Author's note: I'm busting out chapters like crazy for this story lol. More exposition in the future. Also will be updating lamia life next
Cold, deserted, and empty. The frozen winds of this land was enough to make even the mightiest blaze fade into nothing.
Jack felt an icy touch on his leg as he awoke from his slumber. Cold winds tickled him in his clothes. He felt disoriented and weak! What had happened in the time he was asleep? The last thing remembered was his tongue and body melting from the heat of the desert and now he was freezing in some snowy terrain. His teeth chattered inside his mouth.
He crawled his way outside of the bag while avoiding the bag of fruit that remained and the old book. Jack knew the book was important to Inma but it was showing its age with each passing day. The cover was torn to rags, its pages covered in a blanket of dust.
Jack hoped that whatever was in that book would be the key to getting riches and also a way back home. With his head pushing the flap up, Jack popped his head outside and was immediately shot with a cold blast of freezing air.
Wow that's cold, Jack thought as he looked around. Snowy winds blocked his field of vision. It was difficult to see anything and the temperature felt as if it was dropping with each passing second. He grabbed his blanket, wrapped it around himself, and took a walk outside. He looked from his left and to his right with nothing in sight.
He then turned around and gasped.
"Inma?" He said aloud but Inma looked like she had been run ragged. Her face was blue and lips purple, hands looked like they'd fall off, and bits of sand were stuck to her dress and hair. He walked around to her legs and feet and noticed the redness of her soles. Clearly something dangerous happened while he was asleep but he soon felt another chill to his bones and wrapped the blanket around as tightly as he could.
He looked back at satchel and went back inside. The leather inside was now colder than before. He sat inside and rubbed his hands together to keep warm. Every breath he took stung his lungs. It felt like he was pricked with needles inside.
The cold made his lips start to peel and his fingers start to tremble. If he stayed inside this satchel then frostbite and hypothermia would take him. He had a feeling in his gut that he was sure to freeze to death.
Then in his freezing cold, he remembered it. Just barely he remembered the thought from earlier.
The pocket. Jack's mind raced as the thought came to him. He remembered that Inma specially sewn a pocket for him a few days before.
He crawled his way out of the satchel once more. Each touch of the leather by his frozen fingers made them ache and cry out in bones. If he stayed inside any longer then the bones inside would snap.
He went outside and saw Inma still sleeping with a tired facial expression. She looked more worn out than him and he was sorry that he couldn't do more for her.
With his screaming muscles, he lifted up her coat and searched for the pocket within. It took him a few seconds of squinting but he finally noticed it. There is was, his temporary sanctuary.
He got down on his stomach and began to crawl. Just below him was the combined feeling of silk fabric and cold snowy winds. Above him? A heavy feeling of flesh and the smell of the outside.
He crawled and crawled further and further to the pocket, his arms felt like frail pasta noodles ready to snap at a moments notice.
He went deeper and deeper but then he stopped. His eardrums started to vibrate from the sound of Inma's heavy breathing. He felt every breath that she took and every bit of air that left her massive lungs. His mind and body started to feel anxious. A bit claustrophobic.
Each breathe was slow and slothful, but heavy enough to send him deeper into the snow. He crawled and crawled but then heard the sound.
"BADUMP…...BADUMP…...BADUMP…"
Her heartbeat? Jack thought. It was so massive, so powerful, so rumbling that it overtook him. It completely consumed him.
"This is Inma's heartbeat" Jack muttered through tired breaths. It was a strange feeling for Jack. He never heard another person's, no less a GIANTS heartbeat for himself. It was comforting for Jack but Jack felt that that comfort flee like a deer from a hungry lion.
He reached for the pocket slip, his fingers touched the firm edge of the slip. It was at that moment that he heard the sound. The sound that sent a very chill down to the deepest part of his being. A feeling that made a primal fear and cowardice come out of him.
Growl…..
Jack stopped at stared down at the ground in terror. He was frozen in fear as he body trembled. His fingers barely touched the slip anymore.
Her stomach.
Jack began to hyperventilate. It felt like a revelation came to him. With all the walking she had been doing, of course the girl would be hungry.
She isn't a human like me. She's a giant. A beast? A monster?
The sound of Inma's stomach made Jack began to sweat from fear. She was a little girl but she was almost massive compared to him.
She was still temperamental and maturing. Sure she was kind hearted albeit a little smug and argumentative but if push came to shove...would she? Children were cruel and merciless when they wanted too.
Her stomach growled again and Jack took a deep breath. She kept him safe for this long, there was no way she would betray him. At least that was what he told himself to not panic.
With another groan of her belly, Jack slipped himself into the tight slit of Inma's pocket and warmed himself as well as he could from her bodyheat.
