“Hey, jerkhole! Get back here with my potatoes!!” I caterwauled.
He was halfway across the back lawn and I was losing him fast. My aim was true as I pulled my arm back and let ‘er rip. Bull’s eye, right at the back of that fat, fluffy head.
I was having an out of body experience, I’d swear it. This isn’t real, this is some messed up, Alice and the white rabbit chase, and it’s all in my head. Yeti people aren’t real!
This is what a true mental breakdown is, ladies and gentle beasts. That’s exactly what that thing was,a beast.
Long white fur, sharp teeth.
Was this a Lo denaii?
The beast whirled around with a snarl, inhaling deeply as it faced me as if in preparation to roar at me. The roar never came. The creature looked as startled as I was once our gazes met and held.
“You really are real,” I breathed, studying them wonderingly.
When the beast spoke, their voice was deep and gravelly, guttural.
The beast moved fast, so fast I barely had time to react and it was right upon me, so close as it bent and leaned in to sniff at me curiously, when I finally jerked back in surprise my reaction felt sluggish and overdone.
“You’re a Lo denaii?” I mumbled uncertainly.
The beast let out a huffing chuff and jerked back. “Smell like Lo denaii. Why you ask? You not know? Where you male? You mates, where? They in trouble? Need help?”
Eyeing me, he pulled back, until he was staring down at me from his towering height. With a grunt, he cocked his head. “Have mates, yes? Males that’s yours, yes? Where mates?” Leaning in, he growled softly, “Why they leave you, female? They bad males? You bad female? Naughty like the Joad-knee?”
“What?” I spluttered. Joad-knee? Am I supposed to know what that is?
“Where you group? Fam’ly?” he grumbled gruffly.
Say what now?
Scowling right back at him, I wrapped my arms around myself. The action was as much a defensive reaction as it was protective.
“You speak the Hood-man’s Eng-alled-rish, yes?” he said slowly, as if the problem here laid with me. Changing tact, he barked in a strangely high falsetto like maybe he was trying to sound less threatening and failing miserably, “The words that comes out of my moutheses, you un-ur-stands them, female, yes?”
Instead of answering him, I held out my hand. “You took something that’s mine, beast. I want it back.”
When he just stared at me, I pointed at the flowery pillowcase he was carting around that I could spy a couple supersized potato lumps bulging from.
“Why here, you Lo denaii? Mates Hood-man’s? Where you mama? You da?” he rumbled out curiously. “They live in Hood-man’s world too, jes? You lost? Where males? Back at village?”
The way he was eyeing me made me uneasy.
Shuffling a few steps back, I put some much needed space between us. The action had him moving several steps forward, putting him firmly back within close proximity. Too close.
“I think I hear my mother calling me,” I mumbled as I began shuffling backwards.
Did I love my potatoes? Without question. Who the hell doesn’t? Enough to risk being kidnapped or bludgeoned to death over them? Not particularly.
“Lie,” he got out between grunts. Everything in the male changed at my called out fib. Gone was the curious, open look, replaced with a fierce scowl.
Noting this, I did what any reasonable human being would— spinning around, I took off at a run, screaming at the top of my lungs for help.
Dumb move, I supposed, but I’m more reactive than think-it-through in a pinch.
The beastman quickly caught up to me as I ran like my life depended on it. He didn’t grab at me. No. There was a soft thump and then the sound of a being running much faster than me easily traipsing through the heavy snowfall. For a moment the sound of thundering feet stopped entirely, and that’s when I heard a soft snarl kind of behind me, a bit above my five foot six-ish height, right before it happened.
I caught a glimpse of him before he landed atop me in some panther-like pounce.
