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“It’s safe now,” I said. “Tschenkar, this isn’t just a taste thing. There are brain parasites in these sometimes, and they’ve adapted to humans. They probably can adapt to Khetar too.”
“I see,” he said, “the fire kills them?”
“Of course it does.”
“The Hivemind allowed us to eat raw meat.”
“Maybe that doesn’t work anymore either?”
A grim expression fell over his face as he realized he might not be able to eat his favorite foods anymore.
“Sorry,” I said, wincing. “This is going to taste so good, even cooked well-done!”
He nodded, but looked very sad.
He tore the meat up into easily managed pieces, and he handed me what looked like the best cuts. I threw one of the better cuts back to him, and refused to eat until he took a bite. He’d hunted, butchered, and cooked this. I wasn’t going to hog the best parts.
We ate the meat together, and it was definitely tough and gamey, but it was good. The fire gave it some extra smokey flavor.
After dinner, I curled up in the shelter against Tschenkar’s naked body. I still refused to use the gunky blanket. He was warm though, just like he said, and after he fucked me and filled me with his cum, he wrapped his warmth around me, and I fell asleep right away.
I woke up with the blanket on though. He’d snuck it onto me. I wanted to throw it off and into the fire, but the fire was gone. And all the blood and gunk was gone too. Hehadcleaned the blanket, and even though it did still look a little bit gross and gnarly, it was very warm, so I kept it on and laid alone for a few minutes.
Tschenkar came in with the first rays of sunlight. “We must wake, my little human, and press on.”
“Thuliak calls me that. Did he tell you that?”
He shook his head. “I just…it seemed like the right thing to call you now. You look so little, and so human.”
I smiled. “I like it. I like ‘Love’ too though.”
He smiled back, and reached his hand out to me, helping me stand up.
I kept the blanket wrapped around as we walked, and in the fresh light of day, we lucked onto a road.
It was a narrow road, as few women drove out here. The terraforming core under Ginsburg had made a good piece of the land around Ginsburg habitable, but the further you got from the city, the colder it got, and even if you could handle the cold—which no woman could—eventually the oxygen got too low. Eden, despite its name, was not actually especially habitable for humans. It was close though, and the terraforming cores made each city its own little Garden of Eden, bordered on all sides by near lifeless oceans of cold.
“The Buckjacks,” I said, “are native. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
Tschenkar was holding its antlers. He kept saying he was going to make a weapon out of them, but all I’d see him do was rotate them around in his hands as he walked, mostly frowning at them, but sometimes smiling.
“Yeah,” I said, “there was something else outside the habitable sphere, but since the terraforming core creates such a gradual shift over hundreds of kilometers, the animals from Eden were able to slowly adapt their way into the border zones like this. Some of them make it into the cities as cute little pets we keep in our homes. Like the grillabies.”
“I see. And do you think this Buckjack antler is stronger than human bone?”
Now I realized why he was so fascinated by the antlers. “I’m sure it can kill people, Tschenkar.”
“Splendid,” he said, “I’m thinking I make two daggers out of them. Big daggers. Like, are these big daggers, or are these little swords? That’s what those rapist cunts will be thinking as one of their final thoughts.”
“With luck,” I said, “we won’t run across any pirates.”
“Yeah,” Tschenkar said, nodding and faking a smile, “that would be better, wouldn’t it?”
I realized Tschenkar wanted to fight. I knew he was good at it too. The problem was that no matter how good he was, even with two big daggers—or two small swords—I didn’t like our chances against something like fifteen pirates with plasma rifles.
So we walked on and on, and near mid-day the sun even came up above the grey clouds. The way the sunlight hit the peaks to the East was really pretty, and when the day was getting close to over, the light on the snow faded from white to pink, purple, and magenta. There was a special kind of purple you only ever saw in mountains at sunset, and that color was one of the only reasons I ever went skiing. Just to look at those colors with a warm drink and the cold work of skiing over for the day. Now I was looking at that color in a very different context.
