Day Five-Sixty-Nine: Socks a la carte, and you're to blame

I knew bringing Grylock along would pay off. I knew it.

We began the day with no leads. The people of Resupply are pleasant and accommodating, but as I suspected, they're not that open to strangers. We're customers, and customers aren't supposed to ask a ton of personal questions about the community. This wouldn't normally matter when you're trying to hunt down purely commercial metal, which should be public record -

- but it's another thing when you discover that said community is being hounded by a monster. A monster they may not want to talk about, because it's stunting their productivity. A monster that might solve your labour problems.

Libby, Fynn and I were eating breakfast on the front porch of a little pub when the news we'd been waiting for dropped into our laps. Or, uh, news of a sort, anyway.

"Dragomir?" Libby said, looking up from her bowl of bat soup.

"Ngggh?" I swallowed my mouthful of poached ostrich egg. "Chew your food, Fynn. C'mon, don't gulp it down whole."

Fynn giggled. He had half a steak in his mouth.

"Dragomir." Libby repeated.

"What? What is it? Fynn, get that out of there! Reasonable bites, kid!"

More giggles. "Wan om!"

"Yes, I know you do, just take reasonable bites -"

I was halted in place when something slapped me in the face. Something soft, white, and woollen.

I blinked, pulling away from my son. Next to me, Libby sat back, dangling the weapon she'd used to, ah, 'sock' me in the face. Analyze the wordplay and you'll get what I mean. (I'm so clever.)

I studied the sock. "That was kinda uncalled for," I eventually concluded.

Libby shrugged. "Maybe. But maybe I should be askin' why there's suddenly a sock in my soup. And one on your head. And two on Fynn's feet."

I glanced under the table. Fynn was now wearing a pair of adult-sized socks, which, I noted, fit him quite snuggly. Kids these days. "Huh. Lookit that."

"Yeeeeep." Libby folded her arms. "Any, uh, hypotheses as to why we're suddenly surrounded by socks?"

"'cause they smell nicer than yer dirty pits."

Libby and I jumped. Fynn laughed and clapped his hands. We three looked upward, suddenly noticing the slim, green nose pointing down at us from the awning above.

"Grylock!" I breathed, giving him the finger. "Don't freak us out like that! I coulda choked on egg, for gods' sake."

The goblin leaped down beside us and scurried under the table. Always about maintaining cover, that one. "What a shame that'd be. Got any chicken up there?"

"No. Want me to order you some?"

"Obviously," Grylock hissed. "Go fetch me a plate, Libby, that's a good housewife."

Libby rolled her eyes. From anyone else, that remark would drive her crazy; from Grylock... well, we all just know he's an asshole. He and Libby get along fairly well because they're both kinda douches like that.

While chomping down on a plate of fried chicken smeared in potato sauce beneath the table, Grylock revealed the point of the socks. It turns out that one of the richest farmers in Resupply owns and works a large plantation of sock trees, and Grylock overheard him complaining that something has been eating all of his socks before they can properly ripen. He claims it's a four-legged monster, a little smaller than an elephant, though it always runs away before he can properly ID the thing. Only comes out at night.

I wasn't certain how this pertained to us, frankly, until Grylock brought up a semi-reasonable point: something that's almost the size of an elephant would probably weigh more than twenty people. Consequently, that something might just be able to power the Hamster Wheel on its own. Grylock is convinced he can tame the beast, and though I have my doubts, I suppose I'm willing to give it a try.

We've since offered our services to the owner of the sock plantation, and though he's confused as to how we found out, he's willing to let us try capturing the monster. In exchange he'll give us some rare sock seedlings, which, if this thing has a taste for socks, should come in handy should we need to appease its appetites in the future.

So. Yeah. Tonight we try to capture a ravenous, sock-eating monster. The last time I tried to do something like this, a dude wound up dead. Squashed flat by an elephant. Here's hoping the same won't happen tonight.

... man. This week got real weird.

Sincerely,

Dragomir the Wanderer