Chapter 5
Farah
“What do you think, Buzz?” I asked the purple miniature dragon sitting on the edge of the bed next to me.
For five days I’d been on this bed except for embarrassing trips to a bucket behind a shelf when I needed to pee.
I didn’t want to know at all how that had gone while I’d been passed out.
By now it was obvious that I’d lain unconscious for more than just a few days.
I was utterly exhausted from the smallest of tasks.
I slept most of the day and night away, interspersed with dozens of small meals that my host insisted on feeding me himself.
Somehow, despite spending all my time in bed, I found myself cleaner than I should have been.
I suspected that my caretaker sneakily washed me when I was asleep, and I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for that or a little disturbed.
Fact was, each time I saw him, my heart went mental inside my chest. When he left, I was disappointed.
I wanted to be able to speak with him, to learn all about him and his menagerie of animals.
There were at least a dozen of them in the room with me.
Like the wriggling little babies that he hand-fed, and the purple stag that docilely let him treat him.
Most were small animals though, like Buzz and Srazz.
Currently, I had managed to get up and do my own round of washing from a bowl of water that my caretaker had left at the edge of the fire to warm.
I’d finger-brushed my hair as much as I could and used a piece of string Buzz had found somewhere to tie it back into a neat ponytail.
It made me feel almost human again, almost like I was ready to get up and start living.
Buzz had been named for his purple color, ability to fly, and the fact that I was light years away from home.
The tiny, velvety-soft dragon chirped cheerfully at me when I asked him a question, tilting his cute little head this way and that while his lavender eyes stayed locked on my face.
Maybe he was a bit confused by my appearance with my hair pulled back, it sure felt different to me.
A good different, I hoped, while anxiously wiping the strip of wet fur across my face one last time.
I was primping for my caretaker, there was no denying that.
I was sick of being sick and feeling like a wet blanket with noodles for legs.
I wanted to do stuff, to be awake for more than an hour at a time.
I wanted to know where the fudge I was and figure out how to talk with him.
A silence fell over the room, all the animals suddenly freezing in place.
I had a vague recollection of that happening once before, but then my green, scaly rescuer had shown up.
Excited that he might be returning, I looked expectantly at the door.
There was no sign of him, and my smile dropped the longer the animals remained quiet.
A deep unease settled deep in my belly, and goosebumps broke out along the back of my neck.
It felt like I was being watched; eyes on me when there shouldn’t be any.
I turned around and gazed beyond the animal pens and cages into the warren of cluttered shelves and darkness further back.
I couldn’t see the back wall, and I was convinced that there was a doorway back there and someone was staring at me from the dark. I wasn’t alone.
Buzz suddenly flared his wings and curled his back, little spikes raised along his spine as he postured and growled.
It wasn’t anything impressive, especially with one wing lopsided from the bandages and splint that covered it.
The fact that he growled filled me with a hint of relief, see, I wasn’t alone in feeling threatened.
The purple stag-like creature in his pen suddenly jerked his head around, angling his two twisted horns at the back of the room.
He scraped the straw-covered floor with a hoof and snorted, eyes rolling in his head so I could see the whites.
“Easy boy,” I murmured, “What do you see?” Not that the stag would answer me, or Buzz.
As suddenly as the quietness had fallen, followed by the aggressive tension in some of my caretaker’s patients, it was gone.
The stag lowered his head and sighed, skin shaking along his rump and then down to the tip of his tufted tail.
Then he opened his maw and started munching on his straw as if nothing had happened at all.
Buzz took a little longer to relax, but then he scuttled around and straight into my lap, purring and seeking pets. I was not at all surprised this time when my green friend ducked into the room barely a moment later. Whatever had threatened me and the animals had been scared off by his arrival.
I didn’t know his name, so I thought of him mostly as the caretaker, but sometimes as that sexy alien.
Today he was definitely the sexy alien. His scales shimmered with water droplets clinging to him, his long tail seemed extra shiny, and his long blue-green hair was braided along his temples to hold it out of his face.
With the trident in his hand, he looked to me like Poseidon, the water god.
“Hi,” I said, which was usually the extent of our conversation.
He managed something that sounded close to ‘hi’ back to me, his emerald eyes shining with a fierce, almost possessive glow.
That was a look I had come to expect from him.
He was always intense that way, staring at me as he rushed whatever he did.
Whether that was to feed me, give me water, or one of the many trinkets he liked to give me, it didn’t matter.
It was always done with the same intensity, the same focus.
Like I was the only person in the entire world, it was both unsettling and extremely flattering to be on the receiving end of those kinds of stares.
It made me feel like I was precious somehow.
This time he propped his trident next to the door, then circled around the fire and ducked low so he was at face height with me.
He held out one huge, clawed fist and slowly opened it to show me what was inside.
I gasped at the shimmer of lavender pearls set at intervals along artfully twisted copper wire.
A bracelet, one of his prettiest trinkets yet.
Blushing, because that’s always what happened when he gave me pretty things, I accepted the bracelet and slid it onto my wrist. I was still bony and thin after all this time being sick, and I was only too happy to focus on the shimmering jewelry that adorned me, rather than my physical issues.
“Thank you,” I said to him. And not for the first time, I made an attempt at making conversation.
“Farah,” I said, and tapped my chest. Today I got a bit more daring, thanks to feeling clean and sort of myself again for the first time.
Not quite so weak and exhausted that sitting upright was too much.
I reached out and tapped the center of his impressive pectorals in turn and gave him my best inquisitive look. “What’s your name?”
His body flashed with a shimmer of emerald, slashes and swirls along his upper body all the way down the front of his tail.
They appeared and then faded as quickly as they’d come, but the effect was startling.
My sexy caretaker had frozen in place, his green eyes huge in his face, the yellow along his cheeks brighter, shimmering golden.
I was pretty sure that was his equivalent of a blush. Now that was interesting.
“Come on, tell me your name. You must have one.” I tapped my chest again, “Farah. I am Farah.” I insisted several times, but each time I’d start to reach for his chest, he moved just out of range.
Okay, no touching him. “Well, I can’t keep calling you ‘caretaker’ or ‘sexy alien’.
That’s just weird, and not all that original either, if I say so myself.
How about Poseidon? You look like a water god. ”
He rose high on his tail so suddenly that it caught me by surprise.
I tumbled back into the pile of furs I’d practically lived in all week.
His eyes were huge in his face, his mouth open in what had to be shock, displaying a set of upper and lower fangs as sharp and scary-looking as those of a real snake.
“What? What’s wrong?” I asked. Looking around his huge form, raised high on his thick, muscular tail, I searched for any sign that that presence had returned.
None of the animals seemed disturbed this time, the stag still grazing, the little ones like Srazz still snoring in their nest. Buzz was disgruntled, but that was just because I’d dislodged him when I tumbled backward.
He was already shaking out his tail and crawling back on top of me to continue his nap.
My caretaker hissed something at me, then again.
Slowly, he settled back on his tail, still much taller than I was, but more manageable.
It took me a moment to realize that he was hissing the last part of that silly name I was trying to give him back at me.
“Sssseidon.” Then he tapped his chest with his entire fist, hard enough to make a slapping sound echo through the chamber.
The stag snorted loudly as if that offended him.
“Zeidon?” I asked, “Poseidon?” He shook his head, one of the few things communication-wise that we did have in common.
“No, just Zeidon? Zeidon?” He nodded wildly, his hair flying around his shoulders in dark blue streaks, the biggest, toothiest smile breaking out across his face.
My whole body lit on fire at the sight of that smile, I hadn’t realized he could even make such an expression.
It was pretty and a little scary looking, like I was staring into the maw of a very dangerous predator.