Boundless

Old Cravings / New Hunger

The command deck was drowning in cold silence. The usual violence that followed those episodes was not there, though.

Lar'jar, watching from a distance, was trying to remember what was the last time he had seen his brother like that. But how could he describe it? Pensive? Grounded? Fulfilled?

Balanced? No, not balanced...

Secure? Calm? Steady? No, it was none of that either.

Whole ?

Yes, whole. But not quite. Not yet at least. He could see his brother was close to achieving that state, though.

"Ah'kaedh", he called after his brother, who was low-key daydreaming while looking at a printed picture.

"Hmm".

The younger brother never helped. Talking with him was like pulling teeth sometimes.

"You are looking at that image for more than one hour, nonstop".

The enforcer looked over his shoulder, and held the photo close to his head: a clear invitation, that Lar'jar promptly took.

"How can this image give you so much peace?", the Medic asked, holding the photo in his left hand, trying to understand what his brother had found there.

"Take a seat, brother".

Lar'jar blinked, surprised. What could possibly have happened?

***

[39 years ago]

"Are those teeth marks?"

Ah'kaedh was lying on the table, while the Girl carried on with the bathing routine. The Hunter tried to picture which scars she could be talking about, before she traced each one of them.

"Oh boy, those are teeth marks!"

The Hunter's annoyance was tinged with a pinch of amusement (the Girl had been conning him into some extra sleep, and the effect in his disposition was starting to show). Not even 10 days of being responsible for his hygiene (while using the bathing routine to lull him into rest), and she was already curious about each new discovery: she was a chatty little thing, but when it came to his scars? She would engage in a game of trying to figure out what had marked him and how.

The Girl was quite good about never mentioning the ooman-made marks.

And before the Hunter knew, she had developed a strong familiarity with his body.

Weeks would come and go, and the comfort of her touch became something he would welcome and later crave. In a way, no one had ever developed that type of physical interaction with him. It was more than simply caring for his physical condition - there was an easiness, a pleasant connection.

"I sure hope to never meet whatever nightmarish creature did this. It feels old...", her fingers ran over the ridges of a large scar acquired during his chiva, carved by a xenomorph tail, in retaliation to a fatal blow. Before dying, its tail lashed at his torax, tearing flesh, breaking two ribs, perforating his left lung.

The Girl would always come back to that particular mark, extra careful while cleaning it. The scales over the scar tissue had grown back in a strange pattern.

The Hunter had been deprived of physical comfort yes, but his desires weren't born only due his touch-starved body and psyche.

Ah'kaedh was never a warm personality, and while he greatly enjoyed sex, physical intimacy beyond sexual had never been a necessity. He was actually quite indifferent, and would often avoid any physical proximity other than sexual.