Over the next hours, I restore water to her body slowly and carefully, allowing her to rest. I have never regretted my aggressive physiology until now. I want to be soft for her, but I am just as hard and unyielding as the rest of this cave, possibly more so.
She makes sounds, not her enchanting song, but whimpers and grunts and little incoherent murmurs of pain. I wonder if I did her a favor by rescuing her, or if the sharp edge of my blade might have been kinder. Humans seem born to suffer. They have so few means of avoiding it. Most of them are unable to function for very long outside their social group, and those groups can only exist when they can define an in-group and an out-group. When there are no enemies who can be attacked, the humans inevitably find someone within their own group to play the role - and very rarely is it someone who deserves the accusation. The greatest predators are shielded, while their victims take the blame. Theirs is an inherently corrupt and contemptible species, and I am eager to be taken away from this planet as soon as possible.
The girl stirs in my arms and opens her eyes. They had been closed for a time, the only motion of her body that soft swallowing of precious water. When I meet her gaze, I forget about how much I hate humans. The anger and loathing is swept away by the need to care for this one.
She and I are both marooned, but I have the luxury of knowing my tribe is coming for me, while hers has brutally rejected her. She has nobody to take care of her. Nobody to hunt for her. She needs to be part of a group.
“No…” she moans. “Not for me.”
I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. You’re welcome would be the typical human response when you’ve saved someone’s life, but it doesn’t feel right coming from my lips. What is not for her? Water? Air? Life?
Tres
“Drink,” he says, those eyes burning into mine.
I did not expect to be rescued. I did not think that this creature was real enough to rescue me. I had decided he was nothing more than a figment of my imagination, one of the many day dreams I allowed myself to indulge in which became a little too real one afternoon and led to disaster.
I may still be dreaming now, but the water is real, as is the freedom I have from my ropes. He has taken me from the starving board and he has given me a chance at life.
His face is harsh, and his expression is difficult to read, but I think I see anger in the tension of his jaw, the way the serrated ridges of his brow draw down between the sips he is helping me take. My time to die has come, but my body craves water more strongly than my spirit craves the afterlife.
Every sip I take is blasphemy. Hyrrm cannot claim me while my heart still beats. But I cling to life, like an ant clinging to a leaf floating downstream, and this beast I mated with makes sure that I take a little at a time before laying me back and denying me any more.
“You will be sick,” he says. “I will give you more soon.”
“Who are you?”
He does not answer the question. Instead, he crouches above me, gruff and ferocious, staring out the mouth of the cave with so much fierce intensity I feel sorry for any living thing which catches his molten gaze.
After a small eternity of silence, he lifts my head in his large, clawed hand, and tips a little more skull water between my lips.
“Why was this done to you?” He answers my question with one of his own.
“I was supposed to be given to Hyrrm, but…” I hesitate. “But they saw me with you, and Trelok said I was not worthy. He said I would die here in the starving cave and go to the damned ancestors.”
The beast looks at me, his serrated brow furrowing. “Nothing you have said makes any sense.”
“I am sorry,” I whimper. “It was a punishment.”
“Because you were promised to another man?”
“Because I was promised to Hyrrm. The mountain.”
The beast grunts. “How is a human female promised to a mountain?”
“I would have been sent to him this morning.”
“Sent. How?”
“I would have flown on unseen wings down into the crater and been embraced by his molten arms.”
He digests my words, then spits them out in a much less spiritual statement. “You would have been pushed into a volcano.”
“It is what I was born for. I was destined to be sacrifice. From the moment they pulled me from my dead mother’s womb, I have been prepared to be his. But what I did with you… it made me unworthy. You defiled me.”