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He shoots me a determined look and reaches for the knot keeping the loincloth in place. He’s about to join me in the pool and I really doubt we’ll get any cleaning done. I’m sure washing is not on his mind right now, and I’m back in the oh yes and oh no in-between phase of earlier, torn between my body’s desires and my mind’s worries.
My nose wrinkles. There’s a smell of burnt on the air, burnt meat and—
“No!” A different growl echoes against the rocks, and he races toward the entrance of the cave.
Where our breakfast is burning over the flames.
He pulls the meat off the flames and throws it on the ground. The meat has burnt together with the spit and the sticks he had planted into the soil to support the spit.
“Maybe the inside is edible?” I hazard, stepping out of the pool, my hands over my breasts. “Leave it to cool down and we can check.”
He’s staring down at the meat like it has betrayed him personally, a pout on his face that makes me want to giggle. He looks so much like a little boy whose toy broke. And I feel him because I’m starving.
“You don’t have any other food, huh? You never save food for a rainy day?”
“Squirrels save,” he mutters. “Ants save.”
“That’s a no, then?”
“I have some apples,” he says. “But I want meat.”
“Me too. Maybe we’ll be able to have it later. Come.” I nod toward the pool. “Shaving time.”
Time to take a look at the rest of him.
To be honest, I don’t expect him to sit and let me do what I want with him, but that’s what he does. He seems to be in a bit of a shock at finding the meat burning, and I wonder why. Surely it must have happened to him before. Doesn’t it happen to everyone who cooks?
He’s so distracted, he doesn’t even make a move to remove his loincloth and his gaze is distant, barely taking me in. Sitting on the ground by the pool on his ass, he stares off into the distance as I pull my pants back on and tie the shirt around my torso before picking up the knife.
“Ready?” Not waiting for an answer, I stalk over to him and kneel behind him. The day is cool but calm, the sky currently a pale blue, the clouds gathering in what has to be the south. “Sure you don’t mind losing your lion’s mane today?”
He grunts when I gather his tangled, grimy locks in one hand, weighing them. It doesn’t sound like an answer, more like a “go away, don’t bother me” grunt, but he doesn’t shove me away or get up to leave, and I choose to take it as an invitation.
After all, what do I need an invitation for? He’s my nameless captor. He’s the beast who caught me. I’m about to do him a favor and turn him back into a human.
Just like magic.
Let’s see if it works.
Carefully, I start cutting off his locks. I keep the length uniform at chin level because I’m not sure I won’t botch it completely if I cut it shorter. You can fix longer hair, but short hair? Hard to do. My tongue sticking out between my lips, I cut and cut, tangled, gray locks falling all around him.
At some point, he seems to wake up from whatever trance he’s fallen into and turns his head to look at me, though thankfully he does it slowly or I’d have cut off the tip of his ear.
“What… what are you doing?”
“Cutting your hair,” I say cheerfully. “Remember? And hey, that was a full question. No missing words. Good job. Maybe language is coming back to you.” I lower the knife. “The beard now.”
“I remember…” He frowns, raises a hand to touch the much shorter locks. “Remember the past. I don’t talk… to many people.”
“Makes sense. You’re in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by jaguars and the gods know what else.” I get up and walk around to crouch in front of him. “Sit still now. Just going to trim your beard.”
Those wide blue eyes blink at me.
I hack at his scraggly beard kind of haphazardly until the shape of his jaw shows through, square and strong. His beard is blond under the filth and so is his hair. I wonder what the real color is once it’s washed. I cut off as much facial hair as I dare without risking injury to his face, and put the knife down.
And then I take my first real look at him and almost fall on my ass in shock.
Holy smokes.
