Saul was not in his father's shop, minding the parchments. He was not running errands for his mother across town. He certainly wasn't at school, though only on account of the holy month celebrating Alrea, the goddess of restoration. All around town the men and women spent their time cultivating the land, restoring buildings, and setting parties to help ease past misgivings. Saul, being only eight and an adventurous boy, had instead set out for the edge of town and the marshes beyond the low hills that banked the eastern side of the Pauli river. He had tried recruiting some of his peers, but they had been whirled up in the festivities with work or play that they could or would not leave. His company was a crude-hewn sword of wood that he had whittled in his free time the past summer despite his mother's disapproval of what she would only term 'that sort of thing'. A few of the farmers and townsfolk on the road gave him a smile and a nod as he ran by, most of whom he knew by name from their visits to his father's scroll business. Farmer Najit even called out to him about the fertility charm that his father had promised to have ready for today, but Saul was in a hurry and didn't know anyway, so he just called out "dunno" as he sped to his destination.
Brown dirt receded into flowing green grass that squished and sucked at his feet as he angled his way into the swampy floodplains that the river expanded into before emptying out into the sea thirty miles southwest. The vast expanse of the swamp was his playground, and more important to a young boy, a vast swathe of unknowns that were almost certain to contain hidden treasure. For all his time spent dozing off when Ms. Calthern went on about the history of the town and the country, he had caught the notion that at some point way early on there was a veritable wealth of ruins in the bottom of the swamp, and with the water flow that came in the spring there might be a good chance to find some of it washed up a mile or so in. All of the best rumors talked about the overgrown heart of the swamp, deep and dark with trees as old as the town and mushrooms as large as houses, not to mention the dryads and fey folk that were supposed to inhabit that area. He wasn't quite so bold as to go that far in, even if he had the time, but searching the shallows where the flow was greatest was well within his ability and courage.
A mile or so of walking, avoiding sinkholes like the older kids had taught him last summer when he could get an afternoon or morning away from school, staring into the muck in hopes of seeing something shiny, and watching out for blinking eyes that he would like to think led to reptilian bodies his courage and wooden sword could fight off, and a few hours had easily passed. Nothing had caught his eye besides a few glittering pebbles, smooth after their travel down the river. Climbing up an old, gnarled tree that pushed its way skyward he surveyed the sky and the glistening surface of the swamp alternately, shifting between the silent mystery of treasure he just knew was below him in the waters and the delightful shapes of clouds that he formed into heroic battles, back-lit by the early afternoon sun.
Finally, stomach rumbling, seeing nothing but his own fancies, he hopped down to make his way back across the marsh towards home. The light had shifted, and there had been a slow current by that time, so when he glanced out once more into the water he saw a faint glimmer under it, deep in a thick weedy place beside the small island the tree had accumulated. Stepping closer, peering farther into the murk he saw a shimmer of metal, not of the stony reflections that had fooled him through the morning as he had scouted his way through to the tree.
Wooden sword propping him up in the water as he gingerly stepped towards it, grin already expanding on his tanned face, he slipped. It wasn't the first time he had slipped today, though it was the first since he had begun to use his sword as a cane. It was the first, however, that happened to be within hearing of a particularly mean creature of those parts.
Of the few rare creatures one would sight in the swamp, the squid was the least likely you were to actually glimpse before it did any mischief. Mostly it would steal a catch of fish or flip a boat into the water before blending back in with it's camouflaging skin. Little boys, however, were just the right size that a squid of great enough size, and this squid was easily a man's length without counting its tentacles, would find him a very delicious snack.
"Mean"?
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