When she held the empty crock out to him, licking her lips with her thick tongue again, he went to take it from her. Instead, she pulled it away as she sensed his intent, and jerked her head towards his vandiz skin.
“More?” She licked her lips again. “Please?”
“Mo-err?”
She gestured to the skin with her empty hand. “More water please.”
He picked up the skin and held it up. “Mo-err?” At her nod, he poured some liquid into the crock.
So, they referred to vandiz as “mo-err”. He could remember that.
She finished off the second serving, then set the crock down. “Thanks. I actually feel better now that the nasty taste of that blood-protein bar thingy is washed down.”
He lifted his vandiz skin. “Mo-err.”
At her negative head shake, he was confused. “Mo-err?”
She blinked at him, her mouth opening as if she would speak, then her eyes narrowed. She shook her head slowly again. “No more water, thank you.”
He set down the skin, reining in his irritation, reminding himself again that it wasn’t her fault. He would simply have to try harder to understand her, and to make her understand him.
9
The blood bar hadn’t been that disgusting, thanks to her hunger. She’d scarfed it down, trying to ignore the little, gristly bits that suggested it wasn’t only the blood that came from an animal. A part of her wondered if it had come from a human, but she quickly pushed that thought away. The human bodies in the pit had been too old and rotten to have provided food at this point. At least, that was what she told herself.
The problem with eating and drinking was that it seemed to turn on functions of the body that had been in a state of dormancy while lacking those things. Now, her bladder and bowels were adamantly reminding her that they were still there and her grace period had ended. She watched Jotaha pace back and forth on the other side of the stone ring, seeming lost in his own thoughts. She had no idea how she would communicate her more delicate needs to him. They’d managed to muddle through when it came to her hunger and thirst, though she suspected something had gotten lost in the translation there. Miming hunger though had been fairly simple compared to miming something like urinating or, well, the other.
She wasn’t even sure if he did those kinds of things. As far as she knew, all animals did it, and even insects, in order to eliminate waste from the body, but how a lizard man did things was never covered in her biology class. That lesson might have made her pay more attention. In fact, she wasn’t even sure how a simple lizard did things in that department.
She held it for as long as she could while she studied the cave, hoping desperately for a convenient toilet, or outhouse, or, heck, even a hole in the ground to appear. Jotaha had stopped pacing and was now crouching by his pack, digging around in it while muttering under his breath. He’d withdrawn several cloth and leather wrapped bundles, a couple of what appeared to be tins, and a little glass bottle tied to a leather bundle. He set those all aside.
He avoided looking her way, though the tension in his body and the way his tail whipped back and forth like he was agitated told her it wouldn’t be a good idea to make another escape attempt. Especially not in this dress that fit her like a mummy costume. Even the split seams didn’t return full motion to her. In her cross-legged position, the dress had hiked up her thighs, exposing a lot of bare flesh, but the lizard man didn’t seem overly interested in her naked skin.
She wasn’t above trying the old seduction routine to escape, if it came to that, but it didn’t seem to be an option. Also, she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea. He was huge, muscular, and covered in scales that appeared to provide a natural armor. Though she had broken his flesh by biting him, she’d caught him off guard. She suspected if she did manage to get him on the hook, she would be the one reeled in, not the other way around.
She was almost disappointed to reject that idea. For a creature covered in scales, he didn’t look all that bad. Perhaps it was because she’d seen so many different versions of lizard men in video games and movies—from monstrous to weirdly sexy— that she wasn’t as put off by his scales as another woman might have been. His musculature was very male, all bulging biceps and pulsing pecs, with a nice set of washboard abs that few human men could ever achieve without a dedication to gym time that was probably not healthy.
His face was not traditionally handsome as human men went, though he had a strong jawline. His lips were thin, instead of full and sensuous. His nose was flatter to his face than a human nose, and he had hard, pointed ridges over his eyes instead of eyebrows. The lack of visible ears was also a bit startling, though not as off-putting as she would have thought. She’d spotted a hole on each side of his head, neatly tucked behind his prominent cheekbones.
Overall, now that some of her initial panic and horror had faded, and she felt more wary and cautious than outright terrified, she didn’t see him as such a monster. Ghoulish trophy necklace aside. Since he’d ripped it off his neck and tossed it to the ground at her feet, he hadn’t looked at it again.
She still felt a bit like she was handling a ticking timebomb. There was certainly an air of tension that suggested danger from him. The inability to communicate was even more frustrating because he seemed more than willing to try. That in itself gave her hope that his intentions towards her weren’t hostile. If he just wanted to kill her and maybe even eat her, why would he bother trying to converse with her first?
Of course, she could be making a huge mistake by viewing his body language and actions through a human lens. For all she knew, chatting with their victims might be par for the course for lizard men. It didn’t seem likely that he did that though, since he appeared to speak not a word of English and those soldier’s uniforms had looked like they came from the U.S. military, despite the lack of markings. The location also implied that the humans he’d previously encountered had spoken English.
All that probably meant that his attempt to communicate with her was the exception and not the rule. Maybe she was in a different category than those other humans as far as he was concerned. She just wished she knew why. If it was because she was a female, then she wasn’t sure which outcome she could reasonably hope for.
If his goal was to make lizard babies by using her as a breeder, he’d made no move to do so, thus far, and again, his attempts to talk to her seemed unusual for an alien monster just looking to breed.
Or maybe she just watched way too many monster movies and played far too many video games. His intention could be something so far outside the human experience that she could never guess it, and all this time she’d spent trying to figure it out was a waste when she could be considering and escape plan instead.
Although, perhaps it was actually helping to keep her mind off waste—the kind her body was looking to shed.
All these thoughts distracted her from the more primal fear that still huddled in the back of her mind, waiting for any sign from the lizard man that it needed to take over. When he rose from his crouch, holding a cloth wrapped packet and turned his focus back to her, that fear stirred, pushing to make its way to the front of the line of her thoughts.
It hadn’t been Jotaha who had ripped a man’s throat out right in front of her, but it very well could have been. He had claws, he had sharp teeth. And, somewhere, he even had a dart gun, though it must be hidden on the other side of his pack—out of her reach. Not that she could hit the broad side of a barn with a blow gun. The one shot she’d wounded him with from the M16 had been sheer luck, and from the looks of his arm, she’d only grazed his scales.