Yaro had trouble finding sleep since she’d left. She tossed and turned all night, longing for memories consumed. She had the feelings, the drive, but the reason wasn’t there. How could she chase something without reason?
Sleep always did catch her, eventually. It may take a few days, but her physical exhaustion proved to be a fine reason for sleep to slip by her worries and capture her.
This was one of those nights where dreams tried to claw at her. Before they could drag her into a fantasy, a thump and whimpering brought her fully back. She was about to be attacked.
She held still, her cloak covering her in a heap next to some trash. Three humi stood in darkness, auras beleaguered with inebriants and anger.
There was a fourth person, a serpent, the one who wept and hissed in anguish, a pain of body and mind.
Yaro gained her bearings. She nestled under a bridge in yet another city she didn’t know the name of. The people here spoke a kind of mixture between the common Lald and something breathy. She could make out most of what the drunkards spat.
“You’re about to be more snake than humi,” one laughed. “just a few more hacks and you’ll look right.”
They surrounded the serpent, leaning over them while they coiled close against the bridge’s glistening wet wall.
“You should just skip town. Go back to your home. Go eat some rats in a cave like the rest.”
Scared words eked from the serpent, “the baker says he needs me. P-please, leave me alone.”
A blood-curdling wet thwack came as the center humi drove some kind of blade down. Yaro didn’t have an angle to see properly, she couldn’t risk exposing herself.
“Shut up, wretch. Keep talking and you won’t be able to catch anything but rats!” They laughed hysterically, bending backwards with so irksome exaggeration. They stumbled back, catching themselves before they fell onto Yaro.
She took the opportunity and jumped at the stumbling humi. She drove her claws into the squishy arm flesh, eliciting a gasp of pain and surprise.
She took the moment of confusion as an opportunity to better assess the situation. The humi she grabbed felt limp, like they were ready to pass out and soil themselves. The other two took too long to turn and react. The serpent, a young gorgon, sat in a pool of rain-water-diluted blood, shimmering in the dim city light from either end of the alley.
They were missing one arm and several head-mouths. Blood poured from her remaining arm, tendons holding on by a thread while bone poked from either end. She had to act quickly, to at least save her life, if not her arm.
She needed more time, more confusion. She shouted, echoing, “To Yon with you filth. Leave now, or face the righteous anger of a Tukk soldier.”
She took a gamble on their religious nature. Even if they weren’t the most righteous believers. She would bet their drunkenness would bring about more feelings of fear for their souls.
They stared at her dumbly. She would need a heavier chip than words, it seemed. If they were going to leave, they'd do so in a hurry. So she let go of their companion and regrasped him with one arm around his neck. Her other hand now free, she called the burning in the pattern on her palm, summoning flames that lit the alley. She snapped it on the ground. “Leave! Or your friend dies.”
They looked at one another, wordless communication with their eyes. They turned and ran as cowards, screaming about a monster from Yon.
She had exposed herself, cloak billowing behind her like a tent in a storm. She threw her captive to the ground, commanding them to leave as well, if they wanted to keep their head.
They vomited on the ground before scrambling up and after his companions, clenching tightly on his arm. It reeked of alcohol and shone with half-digested meat.
She ignored the bile and turned to the gorgon. She approached the creature, wondering why she did so and why she attacked those humi. She compromised herself, not only letting them know she existed, but also revealing her form. Even before this creature, cowering and in agony, she kept her robe open and hood down. Shadows of crooked horns danced like a jester’s draconic crown.
Yaro should have left then, left the city and found a new one to find rest in. Instead, she crouched, looking the gorgon directly in their eye. The other eye had a patch over it, Yaro hadn’t noticed before. They trembled, staring not at Yaro but at what Yaro represented: their end.
“It will be hard to believe,” Yaro said in the softest voice she could manage, “but I will not hurt you.”
The gorgon stared, leaning down so her arm was in the least-painful position it could be in. Leaning down and as far as she could be from Yaro. It wept openly, tears running down their jaws and their aura like a weighty thundercloud.
Yaro emanated peace, repeating, “I won’t hurt you.”
Nothing Yaro could do would ease the tension. But she had to do something before they would lose their other arm or bleed out. She came down to one knee, close enough to the arm that she could reach it. She removed her mask, hoping truth may ease her tension. She doubted it, but she had little else to work with.
“I will paralyze you,” it said in many hushed voices. “I will paralyze you,” it said, waving its mouths slowly in display.
“I don’t believe that,” Yaro said. She drew close to the wound, opening her mouth and exposing her many fangs and stubs. She pointed at her tongue. “My toxin heals instead.”
“I will paralyze you,” the gorgon repeated, less convincingly. She winced as her involuntary movements pulled her arm from her body. “I will…”
“No, you won’t.” Yaro said. “You will remain still while I heal you.” She leaned towards the arm, all the while keeping eye contact and emanating peace. It was difficult to do, her nerves wanted to scream panic. Even if she would avoid the venom, it was only a matter of time before the local protectors would come for her. She didn’t have the time to stay here.
“I will…” mumbled the gorgon, “stay still.” Her voice was a whisper in a storm. The sunflower yellow of her eyes waned in vibrance, glassy. Yaro didn’t have much time, nor patience for any further placating.
Yaro got to work. SHE HAD TO HELP BEFORE THEY WERE GORGONE
She held the arm rigid with one hand and the opposite shoulder with the other. She gripped tightly, drawing blood from the shoulder only. She inspected the wound. It was horrible. Tendons were ripped free from the bone, muscle brutally severed, blood drooling from so many vessels, skin shaggy and scales pulverized in.
Yaro opened her mouth, ready for putridity to encase her smell and taste.
The gorgon was delicious.
Yaro had had gorgon meat before, stolen from the table of some well-to-do with Natrai and the others. They feasted on things they would never have been otherwise be able to, the heist taking a hold to savor it. With ample time of the villa owners attending a gala that night, they had things like sugar bread, roasted gorgon flank, renua-rice, and so much more. The carnivores enjoyed the other ghrepul shoulder, phoenix wings, and unicorn kebab -which used the creature's actual horn shaved into a skewer.
Yaro’s mouth trembled at the memory-taste she currently had in her mouth. Fancy people cooked things, but the tastiest and healthiest were raw. Like the gorgon she ate.
No. She was not eating her, she was healing. Every lick, every salty, metallic, and flavor-rich stroke sealed those muscles, tendons, vessels, and lipid-stores. Was it so bad that she got something out of it? Even if she didn’t gain enough sustenance to actually feed her, she was able to experience a flavor she may never again.
It was familiar, too. This was not the first time she did this, healing someone alive. And like now, she knew it tasted wonderful. It was a taste she could not bring back the memory of, a taste like the gorgon’s but more citric.
She let her mind roam as she did like when healing herself. She had little else to do, paying attention to anything quickly lost meaning as the energy every look took stacked on her. It tired her, more so than healing herself. With her own wounds, she could return some of the energy spent back into her system. With this gorgon, all was lost to the repair.
She licked and licked more. If someone were to come, they would think she was teasing her prey and leave her alone. It was not wrong to eat non-civilized creatures like a gorgon, so the common law said. But it still felt vile to her, like cheating a relative. But she was a special case that probably led to higher empathy.
Why was she here healing this gorgon in the first place? Why was she expending energy to the point she knew she would pass out to bring back this creature who’d already suffered such trauma? Would it not have been more right of her to end it's pitiful existence? And then, to consume the flesh, a payment for her services?
That choice was already passed as the bruising arm jolted in her grasp. She must have repaired an important nerve. She would keep going.
The zuyg fell behind the buildings, out of sight. The stars of the zuyg vanished as the sayk colored the sky an unsaturated red of the early morning.
With a lick to seal the skin, she’d finished.
Yaro pulled her cloak up and sat on the filthy ground. She was cold and tired, ready for her deserved sleep. If they came for her, so be it, she hadn’t much to live for in the first place.
She looked to the gorgon, to see if they were even still alive. With that sunflower eye, it gazed back, radiating excitement and gratitude. They were awake?
The wound, though healed, still would need to take a lot of energy to become fully scarred over. She passively felt her leg, the bones slowly going back into place where she’d missed. It wasn’t perfect, and the gorgon would surely be tired as it healed too.
Instead, the gorgon seemed to have more energy than the drunkards from the night before. It trumpeted a noise Yaro assumed meant thank you. Then, it said in the common tongue, “Please, come with me to the baker, she will take care of you.”
Yaro was not about to go anywhere, not that she could anyway. She blinked slowly, sleep pulling her eyes. With what little strength she had left, she crawled back to her hiding spot, donned her mask,and wrapped herself in her cloak. She readied herself for sleep.
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