Bam! Chapter two! I make great time!
She woke up almost sweating. Or was it leftover water from the stream?
It was ridiculously uncomfortable, but she wasn't exactly cold.
The wetness of her clothing had changed to a more dampness overnight, and she felt a crick in her neck from sleeping wrong. Her stomach screamed at her, and she couldn't believe it. She had gone without dinner last night!
All the while, she had woken up on top of the beast now. It looked like the monster had snuggled her while it slept, holding her against its belly before it rolled onto its back. She could sit up on it, her legs hanging down, and not even be close to touching the floor. She discretely rubbed the mud on her arms onto the monster so she could be at least a little clean.
Her formerly white shirt was another deal entirely.
She peered down at the sandy-brown rough skin of the beast, toward its face. It was round just about everywhere. Its paws has dark brown claws caked in mud and fat, round legs. Its round belly rose and fell half a foot every time it breathed, and it snored. Raegan didn't know how she slept through it all night!
The farther down the neck she looked, toward its face, the more curious she got. It didn't look like the monster she had seen last night. But then again, she hadn't really seen it last night, just an outline of a large, evil thing.
She felt a little more comfortable with the beast when she rubbed its belly and felt the heat radiating off of it. That must have been why she slept like a rock. This thing kept the cold from bothering her. This thing and its kicking hind leg and tongue that flopped from its mouth happily.
Then her stomach gave her another shot of pain in her torso, and she peered down the side to look for a place to slide down. It had round little nubs all around it she might could use as a footstool. It looked awfully far down from its belly to the ground.
So slowly, ever so slowly, she inched and eased her way down the other side of the beast facing the mouth of the cave.
The sunlight was pouring in through it and made a nice glow all around the little shelter she had taken last night.
Raegan shifted about on her way down, trying to find what she thought would be good footholds but just resulted in blindly kicking the beast in the side a few times. It didn't seem to mind. Or notice.
It snored on.
Eventually, Raegan risked looking down to see how far she was. Her arms were getting tired now and her grip wasn't that strong. She couldn't really see in relative to her foot how far she was, so she risked closing her eyes and letting go.
She fell on her bottom with an oopf.
Then she looked up the mountain in front of her and felt proud of herself. Jeremy wouldn't be able to call her a whiny baby after she did all this, after being lost in the woods and sleeping outside by herself.
Well, not by herself. She glanced at the snoring beastie and then back to the mouth of the cave.
It looked like a girl, whatever it was. Raegan's mother had bulldogs: four of them. So she knew which ones were boys and which were girls. As far as she could tell, this huge bear-thing was a lady.
Raegan didn't know what it was. She'd never heard of anything like it before; but then, she hadn't known she lived so close to a forest either. It could be a weird bear thing, maybe a hippo? The beast didn't have fur; it was more like rough (rock-like) skin. Maybe scales? It had little bumps all over its body, many of them bigger than her hand.
Then her tail which looked a lot like a bee's.
Like one rounded rock covered in pimples with a smaller rock attached to it. Weird.
Finally, her attention was drawn to something below her. At first it confused her, then she thought it was a rug, and then she followed it with her eyes and noticed that the huge rhino thing had wings!
It could fly?
She pet them with her hand too. The rough leathery feeling to them amazed her. It was much less scary when it was daytime and it was asleep. Maybe it was the hunger talking, she would think back years later. It may not have been that long, but Raegan had never missed a meal before that day.
So she pushed herself up with her hands, then wiped them on her shuffled skirt.
Ugh, she hated wearing uniforms when they were clean, much less sleep with them all muddy.
She glanced back at the monster, not even considering waking it up, but she didn't want to wait before she went to try to find her way home. She was already getting bored and couldn't go without breakfast very much longer. Or she could, technically, but she really didn't want to.
So she slowly edged toward the exit, glancing back at the lady-snorezor, thinking of how much it reminded her of a Snorlax now.
She would take a Snorlax over this any day.
She checked both sides of the mouth of the cave before peeking out, like when her mother taught her to look both ways before crossing the street. All she could see was a relatively simple plain of dirt and rocks and the tree line starting over to her left. She looked both ways a few times, then walked out cautiously. Maybe she could find her way back to the stream?
She didn't make it too far.
She crossed down the open plain full of rocks, contemplating the color that really reminded her of the bee-beast. If it really tried to, it could camouflage in the rocks and dirt easily.
Raegan was extremely pleased with herself for noticing.
That feeling almost immediately turned to fear and nervousness with a hint of embarrassment as she moved her way past the cave and father into the rocks only to stumble upon a group of moving boulders.
She stopped in her place, flinching and jerking back in her fear when she saw the first one move. It was a bright purple, a miracle really that she hadn't noticed. It was flanked by a green one and two brownish ones.
Each of them peered up at her, exposing much larger teeth than the bee-beast had, like fangs but on their lower jaw. They were huge, but more resembling two big motorcycles than a car like the bee-beast. These looked similar to it, but might just be younger and smaller. Or kinda like dogs and wolves? Or cats and tigers?
She wonders which are the cats and which are the tigers in this instance.
The four moving rocks looked angrier than her abductor had, but her only clear view of the former was when it was sleeping. The purple one which was closest to her waddled forward awkwardly that reminded her of a duck or something. It had its wings folded up on its back and its yellow eyes trained on her. She curled in on herself, unable to move, and watched as it walked towards her in slow motion.
It reached her in no time, its three friends on its tail, and looked down at her. It might be twice her height, but seemed bigger as it glared down on her.
She avoided its bright yellow eyes and its pupil's slits.
She looked off to the side, head turned away, and arms curled close to her body. What seemed like an hour later, she heard some of the beasts walk off, but the purple one just looked at her.
It made a face when she made eye-contact, so she looked away.
Then she felt her hair ruffle from what felt like the air from a hairdryer.
Its breath was even warmer than the skin of the bee-dragon. It huffed at her. She curled her head up more. It huffed again.
It really confused her.
She slowly lifted her head, keeping her eyes properly away from its, and huffed at it through her nose. She saw the purple beast pat the ground with its clawed feet, and then it blew air into her face dead on. It smelled like smoke and mud. Gross. She kept her eyes closed as it did so before blowing back.
This interaction lasted about ten minutes with the two making noises at each other before Raegan got up the courage to try to touch its nose. It was a cute nose; she had to admit. It reminded her of a rhino's horn, but without the horn. Just a little bump. The rock-beast had been rather nice to her, making no move to munch her down. The other three had even moved back to whatever it was they were doing.
But it seemed like a touch on its nose was a little much because then its pupils turned thin again and it growled at her.
Raegan is not ashamed that she fell back in fear, on her butt, with her arms over her face.
She could hear it walk off. Or stomp. Maybe they're just heavy and don't know how to walk without stomping.
Two minutes later she was again cold without its breath, and sitting criss-cross-applesauce in the dirt. Very unladylike in a skirt, but no one was here to harass her so she didn't care. It isn't like the skirt didn't come with built in shorts underneath that would keep anyone from seeing her undies.
She sat and watched them for a bit, the two brown ones (which for all intents and purposes were identical to her untrained eyes) were the farthest from her, looking like her mother's dogs when they play fought. They pawed at each other while their little round tails shook back-and-forth enough that their whole body was moving with them.
The green one had its eye on her as it laid down, eyes drooping ever so slightly like it wanted to nap, while the purple one was munching down on some. . . dirt?
Rocks?
It was eating rocks.
Raegan looked next to her, where a perfectly reasonable little rock sat, waiting to be picked up. Then she looked back at the little herd. She knew when her dogs were sick, they would eat grass. Her mom told her so. Was this the same thing? She couldn't imagine it would make their stomachs feel better.
She never heard of anything eating rocks to survive.
Or in general.
Slowly she picked up the rock, like it might bite her. She turned it over in her hands several times, procrastinating, before she finally stood up with it pressed against her stomach. It seemed like any old rock to her, rubbing off dirt into her hand as she held onto it. She compared it to the rocks the rock-beast was eating. They looked the same.
She waited thirty seconds.
Then she took a teeny step forward, toward the herd. None of them noticed. The twin brown ones even came a little closer in their playing. She moved closer as well, and the green one became more alert as it watched her. None of them growled though.
She would give the purple one her rock, but it seemed a little preoccupied with its own feast, so she looked to the brown ones. She'd sooner get trampled than get their attention. They were too rowdy. So she drifted toward the sleepy green one.
Would it be calmer since it was tired? Or grumpier?
She held the rock out once she got closer, and, almost like she crossed an invisible line, the beast sprung up as soon as she got within a few arm's lengths of it.
She jumped a little, taking her arm back, but Greenie was not deterred. It came a little closer, its eyes a little adoring as it drooled a little on the dirt under them. It stared intently at the rock in her hand, not her at all. Maybe their big scary chompers were made for chewing rocks and not people?
So she slowly reached out the rock to it, she said a little shakily, "Hey, buddy, you wanna snack?" As soon as she felt the beast's breath on her fingertips, she dropped the rock (thankfully into the thing's mouth).
It purred at her a little as its huge teeth crunched on it, something keen to a smile on its face. She looked around for any rocks in the immediate area, reminded of the time she spent a weekend at her Grampa's and fed his horses some grass she picked up. Once she found one suitable, she went to hand it over to the green one, but nearly bumped into it when she realized it was right behind her.
She liked the adoring look in its eyes. Or she hoped it was adoring. It might just like being fed food.
Not that she was looking particularly hard. The rocks were everywhere.
So she gave the rock to the beast again, this time, Greenie rubbed his nose against her hand, surprising her. She smiled a little, giving it a little rub. She let her fingers roam across his face experimentally before examining the rounded bumps on its chin like the bee-beast had.
She didn't know how long she stayed there, just feeding Greenie some rocks until the brown twins showed up and she gave them a share. The four rock-beasts seemed close and friendly. They didn't fight over who got fed by her, just nosed their way until they were right in front of her. Their shaking tails seemed to move up their whole bodies as they licked their teeth at her.
She almost didn't notice when Greenie vanished because at that point the purple one had come back to her, and she spent the morning feeding each of them their little snacks. The twins crashed into a huffing pile a little while later, sleepy, and the purple one strolled off to a corner and out of her sight for a moment (she was thinking about what she would do next), when two things happened.
One, she suddenly heard a slushy and grunting sound over by Purple; and two, Greenie returned.
At first she had looked over to Purple, whose backside was to her, then she glanced at the approaching Greenie. She did a double take and trained her eyes at the feet of the purple rock-monster. A glowing orange-yellow clumpy liquid that pooled around. She gaped. She blinked.
Is that lava? But then her view was blocked by an excited and chipper (honestly, puppy-like) Greenie. She really jumped back when she saw it open its mouth so wide, at first afraid it would eat her, but then she saw the slick and slimy gray bundle that spilled from its mouth at her muddy shoes.
At first it disgusted her, then another part of her mind thought, are they feeding her because she fed them? She nearly gagged.
Fish?
He held a hand over her mouth.
Once she was sure she could stomach the sight, she looked down at the saliva covered 'meal.' There were about three of them, all about as long as her forearm. As if trying to push survival skills onto her, her stomach chose that moment to let out an obnoxious roar.
Her mouth was drooling. Not at the sight, but she was just so hungry. She looked down at the fish, then at the smiling, green rock-puppy.
Then she watched as the smug, purple rock-puppy walked away from his lava mess with a skip in its step.
She gagged again.
Look at me being generous. You guys get another joke.
'One incorporeal being said to another, "I'm not here, too! Make friends?"'
Bye
