"First Encounter 3" by Cynthia Lane Armstrong

            Watching over the ungrateful beast while he slept, I very much wanted to be annoyed and offended that that my hard work had gone so unappreciated. Instead, I was fascinated. Here was one I could not afford to show weakness; I had no way of knowing whether he could feel the empathic bond that had formed between us during the healing, but it was working hard on me. I could feel his magnetism in the palms of my hands, telling me that I was connected to him in ways that would be a long time in understanding.  I sighed, cracked my aching back, and felt way out of my league.

            His next awakening on the following day caught me by surprise.  I had stretched over him to reach a water skin, and suddenly felt the pinprick of teeth on my throat.  His breath was near-scalding on that delicate skin, and I went as still as a deer in a hunter’s sights. I willed my nerves to be still, knowing this was a test and that one wrong move would end in a rather messy death.  The trickling blood itched terribly, the puncture wounds stung, and it was everything I could do not to squirm. After a maddeningly long time, he finally released me, and I sprang away from his reach. His eyes were perfectly calm and infuriatingly smug, saying that he enjoyed the small revenge for the position I’d put him in.

            I dabbed at my throat with a cloth and eyed him levelly.

            “Some manners you have.”

            He hissed at me in response, and I saw the jagged teeth that had so recently been embedded in my neck, stained pink with my blood.

            “Would you like some water to wash out your mouth?” I maintained an air of cool indifference, which seemed to throw him off.

            “Your blood is like wine,” he rumbled.

            “And yours like acid. I should know - I spent the last nine days up to my ears in it.”

He at least had the grace to look away. Seizing upon the opportunity, I ventured, “Perhaps I can prove to you that I am not the enemy.”

He harrumphed, which became a wracking cough, and I leaned in to lift his head so that he would not choke. Trying to growl at me only made the cough worse.

“Turn your head and spit.” He did, and blood spattered the ground beside him. “You are going to have to relax. You will not heal if you cannot keep your hackles down long enough to rest.”

Perhaps it was the calm, direct tone I took with him, or his own exhaustion, but he exhaled in a great gust and closed his eyes.  After a few moments of scrutiny, I decided that he had no more tricks for the moment, and walked to the nearby stream.  One or two pinecones along the path received an irritated kick.

In the days to come, he slept far more than he woke, and provided me with no further problems for the time being.  Hoping to calm his frazzled nerves, I hummed and sang to him while he slumbered and I went about my daily business. In his sleep, with his face absent of the terrible scowl it wore when conscious, he was actually rather strikingly handsome, in his own way.  With the last of his bruises fading and the gauntness of exhaustion beginning to leave him, he began to look every bit the legend that I had always heard.

Slowly he regained his strength, and remained wakeful for longer periods each day, his hooded eyes on guard against me.  I sensed something in him, much deeper down that the hurts which had brought him into my life; wounds that cut into the soul.  The empathic knowledge rose in me that this man had not been born a vicious killer, but had been made that way at some point in his long life.  Such secrets take the most effort to delve on the healer’s part, and I knew that my real work lay ahead of me.  Winning his trust would be no simple task; suspicion limned his every breath, and a wall put into place long before my conception kept everyone away from his true self.

One of the most important stages in winning the trust of a wild animal is allowing the beast to become accustomed to you; your sounds, your scent, the way you move, all of it, nothing can be unexpected.  So, along with my songs, I causally spoke to him throughout every day.  Sometimes to chide him for being the most irascible patient I’d ever encountered, sometimes to comment on the state of the land and trees, and sometimes just venting my own loneliness at living for so long away from all others.  Although he feigned utter indifference to my idle chattering, I knew from the way his eyes flickered that my every word was catalogued.  Every now and then he interjected a thought of his own, though he rarely said much at all, a fact that I worked into soft teasing.

Scraping a fresh deer hide to sew into boots as a present for a friend that I hadn’t seen in over a month, I spoke idly of the many faces I’d seen and the injuries I’d tended.

“Your accent is strange,” he rumbled, and I nearly dropped the hide in startlement.  I never quite got used to the sudden timber of that deep voice after a long silence.

“So you haven’t forgotten how to make speech.  No disrespect, lord,” I added hastily, seeing the red flash in his eyes. “Where did you learn moon elf speech anyway, to recognize such things?”

“Language is something of a hobby.” That was the first personal information he had ever volunteered, and my ears perked with interest.

“I’ve been in the hills a long time, lord.   I believe that the hill speak burr has rather taken over my native sounds.”

“I do not know this hill speak.”

“There’s no surprise.  If you’ve never been in this area before, you won’t have heard it, but everyone here, from the humans to the elves to the faeries uses it. Makes it much easier to talk with the locals.”

A storm cloud gathered on his brow. “Humans?” he hissed, his sudden anger leaning hard on the sibilant, and I knew I had suddenly strayed into dangerous territory.

“Yes, some live near here.”

“Where?”

“Do not trouble yourself over them.  It’s only a small village; simple people. They’re no worries at all.”

But an ugly snarl gripped his face, and he bared those sharp teeth. 

“Where are they,” he demanded, and his voice could have made the nearby stream freeze in terror.

“I cannot allow you to harm those people, and besides, you cannot even stand.  It is incredibly ill-advised for you to-“

He cut me off with a slashing motion; talons splayed, and struggled to sit up.  I tried coaxing and wheedling, but I might as well have been talking to a stone.  Every last muscle in his body contracted as he pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, to my utter amazement. He towered head and shoulders above me, and I sucked in a breath at the sheer size of him. I decided on a different tactic.

“Look at yourself.  Are you going to go smite those poor people wrapped only in a blanket?”   For whatever reason, it actually worked.  I saw consternation replace the awful rage on his face, and he leaned heavily against the oak.  “Come on, down you go, you’re in no shape for this.  Please!” I’m not above begging when necessary.  Fortunately, he actually listened, and sank to his knees with a sigh. 

“What kind of healer would I be if I let my patient go charging off in such a state?” I asked quietly.  He would not meet my eyes, and silence stretched between us, only punctuated by his labored breath. Finally he settled back down, but his eyes remained far away and contemptuous, whether of the villagers, me, or himself I could not tell.

“You genuinely hate humans.” The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them and I gave myself a mental kick for being stupid.  His head turned and he locked me in that fierce glare. Pushing past that, I said, gently, “What did they do to you to cause such loathing?”

A growl welled up from deep in his throat, but he turned away once more, and pain hit me.  It ripped through my sense, plummeting to the pit of my belly, and I felt utterly nauseated before I could shut him out.  A need filled me in place of that anguish, a need to calm him and soothe his hurts.  Some would call it motherly instinct, but having no children of my own, it was simply the healer’s calling.

I leaned into him, moving slowly. He watched with growing suspicion, and finally snapped, “What are you doing?” The need to understand him, to comprehend the pain that drove him, overtook my good sense.  Before he could push me away, I surprised myself, and certainly shocked him by kissing him full on the lips; the healer’s kiss – and I was flooded with such horror as I had never felt.  Red agonies ripped and slashed at my psyche, punctuated by soul-deep wails.

I had no chance to drown in his pain, for I suddenly found myself sailing through the air. I landed with a painful thump, skidding a good way before coming to a halt.  The moment I could, I rolled over onto my knees and vomited noisily, emptying my system of his unspeakable torment that had wracked me moments before.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” he roared, and the sheer force of it knocked me flat.  I turned and saw him propped on his elbows, his eyes a blistering red and his hair alight as though it were living flame.  The power of his rage took my breath away and I struggled to remain conscious.  With all my strength, I drew in the blue healing energy and formed a protective bubble around me, not a moment too soon as a gout of flame seared everything around me.  I know that I was only fortunate that he wasn’t up to his own full strength, or I might not have been able to divert the fire.  I was also fortunate that his rage burned very hot, subsequently using up the last of his energy, and he crumpled.

Panting for a moment, trying to get my bearings, I then rushed to his side and worry filled me at the sigh of him.  “Are you hurt? I’m sorry, I did not mean to upset you, I -”

“Be still!” he snarled, and swatted me away.  His hands were shaking and his face white from the exertion, or perhaps the emotional upheaval.  Ever so softly, I began to sing to him, gentle songs of wind and night.  Eventually his eyes closed and he fell into a heavy sleep.