*Present day*
"They floundered as the water receded," I tell Dorian who's leaned forward as he listens, his rapt golden eyes never leaving my face.
"Clearly, they're not agile in any capacity on dry land with nothing besides starfish arms, legs and feet or tentacles to move them around. I counted their number around fifty. A few had the simple metal pitchforks, but most were unarmed—in as much as one might say a sea monster is unarmed."
"Did you go back?"
"Are you kidding?" I demand incredulously. "Of course not! I couldn't take my own army since no one would have gone out there with me, especially if they did believe the story. Based on the numbers I saw, the hieroglyphs, and the hundreds of dead eggs they'd laid, I expected they were essentially extinct."
"Guess you were wrong about that too."
Bristling, I give him a warning eye. "I wouldn't exactly say I was wrong. What we saw on the beach was far more humanoid than what I encountered forty years ago."
