A Friend for Otter by Jesse Medlong

Author:Jesse Medlong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkshares
Published: 2022-10-13T20:09:39+00:00

Chapter 7

A Careless Step

Strands of blooming grass swayed defiantly in an unrepentant summer breeze and tickled Otter’s feet as she lay panting on the ground where she’d collapsed. Otter had found the field in one of the Farm’s seldom-visited outlying stretches. From her vantage on the ground, the unshorn grass carpeted and curtained the field, framing the sapphire-blue sky and the occasional wisp of cloud above her in the waves of the field’s green sea.

Beside her, a bellowing yawn erupted, and Otter giggled in response. “Tired?” she asked, even as she allowed her eyelids to slowly close against the vivid sky. She wasn’t tired, she told herself; she just wanted to rest her eyes.

Melvin smacked his lips lazily, and his baritone voice, slower than usual, answered, “Little kids always have too much energy.”

Otter smiled at his good-natured teasing, and she reached over to take Melvin’s hand in her own. The two of them lay there without speaking for several minutes until Otter overcame gravity and lifted her head out of the grass so she could see her friend.

“Melvin,” she began, a worried quaver betraying her voice even to her own ears.

Melvin heard it too. He lifted his head to meet his young friend’s gaze. “What is it, Otter?”

“I have to go soon.” Nearly three months on the Farm had filled the hollowness of her chestnut cheeks and erased some of the strain from around her eyes. She had spent weeks on end roaming the Farm’s expansive grounds with Melvin, or cloistered in Luna’s library, poring over everything from fantastic tales and whimsical poems to great, thick novels and tomes on every subject ever deemed worthy of print in Industriopa, and on every continent of Imbria besides. In a few short months, she had chartered a worldwide voyage, with the printed page as her ship, taking her from the mysterious land of Chimerica with its secretive and dark-skinned spiritualists, through Fidelia where people worshipped imaginaries like gods, and all the way to the austere hermit continent of Pragmatica, where it was said imaginaries endured in bondage, created only to serve, never to be free. And eating—Otter had fed her belly almost as much as her mind, and her culinary horizons had greatly expanded in the process.

Otter now felt better—in every way—than she ever had. Yet she also felt the pull of her quest grow stronger and more persistent with each day that passed, even as she spoke of it less and less. The longer she stayed, she knew, the harder it would be to finally leave again. The last few days had tested her resolve, and she lay awake at nights weighing the memory of her mission against her newfound friends and comfort. She knew she must depart soon or forever lose the will to do so.

“Already?” He sat upright and spread his arms as if to present her with the entire Farm as a reason to wait. “But we’ve only just gotten here. Maybe another week or two to prepare?” Despite the question in his voice, his eyes confessed to knowing the futility of his words.

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