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He feels so good against my tender, pruned flesh. Warm and soft, throwing his full weight into my lap. I laugh with tears dripping down onto his head, scratching his belly, and leaving a thousand kisses across his snout.
“We’re going to get Dessin back, I promise you. He’ll be so happy to see you again. He needs you to save the day for him, too.”
I wish to God I could take him back to the prison now and storm it together. I wish I didn’t need an army. I wish I wasn’t so damn dehydrated and weak.
With the edge of my cloak, I clean his mouth of the clotting blood and ropes of skin hanging from his chin. He looks up at me attentively, lovingly, full of adoration and a tenderness most humans may never see in an animal of this great destruction.
“How I’ve missed those big, cinnamon eyes,” I coo.
An object thumps in the sand next to us, sounding off with snarls and growls. An animal. It attacks the dead bodies around us. I turn my head with DaiSzek, blinking rapidly to make out what has invaded our special moment.
A smaller dog-wolf with copper fur and pointy ears like a little gremlin.
Knightingale shakes half of a dead Blood Mammoth the same way she’d play with a chew toy. Her whole muscular body whips back and forth to shake that corpse in a fit of anger.
“Knightingale, stop! They’re already dead!”
DaiSzek barks at her like he’s translating for me.
The stocky Ginger Wrathbull turns to us with perked ears, then drops the body with a thud. After a moment of staring at us, she wiggles her butt and tail frantically, and with that, she skips over to us in joy.
“Hi, little girl,” I laugh, petting the top of her heavy head. Her fur is short and sleek, unlike DaiSzek’s. She’s smaller, feistier, and apparently out of breath.
I laugh again. “Did he leave you behind? Is that why you’re tired?”
She curls her upper lip and snarls at DaiSzek in response. My sore frame relaxes being around these two cuddly creatures. A rush of dopamine floods my senses as I sag against them, feeling a heaviness tug at my eyelids.
“Dessin should be here,” I tell them sleepily. And before I can adjust to what’s going on, Knightingale is nudging her wet nose against my shoulder, pushing me onto DaiSzek’s back. I drape over his broad shoulders and elongated spine like a limp weighted blanket.
We’re walking now, with Knightingale occasionally poking her snout against my fingers to make sure I’m okay, into the valley of the East Vexello Mountains.
And with these two by my side, I haven’t felt this safe, this protected, in a very long time.
~
The vibrations wake me up.
The deep grumblings against my chest and cheek startle me actually. The feeling is all too familiar. An animal growling at a nearby threat. I’ve felt and heard it come from my boy all of the many times Kane and I would play alone in the forest. Even as a pup, DaiSzek was always looking out for us.
My eyes are sticky and sore as I bat my lashes, forcing my lids to peel back. And immediately, I can see we’re surrounded. They aren’t close enough for Knightingale’s frantic snapping and showboating to seriously harm them, but they’re there.
Men and women dressed in multicolored layers of wool and fur, with massive axes strapped to their backs. And these people are huge. Tall, even the women over six feet, and the men reminding me of bears.
I sit up from on top of DaiSzek’s back, straightening hesitantly.
“Deveëxeq nioëx beaxious be ne qeúsez!” a man with long braids and dark skin shouts to me with a hard scowl and proud stance on a hill to my left. We’re in the center of the valley between the two mountains now.
A woman that looks like his daughter jabs her axe in Knightingale’s direction, trying to tame or frighten my Ginger Wrathbull. Only she doesn’t know that Knightingale has a bad temper, an eagerness to prove herself, though she is smaller in size.
“I wouldn’t piss them off if I were you,” I say with a raw throat. “You may manage to kill us with your numbers, but provoking them will only ensure that they will take down at least half of your people first.”
“You are from Demechnef,” the leader says.
I sigh in relief. “Yes.”
“Why are you wearing the clothing of a Persecuting Caretaker?”
I look down at my uncomfortable red leather bodysuit.
