I hope you enjoy and thank you to VODKKA18 and Twinwolfsister for their reviews. As I said in the last chapter intro, it is always wonderful to know you enjoy my stories.
Carla sat by the fire, shivering and sniffling as the gravity of her situation sunk in yet again. Was she ever going to make it back home to see her friends or family? Would she ever even taste coffee again?
She felt tears beginning to sting in her eyes, thinking about all the things she would probably never see again. Especially now that she knew it was a question of when she was rather than where it was even more unlikely she would ever see her home again.
She sat staring at the fire, thinking about everything she was going to miss. Wrapping her arms around herself, she rubbed her arms, trying her best to warm up. It was warm during the day, lovely even, but at night it felt like all the colds of winter had crept in and infested her space.
Carla jumped as she heard footsteps behind her before feeling an animal skin suddenly wrap around her and huge strong hands settling on her shoulders, giving them an affectionate squeeze.
"Thank you." She sighed.
The hands left her shoulders, and she looked around with a smile expecting to see Takkar moving around to the front of her. Carla leapt up in both fear and astonishment. Staring back at her was what appeared to be a neanderthal, albeit better looking than the history books had taught. The creature looked almost hurt by her reaction, fighting back tears even.
His high brow and prominent scarred facial features gave him a rough appearance, but his eyes told a different story. They were ice blue and conveyed all the emotion you would imagine any intelligent being to possess. They held the gaze of someone that had seen many horrors; he looked worn down by life. Carla had seen that look before.
"I'm sorry." She sighed. "I thought you were someone else." She tried her best to muster the friendliest smile she could without looking crazy, hoping the man in front of her was able to understand her apology. He smiled slightly in return, then appeared to be considering something with great effort.
"You ok?" He asked, looking her intensely in the eye.
"I miss home, and I don't think I can ever go back." Carla sighed.
"Dah misses home." He mused distantly, touching his chest as he said his name.
"Carla." She spoke softly, smiling sympathetically. At least she wasn't the only one unhappy about the thought of being stuck here.
"Ka...La." He spoke the syllables slowly, like a young child learning a new word. Everyone in this place so far had spoken her name incorrectly, but she was starting to like how it sounded. She let out a small giggle as Dah rubbed his head in confusion.
"Ka. La." He spoke a little faster.
"Yeah, don't burst a blood vessel." Carla laughed wholeheartedly at the face the statement prompted from Dah. She sat back down in front of the fire, hoping to warm herself better now that she had something to snuggle into.
Carla's eye was drawn to Dah once more as the light of the fire danced over his massive muscular, hairy chest that visibly rose and fell with each breath he took. He must have stood at least at 6ft, and from what she could make out, he was around 30, which, if memory served her correctly, was pretty old in these times.
"Dah. Not speak to Wenja. Wenja afraid of Dah," Dah said, sitting at the fire to the left of Carla.
"Yeah, well, I'm not Wenja, um, I, at least, I'm not like them out there." Carla gestured toward the entrance. Remembering the vision in Tensay's hut had ended with a Wenja man telling her that she was Wenja, but she still wasn't sure exactly what that meant. Did it mean this tribe would accept her, or did it mean she was of the same blood as them?
"Ka. La. Very different. To Wenja." Dah affirmed slowly, looking at Carla intently. She nodded, staring into the fire as another shudder shook her body. She felt Dah wrap an arm around her waist in an attempt to share body heat. He moved around to sit behind her, his legs on either side of her body and wrapped his arms tightly around her. Carla leant back into his warmth, grateful for it until she felt something poking at the base of her spine. Dah inhaled her scent deeply, closing his hold on her even more tightly. Carla let out a slight choking noise as she felt her ability to breathe being stopped. Dah jumped, letting go, and she took the opportunity to move to the side of Dah once again.
Dah sat for a few minutes seeming to be lost in his thoughts, looking into the fire. Suddenly he jumped up and ran off, disappearing into the hut that sat behind Carla. She could hear clattering and crashing inside. She was just about to get up to investigate when Dah came charging from the hut holding what appeared to be a crudely made dress. It was a one-shouldered number that had something like laces holding the sides together.
"For. Ka. La." He spoke with a smile offering the dress to Carla. She was hesitant at taking it, but it did look warmer than her soaked clothing. She stood, taking the dress from him and looking around, trying to work out how she could get changed in private in this place. She spotted a rock that would be just about big enough to hide her from view.
Before she could move, Dah ushered her into his hut and pulled the animal skins closed. She stood for a minute, confused as to what had just happened, wondering if he was getting ready to follow her in and bash her over the head with a club in true 'caveman style'. Carla dropped the animal skin from her shoulders and stood poised to fight off an oncoming advance, but nothing came. Once she was sure he wasn't going to burst in, declaring she was his in some cartoon-like fashion, she moved the animal skin blanket to one side and began to remove her wet clothing.
She stood for a moment, realising she had no idea how to get the dress on without undoing the leather laces. She tried her best to get the skins over her head without losing the ends but failed miserably. She fought for a while, trying her best to right what she had done, but she just seemed to be making things worse.
"Goddammit!" She roared in utter frustration, completely forgetting where she was. She sheepishly left the hut and found Dah sat in front of the fire poking at it with a stick. She cocked her head to one side, surprised to see that the man sulk had held firm for thousands of years.
"Can you help, please?" Carla requested, not realising the word 'please' did not seem to translate to Wenja. Dah looked at her in confusion, causing Carla to blush. She started to dance from foot to foot, feeling more uncomfortable and cold by the second, standing half-naked before him. Something seemed to click, and Dah jumped up, flushing pink as he corrected the way the skins were lying before re-lacing it snugly around her body as Carla protected her modesty the best she could. He stood towering over her for a moment, staring, his hand hovering over the skin of her exposed shoulder.
Dah seemed to snap out of it and removed his hand quickly before disappearing back into the hut and appearing again with the animal skin hugged to his body. She took it from him, wrapping it around herself, sighing as she felt the warmth he had given. He disappeared once again into the hut, returning with her wet clothing. Carla held out her arms, expecting him to hand them to her, but he walked past her to the other side of the fire. He placed the pile on a nearby rock picking up her tank top first, looking at it in confusion. He held it up to his chest, trying to figure out how it would fit.
"It would be too small for you." Carla giggled as Dah snatched it from his chest and draped it over a wooden rack, doing the same with her hoodie and jeans. He stopped at her socks, flailing them about then sniffing them. Carla tried her best to suppress the laugh she could feel bubbling as he gagged. Then Dah picked up her lower undergarments, looking extremely confused before giving them a cautionary sniff.
"Whoa! That's enough!" Carla cried out, jumping up as Dah pushed her underwear into his face, inhaling deeply. Carla took the item from him, seeing a wildfire light up in his eyes as he glared at her, panting heavily.
"Not quite what you're meant to do with those." Carla laughed. The tension hung between the two of them that seemed to last ages. Carla wondered if he were going to do something she would regret. Dah wondering if he could hold his urges at bay, not wanting to scare away the first person other than Takkar willing to spend any time around him. Dah eventually seemed to snap back to reality, if you could call it that, as he blinked, rubbing his head once again.
"Ka. La. Smell. Good." He mustered with a guttural growl before slumping off into his hut.
"Thank you," Carla mumbled after him, deciding to take it as a compliment. She hung her underwear on the rack and moved to sit back in front of the fire. Dah appeared not long after dragging what looked like a bed from his hut. Carla yawned. She hadn't realised just how tired she was until she saw something that looked vaguely comfortable.
"You sleep." Dah half commanded, and half asked. Carla accepted his offer and lay down on the animal skins pulling the one she had wrapped around her to cover herself. Dah lay down on the other side of the fire, and Carla felt a sharp stab of guilt at the realisation he had given her his bed.
"You want to share?" Carla enquired.
"Share?" Dah mimicked in confusion. Carla figured it was a foreign concept in the current state of living. She gestured for him to approach her and lay down, patting the side of the bed that was still free. Dah seemed to understand as he lay beside her.
"Keep warm." He sighed, sliding an arm under her head and moving closer to her back. He waited for her to lay down under her cover before lying his other arm around her waist, pulling her close, sniffing at her hair once again, inhaling her scent. She was too tired to care about the intruder that kept nudging at her back and figured if he were going to try anything, he would have already.
She unconsciously pulled the arm she was lying on, wrapping it around her body along with Dah's other, loving the strange safety he seemed to make her feel. Carla drifted off to sleep smiling, listening to Dah's breathing after finding the first thing in this place that she preferred to home.
Ok, so I found myself becoming a bit of a Dah fangirl as the game progressed, and his character became more of a lovable brute than the flesh-eating monster he was as an Udam Chief. Anyway, I felt with the awful end he met in the game, it was only fitting that he gets a friend, so in this story, he decided to live with the skull fire for the time being and here we are…..let me know if you felt the same way about Dah and his death in-game, I'm curious as to whether I'm the only one weird enough to find him kinda cute.
I hope you enjoyed :)