She didn’t; she hadn’t played with toys in years. And anyway, she was much more interested in showing that she could be trusted not to get into any more trouble the second he stopped watching her. Despite yesterday’s misbehavior, he seemed inclined to want to believe the best of her. He hadn’t even put her in a sleepsack, and that right there was a fragile bond of trust that she was utterly determined to prove herself worthy of.
She never should have run away. It was a hard thing to admit, even just to herself, but she knew now that she was never going home. Change had come, as she had feared it would, and this was one of the consequences. Somehow, this had become her new home. Somehow, she was going to have to get used to it. And to Tral, who seemed very nice when he wasn’t rubbing that awful lotion on her back and bottom. And when he wasn’t spanking her, although there was no denying that she had deserved that. She had stolen his coat and made trouble for him; she had to do better from here on out or her next change might see her cast out into the snow with the men who pounded angrily on the windows.
Thank goodness that had stopped.
Tral snored deeply and her drifting gaze returned to him. His features were lost mostly to shadow, but the room held just enough light for her to see him clearly if she drew close enough. He was very handsome, and very nice. That he willingly allowed her to sleep on his bed felt like a monumental privilege, especially since it wasn’t (once his huge size was considered) a very big bed. Sprawled as he was, he occupied more than half the mattress space. Huddling up close to the headboard in order to give him as much space as possible was beginning to make her legs cramp. Moving slowly so as not to jostle the bed, she extended them out over the edge of the mattress and stretched the stiffness out.
The snores ceased. Rising cautiously onto hands and knees, she edged close enough to peer over the pillow and into his sleeping face. Mouth slightly agape, he looked completely relaxed. With a slight hitch in his breath, Tral resumed his loudly-rattling indrawn breaths a moment later.
Still asleep, then. Bebe eased away from him again.
She lay back down, hoping to keep it that way. Nobody—nice or not—liked being awakened from a deep sleep. Especially not at night, and from here the windows all looked very dark. Pillowing her head on her folded arm, she kept watch over his dreams. Just like he had done for her over the last few days. She had more than one vague and sometimes dream-like memory of being lost in that misery of heat and sweat and shivering sickness, of sleeping in fits and starts only to find him leaning over her whenever she opened her eyes. She remembered him bathing her with a cold cloth, helping her to sit while he coaxed her to drink sips of tea or broth, rolling her onto her stomach while he took her temperature again and again and again.
Yes, Tral was very different from Sir and Ma’am. He had a very hard hand when she provoked him too—Bebe reached back, touching her still tender bottom—but he could also be gentle. She traced his features, the short wave of straight black hair sweeping back from his forehead, the slope of his nose, the broad curve of his chin. He wasn’t Sir or Ma’am, but judging by what she had seen of him thus far, she knew he was someone she could come to like very much. Maybe even love.
If only he weren’t so strange and...well, disorganized.
Bebe cast a disheartened stare around the cluttered room before sliding back into her cocoon of blankets. Shifting close enough to steal a tiny, unused corner of his pillow, she checked Tral’s snoring profile one last time and then tried to go back to sleep.
She needed to use the bathroom.
Pulling the blankets back over her head, Bebe tried to ignore the nagging sensation. She’d almost rather wet the bed than for Tral to wake and find her wandering around the room. He might think she was trying to run away again. He’d be sure to put her in a sleepsack after that. He might even spank her again. Every house had rules, and he seemed to prefer her to stay in his bed.
If she was very quiet and if she hurried, she could go to the bathroom and be back again before Tral ever knew she’d left his side.
Except that he would know, because they always did. She always got caught. If he wanted to her stay in bed, then in bed she was determined to stay. If she tried, she could probably hold it until morning.
Of course, he might also want her to spend the night comfortably, instead of with her legs crossed, jostling the bed as she struggled not to wet herself.
That was being melodramatic. The need wasn’t that bad yet.
Outside, somewhere around the corner of the house she could hear the slow and steady drip...drip...drip of melting water.
With a puff of soft breath, Bebe gave up on sleeping. Pushing back the blankets, she slipped off the side of the bed to stand beside it. She winced, feeling stiff and sore all over, particularly in her feet as she moved cautiously to circle the foot of the bed. Each limping step was enough to make her cringe, but the only sound she allowed herself was the occasional hiss of breath as the particularly tender ball of her left foot occasionally brushed the floor.
Occupied as she was in not making a sound, she was halfway across the room before she became aware of movement in the snow just outside. Bebe froze, listening to the whisper-soft crunches that were circling the porch. It seemed to be following her progress, matching her speed and pausing when she did to listen. The tiny hairs on the nape of her neck prickled. Shying from the sound, she gave the front door a wide berth and hurried on to the bathroom.
She used the toilet as quietly as possible, then washed up in the sink. Afterwards, she stood looking at her pink-painted fingernails, each one trimmed in at the sides until they resembled Ma’am’s pretty claws. Hers were all dirty and two were torn. She tried to clean them under the faucet, but after a while it all seemed so pointless. Bending, she bit away the claw-like tips and watched as the water washed the pieces down the drain.
Sitting down in front of the bathroom sink, the floor cold under her, the water running aimlessly into the bowl of the sink above, she struggled not to cry. She was tired of crying. It only made her eyes burn and her head hurt, and it certainly wasn’t going to change anything. She lived here now. She had to stop thinking about the past and start getting used to Tral.
After a while, she got up and shut the water off.
Limping back out into the main room, she stood looking at the fire and the shadowy surrounding of mess that cluttered every available surface. Though it was still the middle of the night, she wasn’t at all tired anymore. Briefly, she considered cleaning up a little, like she used to do for First Ma’am, but which Ma’am never liked for her to do. Obviously, Tral didn’t have a Ma’am to pick up for him. He didn’t even have a sweeper, and frankly he could have used both. Maybe Tral wouldn’t mind if she took care of him just a little. Maybe she’d try to wash the dishes tomorrow and if she did it while he was watching her, then if he protested she’d know what the rules of the house were regarding that.
The creeping, stalking crunching sound continued to move outside. Restless footsteps following her from the bathroom, around the corner of the house to pause again near the window that overlooked the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. Very quietly, whatever it was tested the latched sill.
Bebe hesitated, not at all sure she wanted to peek outside and see first hand what was trying to get in. At best, she might get the scare of her life; at worst, that awful pounding could start up again, no doubt startling Tral wide awake. He’d definitely know she was up then.
She always got caught.
Still, Bebe hesitated. After a moment, her curiosity got the best of her and she tiptoed across the floor to take hold of the curtain’s hem. Her breath caught in her too-tight throat as she leaned over the sink and cautiously peeled the fabric back far enough to peek out and straight into the unblinking eyes of the scruffy human male peeking back in.
Bebe froze, locked in the grip of those dark eyes. Bad human, Tral had said. Of course, at the time the human had been trying to beat his way into the house. Obviously,
he’d been angry then, but he didn’t look angry right now. If anything, he almost seemed relieved to see her. He pressed his open hand against the window, steaming the glass right her face-level.
Bebe hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder at Tral, who lay obliviously slumbering on and snoring fit to rattle the rafter beams. Blinking twice, she glanced reluctantly back at the outside male. It was night and it was snowing, and he stood right in the thick of it, straight and strong, dark and furry. Very furry. Even his clothes were furry, and the thick curling hairs on his face and the top of his head were so shaggy, obviously no one had taken him to be groomed in quite some time.
Trying not to look as repulsed as she felt, she tentatively slipped her hand under the hem of the curtain and pressed her palm to the cool glass that separated hers from his. The breadth and length of his hand dwarfed her own, and yet it seemed so small compared to what she was used to.
His mouth moved, but she could hear no sounds. He mouthed again, slower this time, and a jolt of half-remembered past came flooding back to her. Bebe cocked her head, staring at his lips, half hidden by his snow-dotted beard. She moved her lips in sync with his, puzzling through the words—both familiar and yet strangely not—until they became clear.
‘Are you okay?’
It wasn’t big-people speak. These were words Bebe hadn’t heard in quite some time, not since her mother had spoke them, back when Bebe lived in a plain slat-board stall with straw on the floor. Back before she had been collared and sent to live with First Ma’am. The first change that had ever rocked her life.
Bebe recoiled, instantly uncomfortable. Snatching her hand from the cold glass, she let the curtain fall and shut the male from her sight.
She looked over her shoulder at Tral, still snoring. Terribly unsure of herself, she tapped her fingers worriedly. She didn’t want to, but after a good full minute of nervous indecision, she reached for the curtain again.
The furry man remained as he had been, standing in the swirl of new-falling white flakes, his hand still flat against the window pane. Even more hesitantly than before, she reached for him. The glass didn’t feel quite as cold as before; his palm, strangely small and square-ish and yet so much larger than hers, was heating it.
Her lips trembled as Bebe struggled to remember her mother’s words. ‘Go...go a-away,’ she finally mouthed back, then snatched her hand from his and dropped the curtain again.
She limped several steps away from the sink, waiting for what felt like hours. She never did hear his footsteps crunching away into the night, however. And sure enough, when she finally did summon enough courage to check outside, there he was, still with his open palm steaming the icy window. The only move he made was the curling of his bearded mouth as he smiled at her.
He waited expectantly, then beckoned with his head, his warm brown eyes dancing until her fingers unfurled and reluctantly reached for his. Her stomach was a tight jumble of knots. She was very, very uncomfortable and her hand was trembling, but she still touched her palm to his through the glass.
‘No,’ he mouthed and his breath fogged the air when he grinned.
Bebe frowned. She was half-tempted to let the curtain fall and this time leave it that way, but he recaptured her attention and grudging curiosity when he beckoned with his head, two slight jerks to the right. It was a come-hither and follow-me motion that she traced through the room until her gaze came to rest squarely on the window he had been trying to break through earlier that night. Bebe frowned, but when he did finally take his hand from the glass and vanish into the snowy night, she reluctantly limped after him, following the wall to the next corner and then over to the window tucked behind Tral’s work station. When she peeled back that curtain, there the human male was, smiling widely and waiting for her.
Again, he beckoned with his shaggy, furry head, gesturing her on now towards the door. Bebe shied a half-step back, but she did not let go of the curtain. She shook her head.
‘Open,’ he mouthed.
She shook her head harder, but her eyes drifted over his shoulder to the rapid-falling flakes of white snow. There were drifts knee-high against the porch’s support beams. It was probably very cold out there.
As if he could read her mind, he hugged himself and gave a slight shiver, but his eyes were still dancing as his mouth silently begged, ‘Please open.’
Bebe felt herself giving in long before she actually did. Knowing this would probably rank quite highly among all the other stupid things she’d yet done in her life, she touched two fingers to her lips and glared at him to be quiet.
The male accepted that command with a nod, crossing one finger across his heart and then holding up three more with his other hand in a very strange sort of salute.
Her brows beetled. She wasn’t at all sure she should trust him, and she was almost positive that she really shouldn’t open the door. But there were fat flakes of snow in his hair and sticking to the fur on his face, and all she could think about was how cold she had been yesterday when she’d been lost in the snow. It hadn’t been snowing then; not like it was now.
Frowning, she let the curtain fall closed. She glared at the back of it for a long time, knowing she shouldn’t and yet, in the end, she limped around the table toward the front door anyway. She cast a quick glance at Tral, the skin of her bottom tingling in dreadful warning, but already she could hear quiet crunching steps following her across the porch. She wrestled with her conscience first and then with the security latch.
One quick burst of cold invaded the heat of the station house along with the large human male. True to his word, he very quickly and quietly pushed his way inside. Holding up a finger to stay his approaching companions—she startled when she saw them, melting like shadows out of the snowy night to climb the fire-lit front porch—he shut the door. Glancing back over his shoulder at Tral, his eyes darkened into something that made her nervousness intensify. Then he turned back to her. That dark expression left him as his staring eyes roved her, staying locked well below her face for so long that Bebe timidly looked down, following the direction of his eyes and studying herself in an attempt to figure out what was wrong. She couldn’t see anything. Just herself, the curves and vales of her body locked in the flickering shadows of the dying fire in the hearth.
His face flushed. Finally, he managed to drag his gaze back up to her face. He tried to smile, but it was every bit as shaky as the finger he brought to his silently moving lips. “Shhh.”
She already regretted letting him in; she wasn’t about to make a sound. Not even when he reached behind her to grab Tral’s heavy coat from the wall. She resisted, trying to hang it back up while he tried every bit as insistently to wrap the overlarge and very heavy clothing around her shoulders.
Tral snorted, halting the silent argument when it froze them both. The human snapped his head around to stare at the slumbering giant, one hand dropping quickly to the knife at his belt. Bebe’s eyes widened. Really regretting having let him inside now, she grabbed the knife too, fully prepared to fight over that as well. The human male didn’t look at her and he didn’t move, he simply watched and waited, but Tral didn’t waken. Instead, drawing a deep breath, he shoved the gun off his chest and threw that arm over his eyes before settling back into his dreams.
Slowly, the human began to relax. He turned to look at her again, and then looked down at her hands, wrapped around his and the knife. He pulled gently, but Bebe didn’t let go until she realized he was angling to tuck it back into his belt.
She shrank from him, trembling. She never should have opened that door. Snapping one arm out, she pointed for him to leave, but the furry male had turned away from her again. He began to rummage quietly through the room, stepping over and around the clutter to feel his way across shelves higher than his head and search the cupboards and cabinets. Finding a length of rope at last, he crept back to her.
“Shhh,” he said again, tucking one finger to his lips before pulling his knife to slice the
rope into two segments. She watched, shifting restlessly until he put the knife away again. Then, cupping her shoulders in his large hands, he maneuvered her to stand well back from the door and didn’t let go until she was pressed firmly against the wall.
It was a relief to see him reach for the latch. Finally, he was leaving, even if he was stealing Tral’s rope as he went.
She bristled, frowning at the vandalized rope, but she wasn’t sure it was worth what might occur if her protests woke Tral.
‘Go,’ she mouthed, shooing at the bad—Tral had been right; he was absolutely bad—human with both hands for good measure.
How Tral slept through the cold gust of air that accompanied the opening of the front door, Bebe had no idea. What he didn’t sleep through, however, was suddenly being jumped on by four human men, all of them every bit as furry as their leader and each aggressively scrambling to secure their grips on either his wrists or ankles as they pressed him flat to the mattress.
Bebe screamed when Tral bellowed, fully awake and now frantically struggling to get out from under the bottom of the living pile. Hands trapped in the sleeves of his overlarge coat, she slapped them over her mouth, frantically keeping the bevy of subsequent shrieks locked in the back of her throat. It wasn’t helping the situation, and she only seemed to be distracting Tral, enabling the humans to get one cut length of rope wrapped tightly around his ankles, which were then tied to the foot of the bedframe.
“Carve the fucker up,” one man growled. A grizzled older man with more white in his hair than rapidly melting snowflakes could account for, the effort of securing Tral to the bed was already leaving him panting.
“No,” the big male quickly countered. “We won’t last three days if we start killing them.”
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