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I get to the spot Rylan marked for me, but I don’t see them.Uh-oh, now what?I’m about to sit down and contemplate my options when I hear some yelling. I break out into a run. A bit further down the trail I have to leap over Rylan’s pack.
I don’t stop to think what it means that he abandoned it. I have to find him now.
“Ry–!”
Words fail me as I come across them. Renxel is tied to a tree in nothing but his underwear. He’s screaming at the top of his lungs.
The look in Rylan’s eye is positively murderous. Renxel tries to meet his gaze and fails. I guess being tied to a tree almost naked is humbling. He actually winces when he sees me. Rylan turns to see what he’s looking at.
“Oh, hi. I found him.”
“Here.” I whip his navigator off my pack and hand it to him. Then I march over to Renxel. “Give me back my navigator.”
“Can’t. Your asshole boyfriend threw all my stuff down the ravine.”
I look back at Rylan.
“Oh, shit.” He looks genuinely remorseful at realizing he threw one of my items away by accident. “I forgot, I’m so sorry. When I finally got my hands on him, well, it took all my self-control not to just rip his head off.”
“It’s not your fault. If this jerkoff cheater,” I say, poking my finger into the cheater’s chest for good measure. “Hadn’t taken it, none of this would have happened.”
“Okay, well, let’s go.”
“You cannot just leave me here.”
Rylan and I look at each other.
“Watch us,” we say in unison.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Untie yourself. That shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. There’s a path down to the bottom of the ravine over there.” Rylan points. “You should make it down there before dark. Find your stuff. But you’ll have to spend the night.” He deepens his voice on the last word. “Consider the ravine a pit of punishment.”
He lets out an evil cackle. I give a few slow claps and hold my hand up for a high five. Rylan hesitates then slaps it. He doesn’t have all the human mannerisms down yet, but he’ll learn. And I always find the way he tries adorable.
“Nice. Very poetic.”
“You like it?” he asks.
“I can tell you put a lot of thought into it. Humiliating, yet survivable. Not easy to achieve the perfect balance, but you did it. Great job.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to kill him.” He looks back at Renxel before he says the next word. “Much.”
“Thanks for nothing.”
“Youshouldbe thanking me. My original plan involved taking your underwear and smearing your lower half with tree juice to draw the bugs. Lucky for you, I wasn’t that keen on the smearing.”
I can’t help it, I laugh.
“Of course, now that Iara’s here, if she wants to –”
“I do not.”
“Shall we go then?”
I look Renxel up and down. It’s a pity we don’t have a camera and I say as much. A look of great relief crosses his face. We walk back to where Rylan left his pack.
“When I heard him, I dropped it.”
