Page 10 of Resisting the Alien Rider

I turned away and headed for the creek once more.

By the time I returned, the shuldu trough needed refilling. I ended up making several trips back and forth until the bracku and shuldu were sated and grazing happily by the trees. I inspected my herd, finding everything in good order. At least I had one less chore to do than usual. I’d eased off milking the lactating cows in preparation for this trip. There was nowhere to store the milk on the road, and then those female cows would have more available energy and need less water while we travelled. The only cows producing milk now were the ones with nursing calves.

Dinner was dried, salted bracku meat sticks anddehydrated tuhla fruit slices. I’d brought supplies, but with three of us eating them it wouldn’t be long before I’d have to start trapping animals and foraging for our meals. Killian would be able to help. It would be a good chance to teach him a few more skills out here, provided he was willing to learn.

Which he often was not.

But he liked to eat. Hopefully that would be sufficient motivation.

After that, we all returned to the creek to fill our waterskins. Magnolia did not have a waterskin but rather a metal cannister. Apparently, drinking this untreated water could make her very sick, and her cannister was equipped with technology inside to purify the liquid. I found it difficult to comprehend this. To confront her vulnerability head-on. I thought of what might happen if she lost or broke her cannister and my stomach suddenly felt like a loop of old, frayed rope someone had tugged into a knot.

We all found places to relieve ourselves before sleeping. Killian and I were finished first. We stood around waiting for Magnolia in awkward silence until Killian, uncharacteristically, broke it.

“She called me sweet pee.”

“What?” I jerked my head down and to the side to look at my convict-ward. His eyes were two large, white stars in his face. I felt no small amount of sympathy for him. The churn of emotions that would keep a child’s eyes permanently white like his would be difficult even for an adult to deal with.

“She did,” Killian insisted. “I’m not lying!”

The child actually had the gall to sound indignant, as if he hadn’t lied to me hundreds of times before. Usually about things like whether he’d combed his hair or bathed, telling me he had when my own eyes and nose provided all evidence to the contrary.

“Sweet pee,” I echoed in confused confirmation. “As in urine?”

That could not possibly be correct.

Killian’s tail flicked about behind him. His mouth shaped itself into a defensive pout, like an upside-down shuldu shoe.

“That’s right. She said it is a human term of endearment.”

A human term of endearment? Based on bodilywaste?

I tried to ignore the fact that I was now rather pathetically envious of Killian, disappointed that Magnolia had not also referred to me as sweetened piss.

Apparently, all I had to do to endear myself to her and earn a bizarre human pet name was to be a white-eyed, moody child with a penchant for chaos.

I did not particularly enjoy chaos. Because usually, I was the one who had to clean up the mess after.

No. I liked predictability. The numbing comfort of routine. It wasn’t precisely happiness, and it probably never would be. But it was a life.

Even if Killian, and now Magnolia, had blown a rather large hole in the middle of it.

5

MAGNOLIA

Even within the cozy confines of Garrek’s bracku-hide tent, sleep was neither deep nor comfortable. I didn’t have a true sleeping bag or bedroll like the other two, and my shiny thermal blanket wasn’t big enough to completely wrap myself up burrito-style. The result was that heat was constantly seeping out of me, sucked into the ground like a warm drink through a straw.

Halfway through the night, I sat up and decided to give up on sleeping for a while. I took off my silk bonnet and slipped into boots. Tugging on my jacket over top of my pink pyjamas, I quietly opened the tent flap and looked out.

Cool, fresh air kissed my face. For a moment, I closed my eyes and just breathed it in.

Then I stepped out.

I stepped on a lump.

The lump hissed. And then it moved.

“Oh… Oh!” I yelped as my balance deserted me. From the darkness came a muttered curse, and then the snap of something hard but flexible, cord-like, curling around my waist. The cord tightened and kept me from falling.

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