Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 119764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
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?
CHAPTER 10
DAKOTA
It’s the weirdest night of my life.
We sit around the fire with a naked dragon (in the shape of a man) and roast meat for hours. The cats climb all over us, fearless with Murr nearby, and cry to be fed until they’ve gorged themselves. Part of me wants to save the meat and chase the cats away, but I remember how possessive Murr was of the kitten that I’d taken with me, and I feed them all without complaint.
Murr is quiet and watches us more than anything. It’s like he’s trying to decipher us and doesn’t quite comprehend anything we do or say. He doesn’t eat, though, and when we pack up for the night, I try to offer him the remainder of meat since it’s his kill. The dragon-man makes an unhappy sound and insists we take it with us, and I walk back to the old bookstore with a dripping, bleeding side of beef in my arms.
It feels like a treasure. A heavy, heavy, wet treasure.
“What are we going to do with that, Mom?” Rabbit whispers as we head back. “Won’t it go bad?”
“We’re going to have beef for breakfast, lunch, and dinner tomorrow,” I say. “And between all these books, surely one will tell us how to preserve the meat and make jerky.”