I don’t know how to function in a world where my choices have consequences, many of which I cannot predict because I don’t know what they are.
“There’s no food here,” he says, coming back to stand over me, his hands on his hips.
“I’m food.”
“I can’t eat you,” he sighs, running his hand through his lustrous fireproof hair. “I still have to punish you for getting us into this.”
I let out a whimper and sink down where I am sitting. I do not like this uncomfortable feeling filling my chest and stomach. What is it?
Guilt.
I’ve heard of it, but never felt it before. I never had anything to feel guilty about when I was a farm animal. I had no responsibilities to anybody else. I couldn’t put their lives at risk, or get them hurt.
“But first, I will hunt,” he says. “And this time, you will stay here, human.”
He looks at me with an entirely unnecessary expression of pure ferocity. I’m not going to move. I’m still trying to come to terms with what I saw, a beast of such feral fury and pure leviathan size capable of devouring a planet and me along with it.
The horrors of what might have been are being replaced with the very immediate reality of the horrors that have left me tumbled and bruised and grazed in this cave where there is no food, no water, and only an angry alien to save me.
“What will you hunt?”
What is prey on this planet where the sky is filled with monsters and the ground beneath is populated by rough brutal bestial aliens?
“There should be some small flyers,” he says. “They search for carrion after the storms. They’re good eating. Stay here. I mean it. Stay. Here.”
He repeats the order, and then he leaves me alone with my fear and guilt. I cower into the corner of the cave, make myself as small as possible, and wait.
Time passes strangely in my hiding place. Sometimes I think it has been hours. Other times, it seems like seconds. The entire time, I am trying to come to terms with this new reality, how much more dangerous it is than what I am used to. Am I going to hide forever? Doing what I am told? I want to hide. I don’t want to move. Not an inch. I feel paralyzed.
* * *
A sound nearby makes me flinch. There’s something growling and heavy coming closer. I can hear sounds of a struggle from outside where it has become all too silent.
“Aspel?”
“I’m here,” I call out softly.
“Good.”
Isu returns to the cave dragging the not entirely dead corpse of a monster. It is tooth, claw, wing, and rage. Covered in scales and with a wide mouth filled with teeth. I recoil in horror as he pulls a knife from the belt at his waist and pushes it through the throat of the thing, removing the head with two swift cuts. It goes limp, leaking black blood into the grit-ridden floor, its wings splayed out in freakish disarray.
I curl up into myself to try to hide from the blood and the death of the small monster, which is still twitching on the ground in front of me as Isu starts hacking it into pieces. Not pieces. Parts.
He uses the wings to create a small tent-like arrangement, then gathers some black greasy rocks from deeper in the cave beneath them. That finger snap trick makes them burst into fiery life, shedding heat and warmth immediately. I didn’t even realize I was cold.
Then he begins to cook the animal, taking the flesh and bones, using the bones as racks and handles on which to lay the meat that was once part of its living being. The smell of cooking is familiar. It suddenly smells like… food.
This brutal ritual, which I had been assuming was some kind of lesson or punishment, is him preparing a meal. So this is the purpose of parts. They are to be consumed.
He uses the scaled flesh of the belly of the best as a plate for it, handing a small chunk to me. “Eat slowly,” he says. “This may be hard for you to digest.”
I am hesitant, but I am also hungry. The smell makes my stomach growl and my mouth water, so I pick the meat up and move it to my mouth. To my surprise, it melts against my tongue with a delicious taste.
“Oh, my…” I moan. “This tastes so good. How does such an ugly creature have such an incredible taste?”
And why am I so immediately comfortable with consuming it? Shouldn’t I be revolted? I know what parts are. I know there are aliens somewhere in this big, dark universe of endless planets who are consuming the flesh of my kind the way I am consuming this one.
“Is this what the universe is? Things eating other things forever?”