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The restlessness, the longing, the piece of me that had always been missing and wrong, it was absent. I was literally being held as his captive, and it was the most settled my soul had ever felt.
Whatever was wrong with me, it had something to do with him.
27
JOSIAH
Tusks seemed happier after seeing me eat. I’d had more than my share, but he still kept pushing the roasted duck toward me, trying to get me to eat more.
“I’m done, really.”
He huffed, then ate what was left himself in a few huge bites.
Whatever his purpose was for keeping me here, I still didn’t really understand it, but it seemed he was trying to take care of me.
“Can you… speak?” I asked, watching as that long dark tongue licked his sharp claws clean.
Tusks rumbled back to me in response, his throat pulsing as a distorted not-quite growl left him. That was a no, then.
“But you can understand me?”
He nodded once. How exactly that were possible mattered less, for the moment, than the fact that I may be able to reason with him.
“You want me to stay here.”
He nodded.
“I don’t want to.”
Liar.
He hissed softly.
“Listen, that house, maybe it were inhabitable at some point, but it’s not anymore. It’s breaking down. I can’t live there. I have to leave.”
Again, he hissed.
“Do you want to hurt me?”
His whole body tensed, his lip pulling up in a snarl as he shook his head. No.
I’d suspected as much, else he’d have done it by now.
“Well, I will be if I can’t leave here. I need water, I need… warmth. Other kinds of food.”
He gestured at the fire.
“Well, I can’t sleep out here. There are other things in these woods that will try to hurt me.”
He snarled again, puffing his chest out and giving a warning growl, as if to say, “I’ll protect you.”
“Still, I’d feel much better if I had a weapon.”
I did have the rusted kitchen knife, but against something like him, that would do me little good. And I couldn’t at all be sure what else was out here.
His head tilted to the side, then he got up, and shuffled away on all fours into the rubble beside the house. He tossed a few pieces of wood and some branches before he found what he was looking for, then he shuffled back to me and extended a hand out.
An axe.
