Lucero
I woke up to my stomach letting out a dizzying growl that made me curl into myself with a groan.
It took a second of disorientation before I realized exactly what it was that had happened. I’d fainted.
With a sigh and a groan, I pushed myself up, rubbing at my head.
That wasn’t the first time in my life I’d fainted from hunger.
I really needed to get my shit together.
That also wasn’t the first time I’d said those words to myself.
There was almost never enough money for a meal, or never enough time to sit and make something.
I’d survived on cup noodles for weeks, but I knew logically it wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world.
My body was paying for it now, and I’d gone and passed out, putting myself in even more of a vulnerable position before Qanek than I already was.
I slowly blinked my eyes open, surprised to find I was bundled up in Qanek’s nest. The one place he’d specifically asked me not to be.
But I hadn’t fainted here, that much I knew for sure.
Had he placed me here?
I looked around the cave, mouth watering when I caught sight of the fire blazing beneath a roasted cut of meat that was strung up on a spit, with Qanek manning it, using his black clawed hand to slowly turn it.
The fire spat and burst. And in the midst of it, Qanek was hunched, curling into himself, with a grumpy expression on his monstrous face.
“Qanek?”
For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer, but ever so slowly, his gaze lifted to meet mine. I wasn’t sure what I found on his expression, as he was still so hard to read. But I wanted to hope that it was relief?
Maybe the hunger was making me hallucinate, though.
The expression changed though, back into one of extreme familiarity, the one I’d come to associate with him when he looked at me like he wanted to rip me apart.
I slid out of his bed space and walked slowly over to the fire spit. Immediately, the scent of food invaded my senses and my stomach emitted a rumble that sounded like one of the gargoyle’s growls.
“Sit,” Qanek ordered in his gravely voice.
I would’ve told him to fuck off for trying to tell me what to do, but I was too damn hungry to muster that energy, so I plopped down on a flat-topped rock.
Qanek didn’t look at me again. He seemed focused on his task, and I watched with no little bit of fascination as he pulled the stick and meat from the fire and tore it into chunks with his bare claws as if it didn’t burn at all.
He placed several pieces on a little plate and wordlessly handed it to me.
I didn’t bother asking him if he’d washed his hands.
I tore into the food with a fervor. I didn’t know what kind of meat it was, and I didn’t dare ask because it tasted so damn good. I moaned around a mouthful, catching a glare from Qanek in the process but deciding to ignore him and enjoy my meal instead.
I ate until I was full, until the juices coated shamelessly around my mouth and I was licking my fingers clean.
“Oh, God.” I sat back, rubbing a hand across the pudge in my stomach. “That was soooo good. Thank you for feeding me, Qanek.”
He grumbled, poking a stick into the fire, but didn’t answer.
Interpreting his moods was like solving arithmetic.
“Here.”
I blinked as he thrust a canteen in my direction. I took it, sniffing the contents, before taking a blessed sip of crisp, fresh water.
“Ooooh, wow that’s soooo good. Thank you.”
He poked his stick more aggressively into the fire, sending embers flying above him. It illuminated his hellish features in a frightening way, but funny how I no longer felt afraid or threatened by him any longer.
Now he was just… a gargoyle. Just someone I found myself stuck with for the foreseeable future. He was an asshole, but maybe he wasn’t so bad…
“I need to stretch my legs.” I stood up, working out the kinks in my body.
My ribs still hurt, and I still felt bruised, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been before.
I began walking through the space of the cave.
It was enough to not make me feel cramped, like a large, open-concept loft. Even the bathing room was enormous.
My fingers itched to document this moment, and though I felt Qanek’s assessing gaze on me, I still reached for my camera.
I waited a breath, like he would curse me out, roar, or stomp around in anger again.
When he merely watched me, I brought the camera up to my face and clicked, snapping a picture of him.
When he didn’t retaliate, I got to work.
There was something beautiful about capturing the world through a different lens.
About things you would otherwise overlook being held in a different lighting.
The way one would simply swat at a spiderweb without a care, but through my camera, I captured every strand braided together.
Every drop of dew. The innocent eyes of the creature that rested its head upon it.
I made the ugly pretty and made the pretty ugly.
Qanek left me to my exploration, often muttering to himself in his language, often searching me out with curiosity in his eyes.
I snapped pictures of his expressions, so I noted when they changed.
When bits of the hard angles smoothed over and became something…
softer. Not soft, not quite that, but not as tightly wound.
He looked at me differently with each second that passed, that anger making its way to something more.
I didn’t have a name for it. It couldn’t have been respect. Perhaps it was acceptance about our situation and things we couldn’t control.
I smiled at him, showing my full teeth, though the gap between the two front ones had always made me self-conscious.
Fire burned in Qanek’s chest when I smiled, like seeing flames through a glass pane. The reddish hue traveled up his neck and stained his cheeks. Was he blushing?
“What is it that you do with that device?” he asked.
“This is a camera.” I held it up and explained. “I capture pictures–images–of the world with it. Do you want to see?”
Before he even nodded, I was already making my way towards him, clicking through the settings so I could show him the photos I’d taken so far.
“See? It’s your den.” I scrolled through the images I’d just taken, stopping on one of Qanek.
I’d caught him at an intense angle, with the shadows hugging the panes of his sharp, wide face just right.
He was in deep concentration, his stone brows pulled together above two different colored eyes, his lips turned into a pout.
The scar was stark on his face, an angry line cutting across one side.
Anyone looking at him would see the danger but there was beauty to him as well, the same way snakes were deadly and beautiful, Qanek was as well.
Beside me, he sucked in a breath and lifted a black claw, as if he wanted to reach out and touch the portrait, but thought better of it, pulling back at the last second.
“You have a photogenic face.” I smiled, reaching a finger out and sliding it across the screen of my camera, right down his cheek. “Very beautiful.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
When I turned, he was staring at me, not at the picture anymore. Something in the depths of his eyes incinerated through the anger and fear that had seemed to be a pulsing, present thing between us.
My own cheeks began burning at the intensity with which he observed me, not once tearing eye contact. It was too much, to be trapped beneath that stare and a desperate part of me tried clawing my way out with an awkward huff of laughter.
“I want to photograph professionally.” I hung it around my neck again, using it like a barrier between us. “But I still need practice.”
“I am sure all you desire will come to pass. You have a natural talent.”
There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice, and my answering smile was shy and self-conscious. I tucked a ratted curl behind my ear.
“That’s the first time anyone’s ever said that to me, Qanek. Thank you.”
Those flames under his skin glowed brightly. His head darted back to his distracting task, and I hummed to myself as I walked around once again, set on exploring.
A chest sat like a pirate’s trove near his bed.
I could peek at the garments inside and curiosity gripped me.
There was a chill in the air and I was far from the fire.
If I found a blanket or a sweater, I could wear that and not invade Qanek’s space again.
Then he wouldn’t yell at me, and we could continue in companionable silence. And, dare I say it, contentment?
Smiling to myself at that perfect plan, I went to the chest and rummaged inside. Immediately, my fingers closed around a pretty red sweater made of a comfortable, warm, and stretchy material.
I pulled it out and held the sweater up for viewing. It was super cute and actually something I would pick out for myself in a bin at the thrift shop–it was in my favorite color, after all.
I slipped it on and turned…
To find Qanek glaring daggers at me, his nostrils flaring in a sure sign of the rage that would follow.
I swallowed past the lump of nerves in my throat at the sight.
I’d only wanted to be comfortable and warm, to get out of his nest, and he was staring at me like I’d committed a sin.
I expected the anger.
The explosion.
I braced myself for it.
What I hadn’t expected was the slow slump of his shoulders in what appeared to be… resignation?
A deep, rumbling sound expelled from his lips.
Then I watched as he transformed into something akin to a predator.
He stood up, dropping his stick into the fire until it was consumed by the flames.
He prowled towards me, his wings snapping against his back.
He came closer… and closer still. Until he was close enough to touch, to smell.
The scent of smoke and embers from the fireplace, but something warmer enveloped him.
My nose brushed against his chest and I looked up.