On the following day, before taking the snork to the canteen, Vitaly leaded it to the lab so that he could bandage its wounds again. He then noticed, much for his surprise, that the wounds didn't look that fresh anymore.
He really needed to see the snork's saliva under the microscope, and when they returned from the canteen Vitaly decided he had to find a way to obtain a saliva sample; it didn't seem nice to slip a swab into Mikhail's mouth, that would probably irritate the snork and Vitaly already knew that an angry Mikhail wasn't a pleasant company. He then had the brilliant idea of asking the snork to lick a petri dish.
The snork was crouching in the middle of the lab, observing as Vitaly looked for something on the lab workstation, and raised its eyebrows when the young scientist kneeled in front of him:
"Mikhail, lick this." Vitaly said. The snork frowned; Vitaly was holding a transparent mini-dish right in front of the snork's face, and the mutant snarled and pushed Vitaly's hand away. "Not like that!" With a resigned sigh, he stood up and when he returned to his spot in front of the snork he had another petri dish.
Mikhail tilted its head, sensing that Vitaly was about to do something. Much to its surprise, Vitaly licked one of the petri dishes:
"See? Like this!" He exclaimed, handing the snork the other petri dish. Mikhail looked at the little object with narrowed eyes, trying to figure out if it had any food. Maybe it had a nice taste. Curious, it gave the petri dish a tentative lick.
The disappointed look the snork cast at the young scientist made him laugh:
"Why are you making that face, it wasn't that bad!" Vitaly exclaimed and stood up. It wasn't that bad? It didn't have taste at all! Mikhail grunted and resumed to watch Vitaly while the young scientist worked on the lab worstation.
And, for some minutes, the lab was silent.
Then Mikhail began to feel intrigued, because Vitaly seemed very interested with the transparent thing he had told the snork to lick. What was so interesting about a tasteless mini-dish with drool? With a grunt, the mutant decided to take a look on that and made its way to the workstation.
Vitaly was indeed entertained observing the saliva sample under the microscope, but still he heard Mikhail's boots and the chain dragging after the mutant. That didn't disturb him, he was already used to have the snork wandering around the lab before retreating to its little lair under the desk. Mikhail did a little reconnaissance every day and Vitaly supposed it had to be related with its life outside.
He heard the snork stop next to him, but still didn't give it much attention. Only when the snork raised its arm and placed it quite heavily on the smooth and dark surface of the workstation table, Vitaly looked away from the microscope. He couldn't help but wince when the snork curled its hand into a fist, stretching the skin and the still open wounds, and winced harder when he noticed the closed fist tense, accentuating the tendons and the lean muscles and the mass of scars and the still open wounds on the snork's arm as the mutant pulled itself up with a snarl.
Vitaly blinked his eyes quickly and tensed up; he was used to look down at the snork… not to have to look up at it. For a moment he thought about standing up from the stool he was sitting on, but Mikhail passed its other arm over Vitaly's back, supporting the weight of its torso on the closed fists on the table, standing behind Vitaly and looking down at him and to all the unknown objects on the workstation.
The young scientist did his best not to freeze; nothing wrong had happened when he had let the snork play with him in the gym, so nothing bad would happen to him in that moment. Exhaling slowly, Vitaly turned his attention to the microscope again, doing his best to ignore the snork's breathing brushing the skin of his neck everytime the mutant moved its head.
Mikhail tilted its head curiously, looking around, then fixing its gaze on the human under him. The scent of fear was back, even though Vitaly was acting like nothing was happening. But the scent of blood was strong too, and the snork approached its head to Vitaly's neck and rested softly its exposed teeth exactly over Vitaly's external jugular vein. It immediately felt a frightened shiver and, once more, it thought about simply biting Vitaly in the neck, kill him and flee. Plus, the vein pulsing against its teeth was making that idea quite appealing. The snork could already feel tension building up in its shoulders and crawling down its arms and up its neck and jaw.
But then again… what reasons did it have to kill Vitaly? Vitaly wasn't in its territory, Vitaly hadn't attacked or harmed it, and it wasn't even hungry. The snork recalled the day before, when the young scientist had played with the snork and had made that interesting sound, and how the brown-eyed man had irradiated that good feeling.
The snork snarled and moved its head abruptly, brushing its teeth up Vitaly's neck and ending up with its nose on Vitaly's brown hair. That tickled Mikhail's skin and exposed gums and the mutant snorted, amused, because it had never felt tickles before. It grabbed some hair with its teeth and pulled:
"Ouch, Mikhail!" Vitaly exclaimed at the same time he widened his eyes and tensed up in pain, finally looking away from the microscope. Yet, despite the painful tension of having his hair pulled, he relaxed visibly.
The scent of fear vanished. The snork grunted and let go of Vitaly's hair, only to find one of his ears extremely interesting and pull it with its teeth.
The young scientist let out a resigned sigh as the snork attacked his ear. Then… he had a brilliant idea.
Mikhail watched, curious, as Vitaly crossed his bedroom towards the closet wall and opened one door, that had an inside mirror:
"Come here, Mikhail." Vitaly called and kneeled on the floor. The snork walked to the young scientist… but it came to a halt, looking with wide eyes to the… man? crouching next to Vitaly. No, it wasn't a man, it didn't look like a man, men don't have a permanent wild grin on their faces and don't have collars around their necks. Nevermind, whatever that thing was, was to be destroyed!
The snork began to growl and Vitaly realised just in time the mutant was going to attack the mirror. He hurried to push the door closed and couldn't help but giggle when the snork raised its eyebrows and widened its pale blue eyes, looking at the exact place where its opponent had been:
"Come here." Vitaly said, gesturing with his hand, and the snork went to crouch next to the young man. Vitaly opened the door and there was the thing again! Mikhail began to growl… but then Vitaly's head was somehow floating above the thing. How was that possible?
Mikhail looked from the mirror to Vitaly with wide eyes, and the brown-eyed man giggled again:
"It's just a mirror, silly boy." He explained patiently. "That blue-eyed guy, that's you! Come on, you must have seen yourself before, at least in a puddle of water." And Vitaly moved a little closer to the snork, so that both of them were in the mirror, and waved his hand. Mikhail looked from Vitaly waving his hand next to it to the other Vitaly, astonished. Utterly confused. Just to be sure, the snork peeked behind the door, but no one was there.
It looked to the mirror again, frowning; so, humans had a device to see themselves. Why? Seeing themselves was stupid, the only way to survive was seeing the others! And no, the snork had never seen itself before like Vitaly was supposing; it had always been too dark, both the water and the place where the mutant had lived, and before Vitaly removing the annoying thing that had covered Mikhail's head its sight had been quite poor. Mikhail tilted its head, watching its reflection; the snork concluded it actually resembled a human, like Vitaly, and it even had ears like the young scientist, and its hair looked like Vitaly's too, not like boar fur like the snork had initially thought. Yet there was something that wasn't right at all… Mikhail looked to Vitaly, who was smiling at it; the brown-eyed man had… something… that made him feel and look nice and harmless. And now that the snork was aware of how it looked like, it concluded Vitaly's nice and harmless looks had nothing to do with his facial features or the fact of not carrying weapons. Mikhail looked at its reflection again and moved a little, observing the snork in the mirror.
Mikhail, looking at the Mikhail in the mirror, concluded it didn't look nice and harmless, and it definitely didn't have a nice and harmless aura. It could swear it had seen creatures like it, lipless, that moved on its fours and growled… but those had something covering the upper part of their heads, something that now Mikhail didn't have. Yet the memory of those creatures made the snork relate its reflection much more with them than with Vitaly; the creatures in its memory didn't look nice and harmless, and didn't give Mikhail the feeling of nice and harmless like Vitaly did when the snork thought about him. Because those creatures, the snork knew for sure, would attack, not necessarily Mikhail, but they would attack. Vitaly wouldn't…
Vitaly's smile died, slowly, as he watched how the snork's face changed from curious to… sorrowful? It was difficult to tell since Mikhail's most identifiable expressions were those it had learned from Vitaly, mimicking him. And even those expressions weren't perfect at all; the snork still didn't use all of its facial muscles and the ones around its lipless mouth were damaged beyond repair or seriously compromised in their functions.
At least, until that moment.
The young scientist observed as the snork frowned lightly and narrowed its eyes in an almost imperceptible way, at the same time it clenched its jaw and the damaged muscles in the mouth area twitched, almost imperceptibly too. Vitaly concluded the snork had definitely a sad expression, but was it sad enough to be sorrow? Or resigned? Or distressed? And why would the snork be suddenly sorrowful? Was it because the mutant had seen itself as the others saw it? Had the mutant became conscious of how it looked? But even so, how could it be affected by its own image, if it hadn't means, like a human, to compare itself with someone else and then jump to conclusions about how it looked? That, if the snork actually cared about how it looked… The mutant surely had other means, others than the visual and probably more effective, to identify the ones of its own species.
The young scientist changed to a sitting position and pulled his knees to his chest:
"Hey." He called softly, and the snork looked away from the mirror to him. "What's wrong?"
Wrong.
Mikhail tilted its head and rested one knee on the floor. How to explain…? The mutant snorted and pointed itself. Vitaly frowned:
"You're wrong? Why?" And much to his surprise the snork pointed him. How could Mikhail be wrong because of him? And first and most important of all… did Mikhail know what was wrong? Vitaly already knew the snork understood him… but was it able to really understand him at all? Could the snork understand words or the emotions carried by the words? Or both?
Mikhail snarled, annoyed, pointing constantly from it to Vitaly. Of course the snork was wrong, how couldn't Vitaly see it? Stupid human… By instinct, Mikhail already knew it and Vitaly were different, were enemies and one had to eliminate the other in order to survive. And Mikhail had been happy living with the aid of its instinct… until Vitaly showed up. And Vitaly, being different from the other humans, had made the snork really curious about him.
However… seeing their reflections, Mikhail realised they were indeed different; Vitaly was nice and harmless… Mikhail wasn't. By no means could they be a pack, that wouldn't work; Vitaly, harmless and nice, would only delay Mikhail, not harmless and not nice, when it came to face the other humans and escape.
By the way Vitaly was looking at the snork, Mikhail understood the human didn't understand at all its reasoning. The mutant snarled and decided to point the mirror, because if the mirror had made it seen the obvious, so maybe it would have the same effect on Vitaly.
The young scientist looked at their reflection in the mirror, confused, and for a long while he simply stared, intrigued with Mikhail's attitude after seeing its reflection. The young scientist knew animals could tell when they were in the presence of a different species, and he thought it was obvious that the snork already knew they were both… different, yet not entirely different. Vitaly was human, Mikhail was a mutated human. And in that moment the young scientist was starting to believe that Mikhail was much more human than what it could imagine.
With a sigh, the brown-eyed man looked away from the mirror to the snork that still had the same disturbed attitude. Like something was indeed wrong. He offered Mikhail a smile:
"I can't understand what's wrong, Misha." He said softly. The snork frowned. «Misha»? Now the scientist was changing its name? Humans changed names like that? Though Mikhail had to admit «Misha» sounded… nicer than «Mikhail». There, Vitaly was being nice again! The snork let out a small snarl. "I don't see anything wrong."
Mikhail narrowed its eyes, incredulous. It was so obvious and that silly human couldn't see it? The snork made a last attempt to explain itself, pointing again their reflection in the mirror. Yet Vitaly just shrugged:
"Yeah, you're a snork. A stylish snork, with a cool hairstyle. And I'm a man and I should think about getting a cool hairstyle too." He stated with a chuckle. For brief seconds, Mikhail thought Vitaly had finally gotten it. "But trust me, we can be friends."
Trust.
The snork just snarled, annoyed. Vitaly was doing it again, like when Mikhail had bitten him; he was still insisting, provoking the snork's curiosity to try to go further. Mikhail doubted that, with the character differences, their pack would last.
But friends? What was that? It sounded new… nice. There, there was that stupid human being nice again!
And there was that even more stupid snork accepting the whole thing. Again.
Vitaly dragged himself closer to the mutant and stirred its blonde hair:
"But despite you being a snork and me being a man, we actually go along pretty well, don't you think?" Vitaly asked and tried not to think about the bite wound in his arm. Mikhail lowered its head a little, actually enjoying the feeling of Vitaly's fingers on its hair. The young scientist's smile grew wider. "There's more than meets the eye, isn't it?" The snork looked up at him, curiously, and the young scientist was sure, in that precise moment, that he and the snork did understand each other, and with time they would probably understand each other even better, and the snork had a sense of… himself. His reaction before the mirror had no other interpretation, and for Vitaly having consciousness of himself and reacting before it, like Mikhail did, was enough proof that the snork had humanity left.
After lunch they went back to the lab and Vitaly decided that the saliva sample in the petri dish could wait inside the lab refrigerator; Mikhail's mind, that since the beginning had sounded very interesting, now sounded like the only thing that really mattered to understand the snork.
So Vitaly sat on the floor in front of Mikhail and spread pens and paper sheets between them, while keeping his notebook open next to him to take some notes. He unbuckled the collar around Mikhail's neck and left it aside:
"This is a blue pen. Blue pen." The brown-eyed man said and held said pen before the snork's eyes. "And this is a black pen. Black pen. And this is a red pen. Red pen." He took a moment to write on his notebook. "Now Misha, can you give me the black pen?"
Mikhail tilted his head, observing the pens, and after a moment he picked up the black pen. In front of him, Vitaly smiled widely and did something he hadn't done since Mikhail had attacked him; he gave the snork a biscuit. Well, Mikhail wasn't picky with food…
Vitaly then asked for the blue pen, then the red, and the blue again, then the black, and finally the red. Learns names related to objects., Vitaly wrote, Yet I believe Mikhail's understanding of human language goes beyond that. Able to identify identical objects that differ only in colour., and here Vitaly bit his lower lip and decided to add a little note to remind him to lead tests just to be sure the snork didn't have any type of colour-blindness, because he recalled that in all the information he had read about those mutants, there was nothing about how they perceived the world.
And just when the young scientist thought he was going to have a calm, peaceful and productive day with Mikhail… the snork began to growl and turned around to face the door. Vitaly hurried to buckle the collar around his neck and take hold of the chain when someone knocked at the door and came in. The young scientist recognised him immediately; it was the younger soldier from the gym, the one who had looked curiously to the snork while his comrade had been busy ranting about how the snork wasn't supposed to be in the gym.
The soldier closed the door behind him and smiled, enthusiastic:
"I'm sorry to come down here and interrupt your work, doctor… but I got really curious about this mutant." He excused and stood there, visibly eager to get closer but at the same time not really sure of how to act before the growling mutant. Vitaly smiled too and stood up. "Mikhail, isn't it? You named it?"
"No, he was already named Mikhail." Vitaly replied and looked down at the mutant, still growling threateningly. Judging by the tension visible in the mutant, the young scientist decided it would be better if the soldier kept that distance. "He had a dog tag, he was a soldier on duty when the mutation occurred."
"Cool, so you can tell how old it is? Because doctor, when you said it had a good motor coordination… it got me thinking; it didn't originally walk like that, right? It had to learn."
"Exactly, he had to learn!" Vitaly nodded, excitedly; finally someone who seemed to appreciate his work. He decided to step forwards, and much to his dismay Mikhail gave two steps forwards, still growling. "But no, I don't know when the mutation occurred…"
The young soldier began to bounce on his heels; he was around Vitaly's age, had brown eyes and blonde hair in a burr cut. Vitaly immediately sympathized with him, and would have gone shake hands with him if he didn't have to keep Mikhail at a certain distance from the soldier:
"I could ask around the older guys if they know something." The soldier volunteered and looked down to the snork. "I've never seen a snork before, you know? I arrived just some weeks ago. It doesn't seem bad."
"Mikhail doesn't seem bad, yes…" Vitaly repeated and looked discreetly to his injured arm, with the bandage hidden under his sleeves. "But I sincerely hope you don't have a bad encounter with a snork."
"I was told that usually there's always more than one." The soldier crouched, still looking curiously at Mikhail. "You made it that mohawk, doctor?"
"Yeah."
"It looks funny, can I pet it?"
"You better don't." Vitaly chuckled when the soldier looked up at him, disappointed. "Mikhail… he… you can't judge a book by its cover."
"Do you think that, if it gets used to me, it'll let me pet it?" The soldier smiled hopefully. "I'm private Alexandrov, by the way. Alexei Alexandrov."
"I really don't know…" Vitaly sighed and looked down at Mikhail, who was still insisting with growling and looking like he was about to attack. In a way, it disturbed Vitaly that the mutant didn't calm down; that soldier seemed nice, he meant no harm. But on the other hand, the young scientist actually felt special about being the only one allowed to interact with the snork. "Doctor Fedor. Vitaly Fedor."
Alexei stood up, slowly, and waved goodbye to Mikhail. That only made the snork growl louder:
"I gotta go now… Can I show up sometimes?" He asked, looking from the mutant to the scientist. Vitaly nodded. "Cool! See you, doctor! See you, Mikhail!"
The soldier left, but it took a while for the snork to finally relax and stop growling. Vitaly sighed and sat on the floor again:
"Alexei doesn't seem bad, Misha. Why are you constantly growling?" He asked as he unbuckled Mikhail's collar. He made a note to self to change the bandage around the snork's neck before dinner.
Mikhail snorted, watching as Vitaly was doing something with the pens and the paper sheets. The snork growled because the soldier, besides being a human, which was a valid reason for growling and attacking, was a soldier. Soldiers are brute. Soldiers carry weapons. Soldiers kill unless they're killed first. Easy logic, the snork couldn't understand why Vitaly didn't get it, especially when Vitaly himself was a victim of them.
And, since Vitaly insisted on the two of them being a pack, Mikhail had to defend Vitaly from the soldiers, returning the favour Vitaly had been doing since they had meet; the young scientist had defended him from the soldiers.
Vitaly drew a circle, a square, a rectangle and a triangle in some paper sheets and then displayed them in front of Mikhail, taking the mutant out of his musings:
"Okay Misha, this is a circle, this is a square, this is a rectangle and this is a triangle." He explained. "The square, where is the square?"
Mikhail frowned and, after a little hesitation between the square and the rectangle, pointed the square and was a given a smile and a biscuit. Vitaly repeated the exercise a few more times, always rewarding Mikhail, then he turned up the clean surface of the paper sheets and made some basic drawings of facial expressions:
"Now that I'm sure you can really understand feelings and express emotions, I'm going to teach you their names." The brown-eyed man explained while drawing with the black pen. He paused for a moment to look at the snork, frowning thoughtfully. "You looked… sorrowful after seeing yourself in the mirror. I've noticed you started using facial expressions you saw on me, related to things you felt on me… but I never felt sorrowful around you. Not even when you bit me. I wonder if you have capacity to… how to explain, adapt what you already know to something you never experienced before." Vitaly frowned as the snork tilted his head several times. "Am I sounding confusing, Misha? When you saw yourself in the mirror, you made a face… the face you made, it corresponds to a feeling. Have you ever felt like that before?"
The snork thought for a moment, then shook his head in a quite clumsy way. He was more used to nodding and raised his blonde eyebrows when Vitaly chuckled, amused:
"I can really talk with you!" He exclaimed and wrote in his notebook Recalls and applies things learned in a previous moment in time. "I wonder if there are more snorks like you."
Mikhail snorted; he had his doubts, his fellow snorks weren't the curious and the adventurous type as Mikhail, they were way more careful. That was why they were outside and Mikhail was in the lab with Vitaly… Yet this thought didn't bother the snork at all, and the mutant simply shook his head again. Interested, the young scientist pulled his knees to his chest and rested his chin on the top of his knees:
"So you're telling me that, if they had brought a Sergei instead of a Mikhail, Sergei would have probably killed me?" Mikhail just blinked his eyes. "If it was another snork, not you… I'd be dead by now, isn't it?"
All things considered… Mikhail snorted again and nodded enthusiastically; Vitaly would have died long ago had he been working with another snork, and not a curious one as Mikhail. But the mutant also knew that, if someone else, not someone nice and harmless as Vitaly, had been appointed to work with him, he would already be dead, too… or even worse, would be living in the fragile limbo between life and death.
Seemed both of them had been lucky.
Vitaly crossed his legs and finished drawing faces:
"Okay Misha… this is a sad face, this is a happy face, this is a surprised face and that's a scared face." He explained as he pointed the drawings with the pen. "I'm going to do facial expressions and I want you to point the face that resembles my expression the most, ok? Like now, I'm smiling, I'm happy, this face looks like me." And he pointed the happy face.
Mikhail thought the whole thing really interesting; humans didn't only have an endless way to move their faces, but they also had an endless list of names for it! Why were humans so obsessed with naming things? The snork hoped one day Vitaly would teach him the means to voice this question.
At night, after dinning and leaving the snork in his cell, Vitaly went to his bedroom to sleep. Yet he was sleepless, even though he actually felt tired. The day with Mikhail had been at the same time exciting and calm, and for a moment Vitaly smiled to himself, remembering his childhood years; he had used to feel exactly like that before the new school year started, due to the perspective of making new friends.
However, and Vitaly's smile died, bitterly, making new friends had always been something that Vitaly had failed at miserably. Not that he hadn't try, maybe even a little too hard. The perspective of being friends with a mutated human was certainly ridiculous, but Vitaly smiled again; if some people said their best friend was their cat, so he really didn't see a problem of his best friend being a mutant. A mutant that he had to study… He cast a look at his injured arm and decided to change the bandage. With a sigh, he made his way to the bathroom, still looking at his arm; yeah, he really didn't have any other way of doing his job if Mikhail wasn't cooperative, and he was sure that the whole situation would be way better if both of them were sure they could trust each other, that the other wouldn't hurt them.
The brown-eyed man by no means wanted to believe he was such a hopeless case that only a mutant would have patience for him…
He stopped in front of the sink and opened the little cabinet over it, from where he retrieved a small first-aid kit. He opened it and picked up a new roll of bandages, and started to unwrap the bandage that covered his wounded arm. Then he raised his eyebrows; the wound had finally started to heal, and in the places where only the skin had been damaged there were already a few fragile scabs.
Mikhail woke up and approached the door of his cell, expecting. At any moment, Vitaly would show up.
But then… the snork caught a light tension in the air. How?, he couldn't explain. All he knew was that there was danger somewhere, so he began to growl and looked around, his whole body building up tension in case he needed to defend himself. He couldn't see the danger, and couldn't even feel it properly. All Mikhail knew was that there was danger.
Shortly after the snork felt Vitaly was coming, and that was when the mutant felt utterly confused; the danger was still there… but the danger wasn't Vitaly. So, what was happening? He kept growling, remained tense, and deep down began to worry because Vitaly, finding him like that, would be scared again. Mikhail didn't want that, he wanted the good feelings.
Vitaly opened the door and heard Mikhail growl. The young scientist frowned, confused, and wondered if there was someone bothering the snork. But as he approached Mikhail's cell, he noticed the mutant was alone. So, why was he acting like that? Vitaly couldn't help but worry, worry that for some reason the mutant had gone back to stage zero, that all the work from the previous weeks was gone, that the frail trust between them had vanished.
Forcing a smile, he kneeled in front of the mutant, looking at him through the metal bars of the cell door. The snork was tense, looking at him with wide blue eyes. Vitaly frowned, concerned:
"Misha? What's wrong?"
Mikhail didn't know, either. All he knew was that there was danger.
Yet suddenly it was all gone. The tension in the air, the danger. The snork relaxed, blinking his eyes very quickly, and Vitaly's frown grew bigger. Carefully, the young scientist opened the cell door and approached the snork, but Mikhail did nothing:
"Strange… what happened to you?" Vitaly asked quietly and held the chain. He didn't need to pull it, Mikhail followed him.
The snork snarled lowly; he would like to know what happened, too…
Weee, review?