gentle beast

29

【修细节 –  Detailing】

Daybreak swept over the Camuda Valley, and the originally dark valley brightened.

Ryan walked out of the cabin and closed the wooden door with a back sweep of his hand.

The girl inside was still asleep. Sunlight poured in the window and a white halo fell across the girl’s cheek, her thin skin closed to transparent.

The sunlight was harsh, and Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu furrowed her eyebrows. Her slender lashes quivered shortly after like a delicate fan and blocked her clear eyes.

Yesterday, Ryan refused Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu’s request and she had looked at him with those same eyes and asked, “Why?”

Ryan was cool-headed afterwards, as if he had forgotten what he had said, “It’s a long way to the east of Bornia, and it is extremely cold out there. You cannot reach it on your own.”

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu could not refute it.

Her strength alone was insignificant in this land of beastmen. Before she had “Táo Táo”, and while Táo Táo could not help much, he was still a companion. But, Táo Táo transformed into a strong, stalwart Leopard and she no longer had the nerve to ask him to accompany her.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu quietly hesitated: “I can find Eric. . . Eric said he was heading east. . .”
Before she could finish, Ryan set the canister down on the bed and interrupted, “Wait until you’re well before you say that.”
Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu: “. . .oh”

And so the topic was dismissed.

Later, Ryan got up and went outside looking for food.

When he came back, Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu had already wiped the medicine herself and shrank into a corner of the bed, fast asleep. She had such tiny bones that asleep, she didn’t take up much space. She had left such a large empty space on the bed that it could accommodate Ryan’s body.

However, Ryan stood by the bed for a while but didn’t end up laying on the bed, instead laying face down on the couch for the night.

Why didn’t he let her go?

Ryan stood at the door of the cabin with the sun passing over his broad shoulders, casting a large shadow on the ground.

He always knew that she had only one goal in mind.

Countless times she had hugged him to her, pathetically, and said with grievance, “I want to go home” as she thought of her home, of her father and her mother.

Where was her home? Why had she come here?

And what about that “space” that she could pull a numerous amount of things out of? Ryan thought, he just wanted to figure it out.

*

Ryan walked to the home of one of the elder’s called Scarlett, where a female was sewing a deerskin vest.

The female was tall, appeared about the age of an eighteen or nineteen year old human girl. She had leopard ears, deep eyes, a long nose. This was the elder’s daughter Suzanna.

Suzanna’s ears shifted as she heard the footsteps and she immediatley put down the vest to look at the door, “Ryan——”

It was a strange pronunciation.

Ryan walked into the yard and looked into the house, asking in the same tongue, “Suzanna?”

Suzanna nodded then whispered, “Rhode is here, talking to my father in the house.”

Ryan paused and asked, “What is he doing here?”

She shrugged her shoulders, “Who knows? They never let me hear what they talk about.”