Those of you who read x-juicy-lucy-x's fics will know me as clarencedale, her tame beta reader and occasional story writer, under pressure from her I opened an account myself, and have had writers block ever since! I own none of this whatsoever of course, and I make no money from it etc etc. It's listed as complete, but I'm thinking of making it a series. all reviews gratefully recieved, hope you enjoy c x
The glass was possibly the most annoying part of the cell. That and the three concrete walls. And the lack of company. It was far too solitary a place for a creature who lived in a pack. There was, as far as it could see, no way to escape it. The glass was indeed the most annoying feature, it thought as it glared at the glass, all it did was let it see the pink ferrety bags of mainly water or its own face as it growled at the glass.
It didn't understand why it was on the planet, or why it was imprisoned. It had done nothing wrong that it could see. It had arrived in this strange place, where there was little grass or game, in a flash of light that baffled it completely. Hungry it had sought food and travelled high above the land to find it, only to be attacked and imprisoned for some wrong that it simply could not comprehend. All it had wanted was some food and what it had found had been meagre. The things that had captured it had been aggressive, attacking it with a spray that made its eyes sting, and cold metallic things that banged. It was all too confusing and it had been easily subdued, a fact which now made it extremely distressed. If it hadn't been so disorientated it wouldn't now be sat in this cell.
Still it had regular meals, the creature who always wore a piece of fabric around his neck came every day with a tray of meat. It wasn't fresh meat, but yet it was not rotting. It was chilled, it found it to be odd to begin with, but it had long since become accustomed. Occasionally the one who dressed entirely differently to the others came with the young one. That one smelt odd, there was an odour of death around him and timelessness. The two frequently engaged in what it saw as either a prelude to mating or as a prelude to devouring one another.
As well as a place for what it slowly learnt was mating, it's captors appeared to use it as a tool. Something to prove to outsiders that other worlds, it's worlds existed. All these were shocked when they first came upon it. It smelt revulsion on some, and terror on others. One it recognised, one scared it. The black one they brought before it, that one was wrong, it smelt of foreign soil. Of invasion. Of things that should not be here. Then it wished that it could communicate with them. To warn them that this one was not to be trusted. The next time it saw the one that the others revered as a healer it was scared, it was more wrong than the black one, smelt more like death than the ageless one. It decided the safest thing to do would be to cower, as its predecessors had cowered and bowed to the rulers of their home world.
It frequently wished that it could communicate with the captors, then maybe it could explain that it's species was genderless, and therefore assigning it a name seemingly synonymous with the female gender of this species was entirely wrong. It had learned to recognise what they appeared to call it, it was the one word it heard most often. The ageless one had given it to it, the others simply followed suit.
Yes, the glass was the worst part of the cell, it turned it into a freak to be stared at and that it did not appreciate one bit. But it had learned, through experience, that the captors kept it safe and from harm. They had freed it one night. All it remembered from that night was pain, large amounts of pain, inflicted in a larger cage, by angry pink sacks of mainly water. Yes, the cell may be annoying, but it was safe, and it was looked after. There was the chance that being in the centre of their operations that it was more likely to be sent home if they found out one day how to reverse the 'rift' (that was the word the ageless one used) to send it home, to where there was grass and game and where it could hunt freely without threat of capture.