I stand with my arms spread, my face turned up to the light. This is the kind of warmth I need, the kind that radiates all around me and bathes me in its glow.
* * *
Isu
“Sorry,” I say as I return several hours later. “I didn’t expect to be so long.”
Aspel is quiet. Maybe she’s sulking. The farm does not train humans to obedience the way it should. It raises them for their flesh, so their behavior is a very distant second consideration. As long as they can be controlled with pain, the Vargons don’t care.
I need to train my human. I need her to respond when I call. I feel my palms heating at the prospect of spanking her bottom nice and red for hiding from me.
It takes me far too long to realize that she is missing. I didn’t give her credit for being able to escape. I figured a girl like her, one who didn’t even think whether or not she agreed with things, would do as she was told. Apparently her human rebellion has ignited already.
“She’s going to be a handful,” I murmur to myself. I should have known better than to leave a human behind an open door. I know where she’s tried to go, to the surface, of course. But I don’t know that she made it there. This burrow is large and contains thousands of tunnels and paths. It would be very easy for a creature new to the place to become hopelessly lost forever.
The warning of the elders returns to me. She is death.
Perhaps they meant that she was a danger to herself. I grit my fangs as I go after her, heading to the surface. I have to assume that is where she went. As I run, I keep my ears keenly focused on the tunnels around me, alert to the sounds of a lost, whimpering human. If I have to tell the elders that she strayed, they may decide she is not worthy of the burrow at all.
* * *
Aspel
The sun beats down on my skin as I lie spread-eagled next to the entrance of the underworld, drinking in every bit of light and life, fresh air blowing around me. I don’t know what danger is supposed to lurk up here on the sands, but I sense none whatsoever. I have removed the cloak completely and now I am lying on it, using it to protect me from the gritty sand below. It’s coarse, and it gets absolutely everywhere.
I feel—for the first time in my entire existence—free. Every breath I take is one in open air. There are no walls. There are no authorities. The plan they had for me from birth has failed and now I am out in the universe, roaming as I please.
At the back of my mind, I know I will have to return to the burrow. There is no food out here on the sandy plains, nor do I see any water. I will have to return to Isu and no doubt he will punish me, but I don’t care. Even the smallest relief from the oppression of my world is worth whatever pain he has in store for me.
“Aspel!”
Just like that, my freedom is over. I look up and I see him towering over me, his hot flesh burning against blue sky. His expression is thunderous.
“I told you not to leave my…”
“Hole in the ground?”
He snarls at me, fierce flame rising from his head and shoulders. When he is angry, he literally burns. I can see the flames flickering from his normally black eyes as they sear like hot coals inside his skull.
If he touches me now, I will be burned. So he does not touch me, he stands over me and he snarls.
“You will be punished,” he intones. “This is not safe.”
“The only thing not safe here is you.”
I fling the words at him. He took me when I was weak and scared, freshly crashed and without any protection. He took advantage of me, and he still is with these lies about the surface being dangerous. It’s not dangerous. It’s barren.
I am about to tell him as much when I feel the ground begin to vibrate. I’ve felt these tremors before, deep underground. I never liked them. They made me feel as though the whole thing was going to collapse in on me. I feel much safer on the surface where I can see the ground shudder.
That feeling of safety quickly disappears when I see what is causing the earthquakes. Something is emerging from the ground, out of one of the many deep crater holes that dot the surface of the planet.
It is large.
At first it looks as though sandy ground is rising, like a hillock, but the longer it goes on, the taller it becomes, the higher it goes and the more I realize this is not something geographical. It is animal. An animal so big it astounds me and makes me fall into open-mouthed silence.