A soft grunt, followed by muttering and a chuff, had me glancing up to the hooves smacking the cave wall unhappily. Another huff sounded.
Following my gaze, Baumb snorted. “Kraumpensuss,” he said with a note of disgust. “Mine Hunman. Baumb Loo-me.”
“Baumbel…” A familiar chuff sounded off behind us. “Bad. Bad.”
My eyes widened. Ded didn’t… That wasn’t.
“He just spoke,” I mumbled to Baumb. “Ded Krampus doesn’t actually talk.” Squirming until I was sitting up, I tried to peer closer to the pouting, from the sounds of it, Krampus wall ornament.
Baumb scowled and grunted. The Baumbel was unimpressed. “Mine,” he began to grumble, until his gaze was darting from the Krampus stuck on the wall to me. “Nawt Kraumpensuss. Nawt Ded Loo-me. Mine.”
“No. No,” I reassured him, shaking my head vehemently. “I’m yours. I’m so yours, Fluffy Stuff, I’m just- How is- I mean, why? And you? Where are the words coming from? Who has been playing hooked on beastly phonics with either of you?” One glance down at my person and I scowled. How? I didn’t… What had I done differently this time with Ded, or even Baumb? My hand went to my eyes. “My tears,” I whispered as I nearly poked my own eyeball out and it began to water at my finger’s proximity. “With Ded, he’d tasted my tears?” I guessed. What an odd thing to bring him around, though… Shnikel Krampus had been interested in the taste of my tears too and he’d come back from the brink. “What a weird thing to be the secret ingredient to unKrampus a beast,” I murmured. Could it really be that simple?
Ideas ran through my head, odd, silly ones. Could I cry enough to put it in their water and get them all to drink it? Smear some salty tears over meat and get them to eat it? Did it have to be fresh? Why my tears? Would any tears do? Did Krampus cry?
“No,” Baumb grunted out, interrupting my thoughts.
“Huh? Hmm? What?” I mumbled, dragged from wonderings.
“No,” he said again, more firmly.
“No what?” I blinked, staring at him.
“No,” he just kept saying, his voice growing flat.
“Um, okay,” I agreed, though to what I wasn’t sure, but somehow I had a weird feeling he was on to me. My suspicions grew, and along with it a sense for him, like his glow monster bite had aided me with some monster for a mate intuition I hadn’t been privy to before.
When he’d dried us both off, swaddling me in blankets to nestle me within the stack on the sleeping platform, stoked the warming rocks, and with a click at his monster pet with his tongues to keep watch over his female and captive while he got sustenance, he was off.
Staring after him in a strange, cared for, blissful feeling state, pampered for the first time since I’d been forced onto Mt Rock Candy of Doom, I felt truly safe and content.
Wait, I blinked, sometime later when I stood and went to collect the carved, tall bowls we used for cups he’d made with a rock he’d sharpened like a knife, how did I know he was on his way back with food? How did I know what he told… How did I know how he’d made his bowl-cups, or about Yule ti, his pet companion? That he was coming right back? That he was off for a hunt? He hadn’t actually said a single word but for his churring stuff and some feeler wiggles. The male had been all kiss me with them tongues and tease the female. His strange love of my laugh, that he enjoyed even if it made him want to curl his ears in, and- It all just… it came to me. Pop, it was just there. My hands slapped to my cheeks. “How do I know all this?” I burst out.
Yule ti, whose name I should not know, cocked her head and gave me a funny look. I had no cave worms for her, her favorite treat, but I was sure Baumb, as he thought of himself, not actually ever having had a name before but for Baumbel, as the Krampussen- “Gah!” A garbled noise left me. “He’s in my head?!” Falling back against the bedding, I threw the pelts warming me over my head.
Ded let out a lewd growl as my lower half was exposed, chilly air kissing it.
“Shut up, perv,” I grumbled from my pelt hideaway, then gasped. Shooting up, my gaze darted to the Krampus and I blinked. “How did I know that was a lewd growl over any other? How do I speak monster now?” My hands went to the marks from Baumb on my shoulder. It had done something to me, connected us, joined us, some kind of… I didn’t know what.
Ded made a noise that said he’d like me to come over there and just try and shut him up. His bright blue gaze kept going to my breasts, already filled again and aching.
Glaring as he sulked, curling his lip at me sullenly as he watched me, he scoffed as I reached around the bedding in search of something to chuck at him.
Blue eyes. I stilled at the thought. “Ded, what’s my name? Who am I? Who are you?” Standing, wrapping a thick pelt around me, I hopped off the bed and waddled in my pelt pile closer to him. “No. No,” my hand lifted in a wave to disappear beneath the pelts again, “that’s too easy. Let’s try something else. What did you offer me on the way here?”
“Loo-me.” Baumb’s disapproving rumble shook the walls. Jumping in place, I spun around to find him at the mouth of the cavern, lumbering into sight. A dark red bag I’d never seen before was over one shoulder, a smaller bundle wrapped in pelts I knew very well over the other.
“I was just asking him if he knew who he was,” I said quickly, then jerked a finger at Ded’s face. “Look! His eyes aren’t black anymore! They’re blue again. His eyes used to be blue, then went black with the Krampus, and now they’re blue again.” Nervousness filled me, even as I smiled at his approach. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I’d kept my word and I meant to. Only him—just my Baumbel.
As if he could read my mind, a happy churr started up. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to realize he could in fact, to some extent or another, have some inclination as to what was going on in my head, not after that glow spots bite transference bit or whatever that was.
“You brought me something.” Again with the knowing. Deciding right then and there a lot had happened I’d never have an answer for, I just… let it go. Shuffling closer to him as he unburdened himself, I realized the bag he held was not in fact red but bloody, just covered with blood. Crimson dripped from the large sack, drawing my gaze to the ground. Instead of leaving a trail of drips in his wake, the cave floor was absorbing the spots that fell to it right before my eyes. Wow… that wasn’t terrifying or freaky at all. Nope.
“Loo-me,” Baumb called when my gaze fixed on the spot of red pooling beneath the bag to disappear mere moments later, calling to me as if it wasn’t just my name on his lips that drew my gaze upward to meet his.
“I didn’t do anything,” I blurted in a rush, then laughed nervously.
Nodding, looking a mite sheepish if I was reading him right—or was I feeling that… somehow?—he held out the bundled fur to me. He had no idea the gift he’d just given me. Taking the pelts carefully, realizing there was something folded within them, I set it on the bed and began peeling back the wrapped sides. The clank of metal, rattling as bits hit and clanged, had me searching out the sound and its source first. The keys to the cell! And more followed, pieces of the remains of my cave cell home with Shnikel.