by Logan Jacobs
Fela’s hand shook as she pressed her left palm against the glass, right over mine.
“I have been far from home before,” she said, “but never so far that I could not get back. If staying here with you means that I can possibly make it home again, then I will stay until you can find someone to repair your cave that moves between the worlds. But I will not stay a day longer than that.”
“That’s fair,” I agreed. “And you’re not going to try to kill me as revenge for eating your seeds or dragging you to another world, right? Because neither of those things were--well, okay, no, the seeds were my fault, I did eat them, but I didn’t realize that they were your planting seeds and I was going to give you some food in return, I promise. I’m not a total asshole, I was just hungry.”
“Revenge,” Fela said slowly. “No, I am not a crow. I do not hunt those who have hurt me just for the sake of the hunt. I wanted my seeds back.”
“I thought you said you were going to eat me.” I cringed inwardly as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I really hadn’t wanted to remind Fela of what she’d said in the cave, since she’d seemed pretty sincere about eating me, so I changed the subject. “How were you going to get your seeds back after I ate them, anyway?”
“If you ate them last night, they’d still be in your belly,” Fela explained. “I was planning to see if I could find any seeds in your guts after I killed you.”
“But you decided not to kill me,” I reminded her. “And I am super, super grateful for that. I’m sure we can get you more seeds, even if they’re not the exact same kind of plants you had. Maybe we can even find you some berries that are a little sweeter than those purple things.”
“I did not keep them for the taste,” Fela growled.
“The important thing is, I’m willing to pay you back for what I took from you.” My stomach growled. “Starting with the food. I’m hungry, and I have enough to share right now.”
“Where?” Fela pressed her face against the window and peered into the car. “I don’t see anything in your cave. Or are you food stores hidden?”
“Yeah, they’re kind of hidden,” I said. I held my hand up, then moved it slowly down into the well of the passenger seat. “I”m not grabbing a weapon, I’m just going to show you what I brought for food, okay?”
“No weapons,” Fela nodded. “We agreed.”
“Okay, good.” I pulled one of the MREs out from under the passenger seat and held the fat brown plastic envelope up to the window. “I have two of these left. One of them can feed a human being like me for about half a day, so we’ll have to go out and find more food before the sun sets. I don’t know what your people eat, but I’m guessing that since your seeds didn’t poison me or anything, you’re probably going to be able to eat most of the things I eat.”
“I will try it.” Fela peered at the MRE.
“Okay, take a few steps back.” I waved Fela out of the way. “I’m going to get out of the cave, and I don’t want to hit you with the door.”
Fela backed up quickly until she was standing next to Floppy, and her pet mammoth draped his long brown trunk around her shoulders and shuffled over until Fela was standing right between his long, curved tusks.
I grabbed the other MRE from under the seat, opened Honest Abe’s door, and tossed both MREs onto the Lincoln’s patchy metal hood. Then I swung my legs around so that the soles of my Red Wing boots were on the solid ground of my pocket dimension, stood up, and closed the door. The force of my slam made the Lincoln shake a little, and that made my MREs start to slide down the hood, but I caught them before they hit the ground. I was pretty sure the food in there would be fine no matter how much I tossed the packages around, but I sort of wanted to show off my reflexes to Fela, even though I was pretty sure that a cat-woman who spent her entire life surviving in a savage wilderness had much better reflexes than I did. I took one MRE in each hand, read the labels on both, then held them out in front of me.
“I have beef tacos with rice and beans or chili mac with lemon cake,” I said. “Pick one.”
“I heard more words I recognized in the first one than in the second,” Fela sighed. She held out her hand to me. “Let me have the auroch wraps and grass seeds. I don’t know what you humans like, but sour fruit that burns my mouth doesn’t sound very good to me.”
I wasn’t sure exactly how that pill I’d taken was translating my words to Fela, but whatever it was, it seemed to be doing a pretty half-assed job. Or maybe I was just using words that had no real translation into her language, and the pill was doing the best job it could. I was pretty sure that a civilization that hadn’t even figured out fire yet wouldn’t be likely to have the concept of cake or pasta, either. I handed the beef taco MRE to Fela, then leaned against the hood of the car to open up my chili mac meal.
Fela watched me cautiously as I ripped open the MRE package and started to lay the smaller envelopes inside on the hood of the car. She patted Floppy on the trunk, then sat cross-legged on the ground and started to imitate my actions.
“Get ready to have your mind blown,” I told her. “I guarantee you’ve never tasted anything like beef tacos in your life.”
“I’ll find out when I eat them, Dave Meyer,” Fela said, raised an eyebrow at me, and then bent her head over her envelope.
I grinned as I watched the sunlight play off the gorgeous cat-woman’s auburn hair. At least now I had some company on this crazy journey.
Chapter 7
I sat cross-legged on the ground next to Honest Abe, chewed the last of the bland, sweet lemon pound cake that had come with the chili mac MRE, and watched Fela finish her meal. I already felt a lot better now that I had some serious protein and carbs in me, and I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the way my sexy new ally was exploring her portion of human food.
Fela sat crouched over her MRE packages like a cat hunched over its bowl. The gorgeous cat-woman dipped one finger into her packet of cheese spread, pulled out a finger covered in traffic-cone orange goop, and sniffed at the new foodstuff. Her adorable nose wrinkled up, her pink lips parted, and her brilliant yellow eyes crossed a little as she inspected the cheese. She leaned forward, stuck her pointed pink tongue out between her pearly white fangs, and lapped at the neon goop in quick little licks. When she’d cleaned the last traces of orange off her finger, she stuck her tongue into the opening she’d ripped in the top of the cheese spread package and started to lap it up right from the plastic.
Floppy stood behind Fela like a sentinel. He’d positioned himself at the edge of the circle right behind his saber-toothed mistress so that he could eat, and his brown eyes didn’t stop glaring at me even as he inspected the unfamiliar trees that were his breakfast. The mini-mammoth swung his trunk up into the leafy canopy above his head, waved the prehensile end of his nose around, and he sniffed at each leaf on the branch he’d selected. When he’d found a branch that seemed to be acceptable, he curled his trunk around the limb he’d chosen, yanked it violently downward to tug it away from the tree, and swung the branch over his head before he put it down and started to strip the leaves away. His huge brown eyes narrowed a little each time as if to say, “This could be you if you’re not careful.”
I wondered how someone got a woolly mammoth as their pet. Especially one that seemed packed full of personality like the cat-girl’s steed. I wasn’t sure how much of our conversation Floppy had really understood, but I knew that elephants had long memories. Even though I’d managed to talk Fela into trusting me enough not to kill me, I definitely hadn’t won over her pet mammoth yet, and I really didn’t want to keep hopping from dimension to dimension with a big hairy elephant who was mad at me.
I swallowed the last bite of lemon pound cake, poked through my empty MRE wrappers to see what I had left, and found an unopened package of vegetable crackers. I was pretty sure Floppy was a vegetarian if he was stuffing leaves into his mouth like that, so I figured that crackers made out of flour and vegetable bits would probably be fine for h
im. I’d had the same kind of vegetable crackers at Sol’s before when he’d pulled out his survival prepper stuff for lunch, and they were pretty good, so maybe they’d help Floppy associate me with tasty snacks instead of with the loud noise and the chase.
“Hey, does Floppy like treats?” I held up the package of vegetable crackers. “This is just vegetables and wheat, but they’re not really my favorites or anything. I thought I’d give him a snack.”
“That is very little food to Floppy,” Fela warned me. She hooked one of her claws into the cheese spread packet and ripped it open down the side, then bent her head and started to lick the plastic clean. “But he will like it more than I will. I have eaten more grass today already than I normally do in a month.”
“Grass?” I glanced at the crackers, then at the long, green grass that waved between the trees at the edge of the circle. “A lot of human food is made out of different types of grass. It’s how we get a lot of our energy.”
“My people eat mostly meat.” Fela shrugged. “Those seeds I was going to plant help you shit. Some of them come out in shit anyway. I’m sure I can save a few.”
“Okay, you’re not going to poke through my poop,” I warned her. “That’s super nasty, and it’s how you get the kind of diseases that make you shit yourself to death, and I didn’t even bring any soap. Not happening.”
Fela eyed me for a moment, flicked her tail, and turned her attention back to the cheese packet.
“You should give Floppy that treat,” she said between slurps. “He likes to eat when the pride does.”
I stood up, ripped open the packet of crackers, and tipped four big squares out onto my left palm. I stuffed the empty packet in my pocket, then took one of the crackers and held it out flat on my palm as I shuffled over to Floppy.
“Hey, Floppy,” I said to the mammoth. “You want a treat, buddy?”
Floppy looked down at Fela, lowered his trunk, and curled up the end of his long prehensile nose like a question mark.
“Go ahead, Floppy.” Fela reached up and patted her mammoth on the trunk, then pointed at me. “He is safe. Dave Meyer is a friend.”
Floppy tilted his head to one side, raised his trunk, and reached out past Fela’s shoulder toward me. As the mammoth’s trunk inched closer to my hand, I realized that the end of his nose wasn’t just a tube with nostrils like I’d thought. The mammoth had two pointed flaps of skin that looked like wide, flat fingers protruding from the top of his snout, and another pointed finger-flap on the bottom.
His nostrils widened as he sniffed at the cracker in my hand, and then the mammoth curled his finger-flaps together around the cracker and picked it up from my palm. His skin felt rough and dry, but warm, and his faintly musky scent filled my nostrils as he curled the end of his cracker-laden trunk toward his open mouth. He placed the cracker delicately on his long pink tongue, closed his mouth, and rolled his eyes around in his head as he chewed.
“Does that mean he likes it?” I whispered to Fela.
“He hasn’t spit it out,” Fela shrugged. She held up another plastic package in her left hand, slashed the package open with her claws, and then shoved her hand inside and dug around. She pulled out a handful of shelled sunflower seeds, raisins, and almonds, sniffed at it, and looked up at me. “Why did you not tell me you had seeds and dried berries? They do not look exactly the same as the ones I took from my old territory, but I think I can figure out how to make them grow.”
“They aren’t really for growing,” I explained. “Those seeds and nuts have probably been baked for so long that they can’t spout anymore. They’re covered in salt, anyway, and I’m pretty sure that’s bad for plants. And I don’t even think those raisins have seeds in them.”
Floppy reached out to me with his trunk, nabbed the other three crackers off my palm, and shoved them into his mouth.
“I guess you liked those, huh, big guy?” I asked the mammoth. I reached up and held my hand a few inches away from his trunk with my fingers spread. “Can I pet you?”
Floppy sniffed at my hand, then reached down with his trunk and nosed at my jacket pocket.
“No, no!” I snatched the wrapper away from his prehensile trunk tips. “That’s not good for mammoths, bud. You won’t be able to digest that and you'll get really sick.”
Floppy snorted and shook his head back and forth so that his big batwing ears slapped against the sides of his face.
“No,” Fela agreed as she held up one of her own empty food packets. She patted Floppy on the trunk, scooped up a handful of trail mix, and offered it to her pet. “Yes, eat.”
I cleaned up the empty food packets and stuffed them into Honest Abe’s door pocket while Fela shared the rest of her trail mix with Floppy. Once I’d dealt with the trash and reholstered my Glock, I leaned against Honest Abe’s door and checked my watch to see how much time we had.
It was about 10 in the morning, and the countdown timer on the watch read 002:03:25:37. That meant we’d leave at around 1:30 PM, and a nice easy afternoon shift sounded pretty good to me.
“It looks like we’ve got about two days here,” I announced to Fela. “Want to go explore?”
“You mean wander away from your world-traveling cave without knowing the land and risk being lost in the same strange place forever with no hope of making it home?” Fela’s pointed pink tongue lapped at the tips of her fingers. “I’m not even sure why you were so far away from it in the first place. If you were just looking for water, you had the stream right there.”
“I didn’t mean to get that lost,” I admitted. “I got ambushed by a bunch of bear-men while I was filling my water bottle. I was just trying to get away from them, and I ended up running too far for me to get back to my cave before the sun set.”
“The river is not so hard to see on a clear night.” Fela tilted her head to the side. “Or were you worried about the great-owls? They are large, and their screams make a fierce sound, but they usually like bigger prey than us.”
“Great-owls?” I shook my head. “I think there were a lot of animals in your world that I missed seeing, which is totally fine with me. My people just can’t see very well in the dark. I don’t know if yours can.”
“Yes, I see,” Fela murmured, but her tone didn’t tell me whether she was confirming that her people had feline night vision, or whether she just understood what I’d said. She picked up her spear, stood up, and glanced around the clearing. “How do you know how much time we have left?”
“I’m reading the time on my watch.” I held my left hand out so Fela could see the chunky black watch on my wrist, then pointed at the watch face. “These numbers show me how long we have left here, these numbers show me what time it is, and this arrow always points toward my cave so I know how to get back home.”
Fela leaned down and peered at the watch face. She opened her mouth, flared her nostrils, and pricked up her ears as she took a deep breath.
“I understand the arrow, but the rest of those shapes mean nothing to me.” Fela shook her head. “Do they speak in a voice I cannot hear?”
“Okay, I don’t want to sound insulting or anything, but do your people even have the idea of a written language?” I asked. “Like, little marks that stand for the sounds that make up words.”
“I have never heard of that.” Fela frowned. “But my sister Shadowpainter uses different colors of dirt to draw shapes on rock that look like animals, so that when we roam we can remember what kind of prey lives where. Sometimes she’ll make shapes that she says look like us when we killed the animal, but you can’t always tell who is who.”
“Hey, my people used to do that!” I exclaimed. “And we carried around seeds with us to plant, too. We even made friends with other animals, the way you did with Floppy.”
“It seems that our people have much in common,” Fela murmured.
She looked up from the watch face to gaze into my eyes, and my breath caught in my throat as she slid the tip of her tongue along her full, pink bottom
lip. Her tongue curled up at the corner of her mouth to lap a small dollop of orange cheese spread away from her lip. She raised her hand to her mouth, licked a long, slow stripe across the back of her hand, and then smoothed an unruly lock of her auburn hair behind her black, pointed ear. Her tail curled up behind her as she slid her other hand down the shaft of her spear.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I breathed as I felt my cock twitch at the cat-woman’s sexy display. I could smell something musky, tangy, and a little floral in the air, like the fancy bergamot and orange blossom shampoo the last girl I’d hooked up with had in her shower, but it was a lot more addictive than that overwhelming, artificial soap had been. I inhaled a long breath of the tempting scent.
“Interesting.” Fela sniffed again, shook her head so that her auburn curls bounced around her tawny shoulders, then bent her head and peered at my watch again. “I would like to learn how to read those numbers, if you will show me. Are they the same as those markings on the food wrappers?”
“Okay, I’ve never taught anyone how to read, but I do have a pill that I think will help,” I said. I wasn’t sure if the pill would make Fela suddenly literate, but I figured that if she was going to come along with me, then she probably needed one of the pills. I could understand her just fine, but I had no idea what kind of snarls or yowls were actually coming out of her mouth. “It lets you talk to anyone, no matter what language they speak.”
“Strong magic.” Fela nodded. “But useful. I would give much to know what the bear-men say when they speak in their own tongue.”
“Great, let me go get the pills.” I tore my gaze away from the gorgeous cat-woman, went over to Honest Abe, and retrieved the little orange bottle of Universal Translator pills from the glove compartment. I shook one out onto my palm for Fela, capped the bottle and put it away, then turned around to see Fela’s bright yellow eyes barely six inches from mine.