A different way to get iron.
A different scent wafts into the air now, causing Daniel’s head to turn at the familiar aroma. Angel had a rather large slab of steak in her hands now, abruptly speared onto the metal stick. Then she reaches for a second, and a third, and yet more until it was a ridiculously sized kebab with more meat on the metal than could fit in her hand. The sphinx could only stare as she puts the large supply directly into the flames and waits for them all to blacken.
“So first you were playing games with a bunch of other people, then went to bed, then woke up here? Surely you don’t mean here as in directly in our camp.” The woman points out.
“We saw you pass over us three times before coming in to land.” Keth adds.
“Pretty sure it was jus the one time kid.” Charley corrects.
“No he’s right, it was three. I erm, just came down from a dive and had to kill speed before landing. Would have been a lot more awkward if I just faceplanted into the dirt here, wouldn’t it?” Daniel breathes deeply, watching the fire with an unspoken intensity that caused Angel to smirk.
“So how did you get from waking up to flying through the air? C-mon, there’s got to be more to it than your letting on.”
The sphinx nods, taking a moment to think it over.
“Well um, I got to walk around a bit? Lots of trees. I think I was very close to a cliff and could see some small lakes or ponds and stuff. It wasn’t hard learning to fly and so the first thing I did was dive off a cliff and start fluttering around and stuff. Them uuhh … I saw this car on the road and thought I might ask for directions.”
“Then why’dya want ta come to us fer it?” Charley raises an eyebrow, his lips bunching up in a way that makes the cigar shift across his face.
“It probably didn’t go very well.” Keth assumes. “How would you react if a giant monster thing dove out of the sky and offered a polite hello?”
“Ah dunno, shake it’s hand?” Charley responds.
“Will you two idiots stop calling her a monster? Please?” Angel explains while sitting over the open fire. “Unless one of you wants to go offer the carnivore some snacks out of your palm then kindly shut up.”
“W-weh. .. uuhh … yes. It was a very polite and calm and rational meeting. H-he wasn’t even scared” Daniel lies through his teeth. “The problem was all me actually. I couldn’t stop talking in riddles.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be normal?” Angel asks with genuine curiousity.
“Maybe for an actual sphinx, but not for me. It was weird! Infuriating. I couldn’t say anything I was actually trying to say and the stuff that did come out I could barely understand. Like, sure I guess they were supposed to be riddles or something but it’s not like they made sense or that the answer was what I was trying to ask.”
“Did you try not speaking in riddles?” Keth pipes up, just as curious but with a distinct hint of smug superiority that was absent from Angel.
Daniel narrows her humanlike eyes and clenches one paw, the claws extending to scrape narrow marks through the dirt.
“Yes, I tried.”
“Well, actually what I mean is, maybe you were only asking questions. And questions can be made into riddles right, but declarative statements can’t. So if everything you said was a question of some sort maybe you just converted them to riddles on instinct?” Keth offers quickly, perhaps sensing the level of annoyance in this large feline.
The sphinx simply considers. “That … doesn’t … make any sense. I’m asking questions now aren’t I? A lot of them even. The first thing I did when landing here was ask more questions and I have no idea why I can talk normally here.”
“The gal’s right.” Charley puffs through his cigar, reaching out to spear and cook a small chunk of steak for himself. “She asked fer food, if’n it was a riddle it’d be something like, Oh what does a man need every day, three times indeed, but once it’s been had it can never be seed.”
Angel immediately baps the rugged old man across his forehead.
“Did you try Ryhme ‘need’ with ‘see’? Guys I know you can be super embarrassing without meaning to but don’t go out of your way to say dumb things!”
“Well ah thoughit was gud.” Charely turns up his nose and attempts to look dignified. Daniel simply rolls his eyes.
“No riddles please, I’d prefer if we didn’t try to make some relapse or anything. I’m talking normally, you can understand me, I can stop being afraid that something mind controlled me or whatever.”
“Right.” Keth sighs, looking up from his phone to stare Daniel right in the eyes, however distant the two were. “So what happened next? He obviously didn’t pass the riddle or you’d know where you need to go.”
The sphinx winces. “Actually he did! Sort of. I think. I tried to ask him about really long ports without an ocean or something, and he said he was riding to Longport. That’s where my home is and so I sort of fallowed the road after he left.”
“Were you going west or east?” Angel pipes up.
“I don’t know. How do you even tell that without a compass?” Daniel shrugs.
Keth simply points to the sun. Looking rather dumbfounded.
The sphinx blinks.
“Aaannyway, I took to the air and started flying a bit farther now. Realized that being too low was dangerous and so I climbed up really, really high and made it all the way to the clouds. Its hard to see the ground when you have cloud in your face, so I don’t know. Maybe an hour of flying? Almost that? I got really tired and just sort of drifted down, can’t find the road anymore, and then noticed the smoke from your campfire.”
“The smoke an the smell I’d wager.” Charely nods, pulling his small chunk of steak away and nibbling on the edge.
“Y-yeah. That’s when I got hungry, and well .. here I am.”
Written by Arbon on 12 August 2016