The Lady With the Forked Tongue (GxG Short Story)

Part 1: Heads or Tails

The scaly woman sighed with resignation and rolled over to sit up. "Fine, fine, if it'll satisfy you enough that you'll take a hike. Just make it quick."

Sadi finally let go, if for no other reason than to clap her hands. "Great! Come here, come here. I want to show you some things!" She pulled the basket over, and as soon as she dropped it between them, the lizard woman made a face.

"Is that...?"

"Yes, it's your tail!" Sadi picked it up out of the basket. "I wanted to return it to you, of course. I didn't mean to take it. You just left it behind all of a sudden last Sunday when I tried to follow you." Though originally she had been afraid to touch it because it would twitch and wiggle in her hand, it had grown stiffer over the past week and she had started to enjoy the feel of the smooth scales. They reminded her of leather.

"Uh, well, I didn't exactly leave it behind on purpose. It just kind of falls off if someone grabs it too hard while I'm running away." She gave Sadi a wry glance. "Which you did, by the way."

"Oh my! Did I hurt you?"

"No." The woman scooted over slightly and Sadi could see the stump of her tail bone. "It's already growing back. It's more of an inconvenience than anything because then I forget that I can't use it to steer when I go swimming."

"That's terrible! I'm so sorry!" Laying it across two hands, Sadi offered her the disembodied tail. "Here, here! Put it back on. I didn't realize you needed it for stuff, or else I would have returned it as soon as I was done using it."

The lizard woman took it from her, but with some reluctance. She tapped it against the tree trunk and it gave a dead thud, and she winced at the sound. "Well, I can't just put it back on. Besides, it's all mummified now and—wait, what?" She raised an eyebrow suddenly. "Using it? What the hell did you use this for?"

Something.

"Nothing," Sadi said quickly, reaching into the basket. She had lined it with dead crickets and dragonfly nymphs. "It was kind of too big anyway, and at the time it was creeping me out that it would move by itself."

The lizard woman huffed, dropping the tail onto the ground. "You shouldn't be the one complaining that you're creeped out when you're the one who—wait, what? What?" She shook her head. "'Too big?' Too big for what? What the hell were you doing with my—?"

Sadi let out a breath of exasperation and sprinkled some of the crickets into the lizard woman's lap. "I told you—nothing. Besides, what do you care? It's not like it was attached to you anymore, so you couldn't feel it. If someone else wants to make use of something that you just threw away like that, what difference does it make? It's recycling."

"You keep saying 'nothing,' but it's sounding an awful lot like you did something to it." Even with her wary look, though, the lizard woman seemed helpless in the face of food, and she picked up a cricket to pop into her mouth.

"I hunted those myself yesterday. Fried them up for you, too. Do you like them?"

"They're fine."

She and the woman fell silent, but some of the braver birds had returned overhead and started chirping, and so Sadi felt less pressured to make some noise. Still, after a few awkward seconds passed, she began, "Lizard Lady, about that first day we met—"

"Like I said, it was a one-time thing, not something you should expect to happen ever again. You caught me on a bad day, that's all."

"Was it bad, though?" Sadi slid a little closer and the woman leaned away some more. "I know that you lizard people aren't very touchy-feely, so it really took me by surprise when you approached me. To be honest, I was feeling very alone at the time, before you showed up. I was wandering in the forest because my best friend had rejected me, and I didn't realize what I needed most in the world was just that feeling of touch. And when you jumped from that branch above me and then took me in your arms all of a sudden...." Sadi felt the tears coming back, the same tears from that day. "I don't know, I had just never really felt held before then. Even if your skin doesn't feel like human skin, even if it's kind of rough and thin and I can sense your blood pumping really close to the surface, it didn't scare me because I knew that blood came from your heart—and your heart doesn't have any scales; it's the same as mine."