Chapter 14
Ani
As the first rays of morning touch my face, there’s an immense sense of comfort surrounding me. For a moment there, I thought I was back in my bed, waiting for my alarm to go off. However, not even my pillows are as comfortable as what I’m laying on.
It takes me a moment to realize it’s Szhe’ka’s chest. The Bitch would demand I make a cutting remark and saunter off. Like a cat caught doing something embarrassing. Just pretend it doesn’t affect you and walk away.
That’s what I should do, but I don’t.
Instead, I wriggle deeper into the soft feathers. It’s so comfortable, I damn near moan.
When I feel the moistness between my legs my eyes pop open. It’s nearly impossible for me to move quickly in the morning, but the strangeness of it all has my mind trying to push past the usual ADHD haze.
When I look up at him, I see that he is already awake and staring back at me.
I want to ask how long he has been like that, but my brain is still scrambled, and I know it won’t come out right. The damn harmonics of his language will give my muddled emotions away if I sing right now.
I lay there just looking into his eyes, which are a really pretty shade of chartreuse in the daylight. When the thought of kissing him occurs to me and I start to wonder where would be best, my brain finally wakes up and I extract myself.
What the fuck, Ani?
In my panic, I’m more like a hungover human than a graceful cat. Limbs uncoordinated and hair threatening to choke the life out of me.
My lips stubbornly clamp down on the hum of chagrin that wants to escape as I stumble to rise, heart beating a frantic rhythm and my pussy throbbing in an anticipation I have never experienced.
I awkwardly walk away, imagining a cold shower washing over me.
The wind fulfills the cold part of that for me just fine and I find something else to occupy my mind.
My hands reach for my hair and I begin to undo the remaining part of the giant bun I put it in before going to bed.
The thought of a cold shower really makes me long to wash my hands.
In a forest, there’s bound to be a river, yes?
Behind me, I hear Szhe’ka getting up and I wonder if he’s noticed how weird I’m being.
Birds have really good vision and even better senses, but it feels unfair to keep classifying him as an animal.
I am capable of having a deep conversation with him.
At snail speed, but I know the words are there if we had the time to sing through the notes.
Besides, he is the one who kept me safe all night and he didn’t try to take advantage of me. That has never happened before, though, so part of me is just as confused by it as relieved.
I’m not that deep of a sleeper that I wouldn’t have noticed. Or would I?
Well, there’s no need to overthink it. The stickiness of my hands distracts me again and I look around, noticing the heavy layer of dew on the plants around us.
Concentrating hard on the black jumpsuit, I imagine the sleeves growing shorter.
It starts receding and I wait until it reaches a short sleeve before telling it to stop.
I have no idea how long we’re going to keep walking, and I don’t want to get dehydrated too soon. I turn around to find him looking at me again and I run a hand through my hair.
“Thirsty. Dirty,” I sing, wincing as my melody somehow sounds embarrassingly inviting and annoyed at the same time.
He cocks his head to the side, as confused by me as ever. I can’t say I blame him, with me not sure if the Bitch is here to help or not.
“Hear water. We go,” he sings to me, and I nod, standing up straight.
We begin walking out of the thicket that housed us for the night and back into the forest, with him in front of me. I allow my mind to wander as I trail behind him. I have nothing more than my imagination and his presence to wonder about.
To be honest, I’m deadweight. I still don’t understand his motives, especially since he risked his life through the night to keep me safe and comfortable.
I doubt it’s because he’s loyal enough to that Ree woman that he’s willing to keep me alive.
Is he just na?ve? Or is he the kind of psychopath to keep his victim comfortable before he consumes them? I wouldn’t put it past anybody.
How do I know that he is not a conniving collector of human bounty?
I look up at his large frame in front of me and see the messy huddle of feathers behind him, which raises a question within me about why they aren’t as ordered as he keeps them in front, but I decide that the light is just messing with my perspective and keep it to myself.
We come to a small stream in the middle of the forest, and I almost cry tears of joy.
I cannot remember the last time I drank water.
Instead of questioning the weirdness, I wait for Szhe’ka to beckon me over and when he does, I walk to the edge of the stream, wash my hands in it and begin to drink.
The water is cool and doesn’t have any kind of taste so I hope it’s clean.
Painful death by waterborne disease would be pretty much how my life has been going lately.
After I’m done drinking, I wash my face and immediately feel better, though a full dunk would be great and I consider it for a moment before I notice the reflection of my face in the water.
The droplets from my hand fall back in and disturb the image but I move away just a little so that I can see what caught my eye and made my heart pound.
I haven’t given the changes to my body much thought in between trying not to die and fussing at Szhe’ka.
My eyes are red. Full on, demon possession red…
over every surface of my eyes. After my mind is done stuttering over that development, I notice the furrow between my new demon eyes.
A moment later I am making every face I can think of, hands going to my face as I marvel at how smooth it is.
And fully functional. Lips evenly full like they were in my youth.
I barely stop myself from groping my breasts when I see the reversal of dozens of procedures on my face, moving my hands at the last moment to discreetly push at the side of them.
No silicone. Another discreet brush to the front and a low moan escapes when the movement across my nipple sends darting signals to my core. Those nerves were cut out long ago, the lost sensation just another cost of fame.
What the fuck?
Before I can fully take in this new development, a large foot splashes in the water and takes my reflection away.
“We leave. Before they find,” he sings to me.
I look up at him and see that he is looking pointedly in every direction to make sure that there is nothing harming us. The gesture is calming but to think the reverse is quite terrifying.
“Yes,” I agree and dip my hands into the stream one last time, as if to say goodbye, before getting on my feet and standing beside my giant guardian.
We begin our walk, and this time I walk ahead of Szhe’ka but I cannot help but feel his eyes on me. Coupled with the silence, and the thoughts flitting around in my head about how to use the newly revitalized nerve endings in my breasts, it is uncomfortable.
Can he tell some of those thoughts keep including him?
“Something on me?” I ask, wanting to know if I had picked up a parasite or something without realizing.
“Nothing,” he sings back but the look in his eyes is still weird.
Perhaps he can’t see it but he can feel that something is wrong? Or maybe, it’s this absurd idea that he knows something is off with me.
I move so Szhe’ka and I are walking beside each other.
“Why keep looking?” I ask, this time letting the Bitch surface a bit in my discomfort.
He turns his face away, a hum of confusion following, and walks ahead, seemingly scouting in front of us to make sure nothing is trying to harm us. Probably. Perhaps all my abrasiveness has made him uncomfortable.
That’s the whole point of the Bitch, but for the first time it makes me feel… sad maybe?
I don’t expect him to answer. Some part of me doesn’t even want him to so I can be proven right about him wanting something from me. After all, nobody can babysit an angry, full grown adult and make sure they’re safe if there’s nothing in it for them.
After a long huff, I find an interesting stick to quell my mind from going places. Except it doesn’t really work.
I almost forgot that I asked a question until I hear him start to warble with the beginning of a song. “I promised, you mine to watch. Protect.”
I blink at him, confused. “Yours to… watch and protect?” I reiterate, hoping I heard him wrong.
What the hell is that supposed to mean and why am I not angry about it? He looks at me a little too long and I look away from him, unsure of how to feel or even what to say.
“Did I speak wrong?” Szhe’ka asks me and I turn to look at him and stare until he looks away from me.
I know what the Bitch would say, but I keep her in check, heart pounding to not have the protection of her anger.
“No,” I respond,
I don’t like how it feels to be harsh with Szhe’ka. It’s not like I’ve gotten much thrill from being the Bitch, but at least it felt like armor before. Now it just feels… dirty.
All he has done since our meeting is make life as easy for me as he can manage, while I have done nothing but be a burden. My mind goes back to what he said only a couple minutes earlier about being his to watch and protect and although I don’t want to, my brain instantly links it to danger.
I have heard versions of those words before. Since I was thirteen. “I’ll take care of you, baby,” he told me as he undressed me, ignoring my shaking, taking the word of my mother for my consent.
Those memories never lead anywhere good, so I snap myself back to the present. Back to Szhe’ka and his intense eyes and harmonics with their consistent positivity and care.
He can’t act this good and patient and not be a kidnapper. Can he? God, this is fucking confusing. No one is truly this patient. This willing to help.
Isn’t that the way kidnappers act when they intend to kidnap someone? I don’t know. You’d think I would be an expert after as many threats there have been, but the motivation is clear for a human, even if sickening.
Although my mother used to swear that I would get taken away by strange men because of how much of my legs I showed, maybe that’s why?
I chuckle dryly. She was always so full of contradictions, since she was perfectly willing for me to show my legs if there was profit involved. But not if it was my own choice.
I wonder how she would feel knowing that I was taken from my home in the middle of the night and now I don’t know who I can trust.
I don’t know whether the way I have been behaving toward Szhe’ka is deserved or if I am just being the Bitch for no reason.
Or maybe he is trying to trick me? It has to be that; there has to be some ulterior motive for a gentle giant such as this one to meet someone like me and still stay completely sane and patient.
After all, my mother said that almost forty years of being around me made her want to kill herself, and she never took the full brunt of the Bitch like he has. People aren’t this nice.
What does he stand to gain from getting me to them… whoever they are?
Maybe Ree is holding his family, his freedom, or something of his captive, and I am the equivalent. Although, with his size and what I recall of her, it seems unlikely.
I pinch my nose. I’m smarter than this. I have a mask for every occasion. I know exactly how to give people what they want and what makes them tick, but it didn’t prepare me for this moment.
I want to shake the thought from my brain but I cannot help but hear my mother’s voice telling me that he wants something from me. There is no way he is “watching over” and “protecting me” if there is nothing in it for him.
Everyone always wants something.
“I… I no good...” his song stutters, coming to an uncertain ending tone.
He sounds miserable, and I know I’m the cause. The harmonics betray my emotions as they actually are, so logic says his song does the same. That his misery is real. That his eagerness to help is real.
Fuck. I might have met an actual real “person” for the first time in my fucked up life and I am being terrible to him.
I can’t continue being a burden. There has to be more to this relationship than this back and forth, which mostly transpires in my mind.
“All well,” I reassure him. “Not you. Me.”
A classic but it’s all I can manage, the regret in my harmonics doing more to communicate my intent than my words.
An expression of ease finds its way to his eyes and he moves forward.
However, I’m stuck in my tracks because it’s hard to move on from that.
My throat suddenly feels parched, so I move back to the stream, whose bank we are still walking along.
I catch a glimpse of myself again, the novelty of my newly young face not interesting me, though my mother would be thrilled.
My eyes. My reflection. Bright red, like that time that guy hit me and part of my eye was red for weeks. Except it’s covering everything. Just a dark pupil in the middle. Demon eyes I’ll never get used to, no matter how many times I see them.
I feel like I’ve been stolen. My scars, my body, what should be my identity. All of it, gone.
Except there is no answering rush of horror or anger at the thought.
My identity was stolen years ago. How is this different? Is it worse?
My face has more movement than it’s had in years. They simultaneously restored something I thought was lost forever, while altering something I thought even the Witch would never be able to take from me.
Those blue eyes that should have been the constant of my life. Gone.
No. It’s not worse. But it’s also not better.
There has to be something I could have done by this point to get people to stop doing things to me without my consent. Being passive didn’t help. Being the Bitch didn’t help. Is there a way to figure out what would?
I don’t know how far those fuckers went with the alterations to my body and I don’t know whether I am the only one they have done this to, but I want to hurt them in ways they have never experienced before.