“How are things going with the others?” Goru asked.
Millie closed her eyes and opened them disturbed, “Milo is focused on his own thing. He won’t respond to me. He has never ignored me before…”
Goru laid a calming and supportive hand on her arm, “Take it as a good sign he’s focused on his surroundings. He would have called us in to help immediately if something was wrong. I’d definitely rather he was focusing on what he was doing rather than blindly chatting with you.” Millie took a deep breath then sighed. “Let’s join the others, it’s getting chilly out here.”
They entered the shelter, with Millie in the lead. By the time Goru had closed the door behind himself he heard Faith, “She’s awake.” I think…
“No, dad don’t touch me. Don’t make me sick again. I won’t make things move!” Lyla shouted batting away Faith’s hands.
“Lyla, it’s me, Faith. I just need to see how you are…” Faith tried to touch Lyla again. Lyla slapped her across the face and Faith staggered backwards into the structure of the shelter.
Goru saw instantly in a flash of intuition how to calm her delirium. He gave it a try, “Lyla Amante! You did not just slap your father! Settle down now! I wasn’t going to touch you, and you are just being silly thinking I can make you sick!”
Lyla quieted to a degree, “Daddy, when is mommy coming? I thought she would be here today.”
“You know your mother is very busy. She wishes she could be here but her work…” Goru continued in the role of her father.
Millie’s eyes lost focus momentarily then she spoke, “Stone says to give her some water, as a Porusan hybrid her body can provide or collect almost anything else she needs.”
Faith started to put the straw of a pouch of water to Lyla’s lips. Lyla fussed and pushed her hands away. Goru took the pouch, “Lyla honey, I need you to drink this for daddy. It will make you feel better. It is just water.” He put it to her lips and she sipped tentatively then she snatched it from his hands and drained it. Goru offered her several more, which she also drained then she lay back down and drifted off to sleep. Goru gently smoothed her hair back. He flinched away from her when he remembered all eyes were on him. “What? It worked didn’t it?”
- - - - - - -
After watching Goru’s tender treatment of Lyla, Millie wasn’t surprised when he gruffly headed back outside. She followed him as did Beaker and Fubar. “They reached the village. Goru what do we want them to do now?”
“Have them make contact,” Goru suggested with a shrug.
Millie looked to Beaker and Fubar. They both shrugged as well. Millie communicated to her brother, “It seems to be helping. Goru suggested and we agreed you should try to make contact.”
Milo flashed her a feeling of sarcastic irony and then gave her an internal nod. She felt him pull his focus away from their bond and to his task. It left Millie uncomfortably alone. She forced herself to find comfort in those around her. “He relayed the suggestion. They are making an attempt.”
“Good, can you keep track of how it is going?” Goru asked.
Millie was close to tears at the separation and stress of having to respond as an individual, “No, Milo has his focus on the task and it would be a clear distraction to split attention with me.”
Goru nodded, “Good to know. I’m glad he is task oriented, less chance of trouble that way.”
Beaker looked at Millie supportively, and opened his mouth to offer comfort for her obvious distress. It closed and Millie sensed his knowledge that he had no frame of reference for that comfort. She also sensed his sincere desire to help her. Just that tentative connection was calming to her. It gave strength to her curiosity about him. A curiosity that extended to his physical form. It wasn’t that she was unfamiliar with male anatomy. She had seen her brother often enough. She was simply curious about Beaker’s form in particular. Millie blushed.
Millie felt the return of Milo’s focus an intrusion. Her blush deepened. “Millie, Stone tried about every language in existence and Sport circled and explored the village. I went into a shelter. None of us spotted a single child, toy or trace of one. None of the villagers have spoken. There is a spooky vibe around this place.”
“Guys, they made a go of it. The village is creepy. No one is talking and there aren’t any kids. What should they do now?”
Goru set his jaw, “Call them back here. It’s getting late. They might have trouble finding their way if it gets much darker. We can approach this fresh in the morning.”
Millie didn’t look for a consensus this time. She accepted Goru’s sensible order and told Milo to return. He let her know they were on their way. Just that message caused her a flush of relief, until he pulled his attention away to focus on the return trip. Beaker seemed to sense her discomfort and put his hand on her shoulder, “Come on Millie lets get a meal on. None of us has eaten today and that isn’t good.”
Chapter Nine
Day 2
Lyla awoke. Her mouth was dry and her eyes were crusty. She sat up and shrugged off the light blanket covering her. She was in a bed, with no idea how she had gotten there. Vaguely it came to her that she had arrived at the school. She remembered going to bed in her bunk, and waking up to emergency lighting. The whole day before rolled through her mind like a flip-book. She had slapped Faith, and Goru had soothed her by pretending to be her father. He had been almost kind.
Faith had tended to her off and on through the night. Lyla thought she remembered a blood-soaked rag, but she couldn't remember anyone who had been cut. She hoped no one had been injured while she slept. Lyla checked herself over. She had a finger-less glove on her right hand. At several points she had tried to remove it. Faith or more often Goru would talk her down and get her to leave it on.
It occurred to her that perhaps she should be a little less self centered. She looked around the room. Faith was asleep sitting up on the floor, resting her head on Lyla’s bed. Millie and Milo slept in the top and bottom bunks of one bed. Stone and Beaker shared another. Fubar and Sport were curled up together on a pile of blankets.
Lyla swung her legs out of bed. Faith responded to the change in the position of the mattress by repositioning in her sleep. Smoothly, Lyla rose from the bed, in search of the other member of their group, Goru. He wasn’t in any of the bunks, or the bathroom off of the sleeping room. Lyla decided to look for him through the room’s only other door. Lyla thought about going outside. She opened her eyes to the first rays of dawn which glared at her like the midday sun.
Lyla turned to confirm the structure was a self erecting shelter. She had never been in one set for so many people, but her father never used anything but the best equipment for their camping trips in the mountains. Goru sat beside the door leaning up against the structure holding the sleeping room.
“Feeling better?” Goru asked, breaking the silence. Lyla weighed his tone searching for the sarcastic edge he seemed to save for her.
“Yeah, I’m myself again,” Lyla stated sharply, too sharply. She softened it with, “Dad.”
“You remember that? I was pretty sure you wouldn’t,” Goru stood up, “You know you shouldn’t be teleporting like that. It’s why you collapsed, or at least that was our guess.”
“It isn’t like I can control it. I didn’t even know I could teleport until yesterday,” Lyla stated. She noticed a fire pit with logs surrounding it. She walked over and sat. Goru followed.
Goru sat, “I’m sorry.”
Lyla blinked at him, “For what?’
“Blindly hating you. I spent my whole life learning to hate your mother. Literally the only time our mother was nice to us was when she was telling us how wonderful our father was. She beat into us the idea that your mother was the devil incarnate. Turns out, that’s my great grandmother…” Goru grimaced with furrowed brows.
“What led to this change of heart?” Lyla asked.
Goru smiled, “When Beaker started backing my play, and kept doing it even after he found o
ut who I was. It finally broke through my shell of us… or me against it all. He trusted me. Nobody but my sisters had ever trusted me before. All of a sudden, they were backing my play, and not just listening when I spoke, but asking me. I belonged to a group that didn’t hang with me out of necessity, but choice.”
“Okay. I get it. I am sorry about anything my mother did to your father,” Lyla slapped her thighs with her hands, “So what all happened while I was wackadoodle?”
“Well, you can see the village across the lake. We sent Milo, Sport, and Stone to check it out. They rated it as highly creepy. None of them spoke, not even when Stone threw dozens of languages at them. Oh, yeah, and there isn’t the slightest sign of children,” Goru stated.
“Any ideas what is going on?”
“Speculation over dinner, which was foraged for by Beaker in half an hour, ranged from religious commune to some kind of disease that robbed them of speech and killed everyone under thirty,” Goru shrugged. He dug around in the ashes of the dead fire with a stick, he tossed it down in the fire pit.
Lyla shivered in the dawn chill and wished that there was a fire burning right then. The stick Goru had fiddled with burst into flames. Goru yelped and leaped back. “Sorry, I think that might have been me,” Lyla apologized.
Goru eyed her and cocked his head to the side, “Remind me not to piss you off.”
‘‘I am not mad I just wished there was a fire, and then there was,” Lyla admitted.
“Are you cold?” Goru went to a pile of dead wood gathered outside the ring of logs. He tossed several large branches onto the flames and waited until they caught. Then he sat again. He stared at Lyla with an odd look on his face. Lyla shivered as much from the unaccustomed attention as from the cold. Goru began shucking his jacket. He draped it around her shoulders before she could protest.
“Should we wake the others?” Lyla asked.
“No, they had a long day and a late night, let them sleep.”
“Didn’t you have a late night?” Lyla asked.
Goru waved it off, “I haven’t been to sleep. Someone needed to sit watch over camp. It’s okay I’m used to missing sleep watching over my sisters. My mother got randomly violent if she got high on the wrong things. I would sit outside their door and take the beatings for them. They were always worse if I was asleep when she got home. I don’t think she thought it was fair that we could sleep without nightmares. She feared and hated my father at the same time she was pairbonded and physically dependent on him.”
Lyla sat silently absorbing his words. He had opened a window on his psyche almost as intimate as a telepathic exchange. “So, we know I can start fires, teleport, and blow a smallish electrical grid. What abilities have you discovered?”
Goru blinked, “I might have experienced a tiny bit of empathy or telepathy when I was talking to Stone back in the dorm while we were waiting for all of you to get ready. A small electrical grid?”
“My mom pissed me off.”
Goru smiled, “I am glad you don’t think she’s perfect.”
Lyla grimaced, “I know my mom isn’t perfect. She barely spent any time with me when i was growing up. She might visit for a day or two once every month or two. I guess I don’t really even know her.”
Goru smiled, “So we have a lot in common. Both of us were raised by basically single parents. Neither of us really understand or know our other parent. We also both have some leadership qualities.”
“Does that mean we are going to butt heads?”
“Not if we work together. Like yesterday, it would have been great if one of us could have gone with the exploratory group,” Goru stated, “I mean we got us to this point together.”
“Then let’s keep going the way we have been, except the me unconscious for half a day part,” Lyla suggested. Goru nodded. They sat in comfortable silence, while watching the sunrise.
- - - - - - -
Beaker woke up to soft voices. It sounded like Goru and Lyla. He climbed out of bed and dressed quickly. He slung his bag over her shoulder. Then he peeked out of the shelter. Goru and Lyla were sitting on the logs around a roaring fire. They seemed to be discussing the plan for the day agreeably. Beaker carefully left the camp without disturbing them. If they were communicating with civility he didn’t want to jinx it by interrupting them. He decided to hunt down breakfast. He had set some snares yesterday. Plenty of time had passed for them to have snared something.
He checked His snares and two had been successful. One had snared a very large rabbit another had netted a smaller one. He had also set up fish traps in the lake. Those he hadn’t expected to be successful, but his effort had been rewarded with three good-sized lake trout. Next, Beaker harvested ripe pine-cones from a pinion pine. Then he gathered the roots of cattails from the lake. Along the way he gathered other herbs and edible vegetation. He gutted, skinned and processed things where he found them and had them neatly packed in plastic bags slung over his shoulder. He figured on making a hearty stew for breakfast.
When Beaker returned Lyla and Goru were drawing plans in the dirt. Beaker began setting up cooking area from stones and dried wood. He cut the rabbits and the fish into small cubes for quick cooking. He put them into a flexible heat proof bag which he then filled with water. He made a tripod of branches and used it to hang the bag over the fire. He began prepping the vegetation and tossed it into the bag. He didn’t notice Lyla and Goru falling silent or the rest of the group waking up and watching him. The sun was well risen when Beaker started plating things up on plates from their survival gear. He was interrupted by a round of applause.
“What? It's what I did back home.” Beaker stated.
“You definitely have your place in this team,” Goru stated.
Everyone stopped and focused on Goru. Stone spoke first, “Is that what we are?”
“It’s that or a family,” Beaker answered.
“I like family,” Lyla smiled.
“We’re both,” Goru said ending the discussion, “Let’s eat the feast Beaker has made us.”
A warm flush of pride washed over Beaker. He had friends back home, but they weren’t exactly on equal footing. The razorwolves could run faster and longer than he could and he had the ability to manipulate things with his hands. They were too different to see eye to eye. This was different. The best thing was Sport who reminded him of back home. They all sat and ate their breakfasts, all making contented noises.
After the meal, and the cleaning up, Goru stood and began outlining what he and Lyla discussed before breakfast, “Here’s the plan we came up with. We think that Sport and Fubar should scope out the village. Take it slow and get the full extent. Hopefully you can determine what is getting Scout’s hackles up about it.”
Lyla picked up the discussion, “We would like Stone and Milo to reprise their roles yesterday and attempt to make contact and communicate with the villagers. Try gestural communication.”
“Beaker, we would like you to range a little wider and establish our local resources, animal, vegetable and mineral,” Goru suggested.
“Mineral?” Beaker asked.
“Yeah, we don’t know how long we are here for or what we could possibly need,” Goru answered. “Faith, go through the med-kit and familiarize yourself with it. Then use what you find to check Lyla and Millie out to make sure they are okay.”
Lyla nodded and picked up the conversation, “Goru, and I are going to coordinate through the coms Fubar found late last night on a survey of our equipment. “Any questions? Comments?”
Beaker looked around at the assembled team. Everyone seemed as comfortable with the plan as he was. “Aye aye, Chiefs.” Goru and Lyla looked at each other with surprise.
Goru shrugged, “Get prepped, and get going.”
- - - - - - -
It was mid-afternoon. Fubar had been watching the village since mid-morning from a nearby ridge. She could see almost the whole village from her position. The villagers were quiet. They interacted without spe
aking. It was like they were being driven by a single consciousness. Fubar knew about parasites that could take control of people and do things like that. She was deliberately searching out signs of them. So far there were none. Every so often she spotted Sport making a circuit of the village. “Hey, Sport, any ideas what makes these people tick?” Fubar asked over coms.
“I still can’t put a paw on it,” Sport answered back.
While watching the village, Fubar spotted a guarded wagon pulled by a large horse on approach to the village. The entire back of the wagon was a covered cage. The villagers reacted by fearfully running back into their homes. The wagon pulled through the village stopping beside a small home.
Two of the guards pull away and stormed the hut. The guards pulled two children crying and screaming from the hut with two adults following. The male attacked the guard with the boy. Silently kicking and hitting him. Another guard threw the man violently backwards into the plaster hut. The guards threw the children in the cage and released a small monkey-like creature in the hut. Then the wagon and the guards moved on. A few houses away the scene repeated with three girls between three and thirteen being pulled out. Then the wagon and the guards headed out of town.
“You see that?” Sport asked, suddenly beside Fubar.
“Yeah, you should probably follow the wagon,” Fubar suggested.
Goru interrupted over the com, “Saw what? Follow what wagon.”
“A cage on wheels just rolled through town taking five children from two homes,” Sport reported.
“Definitely follow that wagon Sport, but don’t let them see you,” Lyla directed.
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