Rise of The Fallen

–Kora–

Groggily, I opened my eyes, my cave of solitude encompassing the world around me. How long had I been asleep? Groaning, I sat up, stretching my arms above my head. Stabbing pain coursed through my shoulder, and I winced from the sting. I’d completely forgotten about my injury, but surprisingly, it didn’t feel that painful.

Gingerly, I lifted my torn shirt to assess my injuries, and my eyes widened in surprise. They were a lot shallower than they had been just two nights ago.

How–what the hell?

Pulling my shirt down by my shoulder, I checked the bite wound there and, yup. Same thing. I had somehow healed a few weeks worth of damage in under two days.

Kind of freaky, but I wasn’t complaining. It had to be from either the pond water, or the treatments Elazar had placed on my wounds. Speaking of…

I sent a discreet glance toward the cave entrance, but my cave guest was no longer there. I looked around the small cave, and sure enough, no sign of him.

Did he leave?

Last night, when I made my way back here, I was surprised that he had managed to find me after disappearing for nearly the entire day.

I felt kind of bad for nearly whacking him with a branch, but I had been expecting some stranger to step inside and attack me. I didn’t blame him for wanting to ditch my ass.

Sighing, I stood, fastening my new knife to my belt before moving over to the entrance. Pushing the vines to the side, I poked my head out surveying the area for any potential intruders. Instead, I found a bowl set out in front of the entrance, filled with fruit, nuts and roots of some kind.

I stared at the strange assortment of food, beyond confused. Was this a trap? Because this felt like a trap.

The sound of rustling made me flinch, and my head shot up in the direction of the sound even as I crept back into the cave entrance, peeking through the vines. Branches and ferns were pushed aside to the left, and Elazar came striding out of the woods, carrying a massive bundle of sticks in his arms.

He spotted my head hanging out of the cave, stopping in his tracks. “Kora?”

Caught, I tentatively exited the cave, waving at him awkwardly. He walked up to me, dropping the sticks onto a large pile of wood outside the entrance that I hadn’t even noticed.

Had he been gathering firewood all morning?

That was so…sweet.

Looking back at the bowl on my stoop, I leaned down, picking it up and showing it to Elazar.

“Did you leave this for me?”

He tilted his head slightly, brow furrowing in confusion. Cautiously, he grabbed one of the items from the bowl.

“Sa’te.” He imitated biting into the strange looking plant root before gesturing to me, and placing it back in the bowl.

So he does want me to eat them.

Nodding in understanding, I followed Elazar back inside the cave as he grabbed an armful of sticks and ducked through the entrance.

Once inside, I sat down on the fur blanket, and watched as he set the sticks in the fire pit before lighting it up. He used the strange and horrible tasting–yes, I tried it. I was desperate–jelly from one of the jars along the wall, igniting the fire with vibrant blue flames.

“So that’s how you did it,” I mused. “I’m glad that stuff wasn’t toxic.”

Once the fire was growing strong, Elazar moved, taking a seat beside me.

I watched him curiously as he reached towards some of the berries and roots gathered in the bowl. He picked through them before holding one up for me to inspect.

“La’aha,” he said. I blinked a few times before repeating what he said.

“La-ah?”

He shook his head, then repeated, “La’aha!”

I tried again, deepening my pitch slightly. He nodded enthusiastically once I got it right, holding the berry up to my lips expectantly.

Welp, I’ve already played my fair share of Russian roulette with random fruits before. Might as well do it again.

Hesitantly, I ate the strange looking berry. Flavor exploded on my tongue, and I hummed in appreciation.

Eleazar moved onto another food item, grabbing a stringy root that looked similar to an air plant.

“Urik,” he uttered.

I repeated the word before plucking the food from his hand and trying that one as well. Unexpectedly, it melted in my mouth, and tasted like pineapple.

Oh man, I could eat buckets of this stuff.

We moved onto the rest of the foods, going through each one’s name before taste testing them. Most were bland, some were sweet, one or two nearly set my mouth on fire with how spicy they were. But by the time we had finished the bowl, my hunger was sated, and Elazar began teaching me words for other things.

He started off with parts of the body, before moving on to various objects around the cave such as the bowls, tools, fire and so on. We spent hours teaching each other different words from our own languages, often giggling or chuckling when we said something particular that didn’t match up with what the other person was trying to say.

Elazar was surprisingly patient for someone who looked so intimidating.

He seemed to really struggle with English though, when I tried teaching him the opposing words for things. I managed to pick up on his language a bit quicker as he explained more and more to me.

Eventually, we both moved closer together, using the notebook to draw different images. Elazar used a small piece of charcoal to draw on a blank page and, curious, I watched.

Once he finished scribbling like a madman, he handed it over to me, pointing to an animal he’d drawn and speaking its name. I immediately recognized this particular creature as one of those deer things that I had killed when I first encountered Elazar.

“Venshal.”

“Venshal,” I repeated, eyes rapt on the page. I grazed my fingers over the image as I thought about that night.

I had run for my life, believing Elazar was going to kill me, but the more I thought about how he acted towards me, the more I cringed. Looking back, it was clear to see that he’d simply wanted to help me.

I feel kind of bad for kicking him in the head now.

Looking over at him, I noticed he also seemed distracted. He was staring at my hand and then down at his much larger one, his tail flicking around. Almost like he couldn’t quite grasp the physical differences between us.

Has he seen another human before?

I held my hand up, palm facing him. He flinched back at the sudden movement, as if he’d been expecting me to smack him around. When I didn’t move again, he relaxed. His eyes moved to mine questioningly, and then back to my hand. After a hesitant moment, he lifted his own palm and placed it against mine.

He easily dwarfed my tiny fingers.

I laughed a little as his eyes widened in wonder.

“Suz,” he mumbled to himself, and my lips twitched. He called me small.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed his hand in mine.

“Yes, suz. I am suz compared to you because I am human!” I patted my chest emphasizing the word human. “You are faz; big! Because you are Xandisian.”

I patted his chest this time and repeated the name for his kind.

He muttered the word under his breath while looking at my hands before moving back up to my face. “Small-humon.”

I nodded before releasing my hold on him. I snatched up the charcoal from his other hand. “Yes, I am a small human.”

I clutched the charcoal tightly, trying to think of something else to draw, but my mind was struggling to come up with any ideas, and we’d already gone over all the basic things.

He must’ve noticed my hesitancy as I sat there, staring blankly at the page.

“Kora is–one?” I looked up at El, furrowing a brow.

I’m what?

His features twisted into frustration as he combed a hand through his hair, struggling to find the right words. Something on the wall seemed to spark his interest, and then he grabbed a stick, drawing something in the dirt.

It didn’t take long for me to realize he was drawing stick figures like the ones I’d drawn on the cave wall. He created one figure with long hair before circling it. “Kora is one.” He then made a few other figures off to the side, several inches away from my stick figure. “Humans are many.” Next, he then drew a line between the group and me, effectively separating me from the other stick figures. He shot me a questioning look.

Is he asking why I’m alone?

I set the notebook off to the side, unsure what to say. “It–it’s complicated.”

He tilted his head to the side, and I took the stick. I erased the group of figures, and re-drew them around me before crossing myself out.

“If I go to the other humans…they’ll kill me.”

When he didn’t understand from the pictures alone, I grabbed my knife and mimicked slitting my throat.

His expression turned dark as he looked down at the drawing, clearly upset by its meaning. His tail thumped aggressively against the ground.

Why did he even ask me that? I bit the inside of my cheek. Now that I was thinking about it, I hadn’t seen him with any other Xanadians. Was he exiled too?

“Is Elazar also alone?” I asked curiously. His gaze moved to mine as I spoke. “Is Elazar only one?”

He paused, his tail practically freezing mid-flick until he lowered his gaze.

“No,” was his only response, and it was a bit surprising. He was part of a tribe?

I’d begun to wonder if he was simply a hermit who traveled alone. It would’ve made more sense as to why he was sticking around me so much instead of being with his tribe. But I guessed that wasn’t the case at all.

He was choosing to stay with me instead of his tribe.

Pulling my knees to my chest I rested my chin atop of them, facing my alien companion.

“Elazar has many others with him?” I asked, curious to what his life was like.

He thought for a moment, and then his tail swept forward, erasing the drawing. He leaned forward, making a new one. He drew what I assumed was him as well as a couple dozen other inhuman figures. Surrounded by trees with what I assumed was a cave behind them.

He circled the entire drawing, emphasizing they all belonged together. “Many others.”

His tribe must be established close to the river. Was the alien who came to the pond while Elazar was gone was one of his tribemates? I hadn’t stopped to wonder if they were friendly like Elazar, assuming they planned to kill me like the human I’d seen get hunted down when I had first arrived on Xanadis. I’d been so panicked that I ran all the way back to my cave.

My mouth felt dry just thinking about it. Shaking the thought from my head, I grabbed the strap of my bag laying on my bedding. Dragging it toward me, I began sifting through it for my canteen. Elazar watched as I pulled it out, unscrewed the cap and drank. While we were at the pond, he had given me water from one of his waterskins, so I figured he knew what this was.

Quenching my thirst, I finished with a pleased sigh and then looked over at him. He had his head tilted at an angle that made his large and intimidating self seem like a puppy.

I giggled a bit, startling him, and held out the canteen for him to take. He hesitated, staring at the strange container in my hand. “It’s okay, it’s just water. Wa-ter.”

Tentatively, he grabbed the canteen, turning it this way and that to inspect it. “Wah-ner’

Realizing a little bit too late, I tried to grab his arm and stop him as he spilled some of the contents all over his lap, jerking in surprise.

“You can’t dump it upside down like that!”

I snatched the canteen back, quickly screwing the cap back on and tossing it onto my bag. Next, I grabbed my spare blanket, turning back to Elazar who sat there like a confused puppy.

Dropping the blanket onto his thighs, I started patting the material gently to absorb some water before rubbing it up and down the rest of his leathers, focusing on his lap where he’d spilled the most. He stiffened as I continued, but allowed me to finish drying him off. It didn’t take long, and I gave him a small smile when I was done, pausing when I noticed a bewildered, unreadable look in his eyes.

“What? It’s fine. It was just a little water, nothing that would hurt you–” I pulled the blanket off his lap, gasping as I locked onto the huge bulge hiding just underneath his leathers. ”Oh–”

Silence pierced the air around us, and we both looked away, avoiding each other’s gazes.

My face heated from embarrassment as I quickly covered his lap back up with the blanket and backed away.

“Sorry…”

He mumbled something in his own language, shifting his legs and pulling the blanket down to cover his erection better.

Well I guess there’s one good thing to note about this entire situation. At least he doesn’t think I’m repulsive.