Chapter 9 #2
“Aha,” I hummed. Scratching Srazz under his chin I had another good look around.
These males looked comfortable in each other’s presence.
They were well-fed and happy. Yet, by their own words, they were all cast out of their own clan.
Except for Ekkire, maybe; Water Weaver didn’t rush into those kinds of decisions since our males already roamed so much.
“Tour? You should stick around, Zeidon,” Ekkire said at last. I couldn’t say no to that, even if it meant I would not be able to hunt today.
This was important, they had humans as Joxra called them.
Sky beings just like my female. I wanted to meet them and I wanted to learn all about this settlement and its leadership.
***
Farah
“What is it, Buzz? Do you hear something?” I asked the tiny purple dragon. His body was no bigger than my fist, but he had a long, sinuous neck and agile tail that made him appear bigger. When he flared out his wings and raised the little spikes along his back I knew he meant serious business.
He’d been uneasy on and off all morning, and now that the day was fading into late afternoon it was getting even worse.
He paced along the edge of the pile of furs, then fluttered to a spot on a shelf to glare into the darkness at the back of the room.
His unease made me just as restless and I rose to pull on the pair of pants I’d made from that pretty but durable blue fabric.
I would feel better when I was less exposed in just a simple dress.
I wanted to think that I was just imagining things and that Buzz was just reacting to this planet’s equivalent of a mouse scurrying around in the dark.
That thought didn’t really help to make me feel better; I didn’t like the idea of a mouse for company either.
The pants did fit alright, though; that was a win.
I’d even managed to sew a pocket at one hip, I was pretty proud I’d remembered how to do that.
I was just tying the last lace on my sneaker again when I heard a sound that definitely didn’t come from Buzz.
Now fully dressed in new pants and my sweatshirt, I rose to stare at the ominous darkness beyond the rows of cluttered shelves.
What the fudge was it? Enough with the self-doubt; there really was something back there, staring at me.
Buzz sensed it, I sensed it, so it had to be there.
My eyes landed on one of the primitive weapons that Zeidon had stuck in a bin near the exit toward the tunnel.
The one visible door in this place, although I was now certain that it could not be the only one.
My legs only wobbled a little bit when I shuffled around the campfire to the bin and pulled out a sturdy club-like thing.
It was shaped like a baseball bat but slightly curved.
Someone had wrapped fabric around the handle end to make it easier to hold, and it was heavy, smooth, and white as bone.
I had the feeling this might be actual bone, or maybe a giant fang, but that meant the beast it came from was enormous.
It would make for a very adequate weapon, even if my arms struggled to hold it up.
“Come on, Buzz. I know you hear it too, where is it?” I murmured to the little dragon.
He fluttered his wings and with a chirp-kee-kee, landed on my shoulder.
His little maw was pulled back into a silent snarl, his lavender eyes fixated on the last row of shelves.
“Show yourself! I know you’re there.” And those words wouldn’t help a bit, because whoever that was wouldn’t speak my language.
I didn’t feel nearly as brave as I was acting, but I forced myself to walk around the fire with my club to get a closer look.
The shelves were filled so much that you could barely see through them.
Broken, jagged pieces of metal plating, piles and piles of cables sorted by length and color, and a whole basket full of something that looked a bit like a lighter.
There were collections of many more things I couldn’t decipher too.
Zeidon was definitely a major hoarder of things.
When I rounded my third shelf, the light from the fire became blocked and long shadows surrounded me.
Buzz made uneasy noises on my shoulder but bravely kept clinging to my sweater.
I was grateful for his company, without it, I would have crawled beneath those furs and hidden.
Still an option, I conceded. If I didn’t find anything behind the next shelf I was going to give up and do the sensible thing: hide.
I hoped that Zeidon would be back in not too long, but he had said the hunt would take him the whole day.
I thought it was late afternoon because of how my stomach felt, but I couldn’t actually tell down here with no windows for daylight.
I didn’t even know if the days had a similar length to days on Earth, what if it was very different?
A hint of panic filled me when I realized I didn’t know how long it would be until Zeidon got back. I had to figure this out on my own. Panic was useless, and I hated how it had made me feel and react back at the lake the other day. I was not going down another rabbit hole like that.
Firming my posture, I gripped the bone bat thing tightly in my fingers and crept around the next shelf.
I was holding my breath as I expected the worst. Shadows that slowly resolved themselves in another row of shelves with more oddly shaped things that Zeidon had considered worth collecting.
Then I caught the glow of a red light. It floated in the darkness in front but several feet above me.
“Buzz, are you seeing that?” I whispered to my companion clinging to my shoulder. I blinked and that red light had lowered, floating at face height and suddenly it looked like an eye to me, even though there was only one. Ah, fudge! That wasn’t a good sign, was it?
“Who are you?” I asked. My voice trembled in the air, thin and reedy with fear. I was never sleeping in a dark room again, that was for sure. If I made it out of this alive, I was going to convince Zeidon we needed a new place to live in.
The red light blinked once and then it came closer, at the same time, a brighter light flared to life lower to the floor. I screamed, Buzz flew into the air and fled, and the being in front of me uttered a loud hissing noise.