"No," Eefina says calmly, possibly not loud enough for Tret to hear unless those canine ears are for more than scritches. "It's missing on purpose."

She takes another tentative step forward.

Roaring! Moving towards her!

(Tret's ears fold back and he sniffs even harder.)

The silver glow in her hand intensifies, but Eefina stands her ground.

...This isn't working.

The 'monster' starts sinking beneath the water again, when Tret calls out, "Human! Hey, you're human aren't you? Controlling the plants somehow!"

...The shooba falls apart, vines and branches all peeling away to reveal a woman in a straw hat and rough-spun clothes, glaring at the both of them.

Eefina suddenly beams and bounces in place. "Oh wow! I wasn't expecting that! Hi!"

Glare. "...Hi. They send you to kill the 'monster'?"

"Kill? Were they that specific about how we were to resolve this situation?" Eefina asks Tret.

"No, they weren't."

"Right. The Rotula Guard knows about a monster and doesn't want to kill it? Ha."

"Wasn't the Rotula Guard who paid me, I was sent directly by a Count. He was worried you were made of dhar."

"I didn't kill anyone, you know. Just scared 'em."

"I kinda figured. It was obvious you weren't really attacking me."

"They were destroying the habitat of a rare species of turtle. I can't allow that - the eastern lowland gliding turtle is a magnificent species! So I would like them to continue not doing that, a goal that I was accomplishing before you found me out."

"Were you accomplishing that, though? You... created a threat. A target. An attractor of exactly the kind of attention you didn't want." Eefina glances to Tret. "Right...?"

"They were dying! What was I supposed to do, go complain to the nearest noble? 'Please make the peasants stop smashing those nests, it's killing turtles' 'Oh, are they valuable?' 'From a natural diversity standpoint, yes' 'Does the ecosystem depend on them' 'It's very difficult to tell' 'Hmm so you wish to disrupt an entire village's livelihood for essentially no reason?' 'They're rare and will be lost forever if nothing is done' 'I don't see it being economically advisable' Aargh!"

Tret scratches one of his ears. "I mean... It might've worked in a lot of places. There's whole regions you just don't really go into because something dangerous is hanging around. I sort of think it's only the Red Waste being less than a hundred miles north of here being a possible threat to trade routes that got us hired to check it out."

"Trade routes. Don't get me started on merchants, caging up exotic animals without any idea how to care for them or care for their disruption to new environments! There is a species of beetles that destroyed beautiful and unique forests on the island of Kap!"

"Why were the locals smashing up turtle nests in the first place?"

"The turtles break into fish traps and eat all their fish. I tried to urge the turtles somewhere else but they're not having it."

"...how can moving the turtles somewhere else be harder than maintaining a 'rrrarrrg scary monster' ruse for... what, the rest of your life?"

"You're not the one who studied these turtles okay??? They can glide, they're very mobile, so they keep coming back. It buys me time to keep trying! And I figured I'd just need to keep it up for a few months, then occasionally come back and reinforce the lesson."

"I'm sorry. You're right. I don't actually know what a turtle is."

Eefina tilts her head. "But actually, am I missing something or could you have solved this entire problem by buying the villagers turtle-proof fish traps?"

"Hold up," Tret asks, "Flying turtles?"

"Gliding. They can climb, and they can glide. They're very unique."

"How do they even - with the shells -" 

"I can show you later. I think we have a more important conversation now. Do I look rich?" She sighs. "I did try something like that, actually. Fish traps are mostly made by hand, by the locals, from natural materials. They wear out over time, and learning to make a new kind that requires more effort and material and they have decided catches fewer fish is less appealing than killing the pesky turtles, who are apparently tasty in their own right anyway."

Eefina, having never heard of turtles, doesn't have any opinions on the strangeness of flying ones. Where she's from fauna is airborne by default.

"...how much would, uh, are 'modern' fish-traps even a thing? How much would enough absolutely turtle-proof traps for the village cost?"

"I don't know. I don't think those are really a thing? 'High-level' more than 'modern' would do you, anyway..."

"Would it be at all plausible that destroying turtle nests could've been directly responsible for spawning a 'shooba' monster?" Eefina wonders.

"It'd - Maybe if we call upon some mythology about guardian spirits?"

"I've heard those stories! I could spin it!" Tret laughs. "Good idea! The spirit of the swamp was angered by the destruction of the turtle nests, we managed to banish the Shooba for now and commune with it through ghur and ghyran... Uh, that still leaves the turtles stealing fish, unless we tell them to do their fishing very far away?"

"I... Can figure out a better fish trap. Maybe they could do fish farms. I know how to make one of those."

"I'm rich now, remember? We can spend my half of the reward for defeating the shooba on high-level fish-traps for the village, I don't mind."

"I think something in that general category of ideas might work but I'm not sure what it looks like. And it'd probably involve talking to the village. I'm not exactly good at social graces."

"If the villagers won't go for using different traps or a fish farm... I don't know what they'll find persuasive, if turtle-proofing isn't a convincing argument by itself."