Page 11 of Taken to Lemora
“You’re alright, Essmira. You’re alright. Still in one piece. Still alive to fight another solar…” Only the words die on my lips when I catch sight of the body in the doorway. It isn’ttheLemoran, butaLemoran — a female. And she’s huge, almost as big as the male. She comes into the room and looks around, not seeing me at first.
Then, when she does see me, she gives me a bright smile and a tight little Lemoran wave — reaching up and catching the air with all five fingers before lowering her hand. I’m shaking but, with my bloody hand, I still manage to return the greeting.
She arrives directly in front of the green chair I’m hidden behind, glancing between me and it several times. “So um…” She scratches her head. Like the male, she also has no hair, but her lips are larger and so are her eyes, giving her a more feminine appearance, to me. Over her shoulder, she shouts, “You said the green furry thing, Raingar?”
Raingar. His name is Raingar.I mustn’t forget. The thought makes me snort.Forget? How could I ever forget a moment of this?I’ve never seen violence before. Against me at Tyto’s bloody hands, yeffa, but never between two males carved of stone. Never at this scale.
“Yeffa,” comes the male’s —Raingar’s— grunted response from the hallway.
She scratches her head for another moment, then shrugs, gives me another little wave and bends down to scoop up the chair just as it starts rolling away from her. Tossing it over her shoulder, she walks back the way she came and out into the hall.
“Well, here you…” I hear her say, but she’s cut off when Raingar’s burning, booming rage explodes through the world, the blast radius significant enough to shake me and make bumps break out over my skin everywhere. On the far side of the room, another smaller chandelier falls.
“I saidbehindthe green chair! Not the green chair!” Another block of crystal falls from the ceiling and explodes in green magnificence.Like the center of Raingar’s eyes, they’re just that color.But perhaps those eyes were a deception. Perhaps, he cannot be trusted. Perhaps, my instincts made a mistake. I glance again to the window, dreaming of escape, but my limbs are locked in place and I’m shaking. When did I start shaking and why can’t I stop? Why can’t I move?
“You said the green chair…”
“YOU THINK I PAID FOURTEEN TUNS FOR A GREEN CHAIR!”
“Hey,youdidn’t pay anything, so quit your yapping,” comes another voice, a softer one. Then laughter. More of it. It ripples through everything.
The female returns and sets the green chair down, giving it a soft pat that it seems to like because instead of scuttling away from her, it follows her towards me. I shudder, completely creeped out by it and because I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, I close my eyes.
“Hey, it’s okay. Are you hurt…”
“Hurt? She’s hurt?” Raingar’s voice is tinted with a touch of madness. He sounds farther away from the female directly in front of me, but not by much. And then by nothing.
I look up as he pushes her aside quite roughly and takes off his tunic. He crouches in front of me and hands me the balled up fabric. “For your hands,” he says, though he looks like he needs it much more than I do. He’s got blood all over him but…nothing swollen, nothing broken. And most of the blood doesn’t appear to be his, unless he bleeds green, too.
“Raingar,” comes the female’s droll, “you want her to use a bib you wiped Egama blood up with to clean her open wounds? Give me a break.”
“Pagh!” He grunts, snatching the shirt away from me and tossing it onto the floor. “Give me your shirt, Reyna.”
The female called Reyna opens her mouth like she’ll protest, but instead, sighs and rolls her eyes. She reaches for her tunic’s hem and whips it over her head before my mind catches up to my mouth. “Oh nob, please don’t. You don’t need to trouble yourself…”
She just smiles down at me and rubs her hand over her bare stomach. It’s ribbed, like the male’s, full of muscles that make me feel much softer than I did before looking at her. Her breasts are also high and firm and lack nipples. Unusual, but…I have no but, really. She’s just different from me. No less interesting. No less wonderful.
“We just paid two rotations’ worth of kintarr for you, heelee,” she says with a smile so I know she meansheeleeas a term of affection and not as the bug that it is in reality. “We’ve got a vested interest in getting you back to Lemora in one piece.” She winks and tosses her shirt down to me. “Staunch those cuts and we’ll get them cleaned up on the ship.”
Disbelief rolls into pure excitement dashed with a heavy dose of fear and an even weightier dose of exhaustion. “I…” My voice cracks and I flush, ashamed.A female is always eloquent, even when she’s in pain.“I’m going with you all?
“You,” I say, directing my stare to the male crouched at my feet scowling around at everything. Only…he isn’t scowling right now. Right now he’s looking at me like he’s a little unsure. Maybe even terrified.Oh nob. Perhaps he’s regretting his purchase. Can he return me? I pray to the suns that he can’t return me…
“You paid for me?” I ask him. I lick my lips and his gaze drops to my mouth before he grunts noncommittally.
It’s the female, however, who says, “Nob. Raingar didn’t pay for you. We did.”
I don’t understand. “We?”
She gestures over her shoulder where three other Lemoran females stand in the center of the room. I hadn’t heard them enter. They all wear smiles, ranging from stoic to excited to incredulous.
“We,” the stoic female answers. I notice that, unlike all the other Lemoran in the room who sport grey horns, the color of charcoal, her horns are ivory. “We all contributed. All of usexceptfor Raingar.”
I don’t understand. “But…” Eloquence!Eloquence!I clear my throat as daintily as I can. “If youallcontributed, then who will be my master? Who will I serve?”
Raingar visibly winces at that. I didn’t see him flinch half so hard when he had the full weight of an Egama giant barreling towards him.
It’s the one who gave me her shirt, Reyna, who says, “You won’t have a master. You won’t serve anyone.”
