And best, because Polly is in my arms. I can touch her. She is touching me. And she is so fucking soft and luscious, I go a little lightheaded from the sensation of having her atop me.
Of course, that may be due to the pain, too.
Either way, I’m not sure if I am grinning or grimacing right now.
“Oh my God!” she exclaims, scrambling back to get off me.
“Here,” Tryk offers his hand to my Polly to help her rise from the ground, and Goddess-help-me, I want to snap every bone in his stupid hand. But I manage to get a hold of myself before I start threatening the Shadow Wing who has come to help us.
Sucking in a groan of blinding pain, I rise to my feet, only to see Tryk cradling my female’s face in his hands. “What the fuck?” I begin to growl, but he quickly moves to me, holding my face now.
And then the smell hits me all over again.
“Ew! Whatisthat?!” Polly asks.
Tryk’s hand dips into the pouch slung at his waist, pulling out the small, horrible frightberries before he crushes them in his fist and slathers the remnants onto my shoulders. I wince and suck in a breath over my teeth at the contact. I have many injuries and this is not helping.
“If we’re all going to get out of here, you two need to stink as much as I do,” he grunts, throwing a look over at the mimyckah who are edging ever closer, their heads tilted as they stare and smile, saliva dripping like slimy vines down to the ground as they watch us, fascinated.
As if she had forgotten their very existence until now, Polly makes a squeaking noise of surprise when she follows Tryk’s line of sight and promptly leaps behind me. Instinctively, I try to puff up and splay my wings to shield her further, but the left will not rise and the right only does so very painfully, and at such an odd, uncomfortable angle, even Tryk looks pained at witnessing my attempt.
“Here,” he grunts, pulling out more berries and handing them to me. “Put more on your female. We need to go.”
Turning, I crush the fruits and look down at a very wide-eyed looking Polly.
“This is such a weird dream,” she tells me. “And you areSo. Freaking. Tall.”
She does this really adorable little half-laugh, half-hiccup, and I wonder if she hit her head when she fell from the pod because this is not the time for laughter. Does she truly think this is all a dream?
“I think you’re like the hottest guy I’ve ever seen,” she tells me as I smear the pungent berries up and down her arms.
“I am at a regular temperature, Polly. Are you-” I pause to put the clean back of my hand to her forehead. “Are you feeling well?”
She bats me away like my concern is an annoyance to her, only for her attention to snag on something; the wall with the other lost females in their pods that we cannot take with us. She fixes on one and looks stunned like frizikki fawn caught in a trap. I am about to explain that we will come back for them all but am interrupted when the Shadow Wing presses extra blades into our hands. “We need to go, and we need to gonow.”
Chapter 6 - Polly
The man that is not Aloryk has us running through dark and twisting tunnels, barking over his winged shoulder for us to hurry, hurry,hurry.
Now, just because I’m a big girl, doesn’t mean I can’t run. But running for my life is a whole different bag.
I’m seriously starting to doubt that this is a dream. Muscles don’t usually burn when I run in dreams, I can’t normally feel my heart thudding in my chest like it’s trying to escape, either.
But I can’t face that right now because… well…the running.
A bright light bursts out all around us, stinging my eyes when we reach the tunnel’s end. I fall to my knees, my wet pajama pants hitting coarse black sand causing a sensory nightmare that I don’t think I can afford to fixate on right now.
Behind us, I can hear the echoes of those creatures screeching and baying now that we’ve escaped.
“Come,” not-Aloryk clips. “They will be too curious not to follow.”
“Polly,” a warm and raspy voice melts in over the sound of gentle waves and bellowing monsters. Aloryk leans down to help me up to my feet again and, God, now we’re out in the open and away from that darkness, I can see just how truly beat up he is. I take his offered hand - it’s just as huge as it had been when it was pressed up against the pane of my glass box. Except now I can feel the warmth of him when we touch.
“What is all of this?” I hear myself asking. “Where am I?”
“You’re about to be in the belly of a mimyckah if you two don’t hurry!” the other winged man growls as he takes flight with one determined kick, sending some black sand scattering as he launches. “This way,” he calls as he loops back around us overhead. “The Great Waters will swell and cut this place off for the rest of this day soon.”
“Come,” Aloryk says, taking my hand in his and urging me to start running again, even though my pulse hasn’t recovered from our last sprint. He doesn’t let go, even when I can tell my pace is likely a lot slower than he could accomplish, injured or not. His wings don’t look up to the job right now, but he is super tall and his stride is long.
