Chapter Nine – The Dragon’s Favorite Strays
Chapter Nine
MURR
The females sit next to each other, across the fire from me. The younger one is bright eyed and eager, the older one more wary. “Da-koh-taaah,” the younger one says, patting her mother’s shoulder. “Daaaa-koh-taaah.”
Do-tah gives her an irritated look.
But I am intrigued. These mouth noises are long and she exaggerates the movements of her lips. “Daaaah,” I try, mimicking.
“Kohh,” the girl agrees.
“Ooohhh,” I manage. “Aaah. Daah oooh ahhh.”
“Koh,” the younger one says again, pointing to her tongue as it touches the roof of her mouth. “Dah-koh-taaah.”
The mother murmurs something to her daughter.
“Kah-koh-dah,” I try again. Mouths are difficult to use for things other than chewing. The young one coaches me through several more rounds of noises before I finally manage, “Da-koh-taaa” and it makes her squeal with enthusiasm.
It is so fascinating that their happiness comes out not in waves of mental thought, but eruptions of sound that carry happiness in them. When they giggle and laugh, it is with sheer delight, and it makes me want to emulate their laughing sounds. They make me feel good, like I have pleased them in some strange way, and I want to do more. They keep flashing teeth as well as chortling aloud, so I flash mine to them as well to show them I am happy.
“Murr,” the mother, Da-koh-taa, says in her soft voice. It fills me with pleasure to hear that bit of my name from her. I like it when she mouths my name.
“Murr,” I agree. It’s close enough that I don’t mind it being shortened. Mouths make it hard to say the whole thing anyhow. I point at the younger one and say the universal sound that prompts them to speak. “Owmigoh?”
The daughter giggles. She taps her chest. “Rbbt.”
It takes me a few tries to repeat her sounds, and I finally manage a ‘Rih-bit’ which makes her laugh with delight and her mother shows her teeth again.
We take turns naming each other aloud – Murr, Ribbit, and Dakotah – over and over. They want me to say their name words faster, until my tongue is tangling with trying to emulate them. Not only do they want name words aloud, but they want them fast, and it makes me feel clumsy and foolish. But when I say their names, the younger one squeals with delight and it is hard not to be pleased.
The mother is the more reluctant one. Her smiles are harder to achieve, but I find myself watching her mouth to see if it will curve up when I speak, and I am disappointed each time it does not.
Dakotah reaches over and touches the meat with a finger. She licks her fingertip clean and then makes more noises at Ribbit. Ribbit makes a happy sound and then they are pulling the meat off the spit and dividing it up. They put it on flat disks made of metal which I find curious, and before they eat, Dakotah pauses and then holds the meat out to me. She is offering me her portion.
I wave a hand to dismiss this. I already ate a fat cow when in battle-form. This food is for her and her young.
Her strange eyes blink at me and then she shows her teeth again, this time in an almost shy fashion. She picks up a chunk of meat and takes a bite. Next to her, Ribbit devours her food with happy noises, but it is the mother I am fascinated with. She is quiet, but she chews and her eyes close, her expression one of pure joy. It is just meat, and yet I feel as if I have conquered an army in this moment.
I am going to have to bring her more food. Every day, more food, because I want to see that look on her strange, pasty-pale features all the time. Perhaps if I keep feeding her, she will turn a healthier color.
They eat, and as they do, one of the bolder cats approaches the females, meowing his insistence to be fed their food. He is a pale white male with dark spots on his head, and one of my favorites, but he is also too bold. The cats have their own food. Before I can pull him away, Dakotah pulls a shred off of her cooked meat and offers it to him, making soft little noises in her throat.
I am entranced.
Does she love the animals as much as I do, then? Am I finally to have friends once more? Friends with two legs as well as four?
This is the best night I have had in a very long time, I decide. I pull a few more chunks of meat off of the haunch and spit them on the metal like the females did, then place it over the fire. They are unnecessary, these actions, but if this is the way the females like for their food to be made, then I will make it for them just like so. As I do, a kitten crawls over my shoulder and comes to lick the juices off my fingers.
This makes Ribbit giggle madly once more.
After one cat gets fed, the others come over, the smell of the fire-roasted meat enticing to them. Interesting. I make a mental note of this and of the kindness of the females, as they share their food with my cats. They tear the food into cat-mouth-sized bits that the animals can gobble down easily. Their delicate hands are far better equipped for such delicate work instead of my larger, clawed ones. Mine are made for rending and tearing. Perhaps I need these females to help me feed my cats every time I bring home a large kill.
When Dakotah reaches out to drop another tidbit of meat on the ground for the cats, I grab her hand before she can pull it back. She jerks in surprise, her gaze flying to mine, but she doesn’t pull away. I examine her hand in mine. Her temperature is not as warm as mine, the fires in her blood not nearly as hot as my own. Her hand is soft, though, her fingers fragile and tipped with blunted nails instead of claws. I could crush her in my grip if I am careless…which means I must never be careless. She is like my cats – the most precious, most fragile thing that must be handled with extreme caution. I touch her fingertip, fascinated, and her pulse speeds up. I can feel the subtle change through her skin. How does such a fragile being last in a world like this?
Ribbit burbles a few mouth sounds and giggles.
Dakotah’s expression changes, her face becoming reddish in the cheeks. She pulls her hand from mine.
I will not harm you, I send automatically, but there is no mind to touch to, no acknowledgment that my thoughts have been heard. There is nothing at all, and it makes me feel lonely all over again. No one can hear me. They only have mouth sounds and cannot hear my words, my language.
It makes me ache for my people. Why am I here, stranded alone in this world? Why am I cut off from the others of my kind?
Why can no one hear me?
