“You’re right,” he says, stunned. “You’re absolutely right. This is… You have a better understanding of time mechanics than any of our scientists.”
“I do?”
“You said it yourself. If history is already determined, then you cannot die before your time. That means that plank was not your time. It also means that my presence is no accident. It was ordained. I am not polluting this timeline. I am part of it. I have been here before.”
“How is that possible, if you were born millions of years in the future?”
“The universe doesn’t really care when things happen,” he says. “I need to speak to Krave, but there’s no way to initiate contact from my end. We will have to wait until he gets in contact with me. Until then, we do what we please.”
“Okay, well, I’m sure I shouldn’t have been listening to most of that existential crisis,” Tyank says. “I’m going to let you go, and see if I can get Krave back on.”
Vulcan
“I like that man more than the other one,” Tres says when the communicator falls silent.
“Neither one of them are men, but yes, Tyank is much more easy to deal with than Krave.”
“Those are the names of your tribesmen?”
“Yes,” I confirm. “Krave is the oldest of us. He is the leader.”
“He talks to you like you have to do what he says,” she observes shrewdly. “Is that why you said before that I can’t come with you? Because you’re worried he won’t let you take me?”
Oh, she has impeccable instincts, this little human. She is needling me in my ego. I do not like taking orders from Krave. I never have. That makes me a bad scythkin. Usually there is little to no disagreement in a clutch. The first hatched has ultimate authority. But Krave has a hundred of us to command and over the years I have become accustomed to making my own decisions.
“It won’t be him who decides,” I tell her.
“Are you sure? Because it sounds like he is the one with the power. Maybe I should beg him for mercy…”
I let out a growl underneath my breath. She is continuing to toy with me, taunt me in her own soft, feminine way.
“It’s not Krave you answer to. It is me. And if you keep needling me, little human, you will feel my sharpness.”
“Is that a threat?” She looks at me with surprising bravery. “I am not afraid to die,” she says boldly. “I would welcome it. So you do not frighten me.”
“I’m not talking about killing you,” I inform her. “I am talking about whipping you until you know who you answer to.”
“Krave?”
I let out another snarl at the same time she lets out a giggle. She is enjoying this, far too much. I need to work on her respect for me. I have to make sure that she understands precisely what I am to her. These last days, they have been about restoring her strength. But now that she has it, I will put her in her place.
“Say that name again, and I will make you regret…”
“What name? Krave?”
The word becomes a squeal as I pull her from her sitting place and throw her over my lap. This is how humans have been punished for millennia, and it is how she will atone for her impudence, the flat of my palm finding the soft swell of her cheeks. I teased her with this punishment before, but this time it is much more real.
Human females have ample buttocks, a delightful feature of their kind, and a rather useful one when they need to be disciplined. Even Tres has a beautiful covering of fat which renders her soft and jiggly as my large palm descends and covers her cheeks with a swift slap which draws another one of those pretty cries from her lips.
“You are hurting me!”
“Only because you asked to be,” I tell her. “You wanted to know what would happen if you taunted me, and now you know. I will hold you over my knee and make your flesh blaze red. I will use my hand, or perhaps thin branches taken from this world of yours and I will make you feel the consequences you so desperately crave.”
With that, I tear at the leggings which cover her lower parts, pulling them down, exposing her. When she was naked, there was intensity in seeing her flesh, but something about the partial exposure of her skin is far more thrilling.
“Beast!” She cries, half-laughing. “Unhand me!”
She is wailing quite prettily as I punish her, but she is not struggling to escape. She is quite capable of wriggling and pulling away if she wants to. I am being careful not to be too rough with her, not to leave a mark besides the blush of red which quickly covers her rear.