The Adventures of Brian (cont)
When Brian woke up, he heard gentle talking in the hallway. Liam and Aiden were already outside his room looking refreshed. Brian joined them as they walked to the reception area and saw Lucas, Emily and a young girl about their own age with an older man. They all sat around the lounge and introduced themselves. The girl was Zoe, a pretty twelve year old girl, and the man was her father, Raz. They were from this area, and they spoke in English with a lilting, soft accent. They explained the village was named “Peaceful Lake” in English. The village was part of a far- away country, but they didn’t know the name or exactly where it was. It had about fifteen hundred people and hosted infrequent visitors or merchants from far-away lands. The languages of the village included Dutch, German, French and English. They had everything they needed from foods, drinks, hydroelectricity, building construction materials. Good artisans were available to build and maintain their village. They believed that their village was located in a valley at the edge of the world and no one had ventured out to know what was beyond the valley. They were enjoying their peaceful paradise without any care until the “Trouble”.
They both dressed like hunters. Zoe had on a brown long-sleeved shirt, a dark hunter vest, and camouflaged pants. Her light blond hair was wrapped with a light pink headband. Her father, in his forties, with a not-unattractive weathered face, was wearing a tan wool sweater and leather pants. They each had vivid dreams nightly for nearly a month telling them to meet with a group of young people about Zoe’s age at this hostel on this day. Zoe and her father Raz explained the dangerous “Trouble” was a monster Komodo lizard that they were on a mission to kill. The monster lizard somehow had escaped from the private zoo of a man named Horath who lived at the very far edge of the village on a farm. They believed Horath to be an evil person. They told the friends that Zoe’s older brother was killed by the Komodo lizard when he and his friends were collecting the special Black and White truffles, the rarest and most valuable mushrooms, in addition to the Reishi medicinal mushrooms grown in the forest. The giant lizard was not indigenous to the area. The villagers believed that it was raised by Horath as a pet and eventually trained to be his enforcer in controlling the village as the Supreme Leader Lord.
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Somehow, the region's climate, or some strange environmental factors, grew the lizard into monstrous dimensions. Zoe had seen the lizard from a far and estimated it to be 40 or 50 feet long and somewhere between 16 to 20 feet tall. The monster lizard liked to eat the same mushrooms which the villagers had been collecting and selling to customers and connoisseurs from far away for nearly seventy years. The lizard had also attacked and killed villagers, hikers, and people not familiar to the area. Every so often the Komodo lizard ventured near the village and had to be chased away with massive bonfires from crowds of people assembled near the defense moat - which had been dug deeper and wider to prevent the lizard from leaping into the village.
(To Be continued)
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