[shaggydog]

Listlessly, he plucked at the remaining shreds of flesh still adhered to the inside of the shell. Discovered yesterday and mostly consumed, raw, the night before, the turtle had provided a bit of meat in an otherwise root and berry diet. Oeric was vaguely aware of the way in which his clothes flapped about his frame when he walked. The natural impetus to eat was slowly waning as his mind turned ever inward upon itself. The reason for his existence seemed far beyond his capability to ascertain by now; most hours were spent holed up in the little burrow he had crafted. Nothing more than a declivity scraped by some animal into the roots of a tree perched on a relatively dry hump of marshland, it served to keep off some of the rain.

For a week after his encounter with the odd stranger called Dan, Oeric had continued to skirt the ever changing and growing camp. The promises made that day were apparently being upheld, for the while, as no further searches were made with Oeric as their intended quarry. At least, no-one came out to track him and there seemed to be no attempt to flush him from the marsh. Oeric had managed to find vantage points whereby he could somewhat keep an eye on the goings on of the new settlers. Even their forays into the marsh to gather wood held no specific malignant threat to his solitary watch keeping.

One morning, however, he had taken up a crouched position to the northwest, towards the end of the ridge of rock running behind the old ruined hall. Far removed from the camp itself, he could still crane his neck and see the activities of those coming and going towards the south of the settlement. It was the noise that had first alerted him to what was about to occur that day. An unusual murmur of many voices rose through the morning air like a distant flock of herons. It was unlike the newcomers to gather together in number except at meal time or an occasional evening address by their lord. Risking his concealment, Oeric had slipped closer, climbing the rocks until he could just stick his head out and get a glimpse of the camp. There he saw them, almost all the lord’s people it seemed, gathered in small groups, tools in hand, walking slowly towards the burnt out hall. Oeric could not hear the instructions given, but as they fell to it was clear what their assignment was. Armed with rakes, shovels, buckets and brooms the settlers began to attack the lumpy floor of the hall. Strewn with the debris of the conflagration, it was now to be swept clean. The hard earth underneath would be raked and leveled, in preparation for the task of erecting a new hall.

From the weeks spent here truly alone, before the lord and his company’s arrival, Oeric knew the exact placement of the fire scorched bones which lay beneath the ash. With horrified fascination, Oeric watched one small boy who played more than worked with the broom he wielded. Step by step the child had moved until he was standing almost on top of them. Any moment his foot would make contact and he would hear the crunch or feel the unexpected object . . . he would bend down and feel amongst the charred remains and . . .

Oeric blinked. Surely he was not mistaken. The child had been standing in the exact spot, but had raised no cry of surprise or discovery. A few moments later, the ash had been swept away, the floor underneath now exposed, bare and devoid of any object, let alone two entwined skeletons. Feeling light headed, Oeric looked about frantically for some sign that he was mistaken in his memory, that some other settler in some other part of the ruin had stumbled upon what remained of his life. Yet time passed, the floor was slowly but surely revealed, and . . . no bones.

Somehow, for some reason, someone had removed them. After his hours of vigilance, Oeric felt this with a certainty. Was it possible that with no regard for what had happened here, whoever had discovered the remains had gathered up the vestiges of two lives and unceremoniously thrown them on the midden heap? Oeric knew that the other one had been buried, however anonymously. Could it be the two had been given a similar send off? For the one thousandth time since the newcomers’ arrival, Oeric cursed himself for a craven for not having had the courage to retrieve his precious treasure when he had had it all to himself. And now what? What had been done with them?

For the rest of that interminable day, Oeric had waited in agonized impatience. When night had at last fallen, and the camp had drifted off for the most part to slumber, he had painstakingly made his way around to the spot where he knew the other had been laid to rest. Oeric’s heart sank as he crept close enough to see that there was no second grave, no disturbance of any kind in the earth beside the sole mound.

Oeric had silently sent a prayer up as he searched about, hoping against hope that he might yet stumble upon a second grave. As the night hours flew quickly past, no trace had he found of any interment. With unreasoned anger, yet also with a faint flutter of hope in his heart, he concluded that the skeletons must indeed have been cast aside like yesterday’s offal.

For many nights after that, Oeric searched as best he could. The refuse of the ruined hall had been dumped behind the latrine, no doubt as future filler for when a new one was to be dug and the old to be covered. He started there, knowing the impossibility of the bones having gone undetected and unremarked by any of the clean up crew. Yet still he had searched. Fruitlessly, he had risked imminent detection, although waiting until the wee small hours made visitors to the latrine rare. A thorough search of the pile of rubble had however revealed no bones. In desperation, Oeric widened his searching to all the areas around the camp, and beyond, to the point where sanity decreed that there could be no reason for any of the settlers to cast the bones so far afield. Or, with gut wrenching anguish, Oeric realized that if they had so chosen, his chances of finding the remains on his own were slim to none. He slept little and ate less, spending each moment either searching or laying in wait to begin his searching again, once both sun and moon had set and the men posted to keep watch were yawning and less attentive. And as he lay waiting in his lair, his mind turned over and over, and over again, what he should do if he never found them. With each day then, as his hopes diminished, so to did his reason for continuing to exist in this world if they were well and truly gone from him.

The last two nights now, Oeric had not even bothered to search. His mind was as pinched as his belly, one thought only cursing through it. There was at least one who knew where his darlings were. He did not know that person’s name, or age, or whether it be man, woman, or child even. But he did know one thing – where that person, whoever it was, was to be found.

His eyes lifted momentarily in the direction of the camp.