Chapter 3
TwitchEar laid his ears back against his skull when the no-hair screamed shrilly, then fell back on the bed unmoving. He dithered, before he crouched down beside the no-hair again and reached out to touch his face. Was the creature dead?! To his relief, however, he felt the warm puffs of the no-hair’s breath on his fingertip pads. Not dead, but unconscious. He leapt to his feet and scrambled out of his tent, intent on fetching the healer. She might not be thrilled to examine the no-hair, but he was desperately worried about the creature. He would beg her to look the no-hair over at least, and see if there was anything that she could do for the creature.
Arriving at the healer’s tent, he paused outside and called out to her politely. You didn’t just barge into someone else’s tent without making your presence known. After a moment, the healer came to the open tent flap and looked at him questioningly. “TwitchEar? What is the matter?” she asked him. “Are you wounded?”
“No, Healer Greeneye,” he replied hurriedly. “But I…BroadPaw and I found a no-hair out in the grass, and we brought him back to the camp. I was wondering if you’d take a look at him? I’m worried about him. I know it’s a lot to ask, but…”
“A no-hair?” the healer repeated in surprise. “And you brought it back to camp?”
“We had to! It wasn’t moving, and I was afraid that a predator would find it and devour it while it was lying there helpless. Please, Healer. Could you just look at him?” he begged, giving her his best ‘big, pleading eyes’, an expression he’d perfected.
She sighed bit, but nodded. “I’ll look at your no-hair, TwitchEar. Why not? I’ve never seen one up close before. Just let me get my bag,” she stepped back into her tent to retrieve the large leather bag that she carried her healing supplies around in, slinging it over her shoulder. “Lead the way, TwitchEar,” she told him.
He bounced ahead of her back to his tent, really pleased and grateful that she’d agreed to come and look at the no-hair. If there were something seriously wrong with the creature, perhaps she could help. Or at least diagnose the no-hair, so he’d know where he stood.
They arrived at his tent, and he led the way inside. The healer stared down at his bed, where the no-hair still lay unmoving. “They truly are almost hairless, aren’t they?” she said, her eyes running over the naked flesh exposed by the slit garment.
“Yes,” TwitchEar agreed.
She shrugged and swung her bag off of her shoulder. She moved to crouch next to the bed, reaching out to lightly touch the creature’s face. “His breathing seems to be good,” she noted clinically.
She began to run her hands over the no-hair’s torso, probing for broken bones and internal injuries. TwitchEar stood behind her, watching her and feeling rather helpless. Greeneye made small “Hmm,” noises to herself as she lifted the creature’s left arm and rotated it to see if the bones in it were broken. At last she finished her initial examination, looking over her shoulder at the waiting TwitchEar. “He doesn’t seem to have any bad injuries,” she told TwitchEar, who looked relieved. “Would you help me to roll him over? I want to make sure that his spine isn’t damaged.”
TwitchEar nodded and came up beside her. Together they rolled the creature over, and he slit the back of the strange hide garment just as he had the front. But when he pulled the pieces apart, he gasped in shock when he saw the no-hair’s back. The pale, naked skin was marred by ugly red and purple bruises, raised welts, and nasty cuts. “What is this?” he said, staring at the creature’s back in horror.
The healer said grimly: “Those look like the marks of more than one beating, TwitchEar.”
His head whipped around. “Beating?” he repeated, his horror deepening. “Someone beat this poor creature?”
“It looks like it,” Greeneye replied.
“But who - or what - would do such a thing?!” an aghast TwitchEar demanded.
The healer sighed. “Probably another no-hair,” she told him.
TwitchEar just stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief. He couldn’t conceive of a race that would hurt another of its own kind, especially in such a nasty and horrible way. While his own people sometimes injured one another when they ritually fought each other, both fighters knew going into the battle that they might be hurt or killed. The thought of one of his people deliberately beating another in this detestable manner…his mind could barely encompass such a thing. “But why?” he asked in a small voice.
Greeneye reached out to touch his arm comfortingly. “The creature is wearing a leather collar,” she noted, glancing back down at the no-hair.
“Yes, and there was a long leather line of some kind attached to it. I cut it off,” TwitchEar told her.
The healer grimaced faintly, her lips lifting off of her teeth in disgust. “I’ve heard of this,” she told him, “Although it was hard to believe. That these creatures could be so savage to each other…some of our people have glimpsed no-hairs herding others of their kind along, wearing these leather collars, and using long leather lashes to beat them with if they struggled or stumbled. I believe that this creature must be one of the no-hairs that was being herded by others of his kind. As though he were one of the animals that pulls their strange boxes. Perhaps the no-hairs really DO consider the ones who wear collars as being like those animals, which we’ve seen them misuse and lash and yell at if the animals are balking or struggling against pulling the boxes. Such cruelty. To consider one of your own kind as being like a mere animal? It is incomprehensible.”
TwitchEar had to agree. These no-hairs were apparently barbaric creatures. “Is this the reason that he was unconscious when BroadPaw and I first found him?” he asked her, his tail twitching in distress behind him.
“Probably. Also, he seems a bit thin for one of his kind. Besides beating him, the no-hair who put the collar on him might have starved him for some reason. That would leave him weak and exhausted,” the healer said as she removed the bag from her shoulder and began to rummage in it.
He laid his ears back against his skull and hissed. The healer gave him a compassionate look as she removed a long roll of suede leather bandages from her bag, along with a small pot. “I don’t pretend to understand why these creatures do what they do to each other,” she said gently as she opened the pot and began to rub the herbal paste delicately into the wounds and whip marks on the no-hair’s back. “And I doubt that we’ll ever truly understand them, since our people are so different from the no-hairs. Please don’t let it upset you too much, TwitchEar. Look at it this way - at least he’s no longer in the hands of his own kind.”
He perked up at her words. That was true. He watched as she covered the no-hair’s back with the salve and then began to wind the soft leather bandages around his torso, securing them at the front with thin leather lacings. Once she was done, she stood up slowly. “There doesn’t appear to be much else wrong with him,” she told TwitchEar, “Although he needs to be fed up and taken care of so that he gains some weight. He should return to good health, unless I missed something. Which is possible, considering his rather strange anatomy.”
“My thanks, Healer,” he said gratefully. “But the thing is…he did wake up for a moment a short while ago, and when he saw me standing over him he yelled and passed out again. I think he was terrified of me. What will I do if he’s like that when he wakes up again?”
“Hurr,” she chuffed thoughtfully. “Here,” she dug out a leather pouch and handed it to him. “I use these herbs to help sedate my patients if I need them to keep still, like when I set a broken limb. They also aide with pain. Make them into a tea and give him a few sips of it. But be careful - they’re strong, and our people are much bigger than him. You could seriously hurt or kill him if you give him too much. But just a little should help to relax him enough that he won’t panic at the sight of you, and you can get some food into him.”
“All right,” he said, taking the pouch from her. “I made some meat broth.”
“Best thing for an invalid,” she remarked. “I’ll leave you to your patient, TwitchEar. Come and get me again if you need me.”
“I will, Healer,” he said, as she left his tent.
TwitchEar went to stoke the fire and put some water on to boil, carefully adding a few pinches of the herbal mixture in the pouch to the water when it was hot enough. He let it brew for a few minutes, then removed the pot from the fire with a heavy bit of leather so that he didn’t burn his finger pads. He set it aside to cool, crouching beside the fire and looking down into it as he thought his own thoughts about his ‘guest’ and his burning curiosity about the creature and the race that had spawned him. He shuddered faintly as he thought of the marks on the no-hair’s back. His folk never even beat their children for misbehaving; the only things that they beat were the wood and leather drums that they played during their rites and rituals. Kittens were corrected either by a sharp word or the occasional cuff, never hard enough to hurt them in any way. TwitchEar simply couldn’t understand doing something like what had been done to his no-hair to another of his people. For any reason.
He jerked himself out of his thoughts as the smell of the cooling tea reached his nostrils. He picked up the pot and carried it over to his bed. Crouching down, he pried the no-hair’s lips open and very carefully and delicately dribbled just a tiny bit of the tea into the creature’s mouth. The no-hair’s head moved and he choked a little; worried, TwitchEar lifted the creature’s head and turned it a bit so that he wasn’t choking on the liquid. A soft moan escaped the creature’s lips, and TwitchEar was grateful to see him swallowing.
He waited a bit for the herbal tea to take effect, then began to lightly slap the no-hair’s naked cheeks with his fingertips to try to revive him. The creature thrashed a little, then his eyes opened. TwitchEar tensed, waiting for him to start screaming in terror again; but the no-hair simply stared up at him blankly. Then the creature’s mouth opened, and he said something in his strange tongue. TwitchEar shook his mane a bit. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he told the no-hair, although he knew it was futile since the no-hair wouldn’t understand him in return.
He decided to feed the no-hair instead of having futile conversations with him. He fetched the pot of broth, which he’d been warming in the fire all this time, and carried it back to the bed. The no-hair watched him with those strange eyes, which were oddly-shaped like half-moons, not round like his. And they were a color he’d never seen on any of his own people, an intense and vivid blue like the waters of a still lake.
“Drink this,” he told the no-hair, crouching down and lifting the creature’s head so that he could set the narrow mouth of the pot to his lips. The creature didn’t fight his touch, and after a moment began to sip at the broth, much to his delight.
Beythan wondered dimly if he were having another dream. He could taste the rich, meaty broth on his tongue, and feel it sliding down his throat. But this couldn’t REALLY be happening, because the being feeding him the broth was - a very large cat. Huge, in fact, towering over him as he lay on some soft surface. Round golden eyes stared down at him above a wide muzzle, and the cat-being was covered in a coat of golden-brown hair. A little mane of rough-looking, darker brown hair started on top of its head and flowed down the back of its neck. And this peculiar, enormous kitty appeared to be talking to him, albeit in a language that seemed to consist mostly of hisses and growls and rumbling sounds. Yes, he was definitely dreaming.
But if this WERE a dream, he didn’t want to ever wake up from it. Because the reality that awaited him was so much worse…at least the giant cat-creature didn’t seem to mean him any harm. It was even feeding him. Yes it had lots of big teeth in that muzzle, and he could see sheathed claws at the ends of its paw-hands. But it was making no threatening moves…well, of course it wasn’t. This was a dream, after all. And only in nightmares did the things you dreamed about try to hurt you. Unlike in reality, where vicious men like his master made nightmares of your reality, and you heartily wished that you’d died along with the rest of your family…
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TwitchEar laid his ears back against his skull when the no-hair screamed shrilly, then fell back on the bed unmoving. He dithered, before he crouched down beside the no-hair again and reached out to touch his face. Was the creature dead?! To his relief, however, he felt the warm puffs of the no-hair’s breath on his fingertip pads. Not dead, but unconscious. He leapt to his feet and scrambled out of his tent, intent on fetching the healer. She might not be thrilled to examine the no-hair, but he was desperately worried about the creature. He would beg her to look the no-hair over at least, and see if there was anything that she could do for the creature.
Arriving at the healer’s tent, he paused outside and called out to her politely. You didn’t just barge into someone else’s tent without making your presence known. After a moment, the healer came to the open tent flap and looked at him questioningly. “TwitchEar? What is the matter?” she asked him. “Are you wounded?”
“No, Healer Greeneye,” he replied hurriedly. “But I…BroadPaw and I found a no-hair out in the grass, and we brought him back to the camp. I was wondering if you’d take a look at him? I’m worried about him. I know it’s a lot to ask, but…”
“A no-hair?” the healer repeated in surprise. “And you brought it back to camp?”
“We had to! It wasn’t moving, and I was afraid that a predator would find it and devour it while it was lying there helpless. Please, Healer. Could you just look at him?” he begged, giving her his best ‘big, pleading eyes’, an expression he’d perfected.
She sighed bit, but nodded. “I’ll look at your no-hair, TwitchEar. Why not? I’ve never seen one up close before. Just let me get my bag,” she stepped back into her tent to retrieve the large leather bag that she carried her healing supplies around in, slinging it over her shoulder. “Lead the way, TwitchEar,” she told him.
He bounced ahead of her back to his tent, really pleased and grateful that she’d agreed to come and look at the no-hair. If there were something seriously wrong with the creature, perhaps she could help. Or at least diagnose the no-hair, so he’d know where he stood.
They arrived at his tent, and he led the way inside. The healer stared down at his bed, where the no-hair still lay unmoving. “They truly are almost hairless, aren’t they?” she said, her eyes running over the naked flesh exposed by the slit garment.
“Yes,” TwitchEar agreed.
She shrugged and swung her bag off of her shoulder. She moved to crouch next to the bed, reaching out to lightly touch the creature’s face. “His breathing seems to be good,” she noted clinically.
She began to run her hands over the no-hair’s torso, probing for broken bones and internal injuries. TwitchEar stood behind her, watching her and feeling rather helpless. Greeneye made small “Hmm,” noises to herself as she lifted the creature’s left arm and rotated it to see if the bones in it were broken. At last she finished her initial examination, looking over her shoulder at the waiting TwitchEar. “He doesn’t seem to have any bad injuries,” she told TwitchEar, who looked relieved. “Would you help me to roll him over? I want to make sure that his spine isn’t damaged.”
TwitchEar nodded and came up beside her. Together they rolled the creature over, and he slit the back of the strange hide garment just as he had the front. But when he pulled the pieces apart, he gasped in shock when he saw the no-hair’s back. The pale, naked skin was marred by ugly red and purple bruises, raised welts, and nasty cuts. “What is this?” he said, staring at the creature’s back in horror.
The healer said grimly: “Those look like the marks of more than one beating, TwitchEar.”
His head whipped around. “Beating?” he repeated, his horror deepening. “Someone beat this poor creature?”
“It looks like it,” Greeneye replied.
“But who - or what - would do such a thing?!” an aghast TwitchEar demanded.
The healer sighed. “Probably another no-hair,” she told him.
TwitchEar just stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief. He couldn’t conceive of a race that would hurt another of its own kind, especially in such a nasty and horrible way. While his own people sometimes injured one another when they ritually fought each other, both fighters knew going into the battle that they might be hurt or killed. The thought of one of his people deliberately beating another in this detestable manner…his mind could barely encompass such a thing. “But why?” he asked in a small voice.
Greeneye reached out to touch his arm comfortingly. “The creature is wearing a leather collar,” she noted, glancing back down at the no-hair.
“Yes, and there was a long leather line of some kind attached to it. I cut it off,” TwitchEar told her.
The healer grimaced faintly, her lips lifting off of her teeth in disgust. “I’ve heard of this,” she told him, “Although it was hard to believe. That these creatures could be so savage to each other…some of our people have glimpsed no-hairs herding others of their kind along, wearing these leather collars, and using long leather lashes to beat them with if they struggled or stumbled. I believe that this creature must be one of the no-hairs that was being herded by others of his kind. As though he were one of the animals that pulls their strange boxes. Perhaps the no-hairs really DO consider the ones who wear collars as being like those animals, which we’ve seen them misuse and lash and yell at if the animals are balking or struggling against pulling the boxes. Such cruelty. To consider one of your own kind as being like a mere animal? It is incomprehensible.”
TwitchEar had to agree. These no-hairs were apparently barbaric creatures. “Is this the reason that he was unconscious when BroadPaw and I first found him?” he asked her, his tail twitching in distress behind him.
“Probably. Also, he seems a bit thin for one of his kind. Besides beating him, the no-hair who put the collar on him might have starved him for some reason. That would leave him weak and exhausted,” the healer said as she removed the bag from her shoulder and began to rummage in it.
He laid his ears back against his skull and hissed. The healer gave him a compassionate look as she removed a long roll of suede leather bandages from her bag, along with a small pot. “I don’t pretend to understand why these creatures do what they do to each other,” she said gently as she opened the pot and began to rub the herbal paste delicately into the wounds and whip marks on the no-hair’s back. “And I doubt that we’ll ever truly understand them, since our people are so different from the no-hairs. Please don’t let it upset you too much, TwitchEar. Look at it this way - at least he’s no longer in the hands of his own kind.”
He perked up at her words. That was true. He watched as she covered the no-hair’s back with the salve and then began to wind the soft leather bandages around his torso, securing them at the front with thin leather lacings. Once she was done, she stood up slowly. “There doesn’t appear to be much else wrong with him,” she told TwitchEar, “Although he needs to be fed up and taken care of so that he gains some weight. He should return to good health, unless I missed something. Which is possible, considering his rather strange anatomy.”
“My thanks, Healer,” he said gratefully. “But the thing is…he did wake up for a moment a short while ago, and when he saw me standing over him he yelled and passed out again. I think he was terrified of me. What will I do if he’s like that when he wakes up again?”
“Hurr,” she chuffed thoughtfully. “Here,” she dug out a leather pouch and handed it to him. “I use these herbs to help sedate my patients if I need them to keep still, like when I set a broken limb. They also aide with pain. Make them into a tea and give him a few sips of it. But be careful - they’re strong, and our people are much bigger than him. You could seriously hurt or kill him if you give him too much. But just a little should help to relax him enough that he won’t panic at the sight of you, and you can get some food into him.”
“All right,” he said, taking the pouch from her. “I made some meat broth.”
“Best thing for an invalid,” she remarked. “I’ll leave you to your patient, TwitchEar. Come and get me again if you need me.”
“I will, Healer,” he said, as she left his tent.
TwitchEar went to stoke the fire and put some water on to boil, carefully adding a few pinches of the herbal mixture in the pouch to the water when it was hot enough. He let it brew for a few minutes, then removed the pot from the fire with a heavy bit of leather so that he didn’t burn his finger pads. He set it aside to cool, crouching beside the fire and looking down into it as he thought his own thoughts about his ‘guest’ and his burning curiosity about the creature and the race that had spawned him. He shuddered faintly as he thought of the marks on the no-hair’s back. His folk never even beat their children for misbehaving; the only things that they beat were the wood and leather drums that they played during their rites and rituals. Kittens were corrected either by a sharp word or the occasional cuff, never hard enough to hurt them in any way. TwitchEar simply couldn’t understand doing something like what had been done to his no-hair to another of his people. For any reason.
He jerked himself out of his thoughts as the smell of the cooling tea reached his nostrils. He picked up the pot and carried it over to his bed. Crouching down, he pried the no-hair’s lips open and very carefully and delicately dribbled just a tiny bit of the tea into the creature’s mouth. The no-hair’s head moved and he choked a little; worried, TwitchEar lifted the creature’s head and turned it a bit so that he wasn’t choking on the liquid. A soft moan escaped the creature’s lips, and TwitchEar was grateful to see him swallowing.
He waited a bit for the herbal tea to take effect, then began to lightly slap the no-hair’s naked cheeks with his fingertips to try to revive him. The creature thrashed a little, then his eyes opened. TwitchEar tensed, waiting for him to start screaming in terror again; but the no-hair simply stared up at him blankly. Then the creature’s mouth opened, and he said something in his strange tongue. TwitchEar shook his mane a bit. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he told the no-hair, although he knew it was futile since the no-hair wouldn’t understand him in return.
He decided to feed the no-hair instead of having futile conversations with him. He fetched the pot of broth, which he’d been warming in the fire all this time, and carried it back to the bed. The no-hair watched him with those strange eyes, which were oddly-shaped like half-moons, not round like his. And they were a color he’d never seen on any of his own people, an intense and vivid blue like the waters of a still lake.
“Drink this,” he told the no-hair, crouching down and lifting the creature’s head so that he could set the narrow mouth of the pot to his lips. The creature didn’t fight his touch, and after a moment began to sip at the broth, much to his delight.
Beythan wondered dimly if he were having another dream. He could taste the rich, meaty broth on his tongue, and feel it sliding down his throat. But this couldn’t REALLY be happening, because the being feeding him the broth was - a very large cat. Huge, in fact, towering over him as he lay on some soft surface. Round golden eyes stared down at him above a wide muzzle, and the cat-being was covered in a coat of golden-brown hair. A little mane of rough-looking, darker brown hair started on top of its head and flowed down the back of its neck. And this peculiar, enormous kitty appeared to be talking to him, albeit in a language that seemed to consist mostly of hisses and growls and rumbling sounds. Yes, he was definitely dreaming.
But if this WERE a dream, he didn’t want to ever wake up from it. Because the reality that awaited him was so much worse…at least the giant cat-creature didn’t seem to mean him any harm. It was even feeding him. Yes it had lots of big teeth in that muzzle, and he could see sheathed claws at the ends of its paw-hands. But it was making no threatening moves…well, of course it wasn’t. This was a dream, after all. And only in nightmares did the things you dreamed about try to hurt you. Unlike in reality, where vicious men like his master made nightmares of your reality, and you heartily wished that you’d died along with the rest of your family…
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