A Place To Bloom

The Good-Looking One

We all crouched low in the darkness with bows out and arrows nocked, looking out.

All around us, thick vines and ferns filled the ground like a sea of green with islands of groves like the one we hid beneath as far as we could see—as much as forty yards in some angles.

Borel hid beneath a dense cluster of grass. He turned to look at Miyani, then looked around at the rest of our unit, only to look at Miyani again and swallow his breath.

She hunched low and lay her body over Blue's back, reaching her hand out towards us as she looked to our left. Makchuk wiggled his finger around the bowstring where his arrow waited to be drawn. Sweat dripped down our faces, and we all looked in that direction.

An enemy sekiwa raced through the vines between tree-islands and stopped twenty feet from us. I couldn't hear the whistles and chirps of the jungle over my thundering heartbeat.

The vita'o was a female, beige-green with a cute-ish look to her lizard face, and swished her tail left and right over the leaves behind her. The woman riding her was older, perhaps Ahmi's age, petite and muscular as they all were, same dark-green skin with white hair and yellow eyes. She had an arc of a scar like an old bite wound on her elbow and a white tattoo on her shoulder in the shape of a jaguar with its jaws open.

The cute-faced lizard raised her nose to the air and sniffed.

I felt like I was frozen in time. Every muscle in my body was tense. My fingers trembled around the nock where my arrow clung to its string.

The woman looked left and right, then urged her mount forward. They continued along their way and disappeared into the forest to our right.

Blue rose up, lifting Miyani high enough to look over each of us as she counted with her chin. In this darkness, my eyes had adjusted enough for me to see the silhouette of her gorgeous legs. He then croaked low and gave out a string of clicks. Miyani narrowed her eyes at me, pursed her lips, and shook her head. I had to look away in embarrassment.

She turned to our captain and pointed towards the direction the woman had come from, "first they come, then you shoot. OK?"

We all nodded. Borel did as well, "alright."

With that, Miyani darted off and vanished into the woods.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and tried to settle my heart. This was real. This was happening.

Then, our captain belched out, "I don't like it. I think we should split up. Come, Jame, Jezi, Trey, Filau..."

Ales shot his hands up, "what the hell are you doing, man?"

Borel lurched at him, "I'm splitting us in two. Half of us stay here, half..."

Geraln scowled at him, "you're going to get us all killed!"

"HUSH!" The whisper-scream came from our right.

We all looked, and that sekiwa came back. The lizard stopped at the exact same spot as it had before, and the woman looked right at us. She leaned in and furrowed her brow, and an arrowhead punched through her skull and stuck out through the bridge of her nose.

As blood trickled down her face, the lizard reached her head up to look, then opened her jagged teeth and hissed hard. Not a second later, we pin-cushioned her. Poor thing had no fewer than eight arrows thrust into her at once. And those eupin bows, we got a good three-hundred-fifty yards with those things—imagine what that much power can do at close range.

They went down.

Miyani appeared from behind her and came up to investigate. She looked to our left once more, then gestured for us all to come out. "We need go. Now."