AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jagga shook his head in exasperation.
“This is the reason we don’t have any friends,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
He refastened the earpiece and faced the human again. She appeared distraught.
“Please, I need your help,” she said again. “My friend is sick. He’s been bitten by a—“
“Friend?” Jagga interrupted. “Is your friend also a human?”
Serenity looked at him blankly.
Of course. She could not understand him. The nith device only worked one way, allowing the wearer to understand what the other person was saying, but not the other way around.
Jagga began to take the device from his ear, intending to hand it back to Serenity, but the human stopped him.
“Wait,” Serenity said. “Listen, it will be easier if you just let me tell you my whole story, okay? If we keep passing the translator back and forth, it will take us all day, and there’s not much time.”
Very well. Jagga nodded.
Serenity (Jagga still struggled with that strange name) began to speak very quickly and very frantically. The human began by explaining it had been living together with many other humans among a large tribe of ukkur encamped in a canyon somewhere in the region. Did he know of this tribe?
“No,” Jagga told the human, shaking his head.
That was, in fact, a lie. Jagga was aware that there was a large tribe of ukkur living nearby, but he had purposefully kept his distance from them. In many ways, he longed to live among others of his kind. But there was Grodd to think of. Jagga feared that the simpleminded and quick-tempered ukkur would have trouble getting along with others. But he couldn’t very well abandon his best friend either. After all, Grodd had saved his life and gifted him his freedom. And Jagga had made a promise.
So he and Grodd lived apart from the big tribe, making their own way in the wilderness.
But Jagga did not mention any of that to Serenity. The human would not have understood without the nith device. And besides, he was more interested in hearing Serenity’s tale now.
The human explained that it had wandered too far from the tribe and gotten lost. Jagga wondered why, but he did not interrupt. Serenity had then been captured by the nith, but another ukkur named Hruk had come to the rescue.
Hruk was the friend Serenity had mentioned before. The one who was in need of help. He had been wounded by a small creature. Something called azlug? The translator device did not manage that word. Now Hruk was lying unconscious and possibly dying amid a cluster of boulders in the wasteland. Serenity had been looking for some plants or herbs that could be used for medicine and thought perhaps the energy-dense ksh might prove helpful.
The human was both clever and resourceful. Ksh was very useful for treating many kinds of ailments. However, it sounded like this fellow Hruk would need something a little more potent.
“I can lead you to him,” Serenity pleaded. “Please…please, you have to help me.”
While the human was speaking, Jagga had provided Grodd with a shortened translation so that the other ukkur could understand the main points. Now that the human was finished speaking, Jagga turned to face his friend.
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think we take human to our camp. We keep. Wekeep.”
“What about the friend?” Jagga asked. “The wounded ukkur.”
Grodd scowled and shook his head.
“No good. We help Hruk. He get better. Maybe he take human away.”
Jagga had expected this reaction from his friend. Grodd was jealous of his newfound prize. He would share with Jagga perhaps, but he didn’t want to share with some unknown ukkur.
“Please,” Serenity whimpered.
The human looked so small and helpless, and its eyes were now watering as if it had gotten dirt in them.
Jagga thought.
On the one hand, he agreed with Grodd’s opinion. He would very much like to take this strange little human back to their camp, which was set up not far away in these very woods. There they could inspect this mesmerizing creature and explore all the secrets of its soft and supple body.
