Page 5 of Feast

It had a hole between its legs.

Is that where the small one had come from? Had it come from inside the bigger creature? It certainly seemed that way. Rolf’s brain churned with a welter of thoughts that were as wild and chaotic as the storm raging outside.

It crossed Rolf’s mind that he could cook and eat these creatures. After all, it had been a difficult year, and meat was hard to come by.

But Rolf quickly dispelled that thought.

The larger one had just died. Possibly it was diseased. It wasn’t worth the risk.

As for the smaller one, well, it hardly had meat enough on its little bones to make it worth the effort. And besides, if it had come from inside the bigger one, it could be diseased too.

The best thing would be to simply get rid of it.

Leave it outside for the gollan birds to eat. Yes, that’s what he would do.

Rolf reached for the small creature. As he did so, his fingertip grazed its little hand. Tiny fingers seized around Rolf’s finger, clutching him with surprising strength for such a miniscule being.

As that little hand squeezed Rolf’s finger, an unknown feeling squeezed at his heart.

It was a feeling he had never experienced before. Beautiful and painful and intense. His language held no word for this new emotion that ached behind his ribs. He only knew that the feeling made him want to protect the small creature for as long as he lived. To feed it. To clothe it. To make it safe and comfortable and happy, no matter what.

“Huh,” Rolf said.

The little creature had finally stopped crying. For the time being at least.

Rolf scooped the squirming thing up in the palm of his hand.

“You’re cold,” Rolf said, as if the little creature could understand him. “Let’s get you warmed up.”

Cradling the little animal in one hand, with the tube and bloody sac draped over his arm, Rolf set to work building a fire in the fire pit at the center of his den using wood that he had stored in a pile by the wall. Once Rolf had gotten the fire going, he sat close to it, nestling the little creature on a dry pelt in his lap.

After a bit of inspection, it seemed to Rolf that the bloody sac was not a part of the creature and did not have any feeling in it, so he snipped it off with a sharp obsidian knife, leaving part of the tube behind like a stem.

Rolf looked down at the creature, studying the rest of its strange anatomy.

What b’gods was the little thing?

In a way, it was built somewhat like an ukkur too. Two arms and two legs. Two eyes and two ears. Two nostrils, one mouth.

But this one was even smaller and weaker than the one that had died. And where the other one at least had blunt teeth in its head, this one had no teeth at all. Its little eyes remained tightly shut, as if the tiny creature refused to acknowledge the world. And its legs were too weak and uncoordinated to carry its weight.

Like the bigger creature, this little one also had no piss stick. Just a tiny cleft between its useless legs.

More thoughts turned round and round in Rolf’s mind like the wheels of a ksh mill.

After a time, the creature stirred restlessly in Rolf’s lap. It sputtered and coughed and started to scream again.

“What’s the matter?”

The creature only answered with more screams. Was it in pain? It did not appear to be injured. Yes, there was blood, but that was from the other creature, the dead one.

Hungry, perhaps?

Rolf tried feeding it some dried krelk meat. The little thing had no teeth, so Rolf bit off a small portion of the meat and chewed it thoroughly until it had formed a soft paste. He tried to feed this to the tiny thing, but the creature had no interest in that food whatsoever.

“What do you eat?” Rolf grunted.

He suddenly remembered the pale, sweet fluid from the dead creature’s chest lumps. That stuff looked and tasted somewhat like ksh juice. He decided to give that a try.