Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 10: brought to you by angry sheep and a stick

Sheep negotiations. Salt for rice? No, special blue crystal for rice! What a trade! Then we cook it with a stick. And that right there is the perfect date, so boys, load up on dat stick and rice!...okay, fine, it's bamboo, but it's very sticky bamboo!

__________________

Shay surprised herself by not reacting when she woke up in the coils of a goliath sized red snake. When its huge head lifted up and examined her with globe-sized scarlet eyes, she didn't scream or react much at all, bringing her to believe that something vital inside of her had broken.

When the snake head shifted into the torso of an unlawfully beautiful pale man with straight red hair past his hips, his expression was difficult to decipher.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

Shay blinked and wondered how anyone in her position could honestly answer that question.

When she just continued to look at him blankly, numb and still, he frowned.

"Shay?"

"What?" she asked.

It must have been her bland tone for, rather than pressing, he pursed his lips and held her face in his hands.

"Your eyes..." his thumb brushed over her lips. "Your lips have gone pale and dry. Are you sick? Hungry? There's still rabbit from last night."

"Thirsty..."

Cradling her like a child, he slithered out past the dead fire to a trickling stream near his den. There, he set her down on the grass, still flecked with morning dew. Goosebumps prickled up her arms. She leaned down like a robot and drank, her mind bouncing from image to image as though she were still asleep.

Jeep rides with mom. Desert canyons lined with sagebrush. Playing video games under a swamp cooler. Getting raped. What it might feel to get raped. Being wrapped in cold coils during the winter, wearing nothing but two strips of hide.

His cool hand grasped her shoulder, his fingers so long. "Shay? Are you okay?"

It was only when she noticed her nose was still being splashed by the stream that she realized she'd nearly faceplanted into it. Her knees had even straightened from underneath her, ready to dive in.

He picked her up again, his brow furrowed and his eyebrows slanted plaintively.

"Shay? What's wrong? You weren't like this yesterday."

As his fingers brushed her face and arms, she just stared into his face, not really seeing it. There really wasn't any point. Anything she said would be refuted. These people didn't work on a sane wavelength.

No books. No first year of college. No trying out living in a dorm, away from parents for the first time. Back in the sun, driving up into the mountains, away from the desert and into hills of spring green and flowers. The taste of Redvines on the tongue. Occasionally, a heart would show up on the black and white trunks of the aspen, carved by some lovers who thought it would last.

His jaw tensed.

"I'll take you to a doctor."

No need to announce it to me, she thought, even as she allowed her head to fall against his chest once more and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, small square fields (or at least small to someone who'd grown up passing industrial sized fields) passed by, framed by the edges of the forest. Shirtless men with fluffy white hair and black, curled horns worked in them, their skin browned by the sun. They glanced up as they passed.