“By the way, Big Sis Halkara, where did you get that helmet?” asked Falfa. She seemed keenly interested in the armor itself, and now that she’d pointed it out, I noticed it was rather finely crafted. It didn’t strike me as the sort of cheap helmet you’d find lying around just anywhere.
“Oh, this? It was in the museum! I remembered seeing a convenient helmet just lying around in there, and it ended up being a perfect fit! I stopped by during my break today to pick it up.”
So that’s why having work today was convenient for her! “You’re using a relic from your museum’s collection as actual armor?! Is that allowed?!”
“The relics in the museum were technically our private property from the very start, so it’s fine!” said Halkara. “And besides, this is what helmets are for! It’s doing its duty way better like this than it would sitting around in a dusty old museum, so I’m sure it’s happy to be of service.”
That seemed like a pretty flimsy argument to me, but she was the museum’s director, so if anyone had the right to wear that helmet, it was her. As a side note, all my other family members were still present in the dining room to finish their meals, but the mimic didn’t go after any of them for so much as a second. It just kept biting Halkara’s helmet without making any attempt to attack anyone else.
I wasn’t worried at all about myself, the two dragons, or Rosalie getting hurt by the mimic, but my daughters were another story. Sandra had come inside to talk with Falfa and Shalsha that day, so all three of them were present. Maybe the mimic had somehow realized they were off the menu, as far as biting went…? Though if that was the case, it would raise questions about why it was biting Halkara, so I decided to rule it out for the time being.
“I guess this means it only wants to attack you, for some reason…?” I muttered.
“Lady Azusa, I’m certain the mimic is aware the helmet is hard enough to ward off its teeth. Given it continues to bite her anyway, I believe we can conclude…or at least assume it does not intend its actions as an attack, per se,” Laika said, though she sounded a little hesitant about her own analysis.
“You have a point there. If it was really trying to take Halkara down, it could just bite her somewhere other than the head.”
In that case, maybe it really is attached to her, in a certain sense…?
My daughters gathered up around Halkara to observe the mimic up close. The way it was attached to her gave them a very rare chance to observe a mimic from below.
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“It really is just like a treasure chest! Falfa’s never seen any other mimics—I wonder if they all look the same? Do you know, Shalsha?”
Shalsha opened up a book with An Illustrated Guide to Monsters written on its cover.
“There are various theories as to how mimics are born,” Shalsha explained. “One theory hypothesizes that they’re monsters that take up residence in, and subsequently assimilate, treasure chests. Another suggests that the chest portion serves as a protective shell, and another still theorizes that they resemble chests as a form of mimicry to deceive other creatures.”
All those sounded plausible enough to me, but proving them seemed like it’d be really hard unless you had some serious scientific chops.
I guess that first theory would mean mimics are sort of like hermit crabs? Though since this one’s chest is definitely part of its body now, I guess it wouldn’t be exactly the same. Then the second theory would make them sort of like shellfish, and the third would make them like those praying mantises that look exactly like twigs.
“All those explanations are so dreamy! Falfa could watch this mimic all day!”
I’m not sure that’s really what “dreamy” is supposed to mean, Falfa.
“Although the truth remains unclear, Shalsha thinks they’re very interesting monsters as well. It’s rare to have the chance to watch them bite something, too.”
Shalsha was certainly right about that. If you got bitten by a mimic in combat, your first priority would be getting it off you, and most mimics would probably choose to bite you somewhere unprotected rather than deliberately going for your helmet and dealing no real damage. As such, we were witnessing a phenomenon most people would never get the chance to see.
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Meanwhile, Sandra was watching from a slight distance off to the side. She looked a little exasperated as she spoke up.
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Ugh! And here I was, trying my hardest not to point that out…
It was just like how pet dogs tended to only bark loudly at the family members they viewed as being beneath them on the social ladder. Considering the mimic was only biting her, it seemed very possible she was the only one it saw as its inferior…
“What? That’s not true! How’s it supposed to look at me with its mouth wide open to bite me?” said Halkara.
“I didn’t mean it literally!” snapped Sandra. “Actually, I think you know perfectly well what I mean! Aren’t you embarrassed to have a mimic walk all over you?!”
“No, not particularly,” Halkara said as she turned to face Sandra. She genuinely didn’t sound like the idea bothered her at all. “Elves aren’t very capable fighters, generally speaking, so it’s only natural. I don’t think that’s something worth getting upset about, and I’m not embarrassed about it, either. I bet you’re not embarrassed you can’t breathe fire, right, Sandra?”
“I’ve never even considered it, but if I could breathe fire, I bet it’d come in handy for dealing with some of the nastier plants out there.”
Well, you sure took that to a violent place quickly! Sandra did seem to find herself without a counterargument for Halkara’s point, though, and she didn’t press the point further.
“B-but…I do understand what you mean, too,” Sandra meekly admitted.
Right? Most of the time, whether or not a monster saw you as a target was totally dependent on how tough you were in a fight. The less tough races were naturally predisposed to being viewed as easy pickings. That’s why very few monsters or animals were inclined to go out of their way to start fights with dragons, for instance. Considering it was all a matter of your innate nature, it didn’t seem like something worth getting embarrassed about.
Even if you were weak in a fight, you could compensate for that shortcoming in all sorts of ways. Halkara’s helmet was a perfect example of that point, really. The fact she seemed to understand that made me suspect that, just maybe, she had a pretty philosophical view of this whole situation… But on the other hand, watching the mimic gnaw at her helmet was so surreal, it was hard to think about anything else…
“Also, for the record, I’m just saying if it was looking down on me, I wouldn’t be embarrassed about it. I still don’t think it actually is, though!” Halkara declared.
“All right, then. I’ll take your word for it,” I said. She wasn’t drunk at the moment, so her confidence carried some actual weight with me.
“Okay, Madame Teacher! Would you like to go on a nighttime walk now? The moon’s nice and bright tonight, so it’s the perfect time for it!”
“Oh, right. I suppose I did say we could take it for a walk as soon as you’d worked out a solution for the biting problem, didn’t I?”
Her solution had come from pretty far out of left field, but I couldn’t deny it had taken care of the danger I was worried about quite handily. I wasn’t about to walk the mimic around Flatta in the middle of the day and risk it attacking people, but nobody else would be walking around the highlands at nighttime, so taking it out for a stroll now didn’t seem liable to cause any trouble.
“Okay then, sure. Let’s go. Does anyone else want to come along? Not that it’ll be that interesting—we really are just going for a walk, that’s all!”