Braxie crouched behind the swamp reeds and counted the seconds until the next human stepped onto the path. Forty-two. They wrote the number in a wet notebook, beside three hundred other numbers. Braxie stood nine feet tall, with long arms and a face that made village children scream. They had decided, three weeks ago, that if they could not be welcome among humans, they would at least understand them. Understanding came from data. Data came from watching. So Braxie watched. The trap was simple. Braxie had set a tall clay pot full of bright flowers near the bend where villagers fetched water. People always slowed to look at pretty things. Slowing meant Braxie could count blinks, measure stride length, time conversations. From inside the wooden tower Braxie had built behind a curtain of moss, the pot sat in clear view. The tower had a narrow window, a stool sized for someone smaller, and a notebook labeled HUMAN BEHAVIOR, VOLUME ONE. Braxie had been proud of the tower for almost an hour. The first villager arrived at midmorning. She bent toward the flowers and smiled. Braxie pressed close to the window to record the smile, and the tower groaned under their weight. A plank cracked. Braxie's head and one long arm broke through the lattice. The villager looked up, saw a giant face pushing out of a tree, and ran. She screamed loud enough to bring three more people running, and those three saw Braxie too. They scattered down every path. A basket spilled. A child dropped a stick. Within a minute the bend was empty, the flowers were trampled, and the only thing left of the subjects was a spray of muddy footprints leading in four directions at once. Braxie climbed down and stood in the wreckage. They counted the footprints because counting was the thing they knew how to do. Eleven prints. Four directions. Zero measurements taken. The clay pot lay on its side, flowers crushed into the dirt. Braxie picked it up and set it upright with hands that could crack stone. The hiding plan had failed. Hiding was the problem. A creature their size could not study humans from a distance, because distance still meant being seen the moment they moved. Braxie tore the page of zeros from the notebook and wrote a new line at the top of a clean page: STOP HIDING. GO WHERE CROWDS ARE. They did not know yet how a nine-foot cryptid walked into a crowded place without emptying it. But the tower was broken, and the reeds were useless, and the only direction left was forward.