Location Unknown

XYLER DASCHUND

Playful krill squirmed under our canoes. We had found the boats with oars inside against the banks of the estuary. Like a clique, Jennifer and Molly had taken a canoe for themselves while I had to row alone. They were much farther ahead of me.

I felt horrible for leaving Valery behind. Even if it was what he desired, it was not a logical decision. He would be eaten by that alligator by nightfall.

The soughing of the wind in the canopy of branches brought down colorful and petite petals. We had lost too much daylight tending to Valery's injuries. Now there was barely any time left to traverse the estuary and find a place to settle in for the night.

The girls were whispering to each other on their small canoe. Molly gave me unusual glances. As if she had been told not to look, but could not pry her eyes away from her curiosity.

I struck a lily pad with the oar by accident, sinking it into the murky water. I continued to push into the water with the oar until it launched the canoe, moving my hips to the soft current of the river.

"DOCK!" Jennifer shouted back to me, reaching my ears faintly. They swerved to the left, Jennifer pulling their boat closer to the land with her oar until they could depart from the transport. There was only coarse dirt and a few ferns at the edge of that land, so they waited for me to catch up, holding the knocking canoe against the moist earth.

In the gaps between paperbark trees and low hanging long leaves, I spotted a hutment in front of the land they had docked at.

I got a better look at the ancient establishments when I rowed up to and leveled with the other boat.

The sun floated just above the horizon when I stood up and wedged my oar into the other boat to keep it level. My bare torso and chest had been scorched by the sun all morning so sundown was a welcome improvement.

The flat cap kept the sun out of my eyes and shade over my forehead, but my hair underneath was becoming a wet mop and the inside of the cap; a steam bath.

Molly stepped over to my boat, holding the two vessels together with her feet and hands. Her pendant necklace swung to her knees as she bent over. She had explained to me that it was a dowry from her parents, which meant a lot, and that she had even kept it with her in Valery's world.

I picked up the wooden stakes and bundle of rope at the bottom of the boat. The stakes had been sharpened from thick pieces of wood while we waited for Valery to regain consciousness, and the rope had been found in the flooded dwelling on the dock.

"Hurry up," Jennifer urged, "are you trying to be slow?" I stepped over to land and passed her a stake. I swung my stake into the soil and kicked it into the dirt to structurally strengthen it. Jennifer impaled her stake opposite mine.

"Use the oars to nail them in," I told Jennifer.

"I think they're fine," Jennifer said, stepping back to view both stakes. "Any deeper and there won't be nothing for the rope to wrap around."

I twisted and wound the rope around the stakes and then tossed the end of the rope to Molly to wrap around stakes that we had hammered into both ends of the two watercraft, securing the boats in place. Molly hopped off the vessels and we held our breath anxiously, expecting it to fall apart.

The makeshift dock had worked quite well. We turned to the encampment of huts around a fireplace. A woman with a closed umbrella hooked into the dirt had been watching us.

She had two red Swastikas embroidered on both shoulders of her military jacket. It looked like there was also a large Swastika printed on the outer canopy of the umbrella.

She looked exactly like Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp - a Nazi who made objects with the skin of camp prisoners. I had never seen her in the flesh, but read about her when I was researching for my next game.

My eidetic memory must have saved her face and pushed it into this dream manifestation as a Neo-Nazi. The dyspeptic German booted the end tip of her umbrella up and pivoted the point to rest on her collarbone.

I murmured, "She's not real."

As if not being real was the bigger danger, I thought. Or maybe it wasn't anything. Maybe it was nothing.

"Can't you turn into a d-dragon and burn her?" Molly asked.

"If I could, I would have flown us out of here. But this place is so vast, my mind is occupied with generating biomes and fitting them together. L-like a jigsaw puzzle. The dragon isn't a part of that mental puzzle. Don't worry, I realize now, she's not real. She can't hurt me."

In a unilateral decision, I strode across the space between me and the Neo-Nazi. Each step I took, I drew more power from the earth which I had developed a special affinity for. I could see under it, the layout of the environment in gridded visualizations. I grew aware of everyone's position, the people behind me and the one in front of me. The background of swaying trees moved forward into the same layer as the midground of straw huts, which was then pulled into the same layer as the congenital oppressor of Jewish prisoners. It became one canvas in which an ostentatious landscape had been painted, but also a fourth dimensional construct of imagination.

Ilse thrashed her umbrella over the top of my head. I did not flinch and did not move an inch from the impact. I could not feel its nylon material or the hard metal underneath.

"Impossible," the Neo-Nazi gasped in a thick German accent, "your head should be caved in!"

"Possible," I said. She recovered from her shock and held the umbrella upright again.

"No matter." She pointed the umbrella over my shoulder. "It is a rifle nonetheless."

Before I could act, the trigger was pulled and all I could do was look around and follow the bullet's trajectory into Jennifer's chest.