For a moment, all I can do is watch. Morbidly transfixed.
She must be three times the size of me, her blue velvety skin so at odds with the holes in her four palms. Round gapes of flesh that glow with the same fluorescence as the threads draped across the ceiling.
Her numerous black beady eyes narrow on the piece of chair before she stuffs the rest in her mouth, moaning with satiated delight.
Something glints in my peripheral, my gaze latching onto the silver, gem-encrusted bangle sitting atop her head like a tiny crown. My silver, gem-encrusted bangle.
Dammit.
Guess she likes it more than I did. She’s certainly looking after it more.
Definitely getting eaten.
Sighing, I grab a three-legged chair from the pile and drag it across the rough stone floor that’s surprisingly clean, aside from the odd splat of fluorescent goo, stepping into the small patch of empty space before the trogg’s nest of hair and trash.
The creature goes eerily still, a shard of pottery poised halfway to her mouth.
I place the chair down and perch upon it as the trogg cocks her head to the side, lowering the shard, her many eyes blinking at me. “You’re a brave little morsel, planting yourself before me like a midslumber snack.”
Internally, I quiver so much I swear my bones rattle.
“You have something that used to be mine,” I say with a loose shrug.
Those beady eyes narrow further. “What is it?”
“My bangle.” I point to where it’s resting atop her head, stringy bits of hair curled around its circumference and binding it in place. “I want it back.”
She releases a shrill cackle that ends as abruptly as it began, cutting me through with a predatory leer. “She’s a bossy little morsel …”
Guess that was a little bossy.
“Apologies. I would like it back, please.”
“That’s a good morsel.” She raises a hand, her knobbly finger reminding me of the stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
Silence stretches as she unweaves the piece of jewelry from her head one limp, oily strand at a time—my heart pumping hard and fast.
Can it really be this easy?
“You know,” she says in her odd, scratchy voice that makes me battle another full-body shudder, “things have memories.”
“Really?”
Pretending to be interested is hard while I’m quietly begging she doesn’t flick the circlet of silver into the air, then swallow it down in a single gulp.
She nods, hanging the bangle on the tip of her tapered nail, bringing it to her flat, slit nose, all her lids growing heavy as she draws a deep whiff.
Internally, I wince—beginning to see where this is going. “Smells good, does it?”
“Clever, clever little morsel.”
I am clever. Most of the time. This entire situation puts an unfortunate chink in my armor.
Splaying a hand, she plugs her thumb and pointer finger into one of the gaping holes in her palms. Pinching, she extracts a fluorescent string that emerges with a thick, gluey secretion, making me want to hurl. “The richer the memory, the more of this I make.”
“I see …”
She keeps pulling until there’s a lengthy coil of the substance bound on the ground before her, throwing light up at the underside of her honed chin.
The last of the thread slurps free of her palm hole, flopping before her. “Isn’t my palace pretty?” she preens, tossing her arms wide.
I lift my gaze to the ceiling, taking the space in with a whole new, gut-twisting appreciation, a wad of stretchy wetness dripping onto my cheek from what I suspect is a recently strung thread.
It’s an effort not to loosen my guts all over the floor.
“Very pretty. Wish I could secrete like that.”
Fucking glad I can’t.
“This right here,” she says, tapping a nail upon my gem-encrusted bangle. “I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.” She brings it to her nose and draws a long, haunting whiff, groaning. “I can tell it’s going to be tasty.”
Unfortunate. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to part with what I currently have stuffed in my pocket.
I reach in, pulling out a loop of braided colk leather heavy with a round of black dragonscale carved to represent the pronged face of Pah’s vicious Sabersythe. “What about a trade?”
The trogg’s head snaps to the side, like her neck just popped a bone. “Trade, you say? What’s that my little morsel has in her bony hand?”
“It was Mah’s málmr,” I say, dangling it before me. “Gifted from my pah, the late King Ostern Vaegor.”