Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Margot hadn’t exactly been a cardio freak back on Earth, but she did enjoy getting a good sweat going and her favorite Zumba and kickboxing classes at the gym were not only fun and social, but they had also left her with a fairly good level of cardiovascular fitness as a happy byproduct. She hadn’t realized exactly how good her stamina was, however, until she found herself running for her life until her lungs simply refused to cooperate any longer.
She finally hit the wall, slowing to a walk, then stopping, bending over and heaving, her ribcage painfully cramping up on her as she propped her hands on her knees, breathing as deep as her body would allow her.
It was hard, but even as her body screamed for more air, she forced herself to hold her breath and listen. Her heart was pounding in her head, but her ears could clearly make out the sounds of nature. Animals and insects were active here.
She was safe.
Or at least as safe as she could hope for, given the situation.
How far did I run? she wondered, finally taking a moment to assess her new surroundings in a non-panicked-flight kind of way. It has to be at least a mile. Maybe two?
In fact, she’d run closer to three miles, a distance she was more than capable of covering at a leisurely jog on a treadmill, but at a full sprint run? She’d never pushed herself like that in the gym, so it was an utterly unfathomable level of expenditure of both adrenaline and energy.
Margot’s body began to tremble. Not just from the strain and shock, but also something else she recognized. This was what runners called bonking. She’d done it before when engaged in an ill-advised fasting cleanse, but still foolishly going to the gym without easing up one bit. The tingling fingers, the lightheadedness. She knew what had to be done. She needed to spike her blood sugar, and soon.
“Food. I need food,” she muttered, looking around, fully aware that she had absolutely no idea which of these plants she could eat, and which might kill her.
And even if she had been trained in that sort of wilderness survival stuff, this wasn’t Earth. Those lessons would be moot. But she’d not eaten in how long now? Days? First the abduction, then the crash, all without food. As a result, her stomach was growling. And on top of that, she realized just how thirsty she was. Margot took another survey of the wild alien landscape surrounding her.
The area she now found herself in was different than where she’d run from. There were still a lot of trees, but a bit more spread out, affording her somewhat easier movement. And the ground, she realized, was firmer. Rockier.
It seemed that, in her abject terror, Margot had inadvertently run on a slightly downhill trajectory, her feet following the path that allowed her to run the fastest, while not consciously making that choice. It was rockier terrain, but that also meant more open space to run rather than dense bushes to work her way through or around.
There was an additional benefit to her course, though she hadn’t been aware of it. Water flowed downhill. And edible things often grew around water. That she’d learned as a little girl at her grandparents’ lake house, going out berry picking with her grandfather until their fingers and lips were stained purple.
She looked around, noting the dampness to some areas of the soil, her mouth suddenly feeling far dryer than she’d realized. Uncomfortably so. But this proved it. There was a water source nearby. All she had to do was find it.
“Okay, just have to look carefully. Grandpa said it flowed down and to look at the shape of the terrain. So stop, think, and pay attention.”
She took a deep breath, clearing her head, then spun a slow three-sixty, taking in the details of her environment with a clearer, non-panicked gaze. There, perhaps no more than a half mile away in the near distance, was a denser, greener patch of woodland, though it also sported deep burgundy foliage, and one thing was clear.
“That has to mean water,” she said, starting her feet moving again, this time at a normal pace.
Margot kept herself constrained to a slower rate of travel, making sure to keep her ears peeled and attentive to the sounds of nature around her. That, more than anything, she realized, would be her early warning system should the deadly, mindless beast be in the vicinity.
The trek only took her about fifteen minutes, the direction a ninety-degree deviation from her original heading. She wasn’t walking back toward the area she’d fled; she was merely redirecting to a parallel course.
She smelled the water even before she could see it. Margot moved faster, sheer need overriding her thoughts of safety. It was a stream, clear and fresh, winding through the trees at a leisurely pace. She hurried to the edge and dropped to her knees, filling her hands with water. She hesitated but a moment.
“Fuck it.”
Margot drank deep, the cool water tasting better than any sports drink she’d ever had, her desperately overtaxed body greedily absorbing every last drop and crying out for more. She drank and drank until a sharp cramp forced her to stop, sending her doubling over in pain. She heaved once, a trickle of water escaping her mouth with a small burp. But this wasn’t poisoning. She’d simply overindulged. Too much too quickly, nothing more. At least, she hoped that was the case.
Her thirst quenched, she sat on her rear and closed her eyes, breathing deep, taking in the smells and sounds around her. It was peaceful. Quiet. Calm. When she opened them once more, she saw the world with clear eyes and mind. Despite her initial arrival, she now took in the sights not as a terrifying and hostile place, but a fascinating new environment. One that she was very likely the first human to ever lay eyes on.
The trees with their burgundy, violet, and green foliage were actually quite magnificent, now that she wasn’t running for her life. And the shrubs and vines were equally colorful and alien. It was almost like she’d walked into a fantasy painting from one of her childhood books, only this place also had a much darker, dangerous side. One she’d been made painfully aware of not long ago at all. One that she’d be well-served not to forget.
Priorities crept back into the forefront of her mind. “I’d better find food. Can’t run on an empty tank,” she reasoned, climbing to her feet.
Margot began walking along the shore of the stream, her eyes fixed on the area along the water’s edge, searching for anything that might be edible. To her delight, it took no time at all to find a large stretch of berry shrubs. She picked one, the berry the size of her thumb, purple juice dripping from the end. She sniffed it.
Sweet.
But was it edible? There was no way to know for sure, but from the animal prints all around and the way the berries closest to the ground had been eaten away, she reasoned that this was probably her best shot at verifying the plant wasn’t poisonous.
“That, or they have an immunity,” she murmured to herself. “Well, only one way to know for sure.”
She tentatively popped the berry into her mouth, intending to let it sit for a moment so she could gauge how her tongue reacted to it. But the flavor was so intense and sweet that her mouth moved on instinct, chewing it and swallowing in a flash, hungry for more. Starving as she was, Margot quickly obliged, stuffing her face with berry after berry, but stopping herself before she made herself sick. That lesson had already been learned, and she did not want a repeat.
Finally, her belly’s rumbling sated, she moved around the bushes to the water’s edge, crouching down and washing her hands and face. Her heart lurched in her chest as movement to her right, just in her peripheral vision, caught her attention.
She was not alone.
Margot froze, slowly turning, out in the open on the shoreline, exposed with nowhere to hide. Her eyes focused on the threat, growing wide as she realized what she was looking at.
It was a man, that she could very clearly see judging by the impressive length hanging between his legs, easily visible even with his back to her as he bent forward in the knee-deep water washing his face and neck.
He had long, scraggly dark hair hanging to his shoulders, his body a light tan color with a hint of red, almost like you’d find with some native tribes of the United States. He was tall, clearly over six feet, and broad of shoulder with a lean waist and powerful buttocks and thighs. His overall build was rather human, though with decidedly alien attributes, including what looked almost like another two sets of abs on either side of his back, likely allowing him to bend backward as well as forward, though she couldn’t tell how far.
The man flopped back into the water, reveling in the flow, then stood up fully, water dripping off him, running down his manhood in a stream that Margot, despite the situation, couldn’t help but stare at. He was gorgeous. Built like an Olympian swimmer, but more. An alien Tarzan out in this wilderness.
The rocks at her feet shifted, one clattering into the water. The man’s head cocked for an instant, then he bolted into the trees, moving even more fluidly than she’d have expected of one with his considerable physique. He looked almost like some kind of crazy, cat-like parkour runner, the way he effortlessly vaulted rocks and logs. And with his ridiculous muscles, he propelled his body up and out of sight in a flash.
“What the hell?” she marveled, shocked by his unexpected speed and grace.
Margot rose and looked around, her ears straining. The animals and insects seemed to have been untroubled by the man’s abrupt movement, their steady hum unchanged. She turned, eyes scanning for a man-shaped outline anywhere in her line of sight.
She nearly fell over in shock when he abruptly dropped from above, landing mere feet from her, still quite wet from his bath, and very naked.
Margot swallowed hard, her eyes unable to avoid glancing at the impressive unit hanging between his legs. Thick, powerful legs, she noted. She quickly shifted her gaze to his face, locking her eyes on his. His features were very human, but more angular, with cheekbones you’d kill for and arching eyebrows that seemed always amused at some secret joke only he could hear.
His hair was dark and thick, brushed away from his face for the moment, revealing bright copper-colored eyes with a deep silver-gray ring around the outer edge of his iris, making them appear even brighter and more piercing than she’d have thought possible.
He sized her up, calm, confident, not concerned one bit by the intruder to his forest realm or his own nudity. She marveled at the swirling designs marking his entire body. Detailed patterns tattooed over each major muscle group, connected by swooping lines that followed his musculature in a beautiful way. In the middle of his chest was the most ornate of all the designs, a remarkable pattern of a complexity the likes of which she’d never seen before.
The man’s ink, she noted, was ever so slightly luminous, and it appeared to be mostly silver and gold, with bits of black for detail work. But all of the colors had a strangeness to them, every last bit blended with a disturbingly dark green hue, almost as if he had moss growing under his skin, but only where the ink had been placed.
He spoke, his voice gentle and clear, though she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. His eyes, however, were kind. Warm and non-threatening. For whatever reason, instinct kicked in like she didn’t usually feel, and she was certain she could trust this man. It didn’t happen often, but when it spoke to her like this, her gut was almost never wrong.
“I can’t understand you,” she said.
He looked at her with surprise, his head cocked slightly. He spoke again.
“Nope. Still don’t know what you’re saying.”
He gently reached out and turned her head, his fingers warm where they softly grasped her cheek. One long finger softly touched the skin behind her ear, a curious look on his face. He turned her head the other way examining the other side the same way before letting go, never once giving off the slightest hint of ill-intentions.
He spoke again, but this time pantomiming as well, his fingers grasping his thumb and moving to his full lips, his jaw then moving as if chewing.
“Food? Do I want food?”
He nodded.
“Yes! Yes, please! I’ve only found berries out here and when the Raxxians had me I didn’t eat at all!”
A flash of something hard blazed in his eyes at that word. That name. Raxxians. Clearly, he had beef with them, as did pretty much everyone, from what Alida had said. She supposed that their habit of eating people was probably a pretty good reason why.
The man turned and gestured for her to follow, then walked ahead, moving slowly so she could keep up. Margot was appreciative of the courtesy almost as much as she was of the view. His ass was magnificent. Roman sculptors couldn’t have done a better job if they tried. He stopped and picked up some wet and ratty clothing he’d apparently washed before bathing, then continued on his path, leading her through the trees, his presence alone making her feel worlds safer than she would have thought possible.
They trekked for at least a mile, arriving at a thick-trunked tree with a dense canopy of branches above. He grabbed one of the vines winding around it, one that looked just like all the rest, and tugged. A woven ladder dropped down, unfurling right in front of them.
“You have a secret treehouse?” she asked, almost amused at the idea of this very grown man having a secret hideout like some teenage boy.
He nodded, gesturing for her to climb up.
You’ve come this far, she reminded herself, then started climbing.
He followed her up, arriving at a structure so expertly woven into the branches that even knowing it was there it would have been near impossible to detect it from the ground. Only the one open door provided any clue that it was there. Margot climbed inside, shocked how spacious it was, as well as how sturdily built. The man entered behind her, leaving the door open. The way he moved, careful not to startle her, not putting himself between her and the exit, she couldn’t help but think he had done so to help put her at ease, leaving her an escape route if she wanted.
The man had to stoop as he walked across the structure, but only slightly. He picked up a basket containing a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as a gourd full of juice and another full of water, placing them all in front of her. He said something, gesturing for her to dig in.
“Does that mean eat ?” she asked.
He nodded, smiling, pleased as she repeated the word in his own tongue.
“Thank you. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
He nodded, then pointed to a clean spot against the far wall where some blankets lay piled up.
“For me?”
He nodded again, then headed out the door, leaving her to eat and rest in peace.
Margot did just that, devouring a healthy portion of the food, then lying down to rest, just for a little bit. She was out cold in seconds, her body happily full and her mind at ease, embracing the feeling of safety for the first time since her abduction.