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3. A loud scream woke Hiero from his dreams - yesterday's hunting trip was exhausting but rewarding and sent him to sleep earlier and deeper than usual, yet the scream he just heard was so agonizing that even he woke up immediately. He had almost forgotten about the scream as he rubbed his eyes when he heard the scream once more. Hiero jumped on his feet, pushed aside the curtain in the doorway between his sleeping quarter and the main room of his and his parents' shack and then gently set his foot on the soft sand outside his home. The sun laid a bright glow upon the village which, despite its peaceful nature, was already reasonably busy at this time in the morning. One man transported pieces of wood towards the construction at the end of the village on the side facing inland. After years the village was now finally getting a protective wall to discourage predators, scavengers and also outsiders from going into the village. It wouldn't be the first time that some massive snake or primate makes its way into the village to cause drama. There were stories of people who would just show up in the village and introduce themselves, but Hiero never actually witnessed such an event first-hand. Either way, the threat was real and the village finally decided to build a wall so that movements into and out of the village could be more easily controlled. A metallic, rhythmic clanking could be heard from the direction of the forge and the fletcher was hard at work too. Hiero saw a woman hysterically run out of a shack where the harvest and crops were usually stored. “It's gone!”, she yelled, “it's gone again!” People turned around surprised and approached to see what was going on. “All the potatoes that we harvested yesterday and which we made extra sure would not be stolen?” she pointed at the inside of the shack. “I even slept right next to it tonight so that nobody could take it! And then I wake up just now and what?” the woman paused briefly, “It's gone! It's just gone! The entire sack just vanished! Everything else is still there, it's as if someone specifically went for the potatoes!” A small crowd had gathered around the woman and Hiero only stared at them as they started hypothesizing about what it could have been, talking over each other with wild theories and conspiracies.
Hiero felt a big, rugged hand clutch his shoulder from behind and push him to the side, out of the doorway he had been standing in. A man, muscular build, emerged from the door. The doorway was too small for him so he had to pull in his head. Hiero immediately recognized the powerful, wide shape and the contrastingly calming, empathic voice. Only his dad could speak with such a bassy, deep tone yet speak so compassionately and pacifyingly. Hiero liked to think of him as a gentle giant - not just despite his age, but because of it.
“What is happening here?” he said, laying his gaze on the farmer lady. The chatter of the gathering died down abruptly and their heads turned towards Tess, looking at him with eyes wide in anticipation. The way Hiero stood besides, almost behind, his father almost made him appear small and he felt uncomfortable with all the heads turned in his direction. The woman collected herself, stepped forward and repeated what she said earlier, that the potatoes from the last day had vanished. She looked nervous, stared emptily into the ground with her head tilted down, almost like a dog displaying subservience to the pack leader. “I- I'm so sorry…”, she said, “I know I should have…-” Tess took one of her hands and held it between both of his, “Look me in the eyes.” The woman struggled to find the confidence to look him in the eyes. She tried to look at his face as briefly as she possibly could, but her visible panic subsided as she raised her head up towards Tess’s face and realized that he just smiled, softly. The anxiety faded from her face and she raised her head to fully look him in his eyes. “It's fine.” Tess let go of her hand, “If I remember correctly then we had more food than needed anyway. We will have to set up guards to keep an eye on our storage. I will talk to them later and have two of them keep watch on it. You shouldn't have to guard it yourself anyway.” The woman nodded approvingly and stepped back. Tess was suspicious of the lady's demeanor and raised one of his eyebrows questioningly “Why so nervous?”
It was obvious that the woman didn't want to be asked the question and that she would rather have been somewhere else at that moment, but now she was here and she would have to answer with something. “I… uh I…” she gulped, visibly in distress and trying to delay her response, “I… I don't know.” Tess’s suspicion was probably warranted, as far as Hiero was aware she would have been the only person in and around the storage. Well, the only person being there officially, anyone else could, of course, have snuck in while nobody was looking and enriched themselves. The woman's most likely alibi was probably going to be that she was asleep and didn't realize until she woke up just now.
Tess slowly nodded as he thought through the possibilities in his head, though possibly he was also just mentally preparing himself for the next few weeks where, without the potatoes, the village was going to be stuck with the same old diet that it now had from the last harvest. The harvest was plentiful, for sure, but not rich in variety so the village decided to plant some potatoes to spice up the menu. There was another set of potatoes out in the fields but they would still need some time before they got(?) ripe. Tess did like his meals so it wasn't too crazy to assume that despite the murder mystery going on the primary concern on Tess' mind at the moment was the missing potatoes on his dinner table. Hiero had long gotten bored of the same dishes and usually tried to put off eating until the point where his hunger would motivate him to eat more than he was discouraged from it by the repetitive menu. No offense to the kitchen, those were some hardworking men and women, but there was only so much one could do with so few different ingredients. Tess walked into the shack with the woman and the small group of interested people dispersed back to their duties or whatever they had been doing. Something was off about the lady, so Hiero carefully memorized her face and build and then went on about his own business.
His first stop was Caramel, the village's pet snake, seeing how she was doing had almost always been the first thing Hiero did after waking up. On feeding and cleaning days he would do those things too, but today none of that needed to be done. Caramel lived in a shack that was mostly used for the storage of tools and other equipment, but when a certain corn snake named Caramel chose to claim it as her own Hiero and Tess with the help of some of the townspeople built a small habitat into it, virtually a small snake heaven. There was also a mid-sized box next to it where people could deliver mice. Many people in the village had cats and usually some of them would occasionally bring dead mice to the doorstep as a gift, or whatever cats think they're doing when they bring mice for their humans. Instead of disposing of them villagers were instructed to bring those mice to this box so they could be fed to Caramel. A virtuous cycle, really - nobody knew where cats came from or how they made it here, but they certainly did so the villagers took them into their houses as an effective pest control. Cats bring gifts, gifts go to Caramel and both cats and snakes are happy. Where those cats came from would probably forever remain a mystery, but their presence was highly welcomed. Caramel would usually spend her day hidden away in some dark corner of her habitat, but every day when Hiero opened the door to the shack she would stick her head out of her hiding spot up high in the air and look towards the door in anticipation. And a beautiful head it was, sleek, slender, with brown and golden individually visible scales, white underside that extended all the way to her tail and full brown eyes with a deep, black pupil in the center. Dots of several bright-er brown scales were spread evenly across Caramel's otherwise brown back. Though a bit temperamental at times, she was Hiero's friend ever since he remembered. He used to play in the shack and would find and observe the snake several times and slowly befriend her by leaving mice in front of the hole where he usually found her. The next day the mouse would often be gone and when Hiero eventually told his dad about his little friend Tess offered to build a habitat for her. Nowadays it was pretty much a routine to pick up Caramel in the morning to do snake chores and to play with her before Hiero would move on to do the other things he had to do. Usually the “other things” depended on what the adults had to do that day - today Hiero was told he would go with his teacher to visit the other village. His teacher, Álvaro, also acted pretty much like the village's ambassador and regularly visited the other village to maintain a friendly relationship between the two villages.
Hiero had long been looking forward to this day because his parents didn’t allow him to leave the village unsupervised – a reasonable thing to do if you’re a caring parent on this island, but Hiero was much too curious to actually adhere to that rule, so over time he had been pushing and testing the limits more and more. Today, however, he and Álvaro would go to what Hiero only ever knew as the “other village”, said to be somewhere on the far end of the island. Like a mystical being that’s said to exist but no one ever actually sees it, this “other village” was completely unknown to him. Hiero had always wanted, nay begged, to accompany Álvaro on his trips to the other village but they always said that he was “too young”. He was promised that he would get to go eventually, considering that he was the son of the village chiefs, but for a kid like him “sometime eventually” essentially meant “never”. He had yet little perception of the passage of time – childhood eternal with no future ever happening – but now the day had finally arrived. What was the difference between Hiero now and Hiero a year ago when he was “too young”? In fact, Hiero didn't feel too young for most things and didn't quite get why age, either too young or too old, really mattered as much as he was told. As usual the truth was probably somewhere in between and, although Hiero did not know it yet, his visit to the other village today was going to make him infinitely more curious, perhaps more curious than he should be. Maybe he was indeed too young.