"Well, you should— "
I tense up and look around when his voice cuts off. He takes in a long, deep breath.
"I smell a manticorid."
"Really? Get us out of here, then. We need some venom in our lives to take care of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum."
He doesn't even bother asking me who I mean, just keeps reorienting himself and testing the wind. After a few breaths, he uses his tail to move us toward the bank.
When we get there, I fling water off and squeeze as much out of my hair as I can. It's to the middle of my back now, but there hasn't been a good opportunity to make Drasuk swear he won't cut my head off using the sword to cut it.
Actually, this might be a good time. "I think we should chop off my hair and toss it out into the river. Maybe they'll follow the scent or something."
"Good plan," he tells me, then simply steps over, grabs on to the wet fall of it and slices it off with his claws.
My jaw drops. "You let me struggle with a little knife this whole time when you could do that?"
"All you had to do was communicate intent, Kira."
I'm repeating the phrase back in a childish voice as he splashes back in to drop our red herring out in the water. Well, pink herring, I guess.
As I watch my hair drift down the river, I can't help but appreciate how Drasuk allows the space for me to be my own person, his very nature communicating his belief in me and his respect for my independence.
As if a fierce woman is a default.
Everything with him is face value, which is infuriating, but it also means that when he compliments me, he fucking means it. When he tells me he appreciates my strength and what I bring to this partnership, I can believe it.
It's mind-boggling. Too much to process right now, really, so I shelve it for later.
Then we spend a long damn time moving around in circles. According to Drasuk, the scent isn't coming from any one place and there are a lot of overlapping trails. Some of them designed to confuse.
He's confused, alright.
He didn't appreciate my sarcastic comments about his hunting skills, at least not once he realized I wasn't complimenting him. I wonder if his iguana brain will ever understand sarcasm.
Good thing he has me to train him.
A few nasty meals and one long nap in a tree later and he says he's convinced we're getting closer. I keep scanning with my new spidey sense. Shimmer sense?
We've bypassed a lot of opportunities to take out genali. That's how obsessed Drasuk is with finding this cat-man.
He's stalking along, his body rigid and his spines telling me what he thought of my joke about wanting to meet his maker. I tell myself it's his new shimmer that makes me keep looking at him, but I'm finding more and more to admire about him.
He no longer looks like a stupid dinosaur lug head. I mean, he is that, but what I see now is his grace. Appreciating how the cant of his spines can convey so much emotion. The nuance of which way they lean communicating better than his words sometimes.
Then there are all the scars. I want to know each one of their stories.
Then a thought occurs to me that has my brow furrowing. I don't have scars. If he has nanites healing him too, why does he?
"Drasuk?"
"I have no interest in your thoughts about things you know little about, Kira."
"Alright, sure. But I have a question."
"Didn't you just hear me?"
"This isn't about manticorids and how much you love and hate them. About nanites."
