4. life as a argioan

Part I: "Day by Day"

At first, they called him "the heavy."

Not to his face. Not loudly.

But when he walked past, someone always murmured it under their breath. It wasn't an insult. It was a fact. Croc was heavy. His steps left shallow prints in the boardwalks. His breathing changed the air. His silence weighed on the backs of conversations like a stone in a satchel.

He was always there.

Morning fog would lift, and he'd be hauling baskets of smoked fish onto drying racks, placing them with quiet precision. At midday, he'd sharpen tools or patch the sagging roof of the eastern hut, his claws moving like carpenters' chisels. In the evenings, when the marsh glowed with fireflies and mist, he sat near the communal fire with a bowl in hand, not saying much—but always listening.

And always, always watching her.

Shahvee moved differently than the others.

Not slowly. Not timidly. But… with rhythm.

She didn't tiptoe around Croc like the hatchlings, didn't test him like the elders. She acknowledged him with a glance, a nod, a short word that somehow meant more than a sentence.

Sometimes she brought him food. Not scraps—offerings. A cut of belly meat glazed with fermented berries. A rice cake wrapped in palm leaf. She always dropped them near his foot without explanation, never waiting for thanks.

Once, after he lifted a full rain-barrel single-handed so two others could fix the platform underneath, she passed by, paused, and said: "Try not to spoil them."

He growled: "They need it."

She smiled. "So do you."

That smile lingered in his brain like blood on steel.

By the end of the first week, he was fixing things before they broke.

He'd patch a hole in the roof before the storm hit. He'd carry the wet laundry lines across planks before anyone asked.

Children followed him at a distance now. Not afraid—just curious.

They whispered about his claws. His arms. One boy tried to draw him in the mud using a stick, but kept making the tail too short.

Croc crouched behind him, reached forward with one claw, and scratched a longer, curved tail behind the image.

The boy didn't scream. He laughed.

"You do look like that."

Croc gave a quiet grunt. It might have been a chuckle.

On the tenth night, he dreamed.

It wasn't a dream like other people had. No visions, no stories. Just sensory flashes—burning light, the taste of metal, a voice filtered through static.

"Subject unstable—containment compromised—inject—"

Croc snapped awake with his back arched and claws dug into the wall.

His breath came in hard bursts. The wind outside howled, matching the sound in his ears.

He sat there for an hour. Silent. Still.

Then stepped outside into the rain, and stood in the swamp up to his knees until dawn broke the horizon.

Week two passed.

He started speaking more. Not often. Not loudly. But if someone asked him something, he didn't just grunt. He answered.

His Jel was broken, slow, guttural—but improving.

Keesa corrected him constantly. "No no no, it's hass-ka, not hask-kha. That means fish leg."

He blinked. "Fish have legs?"

"Only the good ones," she said proudly.

Shahvee laughed when he told her.

He liked the sound.

Midway through the third week, he and Shahvee ended up side-by-side mending a fence near the northern edge.

It was evening, and the sky was stained orange. Croc was hammering iron stakes with his fist.

Shahvee held the reed twine, carefully weaving it between each post.

"Ever braid?" she asked suddenly.

Croc looked at her. "What?"

"Hair. Tail. Rope. Anything?"

"No."

"Shame," she said, tying off the end. "You've got the fingers for it."

Croc blinked. Then growled softly. "That supposed to be a compliment?"

"Yes," she said, without looking at him. "And no."

They worked in silence for a few minutes more.

He heard her breath. Measured. Calm.

She didn't smell afraid.

She never did.

And that unsettled him more than screams ever had.

Part II: "Silent Glances, Slow Fires"

By the fourth week, something had shifted between them.

It wasn't spoken.

It wasn't even looked at directly.

But it was there—in the space between breaths, in the way her shoulder brushed his when they stood too close in the reed beds, in the way he always knew when she'd entered a room before anyone else did.

And in the way he couldn't forget the sound of her laugh.

It haunted him. That was the danger.

It was dusk again.

Croc sat cross-legged on a worn mat beside the fire pit. The smoke spiraled upward through the marshy fog, dancing in broken curls. Across from him, Shahvee stirred a pot of something that smelled of garlic, river herbs, and patience.

"You never ask questions," she said, not looking up.

Croc glanced at her. "You don't like answers."

That earned him a side-smile. "Maybe. Or maybe I just don't like lies."

He thought about that.

Stared into the fire a while.

"I don't remember much," he said. "Not clearly. Bits and pieces. I was somewhere… dark. Then too bright. Metal. Screams. Blood. Then here."

She stopped stirring.

He saw her jaw flex slightly.

But she didn't ask more.

She just passed him a bowl. Sat beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder.

They ate in silence.

Later that night, they sat alone again. The others had turned in. The fire had died to glowing coals.

Shahvee pulled something small from a pouch at her waist.

It was a necklace—a thin cord with a single piece of carved bone at the center, shaped like a fang. It was worn, stained, chipped at one edge.

"This is all I have left of my mother's line," she said softly. "My grandmother gave it to me before the trek from the south. She said it would bring me strength when I needed it. It used to hang here—" She gestured to her chest. "But it's not the one I wore most days."

Croc turned his head.

She didn't look at him.

"I used to keep a different one. A copper amulet. Just a charm, really. I bought it during the Last Moon Festival three years ago. I was… happy, then. It wasn't worth much, but it felt like luck. And someone took it. Right out of my bag."

Croc's brow lowered.

"You tell anyone?"

She shook her head. "What would it matter? The city doesn't listen to people like me. And no one down here would dare."

He said nothing.

She finally looked at him. Really looked.

"Why does that make you angry?" she asked gently.

Croc stared at the coals.

"I don't like thieves," he muttered.

She smiled softly. "You lived in a sewer, didn't you?"

He blinked.

That memory hadn't been offered. It had been pulled.

He nodded once.

"Then you were one," she said.

"No," Croc growled, and for the first time, there was heat in his voice. "I wasn't just anything."

Shahvee watched him. Calm. Her gaze didn't flinch.

"I believe you," she said.

And that broke him more than any blade ever had.

That night, long after she'd gone to her hut and the frogs had gone quiet and the wind stopped rattling the reeds, Croc stood beneath the moonlight, tail swaying, staring at the water.

He didn't understand it. This feeling. This gnawing burn in his ribs that wasn't hunger.

She was inside his head now.

Not like a wound.

Not like a voice.

Like a need.

And something in him—the old part, the part made of fury and stubborn muscle—tightened its fist around the idea:

Get it back.

Part III: "The Amulet"

The decision came like instinct.

One moment he was staring at the black water, jaw tight with something he couldn't name.

The next, he was moving—gathering sacks, checking the food crates, stacking firewood like he was building walls.

He didn't say why.

He didn't say anything.

He just worked.

It took three days.

Three days of dawn-to-dusk labor. He split enough wood to last the entire quarter through a cold snap. Hauled clean riverwater in sealed barrels and lashed the lids tight. Packed dried fish, root bundles, smoked eel, cured meat, and sun-baked graincake into baskets, covering them with reed leaves to preserve them.

When Keesa asked why he was making so much food, he grunted and said, "Winter's mean. Don't trust it."

She nodded, wide-eyed. She'd stopped questioning him weeks ago.

On the third night, after the last basket was packed, Croc returned to his hut.

He sat for a long time in the dark.

Then, slowly, he pulled a torn parchment from his pack and the stub of a charcoal stick. He wasn't good with letters. His hands weren't made for writing. But he'd learned enough in Arkham. From books they locked in glass. From guards who sneered and taught you how to beg on paper.

He scratched the short notes first.

One for Bryska: "Fish barrels cleaned. Left you the sharp hook. Roof still leaks."

One for the quarter elder: "Wood's dry. Don't burn the green batch. It'll smoke."

One for Keesa: "Don't let anyone tell you frogs don't talk. They're just quiet."

And then… the long one.

For her.

He stared at the blank sheet a long time before writing.

Shahvee,

I'm not good at words. You know that.

I'm not good at saying things the way people want to hear them.

I don't smile. I don't make friends. I don't forget.

But I remember you.

Every second.

How you walk. How you don't flinch. How you don't lie with your eyes.

That amulet—they shouldn't've taken it. Even if it's just a scrap. It meant something.

I don't know why that matters to me.

But it does.

I'm going to get it back.

I'll be gone before light. Don't follow.

Don't wait.

Don't hope.

Just… hold onto the one you have left. And maybe, if I come back, I'll earn the right to look at it again.

—Croc

At dawn, he left the hut

The marsh was quiet. Fog wrapped around the boardwalk like old breath.

He placed the notes where they belonged.

Folded hers twice, neat, and set it on her doorstep, weighed down with a single black claw he'd carved into a charm the size of a tooth.

Then he walked.

Out of the quarter.

Toward the city.

Toward the den of thieves that didn't realize something worse than a legend was coming back through their door.