Menolyrical; Final Friday Fiction

Welcome! Hope a few of you at least have given the fiction prompt a go... here's mine; and if you did attempt it, link up with the blog hop. It will remain open for seven days.

having only each other, cannibals and fire, sounded like a horrible idea.

From “An Angel Named Dog”, by Melody Hewson.

Hill Bert and Low Sooz wandered along the path which they had started out on some hours ago. Or maybe it was days. They weren’t sure because the canopy of the trees was so dense it seemed like permanent night.

When Vidge had told them to go check out whether there really were cannibals and fire to be found in the depths of the forest, they had thought it sounded like a horrible idea. However, having only each other to fight against the whole council, they had lost that argument and here they were. Deep in it.

Their feet were agile on the soft forest floor, which was carpeted with pine needles and moss and ferns. With eyes well-adapted to the low light of Hindertwig, they were alert to anything which might point to fleshmunchers or look like something which might be called fire. Having no idea what fire actually was, they really didn’t have any idea what it would look like. Vidge had only told them they would know when they saw it. It was something which had been in Hindertwig once, far behind time, and because of that there would be memory which would awaken, when it was seen.

Before anything their eyes picked up, though, came a smell. Not like anything they had smelled before. Instinctively they followed their noses. It was but moments before they heard noise. Voices? Loud and harsh to their ears. As they clambered over a pile of fallen tree, Hill Bert and Low Sooz became aware that the air had brightened as well as become more smelly.

Peering over the top of the pile, they both recoiled at first; the onslaught of light, noise and odour was overwhelming and they both gagged from it. Snuggling close, they peeked again.

That must be it. Fire. Fallen trees were glowing with orange and yellow and white and green and blue and it danced and hissed and sparked and rose high above the gathering. They were in awe of it. More frightening, though, were the figures which moved around the crazy mound of light. They walked on their hind legs, they shouted, and they were eating. Hill Bert and Low Sooz now felt truly sick. Those monsters were eating a Hindertwiglet, one of their own. The could see the legs and the ears and nose. That dear thing was stuck through from throat to clinch and suspended above the fire. It sizzled and dripped and the monsters tore off that damaged flesh and gnawed hungrily at it.

Were these the cannibals then? Those who eat the flesh of other living beings? Did they not understand that they ate of themselves, even if in different form?

Oh the shock, the horror. Hill Bert and Low Sooz crept silently backwards then broke into a gallop back to the homebase. They had to report to Vidge that cannibals and fire did indeed exist, but that they were best left in myth…

(493 words)  © Yamini Ali MacLean 2017