smooth bck hair.

  ‘I need to find a way to shave.’

  Since he didn’t seem to have sprouted anything unknown, he assumed the girl was taking creative liberties. He wasn’t sure just how substantial those liberties were but as the girl seemed unreasonably happy at the moment, he would let it slide.

  Happy enough to drop the nature book and rush back to her pillowcase bag. He frowned a little at the mistreatment of the poor book, something he would need to train her out of, but he didn’t say anything as it let him pick it up himself. She seemed to want him to do something with the other book, though he was more interested in poking around this one a bit.

  As he looked through the pages, there seemed to be quite a few animals. The book itself was thin, clearly meant for children now that he had it in hand. No more than a small blurb near each picture. It was possible he could gather some grammar rules from the blurbs, but if it was meant for children he would never be able to tell if they were ‘correct’ or just easy to understand. At the very least it would let him learn the common stuff like ‘the’ or ‘a’ and how to end a sentence. Not much when you had technical documents to go through, but it was a great start he wished he had a while ago.

  It did seem the poor girl was taken aback by that fact he was more interested in the book in his hand than the one she seemed to want him to read. He started to worry that he had given her the mistaken impression that he could read the books to her. It was clear that she knew enough to speak….

  .. or was it clear?

  For all he knew she was spouting as much random babble in her chirpy nguage as she did when she spoke all rumbly. For her it might make sense, but he had no way to know if she was just making things up and he was reading too much into it or not. She might have no idea what the book said and wanted him to read it to her. His short nguage lessons might be the first bit of structured speech she had ever heard.

  He sighed and rubbed his head. This was going to take forever to work out and he wasn’t going to do it standing. It was clear that whatever the girl knew it, he would need to teach her his own nguage to be sure she wasn’t talking nonsense. She had at least reacted to English when he spoke about her book, so he wasn’t starting from nothing anymore. If he could get her to talk in at least broken english, teaching her would go much faster. The only problem being he didn’t have the time while he was searching the deck level and she couldn’t follow him until she understood not to run away. There was just more and more that needed to be done and it all seemed to want to be done now.

  ‘I can at least see what she says as I transte what I found. God, I need a damn shower.’