Chapter 23: Chapter 12 – Flesh Wounds

"So?" Mother asked expectantly, standing next to the tent's entrance with crossed arms and a frustrated look on her face.

"He's an idiot, but he can speak. I'll manage within two or three weeks if I reduce my hunting time a bit." I shot back at her.

I'd just finished my interrogation of the human, having spent around two or three hours with him. I'll admit, I'd been under the impression that I would have been happy with human company, but the longer I looked at the fat idiot, the more I wanted to rip him apart.

It wasn't even his fault, honestly. It was just a deep-rooted instinct that automatically made me aggressive towards him, and the fact that he just reeked of dishonesty and scumminess, if that's even a thing, didn't help at all.

Mother sighed, looking up at the cloudy skies. "I don't understand why you would ever want to speak to humans. The best human is a dead one, after all." She stated confidently, challenging me to dispute the fact.

Personally, I found that way of thinking a bit racist, but I suppose I could see where she was coming from. No human had ever tried to just try and talk to us for the entire duration of my lifetime, and most likely, also mom's lifetime. Still...

"Knowing is better than not knowing, mother. You taught me that yourself, remember?" I challenged. She grumbled under her breath, not calling me out on my misinterpretation of her words.

I brushed shoulders affectionately with her as I passed by, heading over to the longhouse. She followed me a moment after, staring at the ground with a thoughtful face.

Neither of us commented on the fact that the human was completely unrestricted and could easily leave the tent. After all, even if he somehow managed to flee miles away from my home, finding him would be a piece of cake.

Furthermore, although he could survive inside our tents due to the higher temperature there, the frost of the North wasn't something he could resist that easily, especially considering his state of almost total undress.

I'd stripped him of everything save for his underwear, and that was only because I didn't want to risk killing him by accident. After all, if he'd dared to get an erection while I was trying to learn his language, I might have done something unproductive.

It didn't take long for us to reach our destination. The other tribe members weren't there yet, with the majority being out hunting, and the rest either sleeping or shifting through our newly acquired spoils of war.

After all, although our tribe had very little use for human trinkets and gadgets, that didn't mean we didn't like hoarding them. After Leiran had returned with the tribe, we'd stripped the entire human camp bare, taking anything and everything we liked.

Luckily for me, the picking order of that particular looting favored me. Mother obviously got dibs on anything she wanted, and following her were Leiran and me, who'd found the camp in the first place. Of the two of us, Leiran had first picks, since he was both older and stronger.

Even then, I'd still been able to get a few toys that I liked, with my favorite being the sword of the human I killed next to my new captive. It wasn't as impressive as my claws, but at least it satisfied my inner cravings to see a real sword.

Anyways, I stood back as mother sifted through the numerous corpses thrown randomly around the tent. It was her job as the leader to decide how much food we needed to store in case we ever run low and how much to use for each feast.

This week, it was my turn to do the grunt work for her, so I obediently did as told. By the time we were done, the sun was starting to vanish into the horizon.

Needless to say, that night, the tribe feasted on human flesh.

---

"King command subject?" I asked, tilting my head slightly. The human nodded eagerly, looking far too pleased with his bootlicking.

"Yes, yes! King commands subjects. Subject obey king, as gods command." He said impetuously, and the way he spoke gave me the impression that he was looking down on me.

I smacked him, getting a loud cry of pain from him as he recoiled back. I'd been the one to ask him about the human 'leader', which had caused him to go into a huge rant about kings and nobles and such.

Strangely enough, despite not being one himself, my captive seemed to think of himself on the same level as them.

Unfortunately for him, to me, his status meant nothing. Noble or not, he was nothing more than a teaching aid, and the moment he stopped being one, he'd become food. I didn't care about anything else.

I'd been learning for over a month now, quite a bit longer than I'd anticipated. Of course, that was mostly because he was such an awful teacher.

Nonetheless, although I was still choppy, I could hold good if stilted conversations in the human language fairly easily now.

As I thought that, I stood up and headed out of the tent with the intention to go and pick up some leftovers to give to the man, as he was looking quite a bit thin by now.

Which, honestly, made a lot of sense, considering I barely fed him at all.

As if on cue, the man lurched forward, my stolen sword in hand. Desperation and hope shone in his eyes as he neared my unprotected back.

Needless to say, by the time I left the tent an hour later, all that remained of the man were a few broken bones.

It felt liberating to finally rid myself of the annoyance that had been tying me down for the past month. It'd been hard to go on long hunting trips when I had a human to take care of, especially one that was both uncooperative and dimwitted.

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Later that night, I had to go apologize to Leiran. I'd forgotten my promise to leave the human to him, but luckily for me, he hadn't been too upset about it.

"As long as he's dead." He growled, but despite the aggressiveness of his words, his face sported a wide grin. I grinned back at him, happy not to have upset one of my favorite hunting partners after mother.

After growling nonsensically for a while longer, he returned back to what he'd been doing before I interrupted him. Since mother was out hunting along with everyone else, I decided to hang out with him a bit more.

"What's this?" I asked curiously, peering down and staring at the strange, shining stone in his hands. It was only about the size of my fist, a bit smaller even.

He barely glanced at me, not saying anything about my continued intrusion into his private time. "It's loot from the humans. Look."

The stone stopped shining, then resumed, then stopped. He made it a little pattern, lighting it up at a random rhythm.

"Funny. How does it work?" I asked curiously, sitting right next to him on the cold snow. Suddenly, he turned his head to face me and gave me a wide grin.

"It takes magical energy to activate. Do you want it?" He said, holding it out for me to grab it.

"... Sure?" I responded cautiously, surprised by his generosity. While it was true that our tribe was very much communal in nature, that didn't mean that we didn't have our own private toys and the like. So, for him to just straight-up hand it over to me felt a bit suspect.

But, alas, my curiosity won out over my caution, and so I reached out to grab the shiny toy, expecting him to pull his arm back at any moment. However, he did not, allowing me to grab the ball.

I stared at it for a few minutes, poking around with it. It was easy enough to figure out how to make it light up, I simply needed to feed it a tiny sliver of my magical energy, something that wasn't too hard to do after a couple of minutes of trying.

I held the ball to my chest, debating whether to give it back or not. Just taking it like this felt wrong, but I really, really liked it. If nothing else, it could probably give me something to light up my tent at night.

Reluctantly, I tried to hand it back to him. To my surprise, he shook his head. "Keep it, Kira. I already got bored with it."

I squinted suspiciously at him, but nothing in his expression or pose gave anything away. He was still just sitting there, shoulder-to-shoulder with me, grinning like before.

"Um... Thanks, I guess." I said, still feeling unsure. He rolled his eyes in a very much human-like manner. "Why are you being so suspicious? It's just a toy. Do you trust me so little?"

"No, no. It's not that. It's just the first time someone other than mother gave me anything." I hissed at him, feeling a little embarrassed by his words.

"Well, whatever. I'm going out hunting tomorrow at dawn, want to come with me?" He asked, getting up to leave. I nodded, feeling relieved at being asked to do something I was more used to.

After he left, I quickly made my way over to my tent, where I spent the rest of the day playing around with my newfound toy. It wasn't exactly the most exciting thing ever, but compared to the perpetual dullness that pervaded my life otherwise, it was pretty nice.

My ears twitched slightly as the door rustled, signifying someone's entrance. I could easily tell that it was mother from her smell, even if it was tainted by foreign blood.

"What's this?" She asked, just as curiously as I had. After showing it to her and explaining how it worked, she didn't seem as interested as I'd been, handing it back to me only after half an hour.

"Interesting. Where did you find it?" Without hesitation, I told her Leiran had been the one to give it to me.

She blinked in confusion for a moment before her brows furrowed. She stared intensely at me, causing me to take a few steps back in caution.

"You're too young, Kira. Wait another few hundred winters." She said after a long pause, and I could only stare at her helplessly.

"Mother? What do you mean?" I asked, feeling bamboozled by her answer. She looked at me with a blank face before shaking her head.

"The 'season' is coming soon. You're not participating." She said with a finality I could not understand. Normally, I didn't dare get overly irritated with my mother, but between her and Leiran, it was akin to playing the guessing game today.

"Mother, I don't understand. What are you talking about?" I growled at her. She let out a long, long sigh before walking over to her bed of furs, not commenting on the lack of human prisoners in the tent.

She patted the space next to her, beckoning me to sit there. I did.

I wish I didn't.

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