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He heads out. I follow as he crawls from the drooping canopy, trying not to stare at his perfect behind. The white shorts leave little to the imagination.
Shifting my eyes away, I see a medium-sized brown and yellow-striped animal with a long tail and claws is lying dead at the base of another tree.
Just looking at the animal makes my mouth water and my stomach rumbles. Licking my lips, I ask, “How are we going to cook it?”
Tekil’s lips turn down, his eyes shift briefly to mine and then back to the animal. “I do not think we can.”
He kneels, and using a partially shifted claw, proceeds to skin the animal. Instead of being repugnant, my mouth waters even more, and raw or not, I’m eating it.
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With all the meat stripped from the carcass, it’s the first time I’ve been full since I left Earth. It worries me that I just ate raw meat and loved every juicy morsel. That thought alone should repulse me, but I’d do it twice over.
Licking the last of the juices from my fingers, my mind trails to the others locked in the cell— especially the two blue men. I’m torn between wanting to rescue them and wanting to stay as far away as possible. What if they capture us again, or worse, what if they kill me or Tekil?
It’s silent with only a distant chirp every so often. Meeting his eyes, I finally ask, “Are you sure going back is the best idea?”
He’s quiet. I see indecision cross his face before he looks away. We are on the outskirts of a forest where the trees are thin and sporadically placed. In the distance, they stand close, denser. Black and yellow leaves litter the ground with knee-high brown bushes scattered all over. Plump, inviting blue berries nearly entice me over until I notice they’re surrounded by a crown of long sharp thorns, daring me to pick one.
“No, but I do not have a choice in the matter. I must rescue my team. Leaving them behind is not an option.”
Even if I don’t like it, I know he’s right. Guilt would eat me alive if we didn’t at least try.
“You said their names are Vi’del and Zeno?”
“Yes.”
“Were they friends of yours on Kintuke?”
“I would not call them ‘friends;’ more like acquaintances. Vi’del worked with information systems repair and Zeno worked in planet security.”
Historian, info tech and security…hmm… I guess their paths wouldn’t cross that often.
“But you’re friends now?”
A smile briefly ghosts his lips. “Yes. When we were first captured, they put us together in one cell and a bond formed. We spent months trying to determine who had betrayed us, but with such different occupations, there was no common connection. We had no choice but to trust and rely on each other.”
“And now you’re close with them?”
“I am. But after the Acradidia realized that I couldn’t shift and remained trapped in this form, they separated us. The experiments continued for me, but not for them.”
“They probably assumed it would be safer opening a door where only one of you could fight back.”
“That was what we thought as well.”
“Hmm, I wonder why they chose the three of you when you come from such different backgrounds.”
“We cannot find a commonality.”
“And you were the Historian, right?”
He grins. “On Kintuke, we call it the record keeper, but Historian is the only way I know how to describe it.”
This piques my curiosity; after all, an Historian is an Historian, and a record keeper could be virtually anything.
“Sooo,” I draw out the word, “what exactly did you do on Kintuke?”
“It is difficult to explain it properly.”
