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“Suli?” I call her name.
“She’s escaped,” he declares, not bothering to hide his agitation or annoyance. “She’s loose somewhere in the city. She’s probably on her way to stowaway on a ship, or outright steal one. We need to set up a perimeter and ground all ships. Now.”
“Or…”
She’s in the next room, cowering under a different blanket in the corner of a seat that is designed to sit three of us at once. I can see the blanket shifting around as she tries to get both comfortable and hidden. The slight bit of tension that had risen in me at discovering her missing is now gone.
“Or she wanted to sleep somewhere she could lie down, and somewhere you weren’t terrifying her. She’s different now, Avel. So different she may as well be a completely different person.”
“It could be another trick.”
“Believe me, it isn’t.”
I walk back to the kitchen and continue cooking. “Humans are so desperate to control their natural weaknesses, I think. They had no claws, so they had to develop knives. They had no armored outer plating, so they developed clothing and armor. They couldn’t run fast enough to escape all their predators, so they invented the Honda Civic…”
“We have all the same technology,” Avel points out.
“Yes, but we have it because it’s an adopted convenience, not because without it we’d be dead in our natural habitat within days. Humans are very poor survivors. And that means deep down, right at the core of them, each and every one of them knows that they are in danger all the time. And that makes them very afraid…”
These are ideas I have formulated in the time I have known Suli. It all seems quite obvious to me now. It just makes sense. Humans should be perpetually afraid. I certainly would be if I was a small meat-filled creature with limited vision, physical agility, or strength in a universe full of predators.
“So what are you going to do with her?”
“For now, I am making her dinner, and then I intend to put her in bed and have her get some sleep.”
“And when will she face punishment for her crimes?”
“Later on, I imagine.”
Avel folds his arms over his chest and his wings around his body. Even his hair seems to draw close around his head, framing judgmental eyes. “You need to meet with the patrons who escaped the Ground Bar with their lives. You need to explain how a human infiltrated your territory and led to loss of life, not to mention immense property damage. The owner and manager of the Ground Bar wants reparations. And you are going to have to replace your bike. Even at a rough estimate, I’d say that the damages reach into the thousands. Is she going to pay reparations? Is she going to face imprisonment?”
“I haven’t decided yet. The punishment has to fit the crime, and amends will have to be made. I will send construction crews to the bar tomorrow to start the rebuild, so you can assure the owner that they will not be left out of pocket.”
“You’re going to need to address this, Thorn.”
“And I will. But for now, I am going to feed my human.”
Sullivan
I needed to get out of the kitchen. I wanted to stay away from Avel. The judgement in the winged dinosaur’s voice is hitting me in a place I didn’t know I had. I feel something that I didn’t know had been subdued inside me — guilt. I feel bad. I feel as though I have done many wrong things, and I feel as though hiding is the only way to avoid taking responsibility for my actions.
“Suli. It’s time to eat.”
Thorn’s voice is gruff and serious. I get the impression that telling him I am not hungry would not go well. And the truth is, I am absolutely starving.
I barely notice what is in the bowl he hands me. It’s meat of some kind, vegetables of some other kind. It’s probably very good, but when I put it in my mouth, I can’t even taste it. My body isn’t ready to enjoy food. It’s just a matter of needing it.
I eat every bit of it under his watchful eye. It feels weird to be both captive and ward of this saurian, dominant, territorial alpha, who I know must run this entire city and the surrounding lands. Thorn is an incredibly powerful creature in every way it means to be powerful. I am weak in practically every way it means to be weak.
“Good,” he says when I am finished. “Did you like it?”
“I did. Thank you.”
I have no idea if I liked it or not. What I do know is that my stomach is much more full than it has been in quite some time. I feel better as a result. Without the chip functioning inside my head, I’m much more sensitive to things like being hungry and being thirsty. It’s weird. It’s almost as though I’ve been ignoring all the signals my body has been sending me for years now. It’s almost as though I’m not sure what the hell I think or feel about anything. Did I like the food? Maybe. It’s all just symptoms and signs and experiences.
“Good. Now you’re going to get some rest. Proper rest.”
I am ready to sleep. I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. All of a sudden, the crash, the bar, the Chaos Fish, the bike chase, the sex, the primal, the car chase, the fucking hot fucking sex and now this couch and this blanket, both of which are so much larger than any I’ve ever encountered, and which, along with Thorn, make me feel incredibly small — but also incredibly safe.
