Lily's Notes - This was an assignment for English class. The whole idea was to retell the first part of Beowulf from Grendel's POV. I just turned it in, but I liked it enough to kind of want to get some feedback on it. If it seems a little rushed at the end, it's because I really only had two days to write it in. So...yeah. Best of reading!
Hunger woke me. Well, hunger and the festering ache running up through my spine from the rock I had been asleep on top of for the last century.
But mostly hunger.
My stomach gurgled as I rolled over, just before the whiff of human flesh wafted down to me, mingling at an intoxicating level along with the swamp fumes and what looked to be a half-rotted ox. What remained of the ugly beast was a tempting mixture of maggot mush and previously digested bits of meat.
I choked back hunger.
His corpse smelt good, don't get me wrong. But somewhere not too far from the fetid cesspool of the swamp, I could hear men and woman, humans, feasting. They were taunting me as they fattened themselves on mead and warm meat. They chuckled with exuberance as they ran their flat bread across the plate through splatters of grease.
The smells made my stomach wild with a sharp yearning. Smudge sticks of lavender and sage burned in neat, bronze-painted censers in order to “protect” them. The rich, warm scent of bay laurel bundles, warming from elaborately crafted thuribles that they had hung from the bows of nettle-trees, permeated down into the marsh lands.
It was just tempting enough.
I stood up slowly, letting thick green marsh blood trickle down into my legs, stirring to life nerve endings that had slept soundly for too long, prickling at the flesh on my arms, and pushing a pulse into my heart.
With a quick flick of my tongue, I picked up on the direction of the celebration and dropped down to onto all fours. My muscles twanged back to life and hurdled me forward. I was craving Dane.
I covered the acres of marsh-land in a few sharp bounds before my feet hit solid earth and I paused just long enough to dive forward, curling my body up into itself for a moment, becoming as small as I could.
My stomach complained.
How far had man come since I had last feasted on them? I had no idea. It had been too long. But they still smelled the same, so they couldn’t have changed all that much.
I flicked my tail against the ground, spread the rest of my body out, and started dashing across the land once more, leaving nothing behind aside from the sharp pock-marks of my claws in the earth.
By the time I found them, they celebration had fallen still. Lithe woman were sprawled out on the ground next to gruff-looking men whose hands were still clamped tightly around their glasses.
I picked the plumpest I could see. I thick, short man with too much waist and a matted red beard that had been decorated with ragged, weather-beaten beads. Sweat permeated from his pours so thickly that not even the most unappealing of the women dared lay beside him. The only company he had was a small rat-dog with a missing eye and ears caked in scabs from chewing after fleas.
It was a quick motion, I grabbed his neck between my jaws, pinched his legs between one claw, and with the other, I sprang off into the distance.
The routine continued for a fortnight and a year. It wasn’t that I was meticulously keeping track. But eventually, one runs out of things to do within the swamp and skull-counting is often the safest preoccupation.
But it was after a fortnight and a year, after almost every woman and man had fled from the land that the Geat arrived. I could his boat as it pulled up to the beach. And the devil that my stomach had become could sense that his blood was that of an unimaginable warrior.
“Feed!” it hissed at me.
I curled up into a bundle on the marsh-land and waited for night in order to satisfy my demon.
I made the same quick, practiced motions across the marsh and up onto dry land. The mead hall was alive with festivities, all over the arrival of the Geat and his men. My stomach turned over, chortled, and ripped at me, prodding me forward.
I couldn’t resist.
I had never been able to resist the angry, possession burning in my gut.
With a quick swipe of my claw, I grabbed the first man I could find. And as fast as I had moved, possibly faster, I felt the Geat bring down his sword against my back. The scales rippled but the black magic infused within them held strong and left a nick in his blade.
I was surrounded, pushing against men who dashed forward against me.
And that’s when I knew the warrior was there.
He grappled at my throat, pressed his fingers deep into my scales, and it was then that I took my last breath and the demon in my belly died, just as I was dead.
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