Page 5 (1/1)

1

HARLOW

One of the firstover my foot

It hasn't been the ht's sleep already Sand is everywhere, and the cave we're bunking in is tiny and cold Those things don'tin fros perched onbackward in the cave in horror Everywhere I look, there's s They're on the furs, at the mouth of the cave, and I swear there's one on the wall I ht

My mate, Rukh, is instantly awake atand ready to protect s They're horrid looking, a cross between a crab and a scorpion with lots of legs and a segmented tail Rukh plucks the nearest one off the wall and promptly bites the head off

I squeal in horror again

He holds the li "Har-loh?"

"I'etarian in es since coe ins for a ha that awful-looking thing out to ht, I shake my head

He stares at it, and the look in his eyes is uneasy "Har-loh…no?"

"No," I e "My seafood has to be cooked"

"Cookt?" he echoes, shaking the floppy thing at me "Rukh cookt?"

Rukh doesn't know a lot of language—any at all—because he's been feral for so long He's picking up soh, desperate to talk to me And “cook” is one of them he knows

I stare at the thing, trying to get over ust It's food, I remind myself It's food it's food it's food

"Cook it, sure," I e "Thank you"

Rukh grunts, the sound full of pleasure, and tosses the dead thing down on the ground Then he grabs another one of the things He lifts it to his lances over at es tactics at the last moment and snaps the head off instead Itsound, followed by a splat of liquid, and then tosses it down onto the other Within moments, we have a neat, tidy little pile He doesn't care that they pinch at his, or that they scuttle away fast when they see his hand descending Rukh is faster than the tells me he's done this plenty of times before

I can't begrudge the h on my sensibilities

I curl up in the back of the small cave and watch Rukh as he chases the smaller ones out of the cave with a flick of his hand and beheads the larger ones It hasn't been very long at all since Rukh and I resonated Not very long since he hitIt's a lot to take in all at once—leaving behind the sa-khui tribe that's welcoo out into the wild alone with Rukh, but he's made it clear that to him, they're the enemy

Since he's ure out how to e with just the two of us

It's one reason we're at this beach, I think From what I can tell from our (admittedly short and mostly inferred) conversations, the weather will be warhout the wintry brutal season, and we're much farther away from the tribe that he wants so desperately to avoid His father's grave is here, too, and I suspect he just likes the beach It's pretty, even if it's nothing like the beaches back home It's cold and rocky and a little violent, but the tide still rolls in to hit the sands, and there's a coreenish and the tide is slushy with ice

Rukh piles up all the dead scorpion-crabs and then begins to make a fire near the entrance to the cave It's a ss directly onto the fla his food cold and raw, and the fire's forhis food if he's never grilled before, can I?