Saurians - The day of the beast

2-The day before

The previous day, had passed as usually spent the days in the First Bast, monitoring was a routine and tedious activity, but it was necessary and unavoidable to the potential threat posed by the Saurians, a species of lizards of medium size, gregarious by nature, extremely astute, very numerous, related to the great dinosaurs, but much more developed than their ferocious and enormous cousins, inhabitants of the lowlands, but until now had never roamed these latitudes.

It was late in the afternoon and during his vigilance shift, Sema, son of Por, sitting on the vigilance platform, pondered on the best way to engage in conversation with Kir, daughter of Ramel, a beautiful young girl who was part of the group of weavers, she was a very vivacious girl, long and straight dark brown hair that knotted in a single braid, leaving free a beautiful face of cheerful and intelligent black eyes that combined perfectly with the smile that always adorned her face, she was quite tall for her age and her fine but solid forms made her stand out in the midst of her friends, who formed a bustling and joyful group.

Sema, had been furtively crossing glances with her at lunchtime in the mornings or at the common dinners when she was not on guard on the platforms, she had surprised him looking at her gawking a couple of times and from the first time returned the look accompanied by a radiant smile, which was very disturbing to the lanky boy, which, from the moment she was conscious of having been discovered, observed her with a furtive attitude, trying to look away as soon as she appreciated a movement of Kir's eyes, who in turn played with Sema pretending to be absorbed in other things, catching him several times until he had enough courage to give her a smile back, Sema stood up and advanced through the dining room towards her, but just as the girl waited for some greeting and a cross of words, the atolondrado chico passed by with a rigid step, totally flushed and left the room without turning to see her, his heart overwhelmed with joy, fear and a mixture of feelings that knot in his stomach and that that night they would not let him sleep until very early in the morning, waking up at dawn tired, with lay eyes, a metallic taste, pasty in the mouth and entirely convinced that he was a real idiot, this had happened the night before that afternoon when he was on shift at Bast.

Precisely in this incident was thinking, with his sight lost on the horizon, mentally hitting himself with a rock on his head repenting of his cowardice and looking for a suitable excuse to be able to engage in conversation with her the next time they coincided, when he saw on the other side of the lake some luminous points that moved in a very unnatural way towards the shore, neither Sema nor anyone else in the Bast knew it but, some of the Saurians of a Horde that explored the lands in the other end of the enormous lake, had left the thickness of the forest going down to the shore to drink and to gather water for the camp of the Horde in its natural cavities, being exposed and thanks to the fortunate combination between the position of the sun at that hour, his own location and a certain iridescence of his skins that made them shine a little and be visible from great distances, was that Sema could see them as a series of bright spots that moved along the beach, at first he looked at them without imitation, engrossed as he was in his juvenile flirtations, did not pay them due attention until he suddenly realized that these points were not normal and that they looked as they had been explained many times in the training sessions for what could only mean danger and death, the impression of having discovered a horde of Saurios awoke him from his dream and called his other companions to bring them up to date with the discovery.

The major sentries confirmed that they were indeed Saurians and that they were part of a Horde, they deliberated a long time trying to establish the size of the same one considering the number of carriers that were regarded as brilliant points to the edge of the lake, they estimated that the horde was relatively small, more or less, a "basket of acorns" (1) or they were so near the edge that they did not deserve so many water collectors..., they could not really be certain of even an approximate number of members in the supposed horde, it was known that these were normally a little more than two baskets of acorns, that is to say two hundred to two hundred and fifty Saurians in total, but this one, in particular, could be half the normal size for a horde, possibly the group belonged to a horde that had just split(2).