Strange Companions XIV

Walking down the street, you realize many of these homes are foreign to you. As you walk the impression you’re being watched once again settles over you, the sense of unease makes your hairs stand on end, and you resist the urge to break into a run. You look to the sides and though it’s the middle of the day, shadows seem to grow around the houses around you and specks of light glitter in the shadows, like tiny eyes, following your every move. The sense of real danger starts to mount, you furtively glance left to right and where there were once sun lit homes you now see dark houses with windows that give the impression of pervasive spreading darkness – you try to look away but you become entranced with one window, a view of something unfathomable brushes your mind and just as you begin to see flecks of blue a hand wraps around your shoulder and you stifle a scream of terror.

Thomas, fishing pole in one hand, smiles at you and gives you a strange look.

“Friend, you’re standing in the middle of the street perfectly still, are you okay?”

You blink, arms shaking, and the sun has returned to the sky. Thomas ushers you down a side street towards his home. After a few moments, you regain your composure enough to assure Thomas that you are fine and ask him about Cecil and strange happenings.

Thomas gives you a second strange look and breaks out in a belly laugh. “Oh, do you mean besides the dragon attack? Or Ric Ryph? Or perhaps you mean the fact that I caught all these fish?!” Thomas proudly shows you a drying rack with three trout.

“Fished ‘em myself! Maybe I’m not a lost cause afterall, eh?”