Drasuk's question pulls me out of my epiphany and the mixed feelings it brings up.
When I don't answer right away, he keeps talking. "I wasn't sure I saw that correctly. There was a lot of fur and goo in the way while I finished the other one off."
"Thanks for the visual. We need a bath again, Drasuk. We are so disgusting. Time to head back to the water."
"I heartily agree, but stop deflecting. Have you been keeping secrets?"
My hands are shaking now. I'm not sure if I'm ready to face just how much I've been changing. I mean, those changes just saved my life, but I still don't like it.
I don't want to talk about it. Besides, sharing isn't really my thing.
People get so fucking judgy.
I let out a huff of breath. I'm being ridiculous. Of course, he's going to tease me within an inch of my life about it. About everything, but he also sticks around.
Under all that arrogance, I have the strangest sense that I'm accepted for who I am. That I could scream at him, call him every foul name I could think of, threaten to decapitate him, even, and he would just let out that gravely laugh of his and keep following me like an oversized puppy.
I don't think I can shock him or run him off. It's so fucking infuriating.
And it's also one of the best feelings. Ever.
My eyes get full thinking about it, and I have to wrestle down my practiced response of tearing him a new one for daring to make me feel something so... big. Something so lovely and terrifying, I just want to run from it.
To deny it as I stick my fingers in my ears and sayla la la.
Be an adult for once, Kira, I tell myself.
He's been uncharacteristically quiet, I realize. I'm pretty sure just the expressions that have been flitting across my face as the silence grew between us provided plenty of material to take a verbal swipe.
I glance over and his eyes and spines are so neutral it can't be natural.
He's waiting and carefully not pushing.
My eyes well up again, along with the usual unrelated, unearned anger, but I ignore both of them and speak. "I think I've changed again. I shouldn't have been able to do that. Human females, even most males, aren't that strong."
He waits a beat, then speaks. "It bothers you, even though it is an advantage," he observes.
"Yes. Humans don't like change, and I don't like giving up control. Especially of my own body."
He makes a rumble and once again passes up the opportunity to take a pot shot.
When I think back, he's never taken one when I felt truly vulnerable, only when I was acting like a little shit.
My most common mode, so there's been plenty of opportunity.
"You were exposed to braceaaer," he says, breaking me out of my musing, "and they are much stronger than they should be based on size."
A dark chuckle bubbles out. "I'm a fucking ant."
"I'm not sure what that is, but I do know you aren't that. You are Kira. There is only one of you in the whole universe and you will keep adapting right along with each stage of your metamorphosis. You'll figure out how to use every single change to make them wish they had never made the mistake of touching you."
There's something in my chest that hasn't been there since my parents looked at me with pride when I enlisted. It's more than just gratification. It's... hope.
War has a way of making you forget. Making you hard.
My nictitating membranes slide across my eyes and sweep out the welling tears. It makes me realize they stopped bothering meat some point. Stopped popping across when I didn't want them to, but protected my eyes when I was in the stream.
Hell, when I think back, they were over them during the fight in the tree.
