Rough, leave
those chickens alone!"
Hissing and writhing Regulus rose from the pool, slithered out
on the sand. He gazed at Demo balefully. Demo neither saw nor
heard. For him the world was silent.
But then he noticed something. A faint musty odor, and odor
which he remembered from his dreams.
Demo quickly stood up, looked toward the pool of water. And saw
Regulus rising, the brown drops shedding from his slick skin.
Wide-eyed Demo held the spear level, pointed toward the strange
apparition.
Regulus regarded the spear point with concern, hissed mightily.
With consternation he observed Demo, hissed once more.
"Most unusual," he commented, "I must be losing my touch."
He slithered over the sand, undulating from side to side in his
progress. He approached Demo, but kept a distance beyond the
spearlength. With slow sinuous motion he glided around the boy.
"Hisss! Hissssss!" he breathed, watched nonplused at the lack
of response. "You seem not to understand, my boy. Have I failed
in some manner to properly enunciate the sound? Perhaps my lungs
are waterlogged! Know you not that none survive who hear the
hiss of Regulus? How dare you continue to stand there,
impervious. Bad mannered, to say the least."
He grumbled, still continued his slow and torturous
encirclement of his intended prey.
"You must be Regulus," Demo commented, in part to himself. "I
would hope, though my ears are so confoundedly stopped up I
can't hear you, that you can hear me.
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