Page 6 of The Naga Scavenger’s Precious Mate

Her stomach rumbled loudly in the silence stretching between us. Shame spread through me, I should have been quicker to anticipate that. Nudging the Sleara onto my shoulder, I rushed to prep a bowl of the soft, nutritious stew I’d made. I approached slowly, then lowered myself to the ground next to my nest so that I could hold the bowl to her mouth. With my tail between the furs under her head, I propped her upright gently but without actually touching her.

“Here. Eat this,” I said to her, holding out a spoonful of warm but not too hot fish stew. Her eyes locked onto mine, then darted from my face to the eagerly reaching Sleara on my shoulder, the beastie would snatch up her food if I’d let him. At her hip, Srazz was just as eagerly sniffing at the air. He’d climb all over her to get to that bowl of stew so I quickly curled the tip of my tail around the nest to catch him around his generously rounded belly.

She opened her mouth and accepted the bite, and another. Soon she was lifting her hands to grab for the bowl of stew herself, as if she intended to eat it all on her own. I pulled it back with a regretful expression and shook my head, “No, you’ll throw up if you eat too much too quick, Precious.” I’d seen it more than once with too eager animals once they woke from a long sleep. My mate was obviously no animal, but I had plenty of experience nurturing the sick back to health. I was right about this.

“Oh poo,” she said softly, her bottom lip curling in the most curious fashion. It made my heart ache in my chest, that look. Her eyes got all big and shimmery, that lip trembled a little, and then she shuddered out the biggest, longest sigh. I raised the spoon back to her mouth, unable to stop myself. That look pulled more on my heartstrings than the baby Ayala did when they mewled for food.

“You’ll make yourself sick. You really shouldn’t,” I warned her when she took the bite eagerly. Forcing myself to put the bowl down near the fire, I grabbed the waterskin instead. That appeased her and she drank several sips. I let her have more of the water, though that too I needed to watch carefully. She had to be starving and dehydrated, all the more reason to take care not to flood her poor, shrunk stomach in one go. She’d be stronger in an hour, and then I’d feed her again.

I needed to be strong for both of us to make sure she got exactly what she needed to recover. Picking the still sniffling Sleara from my shoulder, I gently set it down on the nest next to my mate. “You stay there. Srazz, watch over them, I need to feed the rest,” I said to the two beasts. The Sleara was barely bigger than my fist unless he flared out his wings, with one bandaged up, he wasn’t going anywhere quickly. He probably didn’t even want to; Sleara were extremely difficult to release back into the wild once I’d patched them up.

My mate made a startled noise in the back of her throat, followed by a waterfall of quick, melodic words that spilled from her pretty pink mouth. She was starting to have a deeper flush along her upper cheeks, making her sallow and sunken complexion look more lively, healthier. She was going to be alright, I hadn’t made a grave mistake by not going to the Shaman with her.

“Whatthefudgebuddy?” she said last, her words going up in the end. From the expectant look on her face, I thought that maybe she was asking me a question but I didn’t know what. It was tempting to reach out and touch her with a finger or the tip of my tail just so I could understand her. That was the way of mates, but I had not properly courted her yet. I needed her invitation first.

“The Sleara is harmless, he just wants to sleep.” The little purple creature had already been fed, going after my mate’s stew was pure greed. Srazz didn’t look like he appreciated being forced to share but that didn’t bother the Sleara, who curled up in my mate’s lap with a content little purr.

“Oh…” my mate said with an endeared look on her face at the sight. “Thatscuteiguess,” she added quietly. Her body relaxed against the furs, and one hand came up to gently touch Srazz where he sat next to her hip. He’d pushed closer when the Sleara encroached on his territory and now chortled eagerly when it was he who got the pats. He knew that was to be envied, I envied him that touch. If only she would stroke my scales the way she stroked the Ayala’s fur.

I turned away from the sight, my heart feeling heavy and tight. I was a mixture of anxious and happy, relieved and excited. Now that she was awake, I could start courting her. Was she going to be receptive to my advances? Or would she spurn them? That was the female’s choice, and some females did spurn their mate, despite the glow of the mating sigils.

My hands stayed busy as I fed and cared for the half a dozen more animals that I’d already collected over the past weeks. I never knew how that happened so fast, one day my cave would be empty, the next I’d have three animals that needed my help. What if my mate didn’t want anything to do with that? It was a very undesirable trait, I had been told more than once.

I glanced over my shoulder to look at her, chest feeling hollow and empty until I laid eyes on her peacefully sleeping. Her hand was still on Srazz’s rump, her other tucked beneath the Sleara’s velvety soft head. She was smiling in her slumber; that did not look like someone who disliked the presence of all these animals.

With more hope, I forged ahead with my chores. Determined to get everything done as quickly as possible so I could spend every moment my mate was awake at her side.

Chapter 5

Farah

“What do you think, Buzz?” I asked the purple miniature dragon sitting on the edge of the bed next to me. For five days I’d been on this bed except for embarrassing trips to a bucket behind a shelf when I needed to pee. I didn’t want to know at all how that had gone while I’d been passed out. By now it was obvious that I’d lain unconscious for more than just a few days.

I was utterly exhausted from the smallest of tasks. I slept most of the day and night away, interspersed with dozens of small meals that my host insisted on feeding me himself. Somehow, despite spending all my time in bed, I found myself cleaner than I should have been. I suspected that my caretaker sneakily washed me when I was asleep, and I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for that or a little disturbed.

Fact was, each time I saw him, my heart went mental inside my chest. When he left, I was disappointed. I wanted to be able to speak with him, to learn all about him and his menagerie of animals. There were at least a dozen of them in the room with me. Like the wriggling little babies that he hand-fed, and the purple stag that docilely let him treat him. Most were small animals though, like Buzz and Srazz.

Currently, I had managed to get up and do my own round of washing from a bowl of water that my caretaker had left at the edge of the fire to warm. I’d finger-brushed my hair as much as I could and used a piece of string Buzz had found somewhere to tie it back into a neat ponytail. It made me feel almost human again, almost like I was ready to get up and start living.

Buzz had been named for his purple color, ability to fly, and the fact that I was light years away from home. The tiny, velvety-soft dragon chirped cheerfully at me when I asked him a question, tilting his cute little head this way and that while his lavender eyes stayed locked on my face. Maybe he was a bit confused by my appearance with my hair pulled back, it sure felt different to me.

A good different, I hoped, while anxiously wiping the strip of wet fur across my face one last time. I was primping for my caretaker, there was no denying that. I was sick of being sick and feeling like a wet blanket with noodles for legs. I wanted to do stuff, to be awake for more than an hour at a time. I wanted to know where the fudge I was and figure out how to talk with him.

A silence fell over the room, all the animals suddenly freezing in place. I had a vague recollection of that happening once before, but then my green, scaly rescuer had shown up. Excited that he might be returning, I looked expectantly at the door. There was no sign of him, and my smile dropped the longer the animals remained quiet. A deep unease settled deep in my belly, and goosebumps broke out along the back of my neck.

It felt like I was being watched; eyes on me when there shouldn’t be any. I turned around and gazed beyond the animal pens and cages into the warren of cluttered shelves and darkness further back. I couldn’t see the back wall, and I was convinced that there was a doorway back there and someone was staring at me from the dark. I wasn’t alone.

Buzz suddenly flared his wings and curled his back, little spikes raised along his spine as he postured and growled. It wasn’t anything impressive, especially with one wing lopsided from the bandages and splint that covered it. The fact that he growled filled me with a hint of relief, see, I wasn’t alone in feeling threatened.

The purple stag-like creature in his pen suddenly jerked his head around, angling his two twisted horns at the back of the room. He scraped the straw-covered floor with a hoof and snorted, eyes rolling in his head so I could see the whites. “Easy boy,” I murmured, “What do you see?” Not that the stag would answer me, or Buzz.

As suddenly as the quietness had fallen, followed by the aggressive tension in some of my caretaker’s patients, it was gone. The stag lowered his head and sighed, skin shaking along his rump and then down to the tip of his tufted tail. Then he opened his maw and started munching on his straw as if nothing had happened at all.

Buzz took a little longer to relax, but then he scuttled around and straight into my lap, purring and seeking pets. I was not at all surprised this time when my green friend ducked into the room barely a moment later. Whatever had threatened me and the animals had been scared off by his arrival.

I didn’t know his name, so I thought of him mostly as the caretaker, but sometimes as that sexy alien. Today he was definitely the sexy alien. His scales shimmered with water droplets clinging to him, his long tail seemed extra shiny, and his long blue-green hair was braided along his temples to hold it out of his face. With the trident in his hand, he looked to me like Poseidon, the water god.

“Hi,” I said, which was usually the extent of our conversation. He managed something that sounded close to ‘hi’ back to me, his emerald eyes shining with a fierce, almost possessive glow. That was a look I had come to expect from him. He was always intense that way, staring at me as he rushed whatever he did. Whether that was to feed me, give me water, or one of the many trinkets he liked to give me, it didn’t matter. It was always done with the same intensity, the same focus. Like I was the only person in the entire world, it was both unsettling and extremely flattering to be on the receiving end of those kinds of stares. It made me feel like I was precious somehow.