To Date a Yautja
By, Sonsasu
Chapter Four
"The Towel"
"Don't go and be hissing at me, King."
I stood with my arms held above my head and commenced a twisting roll to different angles.
A few joints creaked during the wiggle, followed by the pop of rigid bones loosening themselves with a mild complaint, but after finishing the motions, I crossed the short fragment of space separating me from King and my invaded sleeping cot.
Heaped upon coils thicker than an adult, wild boar's torso, a gigantic mountain of a snake rested. His head, equal in size to a matured Australian crocodile's skull, pursued my approach.
I received the usual flipping of his black forked tongue for a greeting as I went behind him. Finding legroom a precious thing, I perched my palm against the nearest spiral of his body for an equalizer. Under my splayed fingers, I felt muscles contract and shrink away. I removed my hand.
He hated my cold fingers, dispite the thick, prominent overlapping plates of ivory scales layering his body. King, as I had named him two years ago, pivoted his head so that the flushed pink eyes of an albino met with mine, and at the same time, did not.
He gave another dull, slow hiss.
"If that was a question relating to what I think you're asking, then the answer is no. I'm going for a swim first, not napping. Alternatively, if you're hissing at ghosts, please tell them to vanish. I've had a long day and don't want to socialize right now."
Even if he did not entirely comprehend my delivered speech, I knew he understood me on some shade of his reptilian intellect.
Speaking of reptiles, I had no idea what kind of ophidian he was.
At first, I had believed him to be a mutated anaconda. Thing is, he lacked too many of the characteristics for the breed. One of those absent features being that his eyes sat within the sides of his head. Said tools of observation came shielded by bone, and beneath those fascinating aspects, the eye itself existed surrounded by a softer gray flesh around the beady, lidless shells.
What was disturbing, at least to me, were the jutting angles of his teeth. Comprise that with the striking argent quills that decorated his neck like a mane of steel and it simply added to his foreign design. In addition, he was too big and much too long for even an anaconda, and way too docile to be an untamed creature. Such a brooding had originally piloted my thoughts to lead me to think of him as a mutation, or perhaps an undiscovered species all together.
Eventually, however, I decided not to try to classify him.
I was no scientist or greedy person looking for a quick buck. Far from it, I was content with having King as my undefined company and more or less bodyguard. Most of the time, he tolerated me, that or ignored my invasion of his realm, take your pick. The other half, he spent quietly with me relaxing on him. Yes, literally on him like a living sofa.
You are all probably thinking monster snakes would not do that without prior human training and meddling, yada, yada.
Believe me; I had entertained the same damn impression in my head for the longest time too. When I first stumbled on this home away from home, I had also bumbled in on him as well. Uh, all right, all right, he found me instead.
Having explored some of my new refuge for two weeks, I, on the perception of not meeting anything that wanted to munch on me, determined it safe enough to take a nap one day. When I awoke, much to my horror, I was in the loops of his elongated body. Curled around and wrapped up as his hostage, with a pink eye watching me, I abruptly gained the insightful perspective of what it felt like to be overwhelmed with numbing terror.
To this day, I will admit to breaking down in a mute fit of crying for a minor period. By being too scared to allow myself even to shift a hand to wipe away the tickling tears, I had to struggle with my fear while in the clasp of a serpent.
King, bless him, did nothing to increase that panic, not even the wiggle of a tongue.
An hour, maybe longer, passed before I attempted to evade what I thought was to be my death. He let me, going as far as subtly to ease his grip when I stirred. Finally, after freeing my limbs, I had come to his head resting on my belly. In an act that disclosed a sagacious intelligence, it was not I who removed it, but him. With my reeling mind ensnared in confusion, I watched him slip away, using the controlled grace only his kind possessed.
Moreover, as you can guess, I virtually avoided that place for month. Yet mortal curiosity won in the end, and I was very glad it did succeed over common sense.
Anyway, history lesson cut short, King and I were friends.
I chucked my book bag to the edge of the spongy cot, and started to strip. With my apparel gone, intimate undergarments included, I grabbed my bag again, unzipped it, and then kidnapped the stored towel buried beneath two day's worth of clean clothes. I did not want to put on anything wet again, and preferred to keep my selected garments untouched until I needed them. Tossing my beach towel on my shoulders, I crept around King, and happily went to the tranquil water.
Clear as a glass sheet, it surrendered an extraordinarily lit view of the cave's other inhabitants.
These serene dwellers, an unfathomed number of unique fish, glided peacefully before me. Some swam to where I stood, curious if I had any of my treats for them. It brought a smile to shine on my face. Bigger then I, counting the billowing sheet-like fins that ghosted in their wake, they looked like huge, multicolored guppies peeking up at me. I knelt and gingerly trailed my fingers along their slick foreheads before they drifted off like clouds of fluttering smoke.
With my view cleared, I saw the smaller schools comprised of silvery waves of piscine that darted around like currents of restless wind. There were more of course, blending in with the glowing coral like reeds and plants far below, but they were unsocial and less interesting to me.
I shrugged off my plush towel and leapt in, scattering a few nearby aquatic denizens from their shoals.
If I bothered to think about it, the quantities of these creatures did explain the incredible size of King. He appeared to be the only serious carnivore around, and with the internal climate of this untouched shelter, it was a perfect habitat for him and the fish.
My pitiful doggie paddle carried me onward, being as it was the only method I knew how to use when atop the water. Not as warm as a Jacuzzi, but not as cool as a tropical ocean, I pitched over on my back and allowed myself to float for a time in the lukewarm liquid.
Not paying attention in my oblivious bliss, after shutting my eyes and weightlessly drifting, I had accidently yielded to the unseen pull of the water and had gone a bit further then I normally would. Reopening them a time later, I righted myself, startled when my eyes centered on the unfamiliar segment of ceiling.
A moment of consideration, and I determined it was no real problem as I stole a deep breath and dashed beneath the surface. Since I had not gone this far on previous ventures, I saw no cause to dismiss the chance of seeing the unidentified area.
I bobbed there in buoyancy, blinking eyelids that wanted to keep themselves shut.
That was another peculiar thing about this place. The water did not sting my eyes, and although my vision was blurred, the monolithic grotto presented a novel sight I had not seen before. Like a wide bowl aglow with a diluted, pale sapphire hue, and honeycombed with lit caves leading to somewhere unknown, I gazed upon this for as long as I was able.
Breathing could be such a pain.
I resurfaced, blowing the stinging fluid out of my nose. Whipping my head to banish the droplets of moisture, I returned to my back, flexing my arms in an upside-down breaststroke to move me back to the beach of glossy rock. Having seen multiple parts of my secret haven before, the scenes above the water still gave me a sensation of awe.
Ornamenting the dark domain of realm below the domed horizon of a stone column flooded sky, massive saucers dwelt strung together by low, rippling dunes of soot hued stone. Filled to their brims with independent, silvery ponds, those disks actually contained a deadly, superheated, semi liquid compound.
"Beautiful to behold and terrible to touch," I muttered.
I pinched my nostrils shut and went under again, not bothering to flip to leave the perspective of the undulating surface above me.
After kicking for a certain amount of unnoted time, that or needing to renew my borrowed oxygen, I would ensure myself of the distance between a painful collision to my skull and my goal of land. Midway there and still underwater with my legs pumping to propel me, the sudden sinuous, weaving shadow of King dividing the unbroken surface startled me enough to release a small swarm of bubbles. As I watched the fluxing wake of his leisured retreat, I, without premeditation, reached my fingertips up and drifted them along the remaining section of his tail before he went beyond my complete reach.
My head emerged from the mass of water, causing my hair to drape on my face like a second skin. No longer wanting to stay submersed, my fingers abandoned their stations of crimping my nose closed. I doggie paddled blindly ahead, knowing my outstretched hands would strike anything solid first. In perhaps several swipes and kicks forward, my fingers scraped on the irregular face of a traveling limitation. Perching my hands on the edge, I pulled myself up and onto my knees, not altogether welcoming the reintroduction of weight to my formerly buoyant frame.
With a black curtain of hair still covering my entire head and stealing my sight, I ran my hands down my body, flicking off the excess dampness rolling down my skin to lessen the sopping duty of my towel.
Just as I lifted my arms to compress the water out of my hair, something unexpected happened. Warmth encircled my lower torso, a wonderfully dry, fluffy envelopment coming to rest above my breasts. The sheer surprise made me suck in a breath and jerk away violently. Although, registering on a dim level of genius, I felt the outline of large hands splayed wide over my back.
Unable to use a visual confirmation in my panic, I shoved apart my blinds made from hair. Shock, plain and simple, stole my ability to inhale refreshing air, it stopped the mental processing factory called my brain, and ultimately it froze my frantic heart. Using a mouth that refused to function, I managed to utter little noises related to a choking frog.
"I win, Winterborn."
Rumbled the towering creature I had previously thought of as a fabricated being.
-Disclaimer-
Sonsasu does not own Predator
A.N
Many thanks to my beta.
