"Who's there?!”
A rustling of leaves draws my attention and I see a dark figure lower from a branch while hanging upside down. Bright orange eyes find mine and a wide mouth moves as the creature says my words back at me, "who's there?!" only, the movement of its mouth doesn't match the words it mimics. The effect is... unsettling. My breath hitches in my throat and my heart stutters to a stop as the creature's head rotates to see me properly while still hanging from its branch.
"Please be a friendly...thing," I whisper.
The creature's mouth pulls into a smile - a smile that looks too wide and too full of sharp, yellow teeth. Limb after limb, the decidedly not-friendly thing drops gracefully from the tree while its head seemingly stays in place - a move so unsettling to watch, I start backing up, my back hitting a tree. The creature stands at its full height on its two hind limbs. It's taller than me and if I saw its silhouette from afar, I might be forgiven for mistaking it for a human man. Except this isn't a human man. It's... it's like someone tasked Tim Burton to design a scary as fuck alien chimpanzee.
Nightmare-chimp starts stalking forward, its too-long arms swinging at its sides.
"No, no, no," I whisper, sliding to the side of the tree I'm currently backed against and stumbling further backward.
"No, no, no," demon-chimp whispers back, its creepy smile still in place.
Oh,fuckthis. I'm about to turn and bolt, hoping beyond hope that I could outrun that...thing, when in a flurry of feathers, something huge drops from the sky, landing directly on my advancing nightmare. It must be a bird of prey. The creepy creature shrieks and all I see are ink-black wings as the chimp tries to struggle out of its grasp.Flap, flap, crunch.A pained yowl echoes throughout the jungle. This bird must be huge! The wingspan alone is about twice as long as I am tall, if not more. Each beat of its monstrous, dark wings sends a powerful gust of air my way, pressing me further back against the trunk of a tree. Feathers fly as the chimp fights back but the bird must finally make the killing move because the scuffle ends abruptly with a sickening crunch and from beneath the mass of black wings, a demon-chimp limb falls slack against the rotting leaves of the jungle floor.
The wings rise and fall as the bird breathes hard after its well-earned kill. From within the carnage of the fight, I see a black lion-like tail flick, so perhaps the killer-monkey isn't dead after all... or the bird has a tail?
What am I doing? I shouldn't still be here, wondering about the anatomy of different alien species! I need to high-tail it out of here and find the others!
Keeping an eye on the mass of feathers and the now dead demon-chimp, I blindly shift my bare foot, ready to silently creep away before the monster-bird sees me and decides I look tastier than its recent kill. Managing to shuffle around the trunk of the tree, I decide it's now or never and start to sprint on aching and cut-up feet.
I don't get far. The wind is knocked right out of me as I'm tackled to the ground with a thud from something big leaping onto me from behind. I scream as I go down. "No!" My attempt to scramble back up again is thwarted by being pinned down. The monster-bird surrounds me with its onyx wings of death and I’m reminded of all those awful aliens back at the auction - at how many different varieties of threat they all posed. "Please don't eat me! Please don't eat me! Please don't eat me!" I chant to myself. My doom says something to me from above. Its voice is deep and surprisingly un-squawk-like for a massive alien bird but the words are still foreign. It repeats its alien words, the tone sounding like a demand. At least it's not eating me. Not yet anyway. Maybe it will fly off with me in its talons to rip into my flesh and feed me to its monster-bird-babies.
Using my arms to shield my face, my forehead currently pressed to the rotting earth, I stay as still and as small as possible. Maybe it'll get bored and leave me alone. But moments pass and peeking to the side, all I can still see is a curtain of dark feathers trapping me from my escape. The predator above me murmurs its words again, softer, this time, its breath ghosting across the back of my sweaty neck.
It hasn't eaten me yet. That's one positive. And perhaps this will mean my death, but I turn to look up at my would-be-killer.
There is no flesh-tearing hooked beak. There are no talons. Above me, pinning me down... is a man.
Sort of.
Our eyes meet and the air leaves my lungs again. The man loosens the pressure he's using to keep me still, allowing me just enough movement to turn fully around so that I'm now on my back, staring up at...him. He’s bare-chested. He’s bare-chested with wings. A quick glance down his impressively sculpted body tells me he is at least wearing some sort of loin cloth -thank God- but nothing else. My eyes dart quickly back up to the… bird-man.
"Um, h-hi," I say lamely.
He just stares back at me, unmoving.
With my heart in my mouth, I try to shimmy out from under him. "I'm just gonna..." His grip on my hip tightens and he...growls.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus, help me! I stop trying to move away instantly. "Ok,nicescary bird-man, pleasedon'teat me."
He says nothing. No more of that strange, deep voice, speaking in his melodic alien language. Instead, he tilts his head, his bright turquoise eyes assessing me, looking me over like he's never seen anything like me before. He probably hasn't. I'm just a sweaty, dirty, covered in cuts and bruises, totally wingless woman. But for some reason, this bird-man seems fascinated. I hope with every fiber of my being that he's not trying to figure out if I'm edible. Something wraps around my ankle unexpectedly. I squeak, jerking my leg away which only makes whatever's wrapped around it hold on more securely and Mr. Bird-Man growl in warning again. I chance a glance down between our bodies to my foot and -yep- that's a tail. He has a tail.Of coursehe has a tail. Why wouldn't he? Part of me feels like laughing hysterically but all I can do is lay here while this huge, winged alien sates his curiosity about little ol' wingless, tailless, human me.
So, we stare at each other. And soon I start to notice something in the dim shade of the cocoon of his massive wings; little lights are fading in and out of brightness in here. They're all different luminous colors - pink, blue, purple, and green. At first, I think they're fireflies, but then I notice they're not in the space between me and the alien- they'reonhim. They're comingfromhim. On his skin and the ends of each feather of his wings, tiny little lights are pulsing in and out of brightness like he was some sort of child's night light. Or a lit-up circuit board. Or...I don't know- I've never met anyone who had fairy lights under their skin!
Tentatively, the twinkly bird-man lifts a hand, slowly moving it toward my face. I pull away at first but that curiosity never dulls from his eyes as he reaches out and cradles my jaw. Those little lights flash up his fingers at the touch and I watch them travel north of his hand, racing up his muscled arm like loads of little shooting stars glittering across the night sky. Bird-man ignores the tiny lights and turns my face this way and that before murmuring something. His big, warm hand slips gently down to my throat, his thumb sweeping back and forth in a surprisingly tender caress. The thick swallow I make beneath his touch stills his thumb's strokes. Lights all over his body and wings begin to burn brightly.
Ok. So, I'm… making friends? I think. Ithinkhe's a friendly, scary bird-man? But when he starts sniffing at the air between us and leaning in to sniff harder, I can't lie and say my pulse doesn't go up a notch or two. All I can do is pray that I don't smell like his next meal.
Getting closer and closer, he presses his nose to the side of my face and rumbles something low into my skin that has my goosebumps rising all over again - but in a different way. Urgh. This is no time to start getting horny notions, Serena! What is wrong with me? He might look like a Greek God sculpted from marble, have cool wings, and can light up like a Christmas tree, but he is definitely an alien. And, judging by how easily he was able to dispatch that nightmare-chimp, a pretty dangerous one, too.
Taking a deep drag of air through his nose, bird-man nuzzles at the side of my neck, muttering something else utterly lost on me. This is all getting a littletoofamiliar now, what with my neck being a big ol' 'on switch' in terms of erogenous zones. My hands slowly, blindly reach out to his chest, palms meeting hard, warm muscle. I intended to try to push him away, but with the contact, a pulse of light radiates from my touch and twinkles out all across his body and wings.
And... and bird-guy starts making a noise from deep within his chest... a sort of... rumbling purr? And holy shit, I can feel the reverberations through my palms. Pulling away only seems to turn that purr into a growl. My new feathered friend uses one of his huge hands to press both my palms back on his skin. He seems rather pleased by the contact, giving a little grunt into the side of my throat and swiping my skin with his tongue.
Oh,fuck.
The alien's mouth moves down to my collarbone and then back up over my shoulder, alternating between tasting my skin with warm, wet licks of his tongue and eager sniffs of his nose like he can't get enough of my horrible sweaty scent. He starts moving down my arm, gently nipping at the inside of my elbow making me jolt out of my stupor. "Ok, Gomez Addams," I say, finally trying to push him away. "You seem cool and all, but we only just met and I usually at least know a guy's name before we get to the fun part, you know?"
