Uma's Road To Strength

The sun had set and the moon was high in the sky when the douen finally came for me.

I’d been lost in my own thoughts for hours, sitting propped against a boulder in the middle of the road, my eyes shut tight.

When I heard their feet crunching over the dust and gravel, I knew it would be them.

I took a deep breath and made myself ready.

My bag was positioned behind me, my staff leaning against it. The douen were small creatures, but they were fierce and they swarmed like locusts or ants. They were silent, though. You never knew they were there until they pounced on you and started biting your face off. They sucked out your brains right through your nostrils and ears, just as they’d do with any other animal if they could get away with it. But humans had sharp teeth and nails that could make a mess of a douen if you got close enough to bite them back before they bit you.

I had my long knives in my hands, ready to swing at anything that came near me. I’d caught two of them earlier today, one in a trap after I’d given up on trying to shoot them with my sling, and another strangled by a noose made from a length of rope I’d carried with me from day one of my journey from home. It wasn’t as good as using iron, but at least now I had two extra mouths to feed instead of just one. After what happened last night…well, I needed all the help I could get.

The douen attacked me last night when I stopped to rest near an old tree stump halfway between where I camped last night and where I planned to stop tonight. One moment I was asleep, then suddenly something tore into my shoulder like it had been stung by a swarm of bees and I was up swinging. My stick cracked against bone just as one of them bit into my leg and gnawed down hard enough to draw blood even through two layers of fabric wrapped around my lower leg like bandages until it hit muscle and stopped scissoring its jaws open and closed on me. Another grabbed hold of my hair and tugged hard enough to pull a few strands loose along with clumps of hair follicles as it tried to get its teeth into me; another three or four jumped onto my chest and began biting at my chin while another handful started tearing into my clothes with needle-like fingers just as sharp as they looked so they could get at the flesh underneath.

It perplexed me, pondering why these seemingly harmless creatures acted so maliciously towards humans. I wondered if perhaps the douen had been exposed to some sort of disease from the animals they lived amongst, driving them to this frenzied behavior. Alternatively, perhaps it was just sheer desperation that caused these creatures to attack unsuspecting victims. Whatever the reason may be, their actions were not unlike those that even humans commit without justification. Throughout history, people have committed terrible acts for reasons such as territorial disputes or unfounded gossip. Perhaps the douen, in their own way, were not so different from us after all.

Faced with this unsettling thought, I knew that I needed to find a way to coexist with these mysterious creatures while still protecting myself. The question remained: how could we reconcile our differences? For now, my only answer was to continue my journey and face each challenge as it came, always mindful of the delicate balance between fear, survival, and understanding.