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“No. I didn’t... Notthem.”
She sighs and closes her eyes. I watch her for a moment through my half-closed eyes and sigh myself, glad I answered the way I did. I think I made her happy.
My sleep is not a pleasant one. Visions of the past torment me. I see the home I grew up in, my planet, my family. Then theyvanish and are replaced by images of the first time I was made to eat another male. I wasn’t the one to kill him, but I watched his death from the skies. The memory is not a pleasant one and I force myself to wake. I push myself up into a sitting position disorientated and gasping for breath.
Something soft reaches out and touches my shoulder. “Hey. It’s okay. It was just a dream.”
The voice is softer than the hand, and my brow draws together mystified, because it sounds so feminine. I turn and look down and inhale a sharp breath of surprise when I see a female.
Felicity. I’d forgotten.
I thought I’d conjured her up in my dream. She sits up too and her hand lifts and touches my forehead. “You’re burning up.” She fumbles with something down by her side and brings a container up to my lips. “Drink this. It’s water from the spring.”
She places the container to my mouth, and I part my lips, letting her feed it to me. I watch her intently as I drink. Her pupils are larger than they were before. I sniff the air. The same pheromone smell that has been driving me crazy is back. “I-I was dreaming.”
“I think you were having nightmares not dreams, brought on by your temperature. Do you think it was biting the first creature?”
Thinking back to when I’s ripped open the orange scaled creature’s neck, I try to remember if I ate any of its flesh. I was so hungry; I might have swallowed some subconsciously.
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t know.”
Alarm lights up her face and her eyes widen. “Are you poisoned? Will this temperature last long? Do you know of an antidote?”
My shoulders lift and fall. “I don’t know. There is a healer amongst us who studies the wildlife here. We have not long beenon this planet. Our ship crashed here. We have been moving from planet to planet since we lost our own.”
Felicity’s mouth drops open. “You lost your own planet?”
I nod. “To a meteorite. It was many years ago. I was barely out of childhood. I was at the learning centre when the warning came. None of us were allowed to go home. We were ushered onto a ship and left the planet immediately... I-I don’t know if my parents and my siblings survived.”
Felicity’s hand comes up to my cheek. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. So all this time you and the others have been wondering the planets looking for your families? The other survivors?”
I shake my head. “No. We weren’t allowed to.” I grimace. “It’s complicated.”
Felicity looks around and then back to me. “Well, I don’t exactly have anywhere to rush off to.”
I inhale a long deep breath, as if drawing energy and charging myself for what I’m about to say. It’s been so long since I've even thought about the past, let alone, spoke of it. “The Badligon elders who were in charge of us, had a disagreement with the Federation, who are the self-appointed council who run a group of planets in the Perinqual Galaxy. They didn’t want the survivors to live on any of the planets they ruled over. There was an argument—a fight. I was there. I witnessed the massacre of the Federation officers who were present.” I close my eyes, trying to block out the image still haunting me from the dream I just woke up from. “That was the first time I and the others my age were ordered to join in the feast.”
“The-the first time you ate another...person?” I nod, the answer to confirm what she’s just asked me not wanting to leave my tongue. “You mean, you haven’t always been a cannibal?”
My brows pull together not understanding the word. “Cannibal?”
“Someone who eats another person.”
I shake my head. “No. Not in my lifetime. Our species did used to eat their enemies eons ago, but it only started again when we had trouble with the Federation.”
Felicity gasps. “You mean to say, it’s not a necessity? You don’t have to eat people? Does that mean you can survive on other creatures like the ones you ate earlier?”
“Yes, I can. It would just take a while for my digestive system to get used to eating something else.”
“Then why don’t you stop? You’re not with your clan anymore. Wouldn’t it be easier and more socially acceptable to just eat what everyone else on this planet eats?”
“But not everyone on this planet eats the same.”
“Everyone except your clan.”
“They are not my clan. I’m an outcast, remember?”
“So you aren’t prepared to stop eating other people?”
