"Who is that?!" Iris shouted towards a high wall of bush on her left. Her shout startled everyone and made them look at her.
"Iris?" Pollux asked his sister but didn't move from his position. He was in front of his brother, paving the way while she was at the with Kai.
"Shh, brother. I heard something." Iris replied without moving her body part.
The group knew Iris wouldn't joke about this kind of thing so, they took it seriously. They became dead silent and sharpened their hearing to hear the sound again, but nothing happened for five minutes.
"I think nobody is there." Castor whispered to his sister after waiting.
"You're right." Iris stopped and started moving again. "Let's keep moving."
They didn't say anything anymore and continued doing whatever they were doing to reach where their parents were.
"Come out now! I don't want to kill you!" Iris shouted again after twenty minutes. She had heard the same sound again from before.
Iris took out the necklace bottle that had seawater and poured it on her skin. Immediately she got venomous tentacles from her back. She then attacked the nearby bushes and trees with her long tentacles, not missing a mouse.
Everybody watched her in awe when Iris spoke that way. She had never really threatened someone apart from one time a girl who had a crush on Jin turned into a stalker and tried to kidnap him.
"Gotcha." Iris's eyes sparkled dangerously when she felt her prey and pulled it up from the bushes into her sight.
"Ow!" A boy screamed when lifted by her strong tentacles.
"Who are you?" Iris asked in a deep voice that took everyone by surprise.
"I am Lee." Although he was trying to escape her grasp, he answered her question.
"What are you doing following us?" Iris again asked the little boy, bringing him closer to her.
"I was..." Lee got scared and couldn't answer. He was just playing alone in the forest when he stumbled across them. He knew they were not his kind since he knew everyone in the community.
"I am asking a question. I want an answer." Iris was snarling at the boy and, everyone could see the boy's eyes filling up with tears.
"Iris, why don't you just put him down first? He looks too scared to talk." Alek asked her cousin sweetly. She could feel fear radiating off of him.
"Nana..." Alek saw her facing her and saw that Iris's eyes were flickering with her animal eyes and human's.
"He is a little boy. I don't think he will hurt us." Alek told her.
"Lee, are you here to hurt us?" Rin asked the boy who was crying silently. Lee shook his head vigorously. "I think you can put him down, Iris." He honestly didn't know why Iris was acting this way. Maybe she's just being careful with the place she is not familiar with.
Iris looked at her brother and back at the boy several times before letting him go off to the ground. She slowly retracted her tentacles back to her body.
"Lee, we didn't mean to hurt you. My apologies." Jin came over to the boy and knelt down beside him. "I am Jin. How old are you?"
Lee put out his small hand with four even smaller, chubby fingers.
"You are four. Where did you come from?" He asked again.
Lee pointed behind him to where they had come from.
"Okay. Can I ask you a favour?" Castor asked pleadingly. Lee nodded, feeling that these people weren't bad. "Do you the house of the head? We are heading there but, we are lost. Could you help us?"
Lee nodded and stood up. He was the height of Kai's hips and, he silently asked them to follow into the deeper parts of the forest. "You are taking us there? If you can only show the way, then we would just go that way." Jin told the small but confident boy.
The boy shook his head. "You can't get out of the forest if you don't have the guide." He said firmly. "Opposite of Kan'nazuki's territory."
"You know Kan'nazuki?" Rin asked the boy.
"My friend lives in that place." He turned back to tell them and continued to pave the way. "This way."
"You have been there?" Rin asked again.
"Yeah. To visit her." When Lee said that, he sounded a little sad.
They walked in silence after that before Lee spoke again.
"There." He pointed at the house on the top of the hill, half covered in the sky river.
"How do we go there?" Alek looked at where she and others were standing. There was a gap between the hill she was on and the hill where the house was located.
Lee knelt down on the ground and placed his scale. It was orange because he was a goldfish. The ground where he laced his scale was sand like the one from the beach. The sand sucked up the scale like there was a hole underneath even though it was just on top of it. He moved away from the sand and waited.
"What are we doing he-" Alek was cut off when she felt the ground shake. Bia quickly came beside her and looked out for any danger.
Suddenly the sand grew larger, and it covered up where they were standing. It was acting like a wildfire.
"What?" Pollux almost fell as the sand lifted them up and brought them to the foot of the other hill.
"You've never met this kind of magic?" Lee asked at the people he met in the forest. They looked a little off guard.
"No." Alek answered as she looked back at where they were a second ago. As soon as the sand transported them, it became lifeless and fell into the gap between the hills.
"Oh." Lee spoke. "We should continue walking." Lee turned to walk again to the house.
"You sound mature," Alek told the boy. He acted as his age when he was caught by Iris but, by the way, he talked and acted now, he sounded like Kai. Not his age. "Mature than me."
Lee just chuckled before continuing to pave his way.
Even the way he chuckled reminded Alek of Kai and, she looked at her brother.
"What?" Kai asked his sister when he felt the intense stare.
"Nothing." Alek stopped looking at him and acted as if nothing had happened.
"He is sure mature than you." Kai spoke and sighed. "I'm not sure how you can get good grades with your brain."
"Hey, that has nothing to do with my maturity!" Alek complained. "And I can get good grades because Torak Donovan is there." She told him happily and proudly. She has always told herself to study so, that she could meet Torak and spend some time with him. To spend more time on him, she didn't waste any more of her time studying.
"Who is that?" Kai asked, but when he saw her eyes he didn't want to know the answer anymore. "You know what, I don't want to know."
"Really?" Alek's eyes were glittering like a Christmas turkey. "I can tell you all about him."
"No, thank you." Kai got away from his sister and went to stay next to his other sister.
Alek tsk-ed internally and continued to climb the hill quietly.
"So here you go." Lee stopped and showed them a staircase made of stones that led to the head's house. "You just need to go up here."
"Thank you, Lee." Jin thanked him.
"I need to go back. It was nice meeting you guys." Lee smiled, but somehow that smile showed them sadness.
"I'm sorry." Iris apologised for her former action before he went back into the forest. "Will you forgive me?" If one of her tentacles accidentally stabbed him, he would have been dead or heavily injured by now.
"Of course" Lee smiled again. "Bye."
"Bye." They all waved their hands at the boy and faced the stairs.
"Let's go." Castor told them and began to climb the stairs. People after him followed.
It wasn't long before reaching the house. It actually looked bigger and beautiful closeup. It was a tropical house like the others but, it had some Japanese taste in it. Somewhere from the south of Japan.
"I don't think we can enter. The entrance is covered in water." Rin told them when he looked for it.
"That's not the entrance, young man." Suddenly a man appeared from where the wall was supposed to be and approached them. He looked like he was in his sixties or seventies, wearing a kimono.
"Are you the former head?" Jin asked, a little cautious.
"Yes." The old man smiled. "And you must be Astraea's son. I am Minaki."
The smile looked like Junto's and, Alek smiled at the comparison. Junto's face does not look like Minaki but, his feature sure did. The old man's shoulders, the way he walked and talked... he must have got that from his father.
"You are the next head of Mutsuki, am I correct?" Minaki asked Castor.
"Yes. Is our parents here?" Jin asked.
Minaki looked at the company Castor had and landed his eyes on Alek.
"You are also the future head. Alektrona, right? I've heard stories of you." He told her.
"I am Alektrona. Hello." Alek greeted him awkwardly.
"And yes, your parents are inside." Minaki moved out of the way to make his guest to the wall door. "I wonder, how can you come up here? You can't come here unless you are not my people or get help from them."
Somehow, they felt like they shouldn't answer that question. They froze and looked at each other without moving.