Chapter 5 #2
My mate froze in place, her clever eyes darting from my face to the image and back again.
Then they grew softer. “Oh, that’s your mom, isn’t it?
Is that you when you were little? I can’t believe you actually looked cute at one point…
” She opened her palm against the coil of my tail I had wrapped around her arm and rubbed her fingers along my scales.
It felt like I unraveled from that spot, spooling out into ribbons that reshaped into myself, but different. Yeah, that was my mother, Vaishe. That was me before my third molting, just a little scrap of a youngling. I looked so happy. I couldn’t remember ever smiling like that.
I felt like snarling, I felt like picking up that treacherous square and throwing it into the fire.
How could it contain such traitorous images?
Was this put here to make me lose my resolve?
To test it? I couldn’t believe that. My eyes lingered on the expression on my mother’s face, the hint of something soft and vulnerable in it.
“Make it go away!” I snapped, too torn up by seeing this to stand looking at it for another moment. Nomy flinched in the grip of my tail but the image winked out almost immediately afterward. Her eyes were wide when she looked at what was no doubt a fierce glare on my own.
“Sensitive, I guess?” she murmured, and it was the open expression, the sort of softness in her eyes that mirrored my mother’s expression that made me crack.
Another change, another chink in my armor, the carefully constructed views I had of the world and what was right and wrong.
I felt backed into a corner, trapped, with only one way out and it went against everything I’d believed in my entire adult life.
***
Naomi
Everything was quiet inside the small, brightly lit little home.
The fire was blazing, which meant I was warm for the first time since I’d been brought to these caves.
I was sitting on a soft bed, piled with thick, even softer furs.
I’d been given a bowl of water to drink, and now something was simmering in a pot over the fire.
It felt more like I was a guest in Krashe’s home than his prisoner.
He hadn’t tied me up, he hadn’t locked me in a cage or even told me to stay put.
He was ignoring me right now, but I could deal with that.
It gave me time to study my surroundings and rest a little.
It was like I could finally relax, and that usually brought along a dissolving of tension in my body.
Which, contrary to what it should sound like, often brought along cramps and pains.
My shoulders ached from how I’d been pulling myself along the ground, my hips were sore as well.
The many bruises that covered me were letting me know they existed by throbbing or aching whenever I moved.
On top of that, cramps were spasming in my calves, making them grow into hard, tight knots that I could feel with my hands.
The warm food would help, and a good night of sleep would help even more, but I was starting to dread more days like this.
It was frustrating to be without the aids that had made my life on Earth easier.
At least, I had to admit that it was nice to be able to dread the coming days.
That meant I wasn’t fearing imminent death right now, which was a big improvement over a few hours ago.
I had to fight a smile that wanted to spread over my face when I watched Krashe puttering around in his home.
I had been right, he had come to rescue me from the Queen of his Clan. Now why would he do that?
Krashe’s home wasn’t big, just a single room.
But it was divided into several sections depending on what he used them for.
The round bed was in an alcove to one side.
A big barrel next to it that kind of also functioned as a nightstand.
Weapons hung from the windowless walls, but diamond-shaped cubbyholes filled up one entire side of this home too.
In them were leather-bound books, clay or stone tablets, and rolled-up scrolls.
A huge workbench lined the wall beneath those shelves, and on it were several woodworking projects.
That included what looked like a miniature trebuchet, which appeared fully functional.
A tall wooden stand was against one wall, with a leather type of cuirass on it, leather pauldrons, and vambraces.
An armor stand for the Warlord. But secretly, this warlord was a bit of a scholar too, from the looks of it.
I liked that. It was like by being in his home, I got to see the secret side of him, the brainy part that he didn’t show to the rest of his Clan.
I was probably mistaken about it, but still.
My eyes went to the dark gray flagstone, a heavy, hand-carved thing, that now hid the chest with the holographic picture frame.
I was pretty sure I’d seen several stacks of datapads inside that thing, not exactly a design I was familiar with, but close enough that I recognized them for their purpose.
How was it possible for there to be technology here?
Nothing I’d seen so far had indicated any kind of technological advancement.
They lived in the freaking Stone Age; even Krashe’s sword was made of black stone.
The blue Naga that had first pulled me and the others from the shuttle wreck hadn’t looked any more advanced either.
I couldn’t deny the evidence. The holo picture frame showed me images of high-tech cities, their skies swarming with flying vehicles.
That was proof enough. Krashe’s civilization had collapsed and regressed back into the Stone Age.
Not so long ago, or that tech wouldn’t be functioning, his people had walked this planet, able to fly to the stars.
Would he let me have another look at those things?
I was dying to find out what else was in that box.
If I knew more about his people, maybe I could better understand why his Clan seemed to hate me so much.
Krashe wouldn’t explain, or maybe he just couldn’t understand my questions.
I was starting to suspect that we could only speak each other’s language when we touched.
Right now, he was rumbling things to himself under his breath as he cleaned up his workbench, putting away projects, and straightening his bookshelf.
It was all hisses and growls, sibilant tones I could not decipher into words.
He ignored anything I said to him, and the marks on his body that glowed only ever appeared when we touched.
I shuddered, was that because he thought we were mates?
That’s what it was like in the romance novels I liked to devour.
Was there credence to his words? Were we really meant to be?
Or was that just my wishful thinking? It certainly would work in my favor if Krashe was my fated mate, that would mean he’d protect me, care for me.
My eyes lingered on the broad shape of his bare shoulders. There were sharper ridges on the edges, making them seem even wider. His scales were the prettiest shade of red, hinting at gold on the edges, but his tail darkened dramatically toward the tapered tip; nearly turning black.
His hair was really long too, pinned up high on his head in a ponytail but draping down all the way to the small of his back.
The luscious strands were twined with little braids, beads, and strings with feathers on them.
The feathers were shiny black and looked like they might just be stone knives instead of real feathers.
Truth was, he was pretty sexy, if I pretended he had legs instead of a tail I would have called him hot.
And the tail… it was growing on me too. I liked how it made his movements all look graceful and elegant.
The tip was swaying in the air, almost as if he was hearing a beat in his head he was tapping a foot to. It was kind of cute.
Now, how did I go about convincing him that he wanted to keep me?
That I was the horse he should be betting on?
I had never been anyone’s dream girl before, the thought that I could be for him was sort of heady.
My choices, my sacrifice for my family, meant I had left everything I knew and loved behind. Could he be my start of something new?
Again I worried that I was suffering from some kind of weird attachment to my kidnapper, but this time I tried to reason that out.
He had not mistreated me, he had actually protected me, though I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure on that one.
He had locked the door but that felt more like he was keeping the curious onlookers out than to keep me in.
I didn’t really feel a desire to leave if I were honest, I’d just be faced with a crowd of hostile Naga if I did.
When he finally started filling up bowls of stew from the pot over the fire, I rubbed my rumbling belly.
Yes, that food smelled so good! I’d tried my hardest to pay attention when he started cooking.
Back on Earth, that was my favorite part of the day, experimenting with making dinner.
All the foreign smells, the herbs and spices he was using, I wanted to try them all.
When he finished scooping his stew into bowls he glanced my way with a thoughtful look on his face.
I hoped that he’d sit next to me and we could try to talk again.
I needed to make him start using my name, that would really fix me as a person with feelings and needs in his head.
I needed to start using his name too, forge a connection.
Honestly, I felt this zing of excitement burst through me. I wanted to know more about him. About the hint of vulnerability I’d seen when he’d been faced with that picture of his mother and him. What did it mean? Had she died?
“Thank you, Krashe,” I said when he offered me one of the bowls.
Two polished wooden sticks were tucked into the food, I guess they used chopsticks around here.
When I smiled at him, his eyes narrowed, the slightly rigid nubs of his brow lowering to shadow them.
He looked suspicious of me, did he think I was up to something just because I sounded nice?
Or had I mispronounced his name in a really bad way?
His tail flicked around, curling up my leg which I couldn’t feel until he reached my thigh.
Woah, buddy, that was rather intimate! I wanted to shrug the coil away, push it to a lower spot on my leg, but then I wouldn’t be able to feel the touch, and I kind of liked feeling the heat of him through my jeans.