Jotaha watched her eat, and she looked up several times to catch him studying her face with an inscrutable expression. Maybe there was something in his body language that might tell her what he was thinking, but she knew very little about lizardman social cues, so she could only guess. Given the fact that he had his pack sitting beside him, he’d probably taken inventory, realized her theft, and now didn’t trust her. He was keeping his belongings close so she couldn’t steal anything more from him.
As humiliating as that thought was, it filled her with a sense of relief. He was still there. He hadn’t abandoned her when he realized the truth. He still shared his food and drink with her. He didn’t seem to hate her. Or even to be particularly angry with her.
She held up the last of the blood bar. “Thank you. For this.”
She glanced around the cave, her gaze pausing on the place where the bat-cat’s body had been. The blood stain that streaked the stone had been covered up while she slept with some of the sand that piled in the corners of the cave.
She relaxed, only realizing she’d been tensing to face that stain and the memory it recalled when she saw that he’d concealed it. “And thank you, for that.”
Her gaze returned to him, noting that he was paying her his full attention, his shoulders lifted, his head slightly cocked to one side, his head spines flexing enough that she could see their spiky tips roughing up the smooth outline of his skull. He was listening to her words, trying to find some meaning to them. She could tell.
Fresh guilt filled her as her gaze shifted to his pack. “I’m sorry.” She pointed to his pack. “About stealing from you. I swear I only meant to use it as a last resort.” He couldn’t possibly understand her confession, but it felt a little better to put it out there.
He was silent for a long moment, and she wasn’t sure if he was thinking about what she might mean, or if he was waiting to see if she would continue speaking.
Finally, his head straightened, his spines smoothing flat again. “Rir draho zigun ita tizan arxi anzha skilev.”
She blinked at the complexity of the sounds he’d just made, though he’d pronounced the alien words slowly. Despite that pace, she didn’t think he expected her to understand them, any more than she expected him to understand her monologue. Maybe he was saying something he just needed to get off his chest as well. She couldn’t imagine what that would be.
He’d treated her as well as she could expect. Most humans probably wouldn’t treat Jotaha half as nicely if he bumbled into their home. She was pretty convinced that half the horror movie monsters and aliens were just poor suckers who’d gotten lost and had the misfortune to end up among humans.
They both fell silent as she finished her breakfast. She returned her gaze to the stone ring. He kept his on her. She feared his intent watchfulness was because he didn’t trust her. That would only be her fault at this point. She’d given him a reason not to. He probably wondered what other weapons she might conceal to use against him later.
It figured that the more she liked Jotaha and appreciated his company, the more reason she’d given him to dislike her.
When she’d completed her food and drained the mug, he collected the empty cloth wrapper and the mug, rinsing out the latter, before tucking both into his pack. Then he rose to his feet and strode to the furs she’d slept on, crouching to roll them into a neat bundle that he carried back to his pack. With practiced movements, he strapped the bundle to his other rolled fur, then hooked it all to his pack. After that, he drew the combat knife that was again sheathed on his thigh, and began to push the stones in the ring apart. As they were separated, their glow faded.
The cave darkened a little more with each dying stone. When the shadows grew too thick for her to see as he separated the last stones in the pile, he seemed to realize her difficulty, because his scales began to glow, returning some of the light.
Once finished pushing all the stones with his dagger tip until they were all a short distance away from each other, he sheathed it and stood to his full height, glowing softly.
Like the beetles glowed.
He shouldered his pack on the side that hadn’t been impaled by the blowgun. If he winced in pain, she didn’t catch it, since his face was distorted by strange shadows because of the way his head and body were glowing.
He motioned to her to follow him, and led her to where her shoes and socks sat neatly on a stone.
Sarah sat to pull on her socks and shoes, feeling as if his gaze was curious this time as he watched her perform the practiced actions. When she finished, he made a gesture that very clearly implied he wanted her to follow him.
“Kavaric oma, Sarah, iri drahi.” He waved her towards him again. “Kavaric.”
She followed Jotaha out of the cave, through the entrance he’d gone through before, where the bat-cat had come from. Her heart thudded with fear, but she felt better that she would be with him this time. As crazy as it seemed, given his appearance and the initial threat he’d posed, she now felt safe with him. Far safer than she had when she’d walked through the darkness alone, aware that the bat-cat creatures might still be out there.
The tunnel system was complex, with so many branching paths that she would have easily gotten lost if she wasn’t with Jotaha. Some of the beetles glowed along the path they took, lighting their way, then fading as they passed. Jotaha seemed to know exactly where he was going without the help of the beetles, so she got an impression they lit up for her sake. Was it too arrogant to assume these insects wanted to make her feel more comfortable and safer by adding more light to her path?
Maybe she had forged some strange bond with the insects after fighting their enemy. She certainly felt far more sanguine about their presence now. So much so that she did not balk when Jotaha led her to another cave with a similar set-up to the previous toilet cave.
He asked her something in his questioning tone as he withdrew the bundle of petals she’d left in the previous toilet cave from the pouch at his waist. Handing it over to her, he used his free hand to gesture to the stone ledge and the hole within the slab of rock. Since they had been walking for some time by this point, she did have to use the bathroom. She suspected he was concerned she would freak out like an idiot again about the beetles far down at the bottom of the hole.
She had grown since then. She had a new respect for the insects. Without comment, she took the packet, grateful he’d retrieved it, and set it on the ledge. Then she unzipped her pants and started to pull them down before freezing in place because he was still watching her. She made a spinning gesture with one hand.
“Could you please give me some privacy?”
Though he couldn’t know what she’d said, he seemed to get the gist of her gesture. After a long moment of consideration, he did turn his back and retreat to the opening of the cave. His pack was still slung from one shoulder because of the hole in the other, visible due to the damaged armor. There was still moss tucked into the holes at the back of his neck, but his shoulders were squared and he stood as tall as he could in the tunnel beyond the cave opening, demonstrating an endurance that seemed as inhuman as he was.
The least she could do was take her poop in peace, without scaring the crap out of him with her freaking out over nothing.
If he heard or smelled anything, he was polite enough not to show it in his body language, and Sarah finished her business as quickly as possible. The petals left a much more pleasant scent in their wake after she wiped and discarded them, and she hoped the slightly medicinal-scented moisture they released when they were pinched or crushed had antiseptic qualities. She hadn’t seen any bars of soap in Jotaha’s pack when she’d rifled through it.