CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The dwindling late afternoon sun blazed a brilliant reddish orange on a nearly perfect early autumn day as the evening pressed on. It had not even been just over a day since she last saw R'chnt, but she smiled softly as she thought about his return.
Ironically, neither of the last two times she had been with him ended the way she expected, and Cassandra kept her amusement about it quiet as she watched the sun drop lower in the sky. She found her mind yet again racing with thought she couldn't control, feelings that thrilled her to the core, and an eagerness she had a tough time containing.
"Hey, Cassy?" Lewis caught her attention. "Are you alright? You seem a little …. Distant."
Carlos looked at her quietly and she couldn't help but feel he was trying to give her a silent examination.
"I'm fine."
"What happened back there?" Lewis questioned as he crouched down next to her.
She remained sitting at a window on the fifth floor of an office building, keeping watch on the cool and windy streets.
She could hear the wind blowing and stared hard through the streets, avoiding looking at either of them directly. She could see Lewis looking at her alien weapon through the corner of her eye while Carlos continued to scan her as though he was looking for injuries.
"You shot John? With that?" Lewis asked and Cassandra pulled the alien hand rifle from its holding belt around her waist.
She held it in her hands and looked it over, silently recapping what had actually happened and glanced to her friends, wanting to tell them, but at a loss for words.
"He came around a corner and startled me. He had a gun pointed at me. He took a shot. There wasn't any choice."
She said, leaving out the specific details, but convincing herself that she had told him enough of what essentially did happen.
Lewis nodded and Carlos asked if she was injured.
"I'm fine."
"Where did you really get that weapon from?"
Lewis continued looking it over and Cassandra handed it to him so he could more fully inspect it.
She tried to think up a plausible answer and considered where the subsequent conversation would go. She was not sure exactly how much she cared to divulge at that point and suddenly felt guilty about it.
She had been slipping silently away from the safety of her group and the company of her friends for months and had said nothing. The conversation was inevitable, but until that point it had not come up and she had not truly spent any time figuring out how she was going to approach such a delicate subject.
She extended her hand for the weapon and Lewis handed it back to her while still giving her a determined questioning and slightly concerned stare.
"Uhhmm…" she began to stammer, trying to formulate a sentence in her head.
Much to her immediate relief, someone grabbed Carlos' attention away for medical help and Lewis followed along to offer assistance.
Cassandra stood and stalked over, but lingered in the back of the next room over, near the door, watching one of the women in the group wince and groan in pain from a deep injury.
Cassandra sighed and rubbed her eyes and face and headed out of the room, through the adjacent room, down a corridor past some offices, and into the stairwell to head up towards the roof when she heard the rooftop door click open over the sound of her own footsteps.
A smile flashed on her face through pressed lips and she looked up towards the next level to see the familiar blue flicker of light as R'chnt decloaked.
K'Shai beamed at him and immediately shot up the remaining stairs, wrapping her arms around him the moment she got near. He lifted her up and wrapped one hand under her thigh, supporting her as he pushed her back against the wall and she gasped with delight.
She kissed him under his raised chin and along his chest, and reached her hands from his arms and shoulders around behind him as he lightly growled with thrilled delight.
"Maybe we should go… somewhere else…" she gasped as she realized her voice was probably echoing down the empty cinder stairwell.
R'chnt gripped her tightly and the two of them dropped down towards the floor as K'Shai laughed loudly.
She laid on her back under him and bit her lower lip as she watched him above her, still gripping his arms tightly as he tried to pull up to a crouching position over her.
"Anywhere you like," he said invitingly and K'Shai smiled widely, not really ready to move as her body pulsed with tremendous arousal.
She pulled him back down towards her and removed his helmet, passionately kissing him with feverish delight.
He stretched his upper tusks apart into a smile and lowered himself towards her, stroking a hand along her body and hip and thigh. K'Shai gasped and groaned, trying to keep her voice low as R'chnt's hand groped her more fully around her thigh, his fingers slipping into the waist of her jeans.
She tightened her grip on his shoulders and tried to stifle a thrilled shriek when a small buzzing sound echoed out.
R'chnt sighed and clenched his jaws closed tightly, tipping his head to the side with annoyance. K'Shai pressed her lips together in a small disappointed smile as R'chnt depressed a button on his arm band.
"What now!?" He barked sharply into the communication panel.
The second of the group, W'rsa, younger than R'chnt, but certainly not lacking for experience, immediately spoke with alarm.
K'Shai had gotten to know W'rsa probably the best out of all of the other Yautja in the group other than R'chnt. He had bold deep blood red and black markings against a yellowish skin and preferred the modern weapons like the hand held plasma caster R'chnt had given K'Shai for protection; the type of weapon he did not care for himself.
W'rsa was curious about K'Shai, and she wasn't blind to it. He was probably as curious about her as R'chnt, but he respected R'chnt deeply and had been hunting alongside him for long enough to know it would be a futile thing to question or challenge him.
She heard clear alarm in his voice and he said merely one word.
"R'ka-lou-dte!"
K'Shai certainly knew the meaning well; it was practically one of the first words she learned.
She and R'chnt, sadly interrupted again, jumped up with alarm and bolted away. R'chnt told K'Shai to
make her way back to her group and safety and shot out of the door to back to the roof while K'Shai thundered down the stairwell and immediately ran to alert Lewis and the others.
"We've got a Queen coming in! Let's go! Hurry!" She shouted, grabbing her Yautja gun and heading to Lewis's side.
He glanced between her, the weapon, and the suddenly jumping up group around them and shot her back an understanding look. Cassandra glanced at Lewis and in a flash of an instant caught the look.
He seemed to have developed at the very least a sudden understanding of what was going on; of how she knew there was immediate danger heading their way before any other human had a chance to sound out the alarm; of how she got the weapon.
Although she was sure he probably hadn't figured out the exact details, Cassandra did seem to see in his look, a validation of his suspicions. She decided she would talk to him after. After the battle.
He should know. Her relationship with R'chnt had taken a whole new spin, and she knew she at the very least owed it to both Lewis and Carlos to try to explain and to stop slipping away out of their glance.
For the moment, those thoughts did not matter. The human group was roused to high alert and by the time Cassandra and the others made their way onto the streets, they could hear the raging sound of battle from somewhere in the distance.
Without delay, K'Shai bolted towards the Yautja and the battle, the humans sprinting along to keep up.
The group rounded a corner and barely managed to stay on their feet as an explosion rocked the street, sending bricks and chunks of buildings cascading down upon them.
The queen herself angrily slammed into a nearby building, her deadly spined tail whipping furiously into the street, just feet from Cassandra and Lewis, who both scrambled out of the way, narrowly avoiding being impaled as the sharp end of her tail dug into the street, cracking pavement.
"Watch out! That thing can slice somebody in half!" Lewis exclaimed as he ran to a better vantage point to take a shot.
"You hurt?" He called to Cassandra.
She shook her head and aimed her weapon as well. Before anyone could get off a shot, blue bursts of plasma flashed and light up the night sky and a wild roar echoed from somewhere between the buildings.
The queen hissed and charged off like an enraged bull, not even noticing or caring about the humans that were closing in on her flank. She thundered out of sight towards the Yautja warriors somewhere on the far side on the adjacent block, but a definite hissing still rang through the air.
K'Shai glanced around the street and up the buildings above her head and saw nothing. Someone called out a warning and she spun around just in time to avoid being hit with bursting glass as a dozen of the bug drones charged through a dark display window from a building just behind her.
Before she could even realize it, the small group of humans was surrounded by a charging swarm of bugs, coming to protect their queen. The sounds of the Yautja battle raging on in the near distance soon became blurred as K'Shai and Lewis and the rest struggled to get clear of the swarm and see the rest of their group to safety.
Cassandra and Lewis darted towards Carlos who was helping previously injured people out towards safety as quickly as they could. Cassandra pulled up the back of the group, just behind three young children, barely ten years old, as she ushered them away from the battle and turned to maintain fire on drones nearby.
They scurried away from the swarm, from remaining fighters, and from the queen and the Yautja, and hurried between two buildings, through an alley. Their path quickly ended up cut off at both ends.
K'Shai and another shot in one direction and Lewis and his back up fired off in the other against the speedy and agile drones. With their nearly armor-thick hides and lightening quick speed and maneuverability, the drones were a challenging target to hit, and difficult to kill.
K'Shai managed to shoot two as the powerful Yautja weapon tore through one and hit right into another. She aimed for her third kill, but the damaging blue burst of flame missed and burned through brick and mortar instead.
The group darted into the opposite building avoiding a rain of acid blood and an encroaching swarm of drones. They ran through the display racks of a clothing store, the drones tearing in behind them, knocking over mannequins and glass shelves as they went.
K'Shai barely had time to perceive that the small group of people was completely surrounded when the queen, in a final death throw outside the building smashed into the front display windows, immediately followed by a fireball of blue blasts.
"Get down!"
She screamed and everyone dropped to the floor to avoid being shot, which offered them up as open invitation for the drones to pounce upon.
Someone to K'Shai's right started screaming in pain as the drone impaled him and began to drag him away. She tried to quell the young boy next to her who was sobbing and wailing, while she shot at another approaching drone.
She could hear a continued swarm outside, beyond their dead queen, screeching and calling into the night, challenging the Yautja warriors positioned around the street, but she had little time to think of that.
She pulled herself up and opened fire, followed by the rest of the group as their own swarm of bugs pressed in.
One of them jumped at K'Shai and slammed into her hard. She toppled to the ground and heard a scream, a gunshot and the subsequent sizzling as the creature's acid blood seared the floor below them.
She only had a fraction of a second to realize she wasn't hurt, though she needed to get away. She rolled out from the drone and it slammed into her, ramming her with his head, and pushing her along the floor before she could regain any chance at her feet.
She scrambled to grab her plasma rifle which had clattered to the floor next to her when she fell, and gasped as her fingers only just missed it.
She scrambled to try to regain her footing as the drone bit into her arm and she screamed in agony. She wasn't exactly sure what was happening beyond her entanglement, but she was vaguely aware of gun fire, shouting and running.
Suddenly she was sent clattering down an escalator into the lower level. She slammed hard into the floor at the bottom and gasped to catch her breath as she saw the drone clamoring down after her. She scrambled clumsily to her feet and got out of the way as the animal was chased down the stairs by a bolt of blue flame.
K'Shai sighed with relief as the drone skidded mid jump to a dead halt and slid across the floor, leaving a burning, sizzling streak in its wake. She bent over, hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath as she glanced back to the stairwell to see Lewis and the others thundering down.
Lewis had her Yautja rifle in his hands and was bringing up the rear of the group, shooting back up the stair pit to the drones that were still chasing them down.
The basement level sales floor quickly became a tattered mess as sizzling drone bodies piled up at the base of the escalator while the ones that managed to avoid being shot ran across the ceilings and down the walls.
"I'm out!" Someone called.
Before anyone could toss him another clip a drone was on him. Lewis shot it, and he scrambled away, narrowly avoiding the blast of acid that sprayed everywhere.
He tossed the weapon to Cassandra after glancing around noticing that the last of the drones was shot dead in a near corner.
"That thing's nice." Lewis said approvingly.
"Right?!" Cassandra said with an amused smile.
"Let's go, this way…" he pointed down the aisle between racks of clothes and Cassandra grabbed up two of the children nearby and headed along in Lewis' tracks.
"Look out!" The little boy called suddenly and the group spun around behind them as another drone scrambled across the ceiling after them.
K'Shai opened fire and as the carcass dropped to the floor, she noticed another one entering from a swinging stock room door at the far end, followed by another and another. Someone else called from the back of the group that more drones were heading at them from another direction.
"They don't stop do they?" Lewis said exasperatingly.
She shot him a wide eyed look and tipped her head as she fired again and again.
"Does that thing ever run out?" He asked quickly between shots.
"I'll let you know when I find out." K'Shai responded grittily as she fired again and again.
"Whoa!" The young boy near her side shrieked and K'Shai turned to see R'chnt and three other hunters descending the escalator.
They thundered through the burning corpses piled up at the bottom and growled out a distracting howl as they opened fire on the rest of the drones.
K'Shai maintained her continued firing while the sounds of the human weapons began to dwindle. The floor filled a combination of acid burn, firearm smoke and flaming blue streaks that left a burning ripple in the air like the tail of a comet as it travelled.
K'Shai had trouble breathing and seeing as her throat burned and her eyes teared up, which only made her appreciate the necessity of the Yautja's biomasks that much more.
"Alright, we need to go. We have to get out of here." She said as she stopped shooting and directed the group away from the hunters and towards a rear exit.
They hurried away, K'Shai bringing up the rear. She glanced back to see what was going on as the others ran ahead of her.
Lewis stopped at the exit door and ushered the first of the group through as he looked to Cassandra and noticed her lingering in the dark aisle holding her ground between the two groups, looking towards the alien hunters as they finished their kills and turned towards the human group.
Through the glare of flashlights in the darkened space, Lewis noticed clearly that the gray skinned leader of the hunter pack signaled a visual direction towards Cassandra.
A high pitched shriek from a child and startled shouts followed immediately by wild gunfire caught her attention and K'Shai spun around on her heels, immediately dropping to the group to avoid being shot by uncontrolled gunfire.
She watched one of her group fall backwards, finger still on the trigger for a moment more; a facehugger firmly in place on his head.
She could hear the Yautja coming up quick from behind her and commotion brewing from ahead of her. The boy was cowered down sobbing in fright within arms' reach and K'Shai grabbed him hard and yanked him away, pulling him behind her as a facehugger she had just noticed quickly scrambled for his head.
K'Shai tried quickly to pull the boy to safety and get to her feet while aiming her weapon, but the facehugger's reaction was faster. It coiled its tail and propelled itself through the air with lightening quick speed, and did not miss its target.
K'Shai heard a definite roar of R'chnt's voice and a child scream. She put her hands up to her head just in time to at least avoid having the half crab-half spider looking animal wrap completely around her head, but its tail wasted no time coiling tightly around her neck.
She collapsed backwards and gasped for air as the thing's tail tightened like a snake around its victim. She began to lose focus as she tried with every force of strength she had to push the thing away from her head.
Its impregnation tube ejected from its underside in the hopes of landing the correct spot. She was torn between gasping for air and gritting her teeth against certain death. She vaguely heard people screaming.
She saw Lewis come closer but halt as R'chnt and W'rsa both landed next to her in an instant.
Unable to get any air, she could feel her head getting light. R'chnt gripped the facehugger tightly and pulled while W'rsa gripped the thing's tail and tried to unravel it from around her neck.
K'Shai loosened her grip on the animal as she weakened and grasped instead onto R'chnt's knee as he knelt next to her.
"What is going on here?"
Someone in the group said in stunned amazement as they all halted and watched the scene unfold.
Lewis held still and silent, watching the two massive alien hunters work to free Cassandra of the wretched beast that was quickly strangling her. He was sure he could see her face turning pale.
"They're gonna' break her neck!" someone said to Lewis, who raised a palm to him, watching the scene unfold intently.
K'Shai lost consciousness and the facehugger released its grip, writhing around in R'chnt's hands for a moment before he threw it to a far corner for another of his group to dispose of.
He looked to K'Shai who laid motionless and not breathing on the ground before him. Lewis edged closer, a look of alarm on his face, but he said nothing. Without missing a beat, R'chnt grabbed the plasma rifle off the ground and adjusted a setting.
He pulled K'Shai's shirt back exposing her bare chest as W'rsa watched in silence, surrounded by stunned human onlookers.
"He's gonna' shoot her!"
The man next to Lewis gasped and again Lewis cut him off.
"No, he's not going to hurt her."
Lewis whispered calmly, with certainty.
Something more than he knew was unfolding before his eyes. He could not put words on it, but it was clear to him that there was a friendship at play that he had known nothing about, and suddenly, how Cassandra had come about getting the alien weapon seemed perfectly clear.
R'chnt pressed the weapon against K'Shai's chest and fired. It ejected a small burst of discharge through a tiny flash of light that looked like nothing more than common every day static electricity.
K'Shai bolted upright and gasped for air. She grabbed her chest with one hand and R'chnt's palm in her other. Without delay, R'chnt braced an arm against her back and helped her to feet and the hunters and humans quickly vacated the area and returned to the street beyond the delivery dock at the back of the building.
R'chnt did not stay in the vicinity long, as he took to the rooftops with the rest of his group, who they rejoined once back out to the ended battle.
Lewis, Cassandra and the others joined back up with the rest of the human survivors after a short while, and the group moved on out of the town, slowly heading towards a new place to make camp. The Yautja walked on, nearby to the humans, but at their typical distance.
Cassandra stayed in a spot in the group that put her closest to R'chnt's position in his own group, but she said nothing and did not approach him. She cast him a few wayward glances as the morning light cracked the sky, and barely noticed Lewis and Carlos both watching her do so.
Resting only as they absolutely had to in order to tend to injuries or other needs, the group continued on, warily walking so far from the town that they passed long overgrown cornfields and miles of quiet openness.
Lewis and Carlos glanced to Cassandra from time to time and Carlos tended to the bite on her arm when they stopped for a brief rest, but they rigidly avoided conversation about the alien hunters or any of the events from earlier that morning.
By the time the late afternoon arrived and most of the people in the group were exhausted and weak. Cassandra was quite sure that the awkward and tense silence between she and Lewis and Carlos was going to overwhelm her. She looked at them and glanced towards R'chnt, who, as the street they turned onto narrowed slightly, moved closer to her.
"I think we should rest, Lewis. For the night." She said softly through a tired, raspy voice.
Her throat was sore and bruised from the nearly deadly attack earlier. Her arm was in pain and she was exhausted, and she wanted to answer the obvious questions Lewis and Carlos had for her, but her mind was too weak to find a way to unfold that conversation.
"Let's check this house up ahead," Lewis said aloud, not necessarily to Cassandra, but to the entire group along his side.
He glanced towards Cassandra and nodded but his eyes shifted to a point a dozen meters behind her where R'chnt's body disappeared behind the light refracting invisibility field.
She and Lewis and a few others approached the driveway to a farmhouse. The scene was beautiful and nearly idyllic. A setting sun loomed on the horizon shrouding the house in a warm glow and highlighting the rims of the chimneys and the large backyard pond as a gentle autumn breeze rustled the trees, whose leaves were only just beginning to change to the slightest shade of gold.
A small scouting group, including Cassandra swept down the long, curving driveway and approached the large farmhouse. The house looked oddly out of place from the horrors of the world around it.
It was clean and neat and organized and looked mostly undisturbed. Its white pillars on the large front porch had decorations softly rustling in the wind and the lacy curtains in the windows were neatly tied open.
It wasn't until Cassandra got to the end of the driveway and looked around the front lawn and off towards the barn in the distance that she got the sense that something was out of place with the place.
"Someone's living here," she whispered to Lewis.
She glanced to a large vegetable garden just off the side of the far stairs to the L-shaped front porch and noticed neatly raked lines between the growing variety of crops and freshly wet lines just under the roots.
A chicken cooed from somewhere behind the house and she was certain she heard a cow off in the distance from somewhere far behind the barn.
Lewis turned towards the stairs closest to the main door of the house while the rest of the scouting party stopped some distance behind them, still in the circular driveway. He started up slowly, putting one foot on the bottom stair and holding his breath.
"I don't think we sho…" Cassandra started but her words were cut off by sudden movement.
An old man, shotgun in hand, screamed and ran out of the door towards Lewis and Cassandra, howling for them to leave.
Before anyone could think or react R'chnt brushed by K'Shai and Lewis, his wrist blades extended on his right arm, and a sword at the ready in the other.
He grabbed hold of the old man by the throat, picking him clean up off the porch. Lewis jumped back, stunned, and almost fell off the step he was standing on.
K'Shai bolted in closer and reached one hand right between R'chnt's wrist blades, gripping his fingers that were around the man's throat. She put her other hand around R'chnt's elbow, just past the end of the gauntlet on his right arm.
Lewis could see her shaking as she looked between the startled old man's face and the helmeted head of the giant alien killer that he had barely realized was there before he appeared, ready to kill. He could hear her voice speaking in a whisper, but the words hit his ears like gibberish and had no meaning at all.
She kept repeating the same sounds over and over, to which the alien seemed to respond.
"R'chnt, don't. Please. It's alright. Easy. Relax. Don't hurt him."
K'Shai repeatedly said in a startled whisper.
She felt him loosen his grip slightly on the old man's throat and lower him back to his feet before releasing completely. He loomed over the man, who had dropped his shotgun.
K'Shai was silently surprised the old man didn't die of a heart attack right there on the porch. She noticed his elderly wife standing in the doorway, tears in her eyes and hand clapped over her mouth, stifling her sobs.
She had the door open, but was obviously torn between hiding and running to the aide of her husband, and probably certain death. Carlos stepped closer towards Lewis, watching the scene unfold with stunned tension along with the rest of the group.
"He's just protecting what's his. We should go. It's alright."
K'Shai said to R'chnt, who finally eased back enough that K'Shai stepped right in front of him, completely unconcerned about the mighty alien's jagged metal blades inches away from her chest and abdomen.
The man and his wife, as well as Lewis and Carlos, jumped a little at the sudden sound of metal on metal clicking back into place as R'chnt retracted his wrist blades.
K'Shai did not so much as flinch; she simply stared calmly at R'chnt. She kept her hand on his arm, but looked to Lewis as she stepped off the man's porch.
"We should…. uhh…" she said to Lewis shakily. "We should find somewhere else to camp for the night." She turned back to the old man and his wife and lowered her head softly.
"We're sorry to have bothered you. We will leave."
Lewis eyed her wildly, but said nothing. He nodded and slowly started towards her as she finally eased her grip on R'chnt's arm completely.
R'chnt turned and headed back for the rest of his group in the distance, who K'Shai hadn't even noticed had already decloaked as well. She glanced to Lewis and the rest of the group, who clearly didn't know where to look first as their eyes shifted between herself and the aliens nearby.
"Wait!" The old man grumbled, his wife now wrapped completely around him with a tremendous hug.
He looked from the battered group of weary survivors, including the children and the injured to Cassandra and the giant lingering alien still just an arm's length from her, then back to Lewis.
"You can stay in the barn." He paused and his eyes tracked back to the alien group. "Just for the night. That's it! One night!"
Cassandra smiled and Lewis nodded appreciatively. The human group did as they were invited and headed towards the barn in the near distance while Cassandra remained motionless near the Yautja.
Lewis and Carlos waited until everyone had passed by them on their way and turned to Cassandra. He eyed R'chnt warily, but looked back to her.
"Cassy, what the hell is going on?" He said firmly.
She gaped her mouth to answer, but couldn't produce any words. A small smile cracked her lips as she looked from Lewis to Carlos to the old man, still on the porch, still watching silently with his arm around his wife.
She tipped her chin slightly towards R'chnt, glancing at him through the edge of her eye and took a deep, tired breath.
"I will talk to you both in the morning." She said wearily.
Lewis shuffled slightly on the spot, clearly wanting to speak or protest, but he obviously had run into a lack of words. He opened his mouth and clenched his jaw tight again.
Cassandra turned and soon disappeared with R'chnt and the other hunters down a narrow path between two long crop fields, and ultimately came to a rest far away from the house and barn and human group, with the Yautja.
The hunters made a small camp and two set out to hunt down a source of food while the others tended to their own injuries around a bluish fire. K'Shai ate quietly, listened quietly to the stories and chatter the hunters had to share, but she found her mind wandering to thoughts of what had happened in the last twenty four hours to pondering the mysteries that tomorrow would bring.
R'chnt nudged her gently, offering her another chunk of cooked meat. The hunters found it a little unusual that K'Shai cooked her meat; it was not typical, although a few of the hunters were willing to try their food cooked, including R'chnt.
"Thank you," she said as she took a bit.
Before she took a bite, she turned her eyes away from the past and the unforeseen future, and looked at R'chnt as he finished his own portion. She smiled softly and leaned into him, kissing him along his cheek.
"Do you ever get scared?"
She whispered to him in English so no others could hear, or if they did, they would not understand anyway.
R'chnt spoke the language because he had learned it over many visits to Earth over centuries. Not all of the others had even been to Earth before, let alone learned any of the ooman languages spoken on the planet.
He turned and looked at her, pricking one mandible in consideration of her words; a half a smile and shifted his position a little as he turned towards her more, speaking just loudly enough in his own tongue to allow the others to hear if they listened closely enough.
"Every living creature with more intelligence than a blade of grass feels fear, K'Shai. It is part of us all."
She clenched her jaw tightly. It was not the answer she was expecting.
She felt weak, tired, and had traveled endless miles by foot for more than year. She felt fearful constantly; she was frightened by what had already happened to her and fearful of what each new day would bring.
Although she was relaxed and at ease with R'chnt, she feared for herself and even for him when he was away. She had never seen R'chnt even so much as flinch a mandible in anything even remotely appearing to be a fearful response.
She had expected him to say fear was weak. She had expected him to pridefully admit to never being afraid.
"How do you…" she whispered, back to forming her words in a tongue so foreign she had to speak slowly to manage the proper sounds. "Do what you do? I've never seen you look fearful?"
"Fear is a powerful force, K'Shai. It keeps you sharp. It makes you quick. It makes you think, and stay aware. It can be your ally as well as your enemy."
"I guess it's just human nature. I just think about everything that's happened, and what's going to happen tomorrow. What's next?" K'Shai muttered quietly in exasperation.
"The path behind is gone. The path ahead is yet to be walked. Focus on neither or you will miss what is in front of you to see."
R'chnt spoke up, reminding not only K'Shai, but his entire group.
"It does a warrior no use to forget where his feet are now for where they were or where they will go."
She nodded quietly. His words made perfect sense.
R'chnt shifted closer to the fire and stirred it up a bit and continued on for another hour, talking of the great Path the Yautja Gods lay before each warrior, and reminding all of his group of the way a warrior's heart beat. R'chnt's words, as always, were true and powerful.
He had a deep spirituality that K'Shai had only just barely begun to understand a small portion of. He viewed the world in simple clarity that was in itself both a wisdom and wonder, easy to agree with, yet impossible to fully grasp.
As the night pressed on, K'Shai leaned against his muscular chest and R'chnt wrapped his arm around her.
She felt the warmth of his body and the power of his heart as it pounded in his chest. Soon she drifted off and slept for the longest and most recuperative sleep she had had in as long as she could remember.