Chapter 46
Year XXXX October 13 Friday the thirteenth, an unlucky day for most men and I am no exception. Things just did not go right today with the exception of a conversation with Sven and the chance to learn a bit more about a young male of the clan whom I haven't had a chance to interact with. He has kept his distance but always I thought he was watching me from the corner of my eye. His lost an eye due to an accident with glass and for weeks after the incident, clansmen told him not to be Cveriss, which he reacted to poorly until the injuries scarred over. The remaining eye is a curiosity, Endermen are capable of displaying many colors at once showing their emotional state and intent but this one can actually show off the complicated colors I had imagined on the rest. Three, even four colors at a time can be clearly seen in his eyes instead of a blend of two that fools me into seeing a third. This oddity isolates him from his own family but it is not enough to have him exiled from the clan. Vaess ran up to me with a tale of a village where D'ni and the others could go and I set off at once with Mel and Tiny close behind to check it out before I told the youngsters that their travels with Endermen was nearly over. I am very glad I did wait, it took us forty-five minutes walk to the village and at first, I thought the residents were shuttered in their houses for the night to keep safe from the zombies. Vaess looked at the windows and in the well to catch his reflection many times but I saw neither hide nor hair of the villages residents, just torn bits of cloth and debris of a fight and a great many broken doors with bits of rotten flesh caught on the busted wooden frames. I was about to see if there was an underground refuge when I caught movement from the corner of my eye behind one of the houses. What was left of the villagers charged from a cave by the village farms with chunks taken from their bodies and shredded robes; they had all been zombified. Even the children had been turned and they ran at me the fastest of all the zombies. One the little monstrosities ran across Tiny's foot and under better circumstances I might have laughed when he kicked his feet as high into the air as he could manage and teleport onto the roof of a house to check for any foulness or injury. As it was, I turned tail and fled from the site of Testificate carnage until the walking dead could no longer see me and I was too short of breath to keep going. The trip back to the clan was uneventful in comparison and Tiny was constantly scuffing is feet in the grass as though he had stepped in something he found distasteful. On the way back, I asked Sven what Mel had been talking to him about, he smiled as he told me that Mel had told him how little Endermen are born, or are suppose to be born. It is a process I could not have guessed at and given how hushed Sven behaved when he spoke; it must be one of their greatest secrets. Normally when a couple is ready to have a child they seek out special foods that they use to help boost their natural energy level so they can externalize the raw power of a pearl without it taking on a form. Then they take the hardest thing they can find. In The End, they use the cracked shells of Dragons eggs and those shells combine with the energy they create to make something I have never even considered; an Enderman Egg that looks so much like a pearl that from a distance humans can't tell a difference. For obvious reasons this method will not work for us since we do not have a Dragons eggshell and Sven is less than helpful with helping me come up with an alternative. Riley and Evalias' existence prove that it is possible for a human and Enderman to have a child but I'm at a loss of HOW it is accomplished. We do not procreate the same way and with the news of eggs I am not entirely sure Endermen are mammals anymore. They care for their young the way wolves, horses, cows, pigs and people do but they create eggs like chickens and Dragons, but I've never seen them carrying eggs, only very small pearls. With such heavy thoughts leading me back to the clan, I mulled Sven's news over. I have a lot of thinking to do since I now know what Mel may try to force onto me; the energy will be difficult since humans are incapable of projecting anything outside our bodies that comes remotely close to one of their Pearls. Again, I am forced to look upon the alternative if I can't make this work I will find myself on the receiving end of a pointless mating ritual that is doomed to fail. What will Mel do if she does not get to have the offspring she so desires? I have to think of something and fast if I don't want to find out how far my 'mate' will go to get what she obviously desires Henri Lemark