Page 39 of Resisting the Alien Rider

“What is there to talk… Garrek! My God, you two! Sometimes I wonder if somebody doesn’t need to smack your heads together! You didn’t think you should talk to Killian about the fact that he could be a budding little arsonist?”

Seriously. This was taking a macho, I-don’t-talk-about-my-feelings attitude just a touch too far.

“There was enough evidence to tell me that he did not cause all the damage on purpose,” Garrek told me. “Upon inspection, I saw that he’d attempted to make a firepit and there were the burned-out remains of a bucket nearby. Presumably it had had water in it for when he was ready to put the fire out. But the conditions were dry, and there was wind. Things got away from him. He woke me as soon as he realized it was out of control.”

“OK. Well, that’s something, at least.” It sounded like it truly had just been an accident born of some combination of childhood boredom and inexperience.

“He cares for the animals,” Garrek mused suddenly. “He would not have burned their food supply on purpose.” His face was serious. “I believe that. Very deeply.”

“I believe it, too,” I whispered. I’d seen the way Killian looked at and spoke to the animals. The way he murmured softly to the shuldu as he brushed them. The thorough focus with which he inspected their hooves.

“I still can’t believe they dump you guys here with no therapy or mental health resources or anything,” I said wearily. “Although, there is such a thing as equine therapy for humans. Maybe working with the animals is helping him.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, at the very least, I do have some medical stuffI can use on you guys. So, chop chop. Let’s get those wounds cleaned.”

His tail flicked. It felt very dismissive, very nonchalant, like an all-too-cool alien shrug.

“I already washed them.”

“Washed them?” I asked, planting my hands on my hips as he lowered himself into a seated position on the ground. “Where?”

Oh, no.

“Garrek,” I said, my eyebrows and voice rising higher and higher in disbelief. “Tell me that you didn’t go wash your open wounds in the creek.”

“Of course I did,” he said. Maddeningly.

“What? Why?” I moaned. “Who the heck knows what kind of microbes are present in that water! You should have used the sterile water from my cannister!”

He stared at me flatly, as if I were telling him he should only have wrapped his wounds in Terratribe II’s finest rainbow cotton candy before topping them off with a satin bow.

“For someone who was all wound up about Killian having an ear infection,” I snapped, “you seem blithely unaware of the dangers of getting random, murky-ass creek water in your open wounds!”

His mouth quirked on one side. For once it wasn’t a frown or a grimace, but something that might have even hinted at amusement.

“Murkywhat?”

“Murky. Ass. Water.”

“And was my ass purported to have been murkybefore or after I bathed in the creek? Because I did bathe.”

“Not your literal backside,” I said, momentarily hating his translator for producing an accurate translation of the term. “It’s a human phrase of exaggeration or emphasis. You can attach it to an adjective to amplify the effect. Big-ass, expensive-ass-”

“Murky-ass.”

“Precisely. Murky-ass. As in the water. Water that you, for some mysterious reason, chose to use to rinse your wounds with.”

“At least I used soap.”

“Garrek!” I barely restrained myself from stomping my foot. The audacity of this man, to sit there and make smartass remarks about soap when he’d probably just doomed himself to die of freaking sepsis.

Smartass. Add that to the ass list.

And dumbass, too.

That little quirk in his mouth stretched and stretched until, holy cannoli, it morphed into a legitimate, bonafide, 100% authentic Garrek smile.

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