Ice ice baby, because charming a girl by having your tribe kidnap you is the way to go! Said no dating manual ever.
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Shay sat atop the Hobbit Hole they'd been given, her back against the stone chimney. She had tried to give Neara back her cloak, but her friend had shook her head furiously, pointing towards her bare legs. Since she couldn't find it in her to care, she'd crawled to the top once she'd finished eating. A chill had sunk into her flesh. She wanted the warm spring sun to burn it out. Closing her eyes, she once more fell into the drifting theories of why this world's sun didn't sunburn them or tan them, at least not at a noticeable speed.
Really, it was all to distract her from the dark thoughts.
You're lucky only one of your kids died, having a mother like you. If you had just let them go...
There's no life for you here other than a breeder, you'll always be on the run.
You shouldn't have threatened them with death, they'll just as easily kill you now.
Your kids could be chased off while you're away. Curtis might lose it, mad from your loss.
All you're good for here is breeding.
And holding it all, like a bowl, was the turmoil of emotions that changed from grief, rage, guilt, and numbness.
At this rate, it didn't matter how much she loved her family. She wanted to go home. Home home. Back to Earth.
"Shay?"
She flinched, drawing into the cloak instinctively. "I was wondering when you'd come, Joseph."
She opened her eyes to see the short, stocky ginger peering over the rounded turf roof, his ears undecided between facing her and hiding behind his head.
Cautiously, as though to a wounded animal, he climbed up and approached her, stopping just out of arms reach.
"I..." his eyes glanced away, but he forced them back to hers. "I heard about your baby. I'm sorry."
The storm switched to rage.
"As you should be," she said. "In truth, you are the only one at fault for his death."
His ears shot down, his eyes went wide. "Shay, I wasn't even--"
"If you had kept your mouth shut, your tribe wouldn't have come for me."
"They were plotting to get you even without your female snakes," he said quickly. "I just--I-I-just..."
She waited, wanting his floundering to somehow soothe the pain in her. But it didn't. And that just made her tired. So very tired.
She sighed and pulled up her legs. "Whatever."
"No, Shay, I came up here to explain myself. I figured--and Captain said--look, none of us here intend to use you as some breeding doe and we were already planning on taking your secret to the grave--that is....if you do help us."
"That sounds more like a threat than explaining yourself." She looked off to the side, towards the woods edging the other side of the valley. "Go away, Joseph. I hate you."
As she had hoped, he flinched as though physically wounded.
"Shay...Shay, I didn't want to betray you. They're my family, just as your babies and Curtis and Ryan are your family. They're everything to me, just as you would be if you were my mate, but--"
"But I wasn't, fine, I get it, you had no reason to be loyal to me, whatever. Fine." She tucked her face into the crook of her arm again, the rage having turned to numbness, and now to a bitterness she could almost taste in the back of her throat like bile.
She heard the tough grass of the roof rustle and heard his steady breathing. She tensed, wondering what she'd do if he was stupid enough to touch her, and just as soon having to fight back the decision to claw off his face just as she had to the other rabbit.
...Poor rabbit...there had been so much blood...he hadn't killed her baby. He had just been following orders.
"Oh Shay, I swear--"
"What happened to the rabbit I injured?"
If he was bothered by her cutting him off, he didn't show it. "He, um...well, he'll heal better than your hand, being a male. But..."
"Just tell me."
"He's probably permanently blind in one eye and his face will be so badly scared no female will ever want him. The mate he has will most likely reject him when she sees."
Her stomach clenched hard.
"Oh..."
"It's okay, Shay, no one blames you, and neither does he. You were a mother trying to defend your kit. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Could you..." she stopped abruptly, then scoffed at herself in disgust. "Look at me adapting to this place, ordering males around like I have the right."
"You can ask anything of me, Shay, I'll do anything for you."
"Shut up." She turned her burning eyes to him, not caring that they were rimmed with tears and probably had become horribly swollen and red. "You only want to use me for babies and pleasure like everyone else, don't even pretend to be nice."
It was the worst wound she had done to him yet. He shriveled against the rooftop, almost falling down to all fours, ears back as far as they would go and blue eyes wide like a kicked dog.
"No..."
Despite saying she hated him, seeing him so injured pushed the gathered tears from her eyes. She wiped at them angrily, hating how she couldn't even be properly vicious. She really couldn't defend herself here. She really was too soft.
When the tears wouldn't stop, she buried her face in her arms to attempt to stuff back the sob that strangled itself out anyways.
"I just want to go home," she rasped. "I don't care if my--my mom makes stupid-ass choices and my step-dad sucks or my siblings fight all the time, I want my mom. I want---I want---Moooooom. Mooooom."
Her mother's faults had never seemed so insignificant. Instead she remembered her hugs, her kisses, her corny jokes, her many lullabies, all the drives up the mountains to tunes and snacks, all her pep talks about honesty and confidence and not giving a crap what anyone else thought. She burned vivacious and brilliant in her mind's eye, like a sun that really would have tanned her brown as the hot chocolate she missed so much.
Before she knew it, she was wailing into her knees, broken and throbbing hand tucked against her stomach. The homesickness was more than she could bear.
A hand touched her shoulder.
Like a switch, her body unbound, lashing out. Her beast marks flared up once more.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!!"
Joseph recoiled, missing the nails of her last good hand by inches.
"Shay, please, you're--you're hurt."
"GO AWAY!" she screamed, her vocal cords snapping with the force.
In a blink, he was gone.
Just as quickly, her borrowed strength left her and she flopped to her side helplessly.
No one came up to investigate her commotion, and for that she was glad. She didn't know if she could handle Neara's quiet watching or anyone else trying to touch her.
The sun traveled from morning, past its zenith, and into the afternoon. She eventually stopped crying and enjoyed the momentary peace a hard cry gave, though her eyes stung and her stomach working through the bran and fruit cramped. She focused on not thinking about anything and just listening to the wind or examining the feel of the sun. Occasionally, chattery clicks issued from around the rabbit Shire, broken with the occasional voice, indiscernible with distance. A rabbit came by to see Neara and went inside, but the earth of the roof was enough to block the words.
Eventually, she sat up and headed down the hill.
She found a rabbit quickly enough, standing guard at the door. He did his best to stay stoic, though she could tell by the subtle widening to his eyes and the small frown that whatever he saw disturbed him.
"Can you take me to the Captain?"
"Of course," he bowed, nodded his head low, as though to a lady, and gestured to her to follow him.
They didn't go far. At another Hobbit Hole at the end of the hills, he knocked at a door, clicking his teeth and tongue. She now knew what the clicks were.
Captain opened the door, his face soft with weariness.
"Yes, Shay? What can I do for you?"
"The rabbit whose face I hurt," she clenched Neara's cloak close around her. "May I treat him? I've been training as a doctor and...it's the least I can do for ruining his life."
Both the guard rabbit and Captain looked surprised.
"We don't blame you--" said the rabbit.
"So you understand," said Captain over him, giving the guard bunny a look, the later which quickly shut his mouth. "His mate will divorce him once she sees his face. No rabbit has been fortunate enough to be beloved of a mate enough to have their malformations ignored."
Shay looked down. "Yeah."
Captain sighed. "What do you need? I'll let you treat him here."
She gave the list of herbs to which the guard rabbit sped off to find. Captain opened the door to his home for her and asked that she wait while she fetched her patient.
The insides of Captain's home was far more furnished than Neara and Shay's, or any other home she had been in, for that matter. The floor had been carefully covered with polished wood planks and the rounded walls had their paved stone washed and adorned with pressed flowers and small woven tapestries, not unlike the little embroidered handkerchief Theo had offered to Neara at the fertility ceremony. A wooden armchair, carved out of large stump into a perfect round shape and padded with furs, sat in front of the fire, and the room also held a bed, a table with two chairs, shelves filled with various knicknacks, and carefully curved beams across the ceiling where drying herbs were tacked to. It smelled of many warm meals, pine sap, and something distinctly male.
Not cocky enough to take the beautiful armchair, she sat on a fur in front of the empty fireplace and looked out of one of the round windows. Of course it had no glass panes, but the shutters had been opened to allow the sun and air to come in.
If Curtis had gone through with his den idea, would it have looked like this?
She smiled to herself, albeit awkwardly. "A room covered in furs."
Sooner than she expected, Captain returned, followed by a grey-speckled brown rabbit who had his face bowed, ears hanging forward as a further curtain. He didn't lift his head to look at her before coming forward and bowing himself to the floor before her.
Instantly, she reached out, horrified as well as thinking of dirt getting into his wounds. "Oh, no, please don't."
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice small and trembling. "Please, I don't hold it against you."
"Stop it, just let me have a look."
She had to get a hold of his face to urge him, but what she saw made her insides squirm like worms.
Five deep gashes ran horizontally across his face, looking as though they had once been deep enough to show bone, but recently scabbed--all except the bridge of his nose, the cartilage white-pink and bare to the world, smooth where her nail had taken out a chunk. Air whistled out from the hole between the bridge and the leftover end of his nose. His left eye was clotted over and dented beneath the mostly closed and swollen eyelid, and half of his right eyebrow was gone. It was a miracle that his mouth had escaped into the space between her forefinger and thumb, but said thumb had left a ravine beneath his bottom lip that made her wonder how he could speak without pain.
Nausea coiled in her stomach and her overused eyes started leaking again.
"Poor boy," she whispered, her throat too tight to speak clearly. "Poor thing, you didn't deserve this at all, I'm so, so sorry. I wish I had an emerald right now to fix this, I'll...I'll never be able to live this down."
The poor marred face couldn't show much, but the trembling bottom lip dropped and the unwounded eye shone.
"You..." he swallowed.
Captain pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, leaning a chin on his palm to watch.
Shay swallowed hard, hoping with all her heart that her stomach would calm down. All she needed now was to throw up in front of this poor boy. It was bad enough that the females of this world would be disgusted because of him now, he didn't need the memory of one throwing up at the sight.
"Captain, would you please boil me some water and find me some bandages? Preferably of cotton--you know, that fluffy flower females use for their estrous cycle--or wool."
He did so without a fight, bringing in a stone pot and starting a fire besides her. In the meantime, Shay gently turned the rabbit's face around with both her stinted and bandaged fingers and her working ones, biting her lip and trying to stop crying. She asked him some questions about the pain and his eye to get more of a grasp of the damage as well as closer to the exact healing speed of this particular rabbit.
Her mangled, strapped fingers throbbed against their sticks, angry at all the movement.
When the guard rabbit returned, Captain brought her a mortar and pestle to make a poultice. First she washed her working hand as best she could with soap, then washed a rag of wool in soap and freshly boiled water. The guard rabbit jumped forward to stop her as she hissed, her hand bright pink, but she shook him off.
"Heat kills the germs."
She didn't bother to explain their questioning glances, using the cloth to carefully clean away any leftover dirt and soften some of the scabs, which began to weep. Only then did she begin to apply the poultice she had made with as much care as she could manage. At least she could do that one-handed.
All the while, the rabbit's one good eye watched her last working, and now scalded, hand. When he couldn't watch it, he watched her face.
"There's not enough flesh to sew," she muttered to herself, dismayed at the hole in his nose. "If it doesn't heal over, I recommend a small strip of wool that's been boiled before, just big enough to go across, held down with sap. It should make it less noticeable and stop the whistling. If you could go where I'm from, they could fix this better and..." she stopped herself before she could mention how the females of her world wouldn't be so stuck up over his face. But even they would hesitate at wounds this heinous.
Once the poultice was applied, she laid strips of boiled and dried wool across the gashes, tying them to the back of his head when she could--or rather, the guard rabbit came down to do the tying, since she only had one hand. The one on his chin, however, would just have to stick for the time being, and she used some tree sap at the edges to help it do so. Though he looked halfway to being a mummy, his face was far easier to look at now.
"There," she gave him the best smile she could manage. "If you bathe, don't let your face get wet. Don't do anything that would make you sweat either. Just take it easy and let your body focus on healing. Tonight, come back to me and let me check them before you sleep, and when you sleep, do so on your back. Hopefully, this will keep the scars down to a minimum. And while your eye is bad, I--only the edge of the cornea was damaged, so you should still be able to see out of it if we take care of it. Your eyelid is more of a concern though. There's nothing even to stitch up, and..." she bit her lip, then sighed. "Maybe I can come up with some kind of eyedrop..."
Her patient just continued to stare at her, broad shoulders slumped.
When Captain and the guard at the table didn't say anything, she fidgeted, then eventually stood up--though she did so too quickly. Black flooded her vision.
Just as she caught herself on the stones above the fireplace with her one good hand, strong arms caught her about the middle.
Her limbs buzzed and her consciousness flickered as blood rushed back up to her head.
"You're not well," said a soft voice.
The blackness cleared to reveal her patient, lone eye soft with tender worry that she didn't deserve.
She pushed at his chest and he instantly let go, though his fingers hovered a few inches from her upper arms.
"What happened to the one who killed my son?" she asked softly, looking away. "Did he get bit?"
"No," said Captain. "Would you like me to fetch him too? If you wish, we will put him to death."
That made her head snap up, horrified. What kind of loving family was this?
At the look on her face, Captain added, "If it will earn your forgiveness and cooperation, it is the least we can do."
That didn't help her to feel much better.
"Why are you so desperate?" She shook herself. "No, let me rephrase that. Why do you want to preserve this way of life? Rabbits--you can't call the life you guys have among other beastmen happy."
"Our work as fertility priests is only one side." For the first time, she saw Captain's face soften. "You have yet to see what happens to this valley when there are young. All of us work together to raise the children once they're weaned from their mothers, and there is no greater joy."
"Still..." she looked into the fire, embarrassed of her own puffy face. "Everyone deserves to have a loving wife or mother."
"And if it is true that you can birth multiple females, then perhaps they may come true. With enough females of our own, we will have little reason to leave this valley, let alone continue our neverending travels among the villages. It would truly be a rebirth of our Clan. Of our family."
She could still see the hand of her patient hovering nearby. He hadn't flinched once as she had tended to his wounds. Either his pain tolerance was incredible, or his nerves of steel just that solid.
"But, as I said," continued Captain. "This would need to benefit us both to work. So if there is anything you want..." Then, after some hesitation. "Perhaps crystals?"
The hand hovering at the edge of her vision vanished. A certain fragility tightened in the air.
"No," she said quickly. "Unless you happen to already have some, no. Neara told me what happened to your tribe the last time someone asked that of you. It would be rather pointless to try and save your tribe if most of it's dead. It's not like it's a good idea to leave my daughters with only their brothers to mate. Unless you like your kids missing limbs or stillborn."
When no one spoke, she dared a peek, only to find Captain and guard once more stunned, mouths parted. She glanced at her patient to find his one dark eye riveted to her, gleaming once more.
"You are by far the strangest female I have ever met," said Captain quietly.
"She's lying," said the guard, tone harsh.
"No, no. Listen to her heartbeat, her form, her face. She's more honest than an idiot."
She blinked. "Should I be insulted?"
"Not at all. Though too much honesty makes you vulnerable." Even so, Captain didn't smile as he contemplated her, his surprise giving way to confusion.
She heaved a sigh, now just tired as tired can get. "Great. If you don't mind, I'm done with today."
"Of course," he gestured to the door.
With that, she stepped out into an ageing evening, pushing a line of dark orange into the oncoming purple velvet.