45 BULLETS
When the sun rose to the morning, I jumped awake to the strong sound of a low ribbiting. My now alert senses trying to look around the forest floor for a water pool with some large frog. But my search became frantic when no water feature, nor frog, showed itself.
Thann, also awake and still holding me, tapped my shoulder and pointed up into the tree branches. I followed the gesture and noticed a fat black rough-skinned thing with long thin wings high up. Frog was already on my mind because of the sound, but I could see where this thing might resemble a frog. Maybe frog-bat would be a good describer?
"What is it?" I whispered.
"Kundiza."
He answered so straight forward, I wondered if he really knew what I asked. Oh! I knew the sign for frog! A flipping under your throat. I pointed and signed frog. "Kandeeza?"
He pointed and smiled. "Kundiza."
My smile followed. "Koondiza."
He nodded. "No mouth," he whispered and then gently sat me on the grass away from him.
I watched as he crept around behind the trunk of the tree and then it was like I was completely alone. Any movement of his was silent. It made my nerves return slightly. My heartrate started picking up its tempo but then a small change was above in the treetop. My glance landed on it and it was half Thann's face, peeking out from behind the trunk, on the same level as the... shoot what was it called? Kabookun? Kadzeena? ...As the frog. When he noticed me, he smiled reassuringly with, oh my gosh, a very sexy wink, and then hid back in the branches. My face heated in response.
I assumed him climbing the tree was to get the frog. I was not assuming that he'd leap from out of nowhere calling some wartime battle cry, catching the frog's wings with one hand, do some aerobatics around the wide branches and drop to the ground like some freaking samurai monkey.
Ho-ly Dothraki.
Plus, that was kinda hot.
Okay, super hot.
But I tried to dust off the red patches to my skin and take in his frog.
The bat-frog thing was much bigger than I took it for, up that high in the branches. It was the size of a full-on basketball. And the thing was screeching now some high-pitched bat sound, not the calming frog croak wakeup call it gave a few minutes ago. Thann simply grabbed the head and twisted, ending its life quickly and humanely.
He then handed the whole thing to me with a grin on his face.
Uh... thaaanks?
Mustering up my butchering courage, I stood and took the animal then reached for the knife in my boot, ready to gut it, but stopped when Thann jumped back into the tree. He just bounced and did a pull up, like that branch was not twelve feet off the stinking ground. Maybe calling him Thor wasn't far off. He was freaking superman. He took a minute on the branch where the frog was and then hopped back down, landing easily beside me.
Thann then took the frog back and held a handful off small speckled eggs out to me. "Eat."
I stared at the eggs, exact in size and color to the eggs he gave us for breakfast day one and then looked at him incredulous. "Batfrog eggs Thann? Seriously? I ate batfrog eggs? I thought you gave me unicorn chicken eggs." Then I started chuckling and took the eggs from his outstretched hands. "Thank you. I guess."
He grinned and then headed a ways off to gut the animal. I turned and stared at my butane stove for a few minutes. Now that I knew these were not some normal chicken eggs, I was even more weirded out to just down them, but I already ate them raw once and I was down to my last can of butane and there might be better times to use it. My over easy eggs would have to wait. Making up my mind, I broke the top off and downed them like a slurpee.
Not
yum.
Thann appeared back at my side, moving silently with his frog now processed. He sat on a stump and proceeded to eat while I arranged the items in the wheelbarrow after my frantic midnight search.
"Hurt period?" He asked from behind me.
Darnit Thann! Stop talking about my period! I cleared my throat. "Uh, no. No period hurt. Walk today." I was too chicken to turn around to see his reaction, choosing to sign to the side and then keep organizing instead.
He grabbed a water bottle for each of us and downed his, watching me expectantly.
"Okay, okay. I'm drinking."
When I finished, he took the empty bottle and replaced it back in his bin. "Good."
I was excited he was starting to use signs too, but really most of the signs I knew were words he already could say in English. So our communication issues were probably going to still be there, unless I could start making up a bunch of words.
He lifted his bins and waited for me to be ready. I grabbed one wheelbarrow handle and with the other signed a point forward. "Go yes. Walk."
"Wulk," he nodded and started out.
Day two, here I come.
We walked for hours. I ended up having to rest a moment and tie rags around my hands after all that pushing. They worked okay as makeshift gloves, but I was a dunce to not carry a good pair of quality leather gloves in my toolbox. Maybe I could get Thann to make me some. I checked out his pants. The leather slacks he wore were certainly homemade. He could figure gloves out. I then grinned at my view from slightly behind him, finding myself checking out more than just the stitchwork.
I ran over a rock and the wheelbarrow wobbled. "Shoot!" I scolded myself and then righted the load.
"El, eyes."
My glance popped back forward, and I giggled. "I was watching where I was going."
Another hour in we stopped for lunch under a pretty yellow apple tree. I pointed excitedly to the ripe fruit. "Apple! Apple! Apple eat yes-no?"
"Yanini. Yes." He reached high into the branches and picked a lovely one out for me and another for him.
I was a little leery after the asparagus strawberries, but he bit into it and ate it down fine, so I tried a bite and it wasn't an apple again. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't something you should put in a pie. I guess I could liken it to the sweet onion flavor after you sauté onions long enough to bring out their caramel color. There was some still some sweetness there, but just enough tangy onion flavor to not want to bite into one of them for dessert.
Still, they weren't entirely bad, so we put a few in our packs where we could find some room. The more food the better to keep on hand.
A few hours later I stopped my constant Potter story word chatter and smiled up to Thann. We'd came upon another crystalline river. I set the wheelbarrow down and unwrapped the rags from my hands, ready to put my hands down in the flowing water, when Thann's hands were stopping mine. "No." His face was up in the air and he was taking long inhales. "No go." He pushed me to sitting away from the bank.
"Okay," I sat back on a rock and waited as he followed the flow upwards.
He came back only a minute later, shaking his head. "No. No water. Ukufa izithelo ushevu."
"Ushevy?" I stared up.
"Isithelo sokufa." He bent to one knee and pointed to my still bandaged arm with the ugly boils, then tenderly rubbed over it.
"Oh! Deathberry water?" I scowled at the pristine looking water and gave it the finger. I then sat back on my arms and sighed up to the sky. Darn you deathberries. I was really looking forward to putting my feet in the cool water.
"Walk. Yes-No." He held his hand out to help me up.
Grabbing his hand and letting him pull me up, I moaned. "Walk yes."
He then lifted me clear into his arms and my grip stretched around his neck. "Whoa! Thann!" I laughed. "I said I could walk! I can walk!"
He then started trotting us away and I looked back watching our packs.
"Our stuff! You can't forget my thiiiiiiii..." I squealed as he took a leap clear across the river.
He stepped a few more strides and then put me down. He laughed at my disheveled existence. "No water."
He hopped back over the water and grabbed my whole wheelbarrow up on one hip and jumped it back over to me.
"Yeah-yeah-yeah Dothraki. Funny guy. I could have jumped that." I stared at the running water. "Probably. ...Okay Okay! Fine! I may have needed the help." I chuckled. "Show off."
Thann had his bins and started walking over while I retied the rags to my wrists.
We wandered a few more steps when he looked down and smiled. "Huhrry Pyatter?"
I giggled. "Harry Potter." I signed a lightning bolt on my forehead. That had to be a good sign for him.
Continuing on with the wizarding story, we walked until dusk, stopping a few times to give me rest breaks or when I thought of a new sign I could teach him. He started getting really good about learning the signs for things that he began to ask for signs I didn't know. After rock, moss, stick, and roach I figured I needed to start writing down my own signs so I could remember them later. Fishing out my mini notebook I tried to draw the signs and names of those few I made up.
When Thann was happy about a stopping spot, I dropped the wheelbarrow handles and gave a sigh of relief. I was pretty excited about how my wheelbarrow was keeping up, but I sure hoped that Molly would pop out from behind some tree soon.
After quickly setting up the perimeter wire, I was already yawning as I laid my sleeping bag down and sat on it like a picnic blanket. Thann dug around in our food packs for potatoes and jerky for our dinner. Then he started around the woods for sticks and dry branches, making us a spot for a small fire.
He sat back and caught my attention, holding his hand out with an upright rolled fist. "Fire."
"Fire?" I looked to his ring of wood. "No fire."
He rolled his eyes and started making the motions to do a lighter. "Fire Fire. El Fire."
"Oh!" I grinned and stood to grab the lighter. "You made up a sign. Good for you. Fire." I found my box of matches before the lighter, so I figured it was a good time to teach him to use them.
"These are matches. Matches fire." I held a stick out and then struck it against the box.
His face lit with enthusiasm at the new brightness. "Fire."
I put the match down in his pile and waited for the tinder to catch. While we waited, I helped Thann try to start one. I put a stick in his fingers and guided his wrist over the rough texture.
He put a match to the box and immediately poked a hole right through the side. "Oh, careful! Soft."
I helped him pick up another match and held over his wrist as he struck it around the new hole. He beamed at the fire coming from the small stick. "Ngiyawuthanda umlingo wakho, mfazi." He then watched the match burn down so far that I started to say something but he yelled, "ubuhlungu" and dropped the spent stick.
He put his fingers in his mouth and I giggled. "Fire."
"Fire!" He grinned and pointed to the box. "Fire Fire!"
"More fire?" I tapped my fingertips together.
More. He copied.
He went through five more matches before I took the box away. "Thann, our fire is going fine and you're wasting my supplies," I laughed. Sure, there were supposed to be like 300 matches in there, but who knows how long this would have to last us.
More.
No more.
He pouted. It was seriously pretty cute.
"Fire," I pointed to the happy fire going on right in front of us. Matches, no play.
He grabbed another piece of jerky and tore into it. Almost like he was a defiant teenager, angry with me. I laughed and handed him one more match. "Okay sourpuss. One."
He beamed, and placed his jerky slice between his teeth and watched the match from strike to burn out, again hurting his fingers. After flailing his fingers in the air for a moment he reached over and pulled me into a hug.
Chuckling, I patted his back a moment. "You're welcome big guy."
He looked up to the rising moons. "Night."
"Yeah. It's probably time to sleep. I'm pooped after all that walking." I stood and gathered the sleeping bag back into a cocoon and settled down in it beside the fire, my arm as a pillow. "Night Thann."
"Night El." He didn't lay down, still staring into the flames.
My eyes closed and even though we were out in the open, with the fire and Thann still awake I was able to fall asleep without the anxiety I faced yesterday.
The fire was burning red coals and Thann was sleeping on the ground around the pit, our heads close together. I smiled at his soft face in the glow from the embers. It caused a small burn inside my stomach to match the heat warming my face. He looked so peaceful when he slept, and a single lock of his hair was touching over his eyes. It made me want to push it away.
My hand came out to do just that when I realized why I woke up. There was movement on my belly inside the bag.
I screamed a sound so bright that Earth probably heard it.
I ripped the zipper down and flipped the bag off me, in the same instant that Thann jumped to his feet, fingers curled and ready to attack. Any other time I would have looked twice, because the tips of his nails seemed wrong, but instead I was staring at the hairy tarantula next to me with bright yellow points at each leg.
Thann must not have liked the idea of me next to a spider either, because suddenly I was picked off the ground like a housecat, leaving the spider scurrying around to find shelter that was not tucked into my shirt.
Thann spun me around and put me on a large branch, as far as he could reach in the tree. His scan met the ground, and he found a large rock, picking it up with ease, then smashing it down on the tarantula when it rushed off my sleeping bag.
When he was convinced it was just a pile of dead goo, he took a breath and then climbed up next to me. "Isisca kill."
I giggled. "Yep, Thann kill. Sorry, I usually don't mind spiders, just anything crawling in my sleeping bag was bound to freak me out."
"Night. Tree."
Grimacing I looked down. I mean, we weren't that far, maybe ten feet, but still enough to make a dent in my skull if I fell. "No," I pleaded.
"El, Thann. Night."
I turned to see his outstretched arms again. "Do we have to?"
"Thann. El safe."
But it was better than being afraid of hairy spiders climbing in my bag again I supposed. "Sure. I guess, yeah." I turned and backed delicately against his chest. His arms folding around my front.
Already I was yawning, even up in a tree, so maybe I'd be able to sleep. I let myself relax against him, one hand resting against his arm, the other clutching a close branch like I'd hold myself up if I rolled over in my sleep.
Yeah, right.
His chin leaned against my head softly and it pushed a small smile to my lips. I was already feeling his warmth sink into me like I was still by the fire. It felt amazing. The bad thing, is I was starting to get used to it. And the worse thing, I was starting to like it.