“Fuck me, get rid of one set of asshole aliens, and find myself about to get killed by a space yeti,” I said, panicking.
Then it dropped to all fours and really began to come at me fast.
I couldn’t lead it back to the others to become chow, but at the same time, my flight response was in full gear. I made a compromise by turning right and doing my best to run like a bat out of hell. I failed miserably, thanks to sinking into the snow with every step I took. I also wasn’t very athletic, and I was wounded, so it was really more of a faster limp while hyperventilating than an actual run. To my complete unsurprise, I found myself tackled to the ground, and flipped over.
I screamed, knowing that my friends back at the ship would probably hear it. At least I could give them that much warning. It would be far better to stay there and get a fire going, maybe use some of the boxes to block the door. Maybe the aliens wouldn’t come after all, and they’d find some of those cubes to eat, so they wouldn’t starve.
Gold-green eyes stared down at me from a softly furred face.
“Grtz gah?” it asked me, cocking its head.
No, not an it. It was a person, a really big person, who looked like a fan fiction version of a Thundercat, going by what I could see of him or her. Which was just the face and the hands, to be honest. I decided to think of this alien as a he for now, for convenience’s sake and due to the fact that he smelled decidedly masculine in a musky way and had a deep voice.
“H…hi,” I said, making a valiant attempt at a smile while taking care to not bare my teeth.
He huffed, showing some pretty scary canines. “Ghorgh shfft trhrpt.”
He wasn’t ripping into my gizzards, so I decided to go for broke. “Ah, sorry, I can’t understand you. Um, can you help us? We just crash landed over there. Me and my friends could really use help. You live around here?”
He stared at me in consideration. Had he really understood me? Fuck, maybe he’d had a translation beam used on him for our language or knew other humans! He wasn’t looking at me with anything except somber concern, if I was reading him right, so at last I probably didn’t have to worry about him handing me over to more slavers.
“Grkt.” He stood up, shrugging off what I now saw was a large coat made of some animal’s fur.
“You really do look like a cat person,” I said, gazing in awe at his magnificent mane. He pulled me into a sitting position, sniffing my clothes and wrinkling his nose.
“Yeah, I know I stink,” I told him. “Not like they provided us with showers.”
He stuffed my arms inside the coat, fastening it closed.
“Thanks, big guy, but won’t you be too cold?” The coat swamped me, the arms easily hiding my hands from view, and the hood practically covering my eyes. He really was a big guy, simply enormous. I estimated him to be at least seven feet and a chunk of change tall.
He ignored my words, choosing instead to suddenly bend down and heft me over his shoulder, then turn around and run back the way he came.
“Wait! My friends are back there!” I told him, pointing behind us. I wriggled to try to get him to put me down but he smacked my ass, which jarred my leg, causing me to yell out in pain. Shit! I guessed he hadn’t understood me then. I’d just have to wait until we reached his house or wherever and try to get him to understand. Maybe I could Pictionary it to him or something if he had something to draw with. At least I was pretty warm now, thanks to his coat keeping me fairly toasty. If we could get all of us one of these and maybe some fur lined pants and boots, we just might make it, especially if there was enough food to go around. I just had to get him to understand about my friends and get him to take me back.
5
GRIGHRI
I was out checking my traps when I saw the fire in the sky and knew I had to go check it out. Every kit is raised with the stories of the sky people who rode inside great metal grak. Some were good and left gifts of exotic foods, cured illnesses, and injuries while they were here. Others were bad and came to steal away people. I needed to see which kind these were and report back. If they were the evil ones, we would need to return with many warriors and and kill them with stealth, using the mighty fire darts and killer air weapons some of the good ones left us in the time of our elders, years after evil ones came in a wounded metal grak and tried to kill good ones who came to measure the deepening ice at the start of that time’s Great Chill. The warriors then helped the good ones, who called themselves the Sho’a’ra, and in return, the Sho’a’ra left the weapons as gifts. They were precious, and only to be used to kill the star demons should they ever return.
As I approached the metal grak, I could see it was mortally wounded, part of its body torn away and burned by the very stars as it fell. The strange one walking towards me was nothing like the others that had been described. He walked with an odd gait as if gravely injured, and I wondered if the grak had bitten him in its death frenzy. He didn’t seem to be able to see me as keenly as I saw him, so his distance vision was weak. If he was a star demon, I doubted we would need any of our gifted weapons to kill him. A stripling with a stone flinger would be able to slay him before he was even aware they were there. I knew the moment the creature saw me, as he quickened his odd pace, floundering about as if he’d never walked in snow. I lengthened my stride, curious to see this small thing. He certainly did not appear to be carrying any weapons, which was very foolish. What if a razor tooth came out of its underground den looking for food to feed her kits? Or perhaps a rival group of star demons, the ones who slew his grak, followed him down to finish the job? And why was I so certain the star demon was a male?
When I was close enough to take in the finer details of just what he was wearing, I was flabbergasted. The clothes were far too large, and were those trews tied upon his head? He shivered, and my heart clenched. This was no demon. It was small enough to have to be a kit, and it had scavenged these things from the downed metal grak out of desperation. How had a kit come to be inside the beast? Had evil ones stolen him, and he’d managed to get away while they tended to their mortally wounded bird?
I dropped to all fours and began to race, needing to reach the ill equipped kit before harm befell it. The kit was clearly traumatized as it screamed a high pitched wail of terror and turned to run. Yes, definitely wounded the way he held himself and stumbled about. I pounced to cross the last several feet, covering the kit’s body with mine to show dominance so it would submit to my care. I flipped the kit over and blinked.
This was no kit. The eyes that were the brown of the dirt Hrucha kept in the pots of seedlings he nurtured looked at me in terror, but there was a look of maturity to them I did not expect to see in a stripling. I’d been right, he was wearing two pairs of trews tied about his head. He had a strange nose and was completely furless, which was probably why he had what appeared to be multiple layers of oversized clothes on. And he stank, and not just of male sweat. I could smell the taint of urine, feces, and general unwashed body. He stared up at me, mouth agape, panting heavily as he tried to control his fear, his heart racing. I could see his teeth just peeking out, and they were blunt, like one of the ice fruit eating corbih that hung on the limbs of drilth, napping all day long before ever so slowly creeping inside a hollow stuffed with leaves to pass the night.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Huhiiii.”
I thought back to the names of the star people. None of the ones I’d heard of were named the Huhiii. Perhaps it was his name? I knew he must understand me, as the stories all said the star people could understand and speak all languages. I tried again. “I meant your species.”
“Ahsrree ah cnt undrrstnd oo. Cn oo hep uss? Weejhst krshlndd ohvr thrr. Meenmuh frundth cu rryri oos uhr hep. Oo lihvuhrnd hrr?”
I could hear the pleading tone, and while it seemed that the star man had come from the downed grak, perhaps I’d not been so far off the mark as to his age. He obviously was young enough to not have learned all the languages. It was plain though, that the young Ahsrree was begging for my help, and given the state of him, and how helpless he obviously was, I was moved to grant him my assistance.
