Ch. 8: A Dangerous Game  

Ray left the map back at the campsite. It wouldn't be helpful. This island was easily big enought to get lost in: it didn't take much unfamiliar forest to get a person turned around. But if he had the map, he knew he would be drawn to the features, and easily found. He swallowed heavily while reiterating in his mind that he could always go downhill toward the coast, and circle around that to the causeway. He couldn't stay lost for too long, and at 6 hours, if he couldn't find his way back, someone would fly in for him. Right? This was probably safer than most of what he'd done with the scouts back in Minnesota.

His trail was impossible to miss down the scree and to the sandy beach, where he cut across at a different angle toward the water, as though to continue around the island counter-clockwise, toward the south and further away from the causeway. Once he was past the sand and waist deep into the water again (only slightly warmer now, which meant still awfully cold, and this time there would be no fire to return to), he turned to trudge back toward the causeway. Saving his energy was important, and the waves would sap it, but if he could get the Ricks headed off in the wrong direction, it might buy him a lot of sitting-around time later. As he fought the waves to keep his footing and keep moving the right direction, he sent constant glances up toward the bluffs to make sure he wasn't being watched, then (just to be certain), he plunged all the way into the water, duck-dove beneath a wave, and then kept bobbing toward the causeway to thread his way through it and around to the other side.

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After a trip to the stream to wash themselves the hunters were off, trotting almost single-file after Ray's obvious trail down to the beach. Quar still had her bow and spear but not her bag, in case they happened to run across something else they wanted to hunt along the way.

They stopped at the waterline, Quar with her tail twitching and staring intently out at the water while the others shuffled up and down the coast a ways. Of course he would ruin his trail by entering the water. She should have known that.

“Only two directions he could've gone, Nissrokr said. “I'll follow the coast South, double back if I hit a dead end.” Quar nodded and turned toward the causeway. Dotta trotted after her while Ghijariis split to follow Nissrokr.

Quar didn't give that much thought; she was busy thinking about Ray. What did she know of him? He liked water. Would he travel very far by water? Try to circumnavigate the island? Already she was forming a sort of profile in her head: the natural behaviors of a Ray Tanner, semi-aquatic mammal native to Earth.

Niss and Ghija were dots on the horizon when she picked up his scent again, but it was muddled with his own earlier markers, and badly distorted from the waves that washed over that broken bridge of land. Quar was hunched over, head moving from left to right as she scanned the area with a twitching nose, but occasionally lifting toward the wind in an attempt to catch him that way. Dotta trailed silently beside her in a similar posture, a little less interested but still making an effort.

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By an hour after leaving the camp, Ray was out of the ocean again. He would have to be: the danger of hypothermia was a real thing. How many Minnesotan moms had told their Minnesotan kids that the danger of hypothermia didn't end when winter thawed out; spending a day in the lake without coming up to get sun could drop the body's temperature to dangerous level. It would happen much faster in the tropics, where the water was usually under 70 degrees, and without the benefit of a warmer current swooping down.

Keeping on the move kept him warm, as did remaining submerged, or as much as his backpack would let him. When he was in the deeper water, it rode up on his back like a floatie, pushing on the back of his head, but it also meant he didn't have to expend an effort keeping his head at the surface, especially out before the waves broke. At the causeway, he made the mistake of touching the rocks with his bare fingers, but after cursing himself, he had to admit that even Quar probably couldn't pick up a scent that fleeting, not with saltwater waves crashing nearby.

This island was shaped very loosely like a bone-in porkchop, with the 'bone' the causeway. The rest of it was a lopsided raindrop, with the longer side sweeping away to the south, the direction Ghijariis and Nissrokr had gone. Like the sandy beach they'd arrived on, that side side of the island was littered with coves hiding sandy beaches, natural stone pillars of more causeways that had 'collapsed' in an artistic liscense of effected erosion; in a mile or two of coastline, it mimicked the old Ssaarian Ellathrain sands. Had Dotta gone that direction, she might have very well been tempted to stay behind. Had Ray known they were there, he might have gone the direction just because the concept was so familiar from childhood fantasy novels. It was a place for lovers, a place for sea shell hunting, and an almost endless collection of pockets for Ghija and Niss to check for footprints - either they would have to swim out into the sea to follow the waterline between coves, or stalk along the clifftop path tracing the bluffline, and miss the possibility that he could be hiding in any of the shallow sea-carved caves and undercuts where the bluffs became cliffs and the beaches trapped the waves when the tide receded.

In the tighter curve to the other side of the causeway, the shoreline of the island curled away to the east. (At the southernmost third of the island, the swell at the bottom of the raindrop, the island flattened out into flat tidal plains suitable for crab-hunting, which was not the pleasant, family diversion Ray would have imagined, but every bit as fraught with danger as a louse hunt, but he hadn't examined the map and couldn't have made it that far around the island anyway, not in the water.) Here, the island was meant to resemble a lush tropical jungle like the Rraashrokl island chains: aqua-and-maroon foliage spilled out over the water, often disguising the shoreline behind it. The shore was pockmarked with openings to lagoons. This time of year (in truth, many times of year, since the equatorial sun allowed the island keepers to maintain an artificial spring year-round), brilliant flowers as big as Ray's head competed for the large bumbling beetles and dragonflies, and the lizards were getting fat snatching them out of the air.

To Ray's eyes, the chaos of color seemed a convenient place to hide. He'd continued to push on past the first couple of attractive-looking lagoons, quite instinctively choosing the third without realizing he was falling into the very human 'third time' completeness reflex. The water warmed as soon as he slithered over the muddy banks from ocean to lagoon, but remembering that the stream had been tap-warm reminded him that his body temperature might just be dropping, too.

After finding a broad enough stone at the water's edge where he didn't think he'd leave too much of a trace, he pulled himself out of the water, and then rolled off the tight gloves and boots to wring them out, each in turn. Immediately he put the boots back on, in case he need to run, and then shrugged out of the nwohl outfit with it still on his legs, to wring that, too. Before putting it back on, he cast about, looking at the nearby foliage until he found some that looked pulpy enough.

God, he hoped he wasn't allergic to whatever this was: half-fern, half succulent-thick ivy. Crushing it in his hands, he rubbed it over his body, focusing especially on the places where he thought Quar might smell him: his pits, his chest, and then between his legs. After a moment of thought, he rubbed his neck, too, where she'd indicated before.

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It was no good. The further they walked, the more Quar became convinced that she had missed the point Ray exited the water. Or perhaps he had gone in the opposite direction after all, and she'd misunderstood what she smelled on the causeway – it had been such a small snatch of scent, and muddled with traces of his earlier passage. When the sand and rocks gave way to vegetation, she considered it hopeless. In some places the beach was no longer a beach at all, but sucking mud under three feet of water and tangled with a profusion of weedy plants that either grew in the shallows or draped over the bank. Waves had eroded the bank so that the footing was bad if one stepped from ocean to land, and the ground there was snarled with roots besides. It would have been easier to move inland and find a footpath, but that would mean missing out on his trail, so they were forced to slog along the shallows, every step a heavy drag against the resisting water.

Quar's leg wraps and trousers were soaked through despite the water-resistant coating and clung uncomfortably to her equally soggy fur. Dotta was trailing further and further behind, and when Quar bothered to look back at her, the other female was obviously enduring this rather than enjoying it. She was bent forward, trudging with her arms hanging listlessly. She repeatedly paused to lean on trunks that curved out over the water to get their share of sunlight while she picked seaweed off her legs and flung it out into the water, grimacing in disgust. She held her tail unnaturally high, whereas Quar didn't mind letting her tail rest on top of the water to conserve energy.

Despite all of that, Quar rather enjoyed the walk. She was an explorer canvassing a new land; she was Lehnklr Iar, the first Rriigkhan to step foot on Rraashrokl, whose bones had never been recovered from the korf pitch lakes.

“That human is craftier than I expected,” Quar muttered, eyes scanning the coastline, ears twitching toward every croak and chirrup from within the dense thicket. They frequently heard a quick rustle as some animal scurried through the underbrush when it became aware of them, never seen and hard to detect through scent thanks to the cloaking medley of floral perfumes. Dotta paused before answering because her mouth already hung open, and there was a moment of indecision when she almost decided she didn't have the energy to close her mouth and speak.

“What were you expecting? For him to shimmy up a tree and sit there waiting for you?” Irritation edged her tone, but it wasn't openly hostile.

“Yes, something more like that,” Quar said mildly, stopping and turning to look back at the other. She stood there waiting for Dotta to slosh up to her, her trudging legs parting water like the prow of a ship, then turned inland. The coast retreated into a lagoon, and the raised sandbar made for better walking, which Quar was happy for even if it was probably a waste of time to check this area for Ray's passage. She grasped her baldric with one hand and held the spear parallel to the water in the other.

“Humans are much more intelligent than we give them credit for,” Dotta said. “As someone with an interest in history, you ought to know that a species can be clever in any technological age.”

Quar's facial muscles tightened.

“I did not say otherwise,” she said, eyes cutting aside toward Dotta before returning to the way ahead. Then she turned her face to fully examine the female walking beside her. “Why have you come, Dotta? You do not want to be here.” It was said plainly, not angrily, with just a touch of annoyance.

Dropping her jaw to pant again, Dotta shrugged. They walked in silence for several moments more before they were forced to stop by a thick trunk leaning out over the sand, almost perpendicular to the ground before it curved slightly upward again. The double-lobed leaves were broad and waxy, dark teal in the center but edged with lighter blue scalloping. Their own weight dragged them down so that the tips touched the water. White flowers with upcurved, needle-thin petals clustered around the center. Rather than walk around it, Quar leaned her shoulder against the curved part of the trunk and put the spear in her armpit so she could take a pull from her canteen. Dotta turned around to lean her rear against the horizontal section of the trunk, not quite sitting but letting the tree take much of her weight. She drank as well between her pants, muzzle angled down to watch her toes dig into the sand. A minute stretched between them.

“You'll enjoy Hronngr's husbands,” Dotta said, conversationally. “Nefraugh was kind, and Joghrith, oh, such a beauty. Not that it will matter, hhhh.” Quar's head whipped sharply to the side to stare at her.

“What?”

“Ah, I meant...” Dotta said, lifting her chin and her eyes to Quar, then glancing away again, a little embarrassed. “Your tempest is coming. That is the reason you wanted to visit the village on the way back. Or did you bring a tab?”

Quar's nose wrinkled, eyes narrowing. Her tail skimmed the sand as it flicked upward.

“It will not break for several days yet, and even if that were not the case, I have no intention of bedding an Ourif female's pack of whores. Tempest is a special time.” Quar pushed away from the trunk to begin walking around it. Dotta's brow arched. She regarded Quar carefully from the side as she followed.

“How romantic,” she said, quite honestly. Then, with less enthusiasm: “And traditional.”

Quar grunted in response and continued on in silence, though her attention had turned inward. She wished that she had taken a tab prior to coming here, to head it off, because once the tempest started she probably would end up using trained companions, then hate herself for it afterward. Ah, well. It wasn't something she would have to worry about until after the trip, she was sure. Dotta had an unusually astute nose, though – of course she did, everything else on her was modified, why not her senses? Quar slow blinked, unseen by Dotta. It was their version of an eye-roll.

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The damp towel in his backpack was no substitute for a fire. Since the daytime air trapped in the jungle wasn't breeze-cooled, the goosebumps on his skin weren't really that worrisome, but he still shivered as he shimmied back into the nwohl uniform. The high collar still didn't suit him, and he to double-check it to make sure that the brightly colored patches were still fully covered, but now he could appreciate the way the gloves and boots caught the loose fabric to his body, so it wouldn't snag on every little branch around him.

The stone he sat on was broad enough that the canopy didn't close over him, but still the foliage extended out toward him, dozens of different-shaped leaves, vines, even a few thorny thistle-looking things ready to grab at him when he continued into the jungle. At least he didn't have fur.

The uniform wasn't so wet as to as to stick to his skin now; the dampness made it stiff, so it held the creases where it had been squeezed and wrung out, and would keep most of those thorns off his skin. He took care to tuck the crumpled plant stuff he'd rubbed on himself into his top with him, to avoid leaving so obvious a trace, and didn't notice the few little pieces that flittered down behind him or beneath him.

How long had it been? More than an hour? Maybe two? So he had at least four more hours of this, and for what? The possibility of a flight in a little plane like the one he'd seen? While that might be the sort of thing he'd lust over in his thoughts during his spare time, at the moment it hardly seemed worth it. There was the Dotta thing, too, but-- Well, in all honesty Ray had really been thinking that it was just a convenient way to mention it, and that really just boiled down to sticking his nose where it didn't belong - being pushy about something he really didn't understand. What kept him moving forward now was the idea that he might prove himself to Quar, and to a lesser degree to the rest of them. He lost nothing by failing - Quar was already so certain he was all but helpless - but if he outsmarted all of them, then he was sure she would...

What? he didn't know what he expected. Renounce the caste order? Become a socialist and distribute her wealth to humanity? None of that stuff really mattered to him as it had when he was in his twenties. He just wanted her to look at him and not see a child. He couldn't even say why that mattered - the lesson of not caring what everyone thought about him had been burned in before he left the house he grew up in.

He'd trudged a hundred yards into the jungle without thinking. At one point he'd flirted with the idea of trying to circle back around to the camp and enjoy the fire while the rest of them were all out searching for him in the cold. But that was too clever by half, and even if the fire might disguise some of his scent, or whatever, that part of the forest was too open - they would see him a football field away. Plus, who was to say they wouldn't come back to the fire themselves? It would be the smart place to meet. He couldn't see the column of smoke from here, but Rriigkhan senses, aside from their sight, fit into a sort of semi-mythical category where he didn't really understand their boundaries.

But he hadn't been thinking. Pushing through the dense part of the jungle left a corridor of disturbed foliage behind him - bent flower petals, branches that had snagged against each other, and crushed leaves on the ground, where his footsteps had left darker outlines. It was a needle in a haystack sort of thing, the chance that one of them would stumble on his trail (or so he hoped), but the needle would be pointing right at him.

"Shit," he hissed - at the level of his breath at least. He turned, looking back at the path where he'd come, and the thick green that surrounded him, all fighting for the patches of sunlight that dappled around him. What he really needed was to find a place to hide out where he wasn't going to get hypothermia, but not just leaving a longer and longer trail for one of them to cross. Maybe up a tree...

Then again, sitting in a tree for four hours sounded like a terrible idea.

A stream! The island was full of them - morning fogs, sea mists, and frequent drizzles ensured the island got enough moisture to supply all of these plants, and also mean that just about every wrinkle in the landscape was constantly draining out to sea. This one, though, he noticed because it was trickling down a rock wall, leaving it covered with slimy fungi and moss. He'd make a loud crash if he fell, but maybe Quar would believe him less likely to climb it, given the earlier incident. Then again, this one was littered with roots and vines twisting across it, half-buried in seams of the rock. Easy-peasy.

What he didn't notice were the smears in the slime his passage left behind.

At the top, he grabbed at a branch that immediately grabbed back. If most of his body wasn't already over the ledge, it would have been enough for him to fall then; he'd grabbed the body of some lizard thing - as big as his leg from ankle to knee, and while its tail whipped around his elbow, it doubled back to snap onto his hand. The compressible material of the glove kept him from feeling any of the needly teeth that would have happily torn open his skin, but it had only just missed the bare skin of his finger, and the little bone in his hand snapped. If the pain wasn't enough - and it was - the thing didn't seem about to let go.

Worse - it wasn't just one he'd disturbed. Nearly twenty of them had turned to face him, a few larger ones opening bright fuchsia frills and making some threatening, rattling sound in their throats. It wasn't until he'd stupidly, stubbornly pulled himself up onto the top of the ledge, groaning through his teeth, so he could fight the lizard off his hand, that he realized he'd stumbled into some kind of a carcass. He didn't recognize the animal at all, but it had been larger than him before it was reduced to bones. Most of the meat had long since been picked clean, and this colony of lizards was picking at scraps and cartilage and rotting skin, and were fully prepared to defend their claim.

Blinded by surprise and the danger he'd stumbled into, Ray stumbled through and past them, dodging a strike at his ankles, dragging the heavy lizard with him. He tried to bash it on the rocks, but it was too heavy to easily lift; somehow, in the midst of everything else, he had the common sense to squeeze it behind the jaw, digging his fingertips into the muscle there until it unlocked. Flinging it away, he stumbled further back, watching the lizards. A couple of the larger ones charged at him, but stopped short - they only wanted to drive him away.

"Ugh!" His hand throbbed - pain shot up through his arm; he squeezed his wrist with the other hand in an attempt to stop it. It felt worse than it was - it probably wasn't even worth leaving the island for since it would be easy to fix in a hospital and wasn't life-threatening. He should have really taken off the glove to check his skin, make sure no teeth got through and he wouldn't get an infection, but the idea of removing the glove right now just spiraled into more imagined pain. At least he'd forgotten the cold.

As he hadn't taken his eyes off the lizards in case they did more than charge, he found the hole with his foot. It was really just luck that he didn't find it with his whole leg and fall in - his toes clung to the lip and he managed to dance his weight off his heel before he slipped in.

Eyeing the lizards one more time, he assured himself that they were back to tearing scraps from the bones, and then crouched to regard the hole. A broad, fan-shaped, ferny leaf stretched over it, so he might not even had seen it if he hadn't backed into it, but for all that it was large, easily large enough for him to drop down into, but not much more than that. Maybe even too small for Quar, sort of like those holes near the beach. Sunlight illuminate a soily, sandy bottom under a few inches of water - probably the source of the stream - but it looked like it backed into a darker cavern or tunnel. It would be difficult to drop down without disturbing the soil and making it obvious something had gone in, but with the leaf covering it, and those lizards and the carcass up there, Quar probably wouldn't ever get close enough to see.

It was perfect.

Holding his hurt hand to his ribs, he used the other to lower himself in, twisting to fit himself with his backpack (so it was that tight), and then backing himself into the darkness so his eyes remained on the sunlight through that covering fan-leaf.

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They were trudging over yet another sandbar when the scent tickled the back of her nose. Quar froze, ears and hackles rising. Dotta almost bumped into her before she paused, too. The snatch she'd caught was gone then, but Quar moved in an outward spiral from that spot, her carefully placed footsteps sending up small splashes until she came to a big flat rock. She dropped to a crouch beside it with the spear over her thighs, her floating tail curving around her ankles on top of the water like a particularly hairy snake. Of course, he'd climbed out here to cover his tracks, but most of his scent had been rubbed off over here –

Pure glee crashed through her, almost dizzying in its suddenness and intensity. Her soggy tail smacked the water's surface and she cackled with a sharp, high-pitched whine that overlayed her rasping chuffs, throwing back her head. Dotta stared at her in bewilderment from several feet behind.

“What? What!?”

Quar sprang out of the crouch and, while bent double still, used the spear to hook around the stem of what she thought was a ficca to separate it from the rest of the brush and pull it into the open. She thought that was the name of it, anyway. Her plant identification skills were rusty. She leaned aside so that Dotta could see, giving the plant an excited jiggle through the spear. It was very clear where the fleshy leaves had been ripped away. Not only that but in crushing them, Ray had released the pungently sweet sap otherwise contained within the leaves. There was no mistaking he had done that. The smell was encountered nowhere else, and too intensely to be the result of insects chewing away at one or two leaves. Anyway the evidence was right there on the denuded stem. The breaks on the petioles were ragged from being torn rather than neatly chewed.

“Hhaa, why would he make himself even smellier?” Dotta asked, leaning forward to examine the plant with perplexity writ across her face.

“The stars know!” Quar exclaimed, rolling up to her full height and bounding into the forest, tail flipping up into a heavy curl behind her. She let leaves hit her shoulders as she pushed through, making no attempt at all to move stealthily or to prevent branches from whipping back at Dotta's face. She could tell from the scent decay that he'd come through about two hours earlier, so there was no risk of being heard.

“Clever in any age,” Quar chuckled, mostly to herself, though she felt a perverse sense of pleasure at throwing Dotta's own words back at her. She knew the other female could hear, and felt eyes boring into the back of her neck.

The crushed leaves did mask Ray's scent fairly well, but it also created a new trail for her to follow. After a moment she realized that was probably why he'd done it. It might have worked, too, if his scent upon the rock hadn't pointed her directly to the ficca. She was happily jogging along, that adrenaline rush Ray had spoken of buzzing in her head when Dotta cried out sharply behind her.

Quar twisted around, fingers clutching a tangle of vines that curtained her path, to see Dotta bent down to fiddle with her leg. It seemed that a fallen branch on the ground had speared her between her calf and the leather lacings of her legging. She pulled the “sandal” off in her hand and looked down at it in disappointment. Her fist clenched around it and she made a movement with her arm like she was thinking of flinging it into the trees, but she did not.

“Are you injured?” Quar asked without concern.

“My legging broke,” Dotta said. “Ugh. Quar, I have had enough. Walking in this thicket is too arduous. You have his trail. Soon you will catch him and prove to the poor creature that you are superior to him. You don't need me for that.” The disgust on her face, Quar thought, was turned in toward herself as much as it was projected toward Quar, though she couldn't say how she knew that. Quar straightened a little, letting the vines she'd been lifting fall.

“It is only a game, Dotta. My intention is not to prove anything,” she said, not nearly as testily as she felt. Quar applauded herself for her restraint. Dotta flipped her hand at Quar. I don't care. They both stank of tension. The other female began to turn away.

Quar watched her with an unpleasant mixture of astonishment and... and.. something else, like disappointment, but not really.

Include Dotta so she's happy. Well, kesh! Hadn't Quar tried? Could she change someone determined to be unhappy?

Watching Dotta's back as the jungle swallowed her up, Quar realized what she felt. It was pity. Dotta preened herself like the vainest, most pampered male. She was a useless person and knew it. She was not even fit enough to walk the distances Ray had walked that day. If they had been of one House, the second-hand embarrassment would be unbearable.

Quar returned to her path. She moved at a more measured pace now, deep in thought, rankled by that turn of events, happy to be alone but guilty she had not tried harder to be inclusive. Anyway, she owed Dotta nothing She owed Ray nothing, for that matter. If Quar said run, he ought to start running.

She was snapped out of these thoughts when she encountered a change to his scent, one that almost overpowered the ficca pulp – a spike of fear and alarm, stress hormones. Quar's pupil swelled to engulf her iris. Ray! Her head snapped up to follow the vines he had crawled in scaling the rock wall. She scrabbled effortlessly up with one hand and two feet, toes molding around the crevices and claws digging against stone and vine alike for traction. Her tail whipped from side to side as she went over the ledge on her knee and found herself face to face with a colony of hissing lizards. Her guttural snarl immediately scattered the lizards into the undergrowth. That snarl contorted her entire face: the skin of her muzzle scrunched back in rolls so that her lips lifted over her gums, baring sharp incisors and curving fangs. Jaws parted still, she launched herself up and away from the ledge, hunkered low to the ground to keep herself closer to his scent and to avoid the need to duck her crest, searching frantically for the place he had gone.

But he had gone nowhere! The trail ended here! Quar spun, stalked over her path again, eyes sweeping frantically over the bones – too decayed to be a human, you idiot! She ran toward the thicket most of the lizards had scurried into, paused, tail thrashing, realizing this was wrong, and then she grabbed hold of herself.

There was no scent of blood. He hadn't even been attacked. He'd been startled, that was all. That was all! Quar paced back and forth across the ledge, on that stonier area were only the most enterprising of vines could creep along, wetting her paws in the weak trickle of water that flowed over the edge. Her tail calmed, though the end of it continued to twitch rapidly. She thought of calling to Dotta. If she screamed loud enough, Dotta might hear.

No, no. That was stupid. She couldn't believe how stupid she had been.

Quar worked herself in circles, this time moving calmly, focusing, finding the boundaries of his trail. She even craned her head up – maybe he did shimmy up a tree. But no. She discovered the truth when her foot landed on the same hole that his had, but more directly over it so that she stumbled, went down heavily on one knee. She dropped to her palms, spear under her hand, and used the other to push aside leaves. She peered down into that hole, deeper and deeper until her muzzle was pushed through it. Her tongue flicked out to lap over her nose.

Inwardly, she grinned. The panic faded and the glee came flooding back. But how to get down there? It was entirely possible there were no larger entrances into that cave system for another mile, and even if she found such an entrance she would have no way of knowing if it connected to this spot.

Tail wriggling in the face of this new problem, Quar pushed herself to her feet and began an exploration of the area, keeping that hole in her mental map so that she would not stray too far from it. Even if she had to turn several times, she had a general idea of its location. She walked a little further until the ground dropped off, following the scent of water. The drop off was not immediately obvious because of a bush that grew on the ground below, its uppermost leaves level with the rocky prominance she stood upon, but Quar recognized that those wavy, dark maroon leaves with tapered points did not belong to any sort of ground cover. She dropped onto her belly to hang her head over this new ledge and saw that the bush grew from a floor that was only a drop of a few feet, and that it blocked the entrance to a crevice. There was just enough light to see inside, light from Ray's hole.

Damn. She had only a little penlight. She hadn't thought to bring anything better than that, knowing Ghijariis would bring actual torches. Not that she needed a light now, but if Ray had gone deeper into the cave system where no sunlight reached, she might.

She turned herself around, dropped down on top of the bush, snapping branches and cursing under her breath at how clumsy and awkward it was, and how annoying it was to get poked in a hundred different places. She backed up onto flatter ground and swung her bow off her back, placing it on the driest, flattest piece of ground nearby. That crevice was only just big enough for her body and snarled with vines that would grab at her. There was too much risk of her bow getting broken, though she hated to leave it behind, which meant she would have to backtrack to this spot at some point in the future.

She pushed through the branches of the bush and into the crevice, moving slowly to part boughs, tossing the spear ahead of her a little but so she could walk herself in on her palms. The floor was covered in broken stones, some quite jagged, and it angled down into the Earth. It was incredibly slow going because of the vines snagging at her crest, which she was forced to reach up and rip with her hands, or just push her way through until they snapped, and because at one point her hips became wedged in the crevice and she had to twist and wriggle to get through.

Finally the way opened ahead of her and she let herself drop to her chest to rest for a minute, panting, stones digging into her soft belly while her eyes scanned her surroundings. It was a decently sized cave, the roof here tall enough for her to crouch-walk. The ground sloped down into a very shallow pool of water. The hole Ray had dropped through was a bright circle of light above because she had ripped up the plants that obscured it. She couldn't smell any rock-louse yet; if she had, she'd have feared for Ray's life and called for help immediately. All she could smell so far were the pretty scents of mineral rich freshwater and the earthiness of fungal shelves that grew along the walls close to the crevice. And Ray. And the sharp, misplaced scent of ficca sap. The ground continued to slope downward into darkness, which worried her a little bit. Humans were blind in the dark. Would he really...?

Quar slowly picked herself up, taking a moment to unravel the medallion-print wraps on her arms and re-wrap them because they'd become so disheveled on her way in. Then she hiked up her trousers for the same reason, tightened the laces, and picked up her spear to coached cautiously into the dark. Her fingers brushed the leather pouch on her baldric that held the pen-light, ready to pull it out if she had to go deep enough that the light from the cave entrances became too weak to see by.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

For maybe a quarter of an hour, Ray had sat near where he'd dropped through the hole, taking his well-earned rest, and probing the injury to his hand. A bit of working at the glove, tugging at the compression fabric to pull at his skin, trying to see if he could draw his fingers back into it, convinced him both that he didn't want to try taking it off, and that his hand had a break. He remembered from scouts: if you turn your ankle or break your foot, leave your boot on, or the swelling will make it impossible lace up later. The same probably applied here. However stupid the boots and gloves were to leave his digits free to accommodate claws he didn't have, they were better than grabbing roots and rocks with bare palms.

For another ten minutes he experimented with splints and wraps. They were pointless. He could bend his wrist, except for the strain in put on his tendons. The break was up beneath the knuckle at the base of his pinky, or at least that was where everything was tender and felt liked it was twice as big as it should be.

He thought about what Quar had said, and tried to ignore the pain, like it could be willed away, or turned off if he could fumble for the right switch in the back of his mind. He gritted his teeth and knocked his head against the stone behind him (or rather the high collar, and that against the stone) but that wasn't sufficiently distracting.

Distraction. Distraction was exactly what he needed, or he was just going to sit here and fixate on the break, which wasn't even that bad to begin with. Ricks were right about it, really. Pain was stupid. If you were past due on a bill, the first notice was welcome - a reminder in case you'd some how missed it. If the notices kept coming and coming, and were joined by calls, texts, emails, heads-up alerts in public advertisements, etc., that was just torture.

***

While he'd waited, his eyes had adjusted, pupils dilating as far as they would go. That meant most of his fine-detail vision went with it, and the deep shadows that emerged had a tendency to resolve into patterns they shouldn't: monsters, plants, significant shapes that didn't belong here. He half-wondered if the lizards would follow him in the hole, and realized that if one of the Ricks so much as glanced in, they'd probably see him. He scooted back, leaving an unfixable impression in the gritty sand where his butt had been for so long, and not even noticing.

Further back in the dark, both the ceiling of the little cave and the floor sunk down, but the water level didn't (of course). They both curved upward at the edge - like the corner of a smile - to a narrow rift, not that deep at all, so he got the impression there was a chamber on the other side.

Light - he didn't want to ruin his darkvision, but among the things he'd gotten from Vern, there was this 'stone' (artificial, obviously) that Vern had insisted was the most he was allowed for a 'natural' excursion like this one. A little smaller than a deck of cards, it fit neatly into the palm of his hand, and glowed enough just to give off a gentle ambiance suitable for changing in a tent at night, or maybe marking a spot on a trail, rather than actually blinding himself. since it glowed in the reds band, apparently closer to IR than Ray could see, it wouldn't kill his vision, either. Squeezing it in his palm to turn it on, he held it up to the rift and peered through past it. Dark, dark, dark - some huge chamber on the far side, but more importantly water at the same level as here. A very slight suction pulled air through the seam past him, into the deeper chamber. It would be like Quar's grotto back home. Perfect.

(Yes, it occurred to him that if she could swim that, she could swim this, but she'd never even think to, and back there, with the rock all but sealing off the rest of this cave, he could leave the light out, probably even make noise and move around, and nobody would notice unless they actually swam under. Heck, if there was a nice dry spot, he could maybe even spend the night, or try for very small fire with the starters in his pack.)

In retrospect, even though it wasn't much of a squeeze beneath the stone to get to the other side, he realized how stupid it had been. He could have gotten stuck, drowned, never been found, if it had been a squeeze. His backpack the floatation device had fought him as he went underneath, refusing to let him dive; he'd had to take it off and drag it through after him (he should have at least pushed it first!) once he was committed and needed the breath on the other side.

It was perfect. Once he got the light up on the far side, it looked like the cave was tall enough that he could stand around the outer shores on either side, which meant it probably had enough air for hours, even days. Darker spots suggested other entrances higher up, if he wanted to climb the jagged boulders along the back to explore, but one side was a sandy shore that he could definitely lay out on. While the air was wet, the stone of the walls looked dry, so there wasn't any chance it was tidal, not that the water seemed brackish anyway.

Where he'd emerged, he could stand knee-deep and wade to the shore, so he did.

***

It was maybe five minutes after stretching out on the shore that he woke. The light had slipped from his hand to the sand, and was enough that he could vaguely see all the cave, including the creature draped over the rocks above him like a glittery brown-black belt along the edge of a bed-frame. It's mouthparts wiggled at him.

"UGH!!" Half-shout, half a scream he wouldn't have been proud of, and far too reflexive for a curse, Ray stumbled back, and doubled down on the cry when he put his weight on his hand.

The thing was huge - probably bigger than him, it seemed, and moved more like a centipede than a 'louse' or even an isopod or lobster, flexing between every segment. And it was terribly fast when it lunged at him. He bounced back against the wall, jumping, trying to leap out of the way - the thing had more momentum than him to arrest, but it also legs enough to do it, and was quite adept at banking off the walls in its own home.

When he splashed out into the water, it followed, sinuating out onto the surface like a water snake.

***

He'd discovered quite by accident that it couldn't dive, and neither could it see down into the water. Its four eyes were all clustered in the top angle of its skull, presumably to see prey while it floated at the water's surface, or from its position low on the ground. It twisted at the surface, roiling for him when he'd sunk, expecting the pack to buoy him, then given up to sinuate back across the water to the shore. That was time enough for him to surface, but as soon as he had, it was back, gliding across the water like a finless Jaws in his direction, so he dove again.

And again. And again. And again until it was painful, until counting to twenty wasn't enough because the thing had begun crossing the water; he had to turn up and watch for the shadow against the faint red light bouncing off the surface. The floor of the pool - which was deep enough in the middle that he hadn't found the bottom, was filled with rough rocks, not covered with any kind of vegetation this far underground. There were a few bones, legs, other animal parts he'd touched with his fingers, freaking himself out, but nothing else alive under the water.

The louse was cruising now, stalking, not really seeming to expend itself at all, but every minute this stretched on, this need to anchor himself at the bottom and shoot up for air only to kick and dive again, was getting him closer to the last minute he'd been able to. Early on he'd made several attempts to reach the same place where he'd entered. The water there was shallow, but he'd swum beneath the rock there before. If he kicked enough at the surface, maybe he'd be able to fend off the louse until he got beneath. Given how much trouble he'd had getting under, though, and what he'd seen the thing do to his backback earlier, slicing through canvas like it was tissue, the risk was too high that it would get a good bite on his leg or back before simply following him out the crack to the other side before he could escape.

No, he needed a better plan. But forty-five minutes of frantic splashing hadn't given him any chance to come up with one yet.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Quar slunk stiltedly along the path she knew he had taken, her slow, stiff movements designed to avoid splashing. Her tail would have curled but that was instead poised above the water and utterly still to avoid even the faintest rustle. It was so quiet that she could hear her own heartbeat throb steady in her ears. It had occurred to her that Ray probably meant to hide down here, probably still was here, and she was moments away from springing on him. Hhhha hhhaa! As she approached the rift at the back of the cave, she realized that the inside was lit with a faint glow, the quality of which was nothing like sunlight that might have come from a break in the ceiling.

I have you... Already the gloating words were on her lips. Cocky human! Simple human! No plane ride for you!

And then she froze. She heard the splashing from within the next room in the same instant she smelled it, in the same moment she knew Ray had touched these walls as he passed through. Her next actions happened in a chaotic jumble that she hardly comprehended and wouldn't be able to remember later: opening her AR, the failure to connect message that she did not recognize, her frantic clicks that did not align properly because her eyes weren't focused where they needed to be and her thoughts were so scattered. Even as this happened she was moving, shoving herself through that narrow opening, feeling the three topmost prongs of her plate scrape against the stone so that she was forced to flatten her head, angling her chin up. She dug her fingers into the sand to claw her way through, propelling herself both with her hand and her paws pushing from behind. Her eyes bulged open, even under the water, for once the whites of them clearly visible. She'd have looked crazed if anyone had been there to see.

She exploded up out of the water with the spear in her left hand, water dribbling from her black lower lip when her jaws opened to scream.

“RAY!” The cry bounced off the walls, amplified with that ghostly echoey quality, Her eyes darted first toward the light and then to the dark shape of the louse skimming over the water, currently in the middle of a turn that was bringing it back around toward her, to the source of the noise. In that brief moment she had seen the stretch of sand where the palm light lay, empty, EMPTY! Terror closed around her heart with icy fingers. The chamber reeked of his fright and now it reeked of hers, for her howrfs misted that terror into the air.

She gripped the spear in both hands and sprinted along the beach. The footing was awkward; because there was a slight slope her stride was uneven, but the gravelly quality of the sand prevented her sinking into it. Her claws kicked up chunks of wet grit behind her.

A blinding hot rage gripped her, obliterated all intelligent thought and left only instinct. The louse's rear paddle-legs propelled it with horrible speed across the water and then its many legs scuttled over sand, serrated mandibles pulling apart so it could snap them down on her leg. She bellowed in inarticulate fury and thrust the blunted spear into that cluster of eyes, successfully stabbing one. From her end it felt like stabbing into soft jelly. The rock-louse had no vocal chords so it could not scream, but it jinked aside immediately, head curling toward its tail in a spasm of pain.

Her spear had obviously not discharged the neural stun. Whether the tissues of the eye couldn't trigger it, or she had merely been unlucky, Quar did not know.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

In the water, the rock-louse was a skilled assassin, gliding silently at the surface to strike with a quick bite that would leave her quarry bleeding out or maimed, and easy to track (or ride) until their struggles relented to the point that she could begin to feed. On dry land, whether her limbs were digging into sand or finding solid rock, she was incredibly strong, and thus fast as well. Her strength lay not in her limbs - if Quar was foolish enough to grasp one, she probably could have twisted it out of the creature, but in the curve of her body. Muscley fibers ran the length of her body inside the carapace, cording as thick around as Quar's thigh at their largest point, and these could snap the rock-louse from one curve into another in the blink of an eye. Tens of millions of years of evolution had provided the louse with instinctive knowledge to dodge out of the way of quick attacks, to throw their prey off their legs, to spring off the ground and twist into the air.

Ten years of surviving 'kills' by Rriigkhan hunters had given this louse better knowledge than most. She'd not had the opportunity to feast on one, but she'd tasted the blood of many, and knew that flesh would be tender beneath the fur. The eye was a painful loss for a creature like her, but it was a weak sense to begin with, largely tracking motion and shape across a thousand glittering facets. The taste of the Rriigkhan on the air was far more reliable.

Lashing away from the spear, it clattered through a series of comma-bends, scales clattering. The random spasms were meant to buy the louse space, and would also help her flip back right-side up if she'd been toppled, but it wasn't real 'strategy'. For an insect she was incredibly clever, but beneath that her automatic instincts were strong, so there was no delay, no time for thought, before she leapt at Quar again, paddle legs throwing her up under Quar's arm, where she could sink her mandibles into the flesh that stitched arm to ribs.

Ray had counted to twenty, forcing himself to go slow, to use the time to calm himself as much as he could. He'd lost sight of the louse, which wasn't good, but he'd seen where it went toward the shore, and used that knowledge to go bobbing back up, leaving the water as still as he could. He'd dithered between emptying his lungs to make it easier to stay at the bottom, and holding the breath to keep the bubbles from announcing his position. Most recently he'd been leaning toward the latter; this monster seemed to be too smart, even if it was possibly hypoxia causing conspiratorial thinking.

A foot from the surface of the water, he realized how much it was rippling and began to hear the chaos of the struggle. Spluttering water, he came to the surface gasping, and twisted to see the shape of two beasts fighting.

The back of his thoughts identified it as a Rick at the same time that his forethoughts picked out Quar; those two, somehow, were not synonymous and didn't immediately marry together. He was already splashing toward the shore by desperate instinct - his limbs were like jelly, his hearing and vision buzzing, his broken hand a single throbbing aching point, though he had no plan of what to do when he got there. Knife, maybe. Help, somehow. He'd be in the way.

The louse was not exactly a single-minded thing. Processes ran in parallel, so again there was no pause for decision before it gave up on Quar, backing away with a clattering hiss that kept her scales pointed overlap forward, toward her true prey, which she would diligently protect before letting Quar steal away its meat.

"Quar!" Ray finally managed to gasp out - it had only been seconds since he surfaced, but it felt like forever. The louse had lunged at her - just a feint to drive her off before it continued its retreat toward him.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Quar was already jerking away when the louse lunged at her the first time, interposing the spear lengthwise across her torso to catch those mandibles, because trying to pry those jaws off her body with bare hands would mean the loss of fingers. The weight of the louse mashed the spear down against her body from hip to chest. Quar staggered back with a leg braced behind her and her back arched, crest tipped back, jaws locked in a grimace of effort, embracing a statuesque pose for one a single moment. The haft hitting the underside of the louse's head prevented the jaws from getting the grip on Quar they'd been aiming for – the tips pinched down on the naked flesh under her left arm instead. Quar violently shoved the louse away with the pole, ripping out a chunk of bloodied flesh and fur from her own side. Pinch was the correct word, for that was all that Quar felt: a pinch, then a little throb, and then she ceased to think about the wound aside from, later, feeling that it was sticky and wet.

As the louse's upper body fell back, its hindmost legs still rooted in the sand and its forelegs waving in the air in search of something to grasp, Quar rapidly moved back to create the distance required for her weapon. She swept the spear down so it was parallel with the ground and thrust again, this time trying to jam the blunted tip up under the plates. It was impossible, no good openings from that angle. The spear scraped aside to no effect.

She understood that Ray was actually alive, then, but there was no room for any sort of emotional response or intellectual evaluation of that fact. There was only the louse.

“Run!” she roared at him, again thrusting at those mouthparts when the louse feinted with a snap of its jaws. She felt the spear connect with the soft fleshy bits. A strike against flesh! But the neural stunner did not activate and without a sharp point there was no real damage done. The louse knew its mouth was not being probed with anything edible so it didn't clamp down on the weapon.

Haf kauragh! Haf kauragh! Those words had meant God save me in long-dead language, their original meaning corrupted by a conquering nation even in antiquity so that it was no longer a prayer but a phrase which communicated unimaginable grief, fear, or frustration. Now those words repeated like a mantra in her mind, a desperate plea. Why will the stunner not trigger!? But it was pure chance, not a malfunction of the weapon, and Quar could recall hunts in which it had taken six or seven contacts before she won that coin flip.

She chased after it, leaning low so that she could thrust again, this time from below with the intention of getting her spear under its belly, and for too long a moment she was running and falling at the same time. She was top heavy to begin with, and running bent over meant that all her weight was in the wrong place. Her momentum was all that kept her from toppling during that wild careening gallop. Her howrfs throbbed in her skull, her heart hammered in her breast, twin drumsticks pounding, pounding.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Run!

It was easy for her to say - Ray wasn't entirely sure how his feet remained beneath him. He seemed to wobble along more like a marionette, with some disturbed, ragdoll physics that shouldn't have kept him upright. Still, when he slid to his knees in the grit, he was more in control than not, and immediately fumbling through the backpack, looking for what he'd left there instead of conveniently at one of the pouches on his hip. No, not that knife - that was thrown to the side with the towel and other things. He grabbed at the ribbed orange canister when his fingers felt it, yanked it open, and barely caught the bundle of square-profiled sticks that came spilling out.

Run where - back into the water? He didn't have the strength to swim again, to dive - the thing would catch him for certain.

"Cover your eyes!" he answered her, voice cracking. More crawling on bare toe-tips and hands than either running or falling, he came stumbling toward the louse's back. He'd caught a couple of the little sticks, and smacked them down on top of the canister, still held in his left hand.

Oh, he felt that impact much worse than simply closing his hand around the thing. But the two sticks flared up together like they were charged with magnesium, not only blinding his darkvision, but - more - importantly, flaring up with enough heat to light wood on fire.

He was holding them wrong, backwards in his hand, hotpoints on the pinky-side, like a dagger he was going to swing downward. The tips were too close to his skin, painfully hot even through the glove, hot enough that the air around him warmed.

This was a new threat, one that the louse was not experienced with. It stayed away from fires - the closest thing it liked to heat was warm summer rocks, because the lizards sunned themselves there, and they were an easy catch when she was peckish. This heat was a horror. She whirled on Ray, plates bristling like a dog's fur to make her seem even larger, hissing and chittering now to drive him off.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Her eyes snapped shut. With her hands grasping the haft she could not cover them and saw light burst beyond her lids. She had no choice but to open her eyes to make her attack, though with her head tucked as it was at least she wasn't staring directly at the light. The louse blanked to a vague gray shape, though she saw the plates lift in silhouette. She had seen rock-louse behavior in video and in person often enough to understand what she was seeing.

It was exactly the opening Quar needed to get the spearhead under those plates. She didn't have time to stop. She jabbed, felt the blunted tip scrape up under a plate and wedge there like a splinter jammed under a fingernail. She didn't release the haft as she blundered by so it twisted in her hands, which shoved the end of the spear against the louse's muscles with bruising force. The haft buzzed in Quar's hand to tell her the stunner had activated and the louse dropped in a heap, instantly and completely, without so much as a leg twitch. The spear could only twist so far before her feet stumbled over her own hands and momentum did its thing.

Quar bit dirt. She released the spear but not in time to get her palms under herself, but she was able to duck her chin in time for her crest to slam into the gravelly sand first. Her right eye and her chest scraped along the ground with her arms trapped underneath her. She was pushing herself up on hands and knees in the next instant, tail lifting and head snapping up, but all that achieved was blinding herself completely when her eyes fell upon the flares.

The human was fine, she knew he must be. There was no fresh blood in the cavern, only the fluid weeping from the louse's ruined eye, and he was obviously moving around and capable of speech even if she couldn't see him. She dropped to her forearms on the sand and then dropped her crest to the ground between them, jaws open for her shuddering breaths to puff out against the ground. Her back shook, beads of saliva dripped from her teeth, her tail whipped aside and then dropped heavily down. It wasn't just that she'd exhausted herself, far from it, but a sudden nausea rolled her. She felt an overwhelming urge to vomit but did not, instead lifting her head again and crawling over the sand toward him, panting, again punching at the emergency extraction command of the park's menu and getting that error message. Pebbly sand clung to her fur all down the length of her body, but especially on her right side where she'd hit the ground hardest.

“Human! Are you injured!” she shouted. She had never felt panic like this before, or felt her heart thumping so wildly in her chest like it was about to explode. Her howrfs had extended to peek out of their cavities and jittered crazily, all the better to fling out the pheromones that would call for help.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The rock-louse hadn't gotten close to him - not this time. There were a few moments in the water before when their bodies had touched; he'd kicked it or it had snapped at him and just missed, so the weight of it, the reality of it was was a sharp, painful point in his thoughts. But the distance meant that Quar didn't bowl him over when she came stumbling past it.

He was on his knees, those weird boots leaving his toes open to be roughed raw by the sand and grit, but completely protecting him otherwise. He didn't quite understand the spears or how they worked. Slouching, panting, head angled off slightly, mouth agape so he could breathe through it and eyes still flared white, he tried to blink away the the burn to see if the thing was still moving. He couldn't see anything, but some sixth sense told him it was still, unmoving, effectively dead. His slump continued until he just let himself fall into a sprawl on his side, so he didn't have to expend any more energy than from breathing. The exertion in the water had left him hot, but as that heat seeped out through his skin and breath, a deep chill crept in to replace it. The bright flare of the firestarters had already flickered away, leaving curling, glowing ash in their place, but that still gave off a bit of heat that made Ray want to curl around it.

Human! Ray wanted to laugh at that. It seemed to ridiculous. He nearly answered her with 'Rick!', but he was not so weary that he couldn't recognize that that was weariness undermining his better judgment.

"Yes," he answered plainly, a simple, tired word. Then he frowned and said, "No," and felt forced to explain further, "Not by the thing. Lizard bit my hand. I think it's broken." That wasn't too hard to believe; he'd naturally been favoring it all along, and now that left hand was held up against his chest, while the other participated in the sprawl and stroked idly in the sand, like his body couldn't be still no matter how tired he was. He wasn't really looking at anything, since the light from the sticks was all but gone, and the stone with the red glow too faint where it was half-covered, on the other side from where Quar had felled the louse, to pick out the shades of black in the cavern. But his eyes stared out across the water. Belatedly, his head turned in her general direction, searching the dark where he thought her to be.

"I've been swimming away from that thing for-- I don't know. Too long. I just need to rest for a little. So cold in here, though."

It wasn't - not really. Compared to the rest of the Mid-Atlantic, the Antlic islands were particularly warm. The dome had a slight greenhouse effect to begin with, letting more heat in than escaped, but it was amplified by the fact that it acted like a sponge, too, increasing the humidity in the air by tipping general hydrostasis off-balance with the particulate and microbiological counts in the contained atmosphere. The result wasn't so bad that it was sweltering or anything like it, but because the vegetation here expected the lower sea temperatures, the islands required heat regulation, which it handled in the form of underground heat-pumps - essentially just big, fluid-filled pipes or reservoirs pumped by a species very similar to the ones in Quar's grotto, which exchanged heat but not water with the ocean beneath and outside the dome. Ray would have been fascinated had he known, but even with his eyes adjusted to the dark he'd been unable to see the regularity in the cavern's shape, that it was essentially a large overflow bulb, and the deep part in the middle of the pool was VERY deep, the top of a pipe descending forty yards or so.

The rock-louse, somehow, had eaten away at the wall of the bulb - rough rocks had tumbled in from above, and much of the bulb had filled with sand and dirt. She'd secreted lime along the walls, building up all signs pointed to this as a primary nest. The pool was absolutely littered with bones in the deeper parts, and the louse had excavated the dirt on the far side for her eggs. The good news was that this was the one part of her warren where one could be certain not to find males skulking about - at least not ones who had any sense of self-preservation.

Regardless, by all accounts, the air, the water, the soil in this cavern was warmer than outside, which was warmer that it would have been outside the dome, but even as he spoke, Ray had curled up into a ball to rub his shoulder with his good hand, and he'd started to shiver.