A Sketchy Tale

“Alright Timoteo, we’re taking you out,” said Felix Sombrero, whipping out the skeleton key that opened all the cell doors in the underground dungeon area.

“Oh joy,” came Timoteo’s monotone.

“Felix, wait,” said Lithuania. There was a shuffling, scraping sound coming from down the tunnels.

“You don’t have to drag us!” came a woman’s voice.

“Be gentle with her!” came a man’s voice.

“Sergeant Sombrero,” said a broad-shouldered soldier, appearing at the entryway to the dungeons, gripping a frail-looking woman with his right hand, and a lanky man with his left. “I found these two lurking outside, near the southwest tower. They say they’re from nilbmah.”

“Nibmah?” said Lithuania.

“nilbmah,” corrected winfry, “With a lower-case ‘n,’” he said. isa shot winfry a that-was-unnecessary glance.

Lithuania’s stare went from curious to aggressive. “Outside of Nilbmah we use capitals, you hear me?” she barked. “Were they armed?” she asked the soldier. Felix Sombrero didn’t even think of taking the lead. No other officer came remotely close to Lithuania in terms of rank.

“No, just a satchel with some cooking supplies,” said the soldier, “and that grimey old book.” Lithuania looked at the prisoner’s hands. He was clutching an ugly, ancient-looking book as if it were a secret-laden diary. Lithuania snatched the book and flipped through it. It was nothing. Just a stupid book on mythology and folklore. She shoved it back into the prisoner’s hands.

“Tell me your names.”

 “She’s isa,” said winfry pointing to isa.

“And he’s winfry,” said isa pointing to winfry.

“Isa and Winfry. Well. If you’re from Nilbmah, how did you cross over into Luscious Locks?”

“It’s really a long story,” said Winfry, squirming uncomfortably in the muscular soldier’s grip. “Things aren’t exactly going down very well over in Nilbmah.”

“Bring them here,” said Lithuania to the soldier, indicating a nearby cell with two stools and a cot. Isa and Winfry sat on the cot, while Lithuania and Felix sat on the stools. Lithuania’s face was impassive. “Explain.”

Winfry was a nervous wreck. As if making it through the woods of Luscious Locks hadn’t been enough, dealing with monsters every night, and Isa’s moods during the day, and the annoying habits of the librem every other minute, and the stress of knowing he was a fugitive in his homeland—now he had to deal with a bitch, just when he thought he could take a break. “Could we maybe just—just rest, for a bit?” Winfry pleaded. “We’ve hardly slept, and we’ve faced monsters, and crazy weather, and—”

“Explain,” demanded Lithuania, coldly.

Winfry sighed. “I’m a writer,” he stammered, nervously. “Isa too. She is my—my sister. We wrote negatively of nilbmah’s current regime, and are now fugitives.” Isa clutched the tiny quilaire hanging around her neck, and suddenly Winfry was calm. He could feel her inside him. Her breath hovering in his mind, telling him to stay cool… to not share too much… To stay on guard. “I was captured by the government, and placed in a secure government facility for questioning. Isa rescued me.”

“From a secure government facility,” interrupted Lithuania, scathingly.

“Y—Yes. I’m not quite sure how—” he turned to Isa, “I’m not quite sure how you did it, but,” he turned back to Lithuania, “But she had a gun and she just barged in. She was really good. She rescued me, and we started to flee… and—”

“From a secure, government facility,” repeated Lithuania, incredulously.

“Tell her about the dark man,” came Isa’s voice in his head. “She’ll want to know.”

“Yes. And, we saw an open window, at the end of the hallway,” continued Winfry. “And we were just about to cross the hallway where the open window was, when, all of a sudden, this… I don’t know, this creature… It was so strange. It seemed like its stomach was a miniature black hole that was sucking out all the moonlight from the hall. Neither of us could tell what it looked like other than it was about the size of a tall human. As we crossed the hall it shouted out in this very strange, very raspy voice, ‘Surrender yourselves,’” Winfry’s eyes dropped to the floor. “‘There is no hope of escape,’” he continued, imitating the creature almost comically. “Of course we would have made a run for it anyways, but it was strange—in case I haven’t said that enough, it was strange. Neither of us could move. Maybe it was the shock of it all but I suspect that the creature was doing something. I don’t know what and I don’t know how, and it sounds crazy, I know, but something prevented us from moving.” Lithuania suddenly remembered how she felt back in the ditch at the forest’s edge, the Monolith breathing heavily above her. She hadn’t even seen the Monolith’s rider, but she just felt that the rider and Winfry’s “creature” were one and the same.

“But then,” Winfry continued, “All the security finally realized where we had gone, and they burst into the room, and that must have distracted the creature because our paralysis let up. We then shot at the creature, which at least stunned it, giving us time to jump through the window. And the security must have been surprised by it all too because they gave us a tremendous head start and we were able to hijack a car and head to Nighline before anyone could stop us.”

Lithuania sat there, arms crossed, expression blank. Isa and Winfry were lying. No doubt about it. The way he tapped his foot continuously, and quivered his eyes. The way Isa kept fiddling around with her necklace. They were clearly hiding something. But what? And why? Perhaps there was some truth to their story, but there was definitely a lot missing. No ordinary couple could just wander from Nighline into Luscious Locks. And no ordinary couple could break from a high security government facility, no matter how shoddy the security in Nilbmah might be. And by Jove, could the girl not stop messing around with her necklace?

Lithuania decided to take a softer approach. Maybe she could coax the truth out of them. “I’m afraid your story leaves me with more questions than we will have time for,” she said, her tone softer than it had previously been. “So let’s get started. Why on Coralende did you come to LusciousLocks? I mean, it’s the last place I’d flee to.”

“Well to be fair, we didn’t know it would be like this when left,” said Isa. “And unless I’m mistaken, neither did anyone else until they entered this inferno,” she said, hoping Lithuania would agree. Lithuania nodded.

“Besides, we clearly had to leave Nilbmah, and we clearly couldn’t take any government-run transportation,” said Winfry.

“And since neither of us knows how to operate a boat, we had to run for it in a car,” said Isa.

“And since transportation is so centralized, cars are a rarity. And roads outside Nilbmah citadel are a complete anomaly,” said Winfry.

“The road to Nighline is actually the longest road in Nilbmah, and Nighline is right on the Nilbmahian-LusciousLockian border,” said Isa.

“So we decided to take our chances with the unknown of LusciousLocks rather than the known insanity of Nilbmah,” finished Winfry.

By Jove, these two were liars. They were also annoyingly cute. Lithuania was initially peeved by how Winfry and Isa finished each other’s sentences, but at the sight of it, she couldn’t help but turn a thought to what she might have been with Marco.

“I guess that’s reasonable enough,” Lithuania lied. “Now, about this creature… You say it paralyzed you. Did it ever make you feel as if your whole body was on fire?”

Felix glanced at Lithuania, wondering what she was getting at.

“Umm not really, just paralyzed,” said Winfry.

“Yeah, me neither,” said Isa.

“But you did say the hand was black, right?” Lithuania asked. She had such a clear image of the creature in her head… though she didn’t know where the image was coming from. Was she remembering the Monolith’s rider? Was she remembering something no one else could? 

“Ahh… actually, I don’t think we said that, but yes, the hand was black, like charcoal actually,” said Winfry.

“How did you know that without us telling you? Have you seen something like it here? Has it attacked you too?” Isa splurged.

The question hit Lithuania a little off guard. She wasn’t expecting her prisoners to question her. She held back a retort, and kindly said, “No... No. It was just a guess. But it certainly sounds like Assmachestan all over again, in Nilbmah.”

“Really?” said Winfry, incredulously. He was beginning to appreciate Lithuania’s more conversational tone. “You think that Assmachestan, the long-forgotten-nation-of-maid’s-tales Assmachestan, is responsible for all this?”

Lithuania looked Winfry straight in the eyes. “Yes,” she said. “But we can talk about that later. You said the creature had paralyzed you. How were you able to escape so easily then? Why didn’t it just paralyze you again? And why didn’t it chase you to Nighline?”

“Well, I don’t really know why it didn’t give us more trouble, but we were already very close to the window and we must have hit it with at least a few bullets,” said Winfry. “Isa’s aim is actually quite good. And to be completely honest, no one in Nilbmah citadel thinks about Nighline. It’s practically on another planet.”

“And who knows, maybe it wanted us to get away,” said Isa.

“Why would it want you to get away?” Lithuania asked. Isa's face was blank. And Lithuania was growing tired. These two weren't fessing up. They didn't even seem to know anything of value. If anything, they were clueless.

“Sergeant Sombrero,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Take these two to the cell and lock them up.”

“They’re in a cell,” Felix said simply.

“The other cell,” she snapped. Felix nodded, and led the two prisoners out. Lithuania had no idea what these two new strangers would play in the grand scheme of things, but she felt there was something to them.

And she still had a lot to figure out.