Where Frost Meets Fire

10: Sseschni

The next time my albumen-eyed captor stuck her dead-skin paw into the cage to grab me, I went along with it. Whatever indignities I was about to suffer, at least it provided a distraction from the endless hours within the eighteen bars and twenty slats of wood that made up my new life.

I dug my claws into the skin, my wings beating for balance. My captor chirruped at me and bared her teeth.

She brought me close and placed my front legs on her shoulder. She performed none of the antics of yesterday, letting me perch there, where her heat made the chill somewhat bearable. The giants' cave was lined with dead trees and furs, probably for warmth. Either they weren't very effective or the air was even colder outside. 

My captor walked away from the fire to a pile of furs. Here she sat, stroked my crest, and opened something that smelled of old wood and hide.

It was a curious thing. There were markings in it that formed a kind of pattern.

She touched the markings with one finger and stroked along them, murmuring. As she did so, to my surprise, she began to speak, albeit clumsily: her mind framed high, wispy clouds over a turbulent sea, and smoke borne away on a breeze. I gathered the markings spoke of the wind.

If she could do this much, perhaps I could communicate. It had to be something simple, and I needed to say it clearly. I descended her foreleg, and she cupped her paw over me as I reached her ankle.

I turned my neck around the pelt and stared straight into her slimy eyes:

"Burn the meat."

She heard. Her limb twitched under me, and her trillings sounded more excited than usual, but I got no confirmation. In the haze of her unfocused thoughts, I thought I heard "speak."

I tried again: "Burn. Meat."

My captor lurched to her hind legs. I clung precariously to her foreleg as she dashed across the chilly room. Soon it was clear I had succeeded: she took a pronged stick, skewered some of my usual fare, then returned to the fire and thrust it in.

The scent of the hissing, crackling morsels was maddening. When my captor finally lifted the meat from the flames, I ate ravenously straight from her paw. The meat was still strange, from a much larger beast than the birds and conies my mother would bring me, but for the first time it didn't turn my stomach.

When I had eaten my fill, I noticed that my captor was twittering at me again. I listened, but only caught murky, unintelligible thoughts.

Now I knew she could communicate, I didn't feel there was any point putting up with this. "I don't understand."

She tried again. Was that "word"? "You"?

"I don't understand."

"Who...you?" my captor said. There was a hazy impression of a colony, and understanding dawned.

"My mother called me Sseschni," I said. The phrase made my heart ache to know where she was, but I was sluggish from the feast and had no will to hammer it out with this imbecile. I curled up on the hearth with my back to her.

"Seshi?" the girl formed an approximation with her soft lips. "My mother..." (here a rosy picture of one of the other captors) "called me...Anhilde."

I flicked my tail in acknowledgement.

Anhilde poked and prodded me onto her deadskin paw, and scooped me back into my prison.