Unlikely Meetings

CHAPTER 18 - BITTERSWEET MORNINGS

Whispers and images flashed in front of Eli, her world a technicolor oil painting. The oil like snow washes past in waves bringing trees and stones past her. Gunfire reverberated off the mountains that towered over her as the weak sun was ripped from the sky above her. She felt cold and alone as she noticed a flickering light off in the distance drawing her in. She moved like she was underwater, slow and sluggish as her limbs felt like they were weighed down by sand. Feet felt like miles as the flickering light got closer by only inches at a time that when the light was finally upon her she never noticed the doorframe and Max's home swallowing her. He was there, on top of her lover with his pistol in hand and smiling as he was about to pull the trigger. There was a flash from Eli's hands before her ears started ringing as the macabre of blood and viscera was splayed out before her. Memories she had blocked were on full display as the squalor of gore spread from his now vaporized shoulders. Bits of bone, teeth and gray matter danced before her ruby eyes as that smile and face were forever removed from the fabric of the world. A sense of relief washed over her as the body fell from Max's form until she looked down to see he had already pulled the trigger just before she did.

"AAAAAAH! No you can't take him!" Eli thrashed from under the stiff sheets that Max and her shared last night long after their tryst had ended. She was alone causing her stress to spike and quickly glance around the room and noticed she was more alone than she originally thought. A moment later her lover was next to her, sprinting from around the corner smelling like bacon and coffee.

"Eli, I'm here!" Max rounded the corner and held her face to force her eyes onto his. Her breath was rappid as she tried to take in her surroundings and blink the tears from her eyes. He was blurry due to her tears clouding her vision but his warmth and voice assured her that what she witnessed was simply a terrifying nightmare. New tears met the old ones on her cheeks as he comforted her to the best of his ability. Her nude form wrapped itself around him as she wept into his shoulder, the words coming out stammered and broken between her sobbing. "Th-the h-house a-a-and the g-g-guy th-"

"Shhhh it's alright Eli, I'm here, we're safe." Her sobs continued as her babbles faded off into weak sobs as he continued to whisper comforting words of safety into her flat scaled ears. "We're alright, love, we're okay."

It wasn't long before her weeping subsided as reality set in. She was in Max's small offsite home, built inside an abandoned mine whilst also being built from two shipping containers. It was warm, His skin on her scales, the light drafts around the room. She breathed a sigh of relief and let her tongue flick the air to smell coffee, venison and blood in the air. "Oh my God that's right! I bit you last night!"

She pulled back to look at Max's body and saw nothing out of the ordinary until she noticed his swollen left shoulder with a neat parallel set of pinpricks that matched her retracted teeth perfectly. "Ah don't worry about that, are you alright? That seemed like a horrible nightmare."

His words didn't register with her as tears started to well up in her eyes again. "I- I hurt you."

Max simply rolled his eyes as he motioned to his inflamed shoulder. "This isn't even that bad. Had a worse reaction to some skin care product my mom used on me in my teen years." Rolling his shoulder his warm smile didn't flinch as his nerves flared slightly. "See, right as rain. Now if you'll stop worrying about me let me worry about you for a little bit since you're probably starving."

"Max I'm not some kid you have to take care of. I can feed myse-" The rumble of her stomach cuts her off in the middle of her sentence before she took a moment to compose herself. "However it is very much... appreciated. What's in the stores that can be used for breakfast?"

Clad in underwear he moved to the woodstove where the few confections were still warming in the even but low heat. "Well dried potatoes rehydrated to be hashbrowns, some venison jerky to be a kind of...fake bacon and fresh fruit and veggies I grabbed from my place. Should be done heating up once it gets to temp in maybe like forty minutes?"