The rain has been falling for three days straight. Theanore worried about her plants. Would they be ok with this much water? And with all the falling lightning, what if there was a fire? Ants were not good firefighters.

She looked at the sleeping Mary and Archibald in her bed and smiled. Technically, it was her bedtime too, but she was so worried that she couldn’t sleep. Despite the bed being big enough for all of them.

She looked through the window. Her grotto was much better now than when she started working on it. It was full of life and friends, both leafy ones and not. She was happy she no longer had to be alone. Why, before Marinus came to her grotto, she had been considering naming the quick shot raspberries. Every raspberry.

Her gaze travelled to where Marinus was snoring softly under the covers, tucked in the blankets with his thumb in his mouth. She giggled. When he woke, she was going to tease him silly about it. He would deny everything, of course, but she would still tease him.

With nothing else to do, Theanore hopped off her chair and went down the secret tunnel, hidden beneath her father’s bed, and into the grotto. She had wanted to plant deep wheat at the pool. Had the ants prepare the soil. But she had never gotten down to it. Now it was as good a time as any.

She went to a seed sack, full of grains, and filled a coin purse with them. They were all deep wheat seeds. The bread that was made from them was tastier than normal wheat bread, but black.

With a skip to her step, she went to the pool. Her feet stepped on rotting clovers as she moved down the tunnel. She should get the ants to hoe the clovers inside the soil. And worms. She needed more worms in the tunnels to make sure that the soil had proper airways.

It was good that it rained, then. With the soil flooded outside, the worms were sure to be just above ground, wiggling searching for a dry place to nap. They would surely be grateful for the dark, warm, tunnels. Theanore liked to even think she could befriend them and have them make pretty airways. But, she supposed that any airways would do.

When she went to the pool, she found it already covered in vegetation. Mushrooms and moss grew in abundance by its edges. She had left its upkeep to Marinus, and it seems he was not very concerned with aesthetics.

With a sigh, Theanore considered her options. She could leave this naturally grown garden be, she supposed it looked pretty enough. All kinds of mushrooms were lining the edges of the pool.

Glow caps, blue, with white dots. Shining merrily and giving the pool a nice blue gleam. As if the water was magical. Little red caps with white dots, poisonous, she knew, but pretty nevertheless.

There was a big mushroom in the corner. Brown with red dots. It smelled tasty even from here and had tendrils extending from its cap. Theanore saw the rat and fish bones beneath it and sighed.

They were all her friends, these inhabitants of the grotto, but they were not each other’s friends. And above all else, they needed to eat. Even mushrooms, it seems, couldn’t play nice.

Theanore shrugged and emptied the deep wheat purse in the pool. The fish swam to the surface and began eating it all. An Eelaconda came through the tunnel that connected the pool to the sea and tasted a grain, then it spat it out, only for it to be eaten by a silver longtail.

Theanore remembered her Eelaconda pet. Her smart pet that could do tricks and never failed to make her smile. Where was he now? Probably in the ice room, diced into steaks.

The Eelaconda looked at her for a while. It was a strange Eelaconda. Come to think of it, since when were they purple? The giant serpent raised above the water and then dived.

It came back with a silver longtail clutched in its jaws. Theanore blinked. Eelacondas ate only bait fish. This was no Eelanconda! And it was bigger than an Eelaconda. Could probably wrap around Theanore ten times and squeeze.

For once, thoughts of friendship with the unknown didn’t enter Theanore’s mind. She backed away from the pool. Then she ran out and didn’t stop running until she was back inside the house.

“Mari, Mari! There is a giant snake in the pool.” Said Theanore, panicked. Currently, that thing was eating her friends.

“We have Eelacondas, silly, remember?” Said Marinus sleepily, turning to the other side. Theanore kept shaking him.

“It is a giant and purple and eats silver longtails! It is eating my friends!” Said Theanore. That woke Marinus fully.

“Purple?” He paled immediately. “Get me my sea horn.”

They ran back inside the grotto to see water coming into the main cavern. The salty water was a meter away from her apple sapling. Theanore knew trees, apart from certain ones like mangroves, didn’t like salt. Her apple sapling was going to dry up and she…she was going to die.

Marinus made to start digging into the base of the sapling, but the ghost aura lashed out at him, nicking his cheek.

“Thea, the sea horn! The water can’t reach the apple tree.” Even Marinus knew what happened with trees when the soil was salted. Granted, more because of stories where conquerors salted the land of their enemies. But he knew.

Theanore began digging as the water kept coming closer and closer. Just as it was going to touch the sapling, Theanore pulled out the sea horn. Marinus took it from her hands and blew it.

The water began to recede with each time the horn was blown. But two orange eyes stared at them from the dark tunnel. The giant serpent exited the tunnel and raised as high as the ceiling. But Marinus was not afraid. He knew what this beast was. A Draconian anaconda.