2026 Star Festival Prompt
The Watcher in the Mud (13) : With so much rain lately, it's not surprising to find muddy patches throughout the city. Aside from being very slippery, there's nothing notable about most of them. Most. At first, there's only the strange sensation of being watched--and then, you see why. The eyes. There are eyes in the mud. Two, staring up at you, and nothing else. No face, no form. Sometimes the mud is totally flat, sometimes it's sunken into the ground a bit, sometimes it's built up like a small hill--but the eyes are always the same. Blinking, occasionally. Tracking you. Moving, if they need to--with surprising ease. Kick them, disturb the mud, or try to bury them, and they'll simply roll or swivel back into place to continue watching. Even if you try to leave, they'll move until they run out of mud--and then watch until you disappear from sight. If you linger long enough, the eyes will eventually grow heavy and slowly close before sinking beneath the mud.
With as many star charms as Leiko was finding around the city, he was sure he would be able to get a full set for Kit. That would be nice because as much as Kit loved to collect all the star charms he could each year, including for others, he had been so busy that year that he hadn't really gotten much chance to go out and get some of his own. Thus, Leiko was happy to collect them for him and was delighted to accept an emerald star charm from someone offering them as he walked down the street.
It hadn't been very long since he had been stuck in the freak storm that had somehow gotten him and the bird he had saved into the crocodile enclosure at the Destiny City Zoo. Thus, the blond wasn't very surprised to see so much mud and so many puddles about. What he was surprised to see was a pair of eyes looking up at him from one of the muddy puddles.
"...Huh?" Puzzled and curious, Leiko crouched down beside the mud and stared at the eyes. They stared back. Then they blinked.
So they were real, not just something that happened to look like eyes. But who or what did they belong to?
"Hi," Leiko greeted, grinning at the strange pair of eyes. "What are you? Like a mudskipper or something?" He reached into the mud and tried to gently touch whatever the eyes belonged to...but there didn't seemed to be anything there. At least, not that he could feel. What in the world...?
"Are you an alien? Maybe a youma?" he asked the eyes, though he didn't really expect it to talk back. Nor did it. He wondered if he could sense if it was a youma or something else or at least if it had an energy signature if he powered up. Eventually, however, he decided against it. The place he was in was too public.
Leiko continued to poke and prod at the eyes and the mud around them. He giggled as he tried to put mud over them, but they appeared again after a few seconds, still watching him. "Are you waiting for something?" he asked the eyes. No answer.
The blond hugged his knees to his chest as he crouched there, staring at the eyes, wondering if they could have a staring contest. He had several with the eyes; some of them he won, some of them the eyes won. Leiko then took to telling the eyes about his day and the star charms he'd found all around the city. He took out the charms to show off and dangled each one in front of the pair of eyes. Eventually, to his great amazement, the eyes seemed to grow tired because they looked like they were growing heavy despite trying to keep open. It was like watching a child fight to stay awake. Leiko laughed.
"You don't need to stay awake on my account," he told the eyes, watching them slowly, gradually close. "It's getting late. I should head home anyway or Noa might worry. Thanks for keeping me company, though! It was nice."
As if in response, the eyes close completely and sunk beneath the mud. Grinning with amusement, Leiko stood back up and began the walk home in the dimming twilight.
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((The End))
