The Human In The King

…and waited. You know, I didn’t like to think I was addicted to my smartphone, but shit! This bitch was out and I had nothing! No Facebook, no Youtube, not even Reddit! All I had was the tweeting of the birds and my own imagination, which only conjured up more ways to express how much not having my phone sucked.

This is worse than a Sunday with the girlfriend at an Arts and Crafts store, I thought, then frowned. Good, but I could do better. Worse than…an Arts and Crafts store next to a Pottery Barn? Better, definitely better…

Suddenly, my captive audience turned over and let out a long, contented breath, like someone waking up from a good, long sleep. I saw her massive eyes flutter peacefully, a sigh escaping her nostrils. I grinned. If ever there was a time to lean on the good will earned by a pleasant nap, this was it.

I watched her slowly sit up, wings stretching out as far as they could, then looking down, confused when she realized her arms were pinning them back. Figuring this was as good a time as any, I stood, thrust my chest out, and attempted the most imposing look an electrical engineer from Michigan with no combat background, an alien body, and a consistently-broken promise to himself to “get back to the gym this month” could muster. “Madame!” I bellowed.

At that, the blue lady turned in place, took one look at me, and instantly all that old hatred and anger came blooming back. Screaming once more, she ran at me, hands still bound behind her back but her legs pumping away. With all my bravado leaving my body, I stooped, scooped up the sword, and had it in my hand again and extended outward in a heartbeat, the tip quivering up even while I negotiated with my bladder to not release itself.

She stopped just short of piercing her own throat with her own sword, not an easy feat with your hands behind your back and your balance off. Girl must have been trained, the way she stopped herself practically in mid-air. She clenched her teeth, looking at the blade, then back up at me, a straight-up growl building in her throat, which would’ve sounded ridiculous had I not known she was of the “stab first, ask questions later” camp.

“Okay,” I shouted, still willing my bladder back under control. “Okay, no more of that now, y’hear!? No more! Seriously!”

She remained standing there, her breath heaving angrily, her teeth clenching. I just kept standing there, trying to look like a guy who totally didn’t just let loose with a tiny jet of terror-piss which was now cooling along his inseam. Our staring contest kept up for just a second, and then all of a sudden, something gave up in her. She looked at me, shocked, as if I’d just reached around and pulled the sword out of my own ass. She took a couple steps back, and finally her legs buckled out from underneath her.

“Well?” She said in that weird, raspy voice, her head bowing low and her ears folding down in a way that I totally didn’t find totes adorbs omg! “G’wan, get it over with.”

I sighed in relief, the point of the sword wavering in my grip. Okay, good, alright. Talking was good. “I’m not gonna kill you,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.

“I know,” she whispered, though the hitch in her voice implied this still wasn’t very reassuring.

A bit confused, I shrugged it off and started to lower the sword. “Okay, so no jumping at me or anything like that, alright? No more of that.”

Silence, but she nodded, her head still bowed.

“A-and no stabbing in my sleep either! Basically, what I’m trying to get across is no stabbing, period.”

Another silent nod. Awkward silence.

“Or throttling. Or biting.” I continued, trying to fill the silence somehow. “Basically, please avoid anything that might do me physical damage. Or mental, if you can. Or emotional. Seriously, what I’m trying to get across here is I don’t even want to hear you insult my mother or…”

“Will you just shut up and get it over with already!?” She hissed angrily, though when she looked up, I could see a light film over her eyes, a mild shimmer like a kid on the verge of a tantrum.

I blinked. Okay, she acknowledged I wasn’t here to try and kill her, what could she have been talking about? Rather than run through the checklist of possibilities, I replied with a very intelligent and well-thought-out: “Uhhhhhh…wut?”

“You heard me.” She replied, her voice lower, her eyes glaring at me behind tears. “Know this though: you can take me, you can ravage me, but I won’t break. I will laugh the whole damn time your disgusting cock is inside me, and when you finish with me, I’ll be smiling. You can make me cry, you might even make me scream, but I’m never going to give up and be your bitch. Never again.”

Another long, awkward pause. This was the previous awkward pause’s even more awkward cousin, the one who didn’t get invited to parties anymore ever since that time he got drunk and shit himself while groping some chick in front of everyone. I blinked again, and immediately darted back. “Jesus, lady, the fuck you talking about!?”

“Don’t even deny it! I…”

“That was rhetorical, dammit! We just met, and you immediately assume I’m here to rape the shit out of you!? Fuckin’-A…what kinda ultra-politically-correct, Tumblr-inspired SJW bullshit is that!? How is that in any way fair!?”

She continued watching me with those shimmering eyes, though the tears were fading and rapidly being replaced with confusion.

“If you must know, you’re tied up right now because that is a completely natural reaction for someone to have when someone else tries to stab them repeatedly while screaming like maniacs! It’s not because I have plans to throw you over a rock and take you the next time I feel like it, and in fact, I’m super offended by that!” I knew I was ranting, but I was on a roll and not willing to stop myself. “Yeah, that’s right, two can play this game, bitch! I’m offended by the mere fact that you would just assume that about a guy! I’m offended that the moment you see one, you just see a potential rapist! You don’t know me! You don’t know my story!”

Her eyes locked with mine again, the old anger still there. Her jaw visibly clenched and unclenched. A tear streaked down her cheek. “I don’t care what craziness you try and spit out, you monster, just do as you will.”

Fucking dammit, just what had I landed myself in here? Wait…the war thing, of course! This was a case of propaganda being used on the masses! Her people were probably bombarded with stories of my people’s rapes and the destruction we bring and how our favorite hobbies involve puppy stomping and stealing lollipops out of baby’s hands. This was nothing more than a result of good ol’ fashioned propagandized brainwashing! Like how the North Koreans tell their kids that Americans will eat their faces if they don’t do their math homework or something. But shit, if that was true, odds were this chick hardly knew anything useful. Everything she could tell me about myself would be how I bathed in baby seal blood and had invented guns that specifically targeted blind orphans. I wouldn’t be getting much out of her. So where did that leave me?

I could have just left her tied up on the river bank again, but then she might have gotten loose and thrown together a search party. If her behavior was any indication of how these pony things thought of me, I doubted I wanted to see how they might deal with me when I was captured by a bunch of them. Besides, she might have concussed herself, and I’m pretty sure proper treatment for that didn’t involve tying someone up by a river and leaving them to possibly starve. I knew I sure as hell couldn’t kill her, I didn’t even know how to use her sword, and just picking it up gave me a queasy feeling, like I was about to cut myself for some reason. Besides, back to the whole “introducing yourself to a new world with murder” conundrum, I would be pretty well screwed if someone came upon her body within the next couple days and sent out another search party.

On the plus side, this all pointed to one course of action: adding a new member to my party.

“Achievement unlocked,” I muttered as I raised the sword again. “Alright, here’s what’s gonna happen: we’re gonna start walking and you’re gonna be in front of me. You try any funny business, try to run off or alert one of your companions to what’s going on, and I-I’ll run you through, you hear me?” I had to suppress another cringe. That last part was supposed to sound scary and intimidating, but the mere attempt at making a threat had come out quivering, like a kid with his dad’s switchblade and a flashlight trying to face down the monster under his bed. Still, she nodded, still making eye contact despite the tears streaming down her face. Dang, this chick was way harder than I was, probably lucky she knocked herself out earlier or she probably would have sliced my balls off my dead body to bring back to her people as a trophy.

I motioned in the direction of the woods. “Now, march!” I barked. She maintained that silent glare for a second longer, then turned and slowly walked along the path, her weird, backwards-jointed legs (not too unlike a horse, now that I thought about it) striding along smoothly. Nodding, I followed close behind, sword at the ready, though I still wasn’t sure what I’d do with it if the need actually arose.

You know what’s almost as boring as sitting under a tree with nobody to talk to and nothing to do? Walking in a forest with someone who has all the conversational abilities of a rock.

“Anyway, enough about me, what’s your home like, anyway?” I asked for the umpteenth time, to get no response for the umpteenth time. “Because if you guys are still into swords and metal armor, I’m guessing Wi-Fi and Youtube would be a little much, huh?”

No response. I was speaking to the back of her head, but it might as well have been a rainbow-colored brick wall.

“So, back to my Dad: awesome man, best beef paprikash you’ve ever tasted in your life. Just getting a little senile as time goes on, y’know? Like the time he tried to mail his cat to me for a Christmas present. Thank God the mailman got suspicious of a box that kept yowling and spitting at him, poor bastard would’ve died of thirst before it made it to my doorstep…”

“What’re you doing?” She hissed over her shoulder.

“And she speaks!” I gasped, throwing my hands up in the air. “Can I get an Alleluia from the crowd out there!?”

At that, she stopped, twisted in place, and faced me. The tears were gone, at least, but now she just looked pissed. Still, I called that a step in the right direction. “What. Are. You. Talking. About?” She growled again.

Grinning, I figured the only thing to do here was to amp up the annoyance level by a factor of three. Thus, with little ceremony, I reached over and ‘booped’ her right on the tip of her nose.

She flinched back, wiggled her muzzle like a cat, went cross-eyed to look down at her nose, then her eyes narrowed back at me. “What did you do!?”

“I booped you.”

“Touch me again and I’ll…”

*BOOP*

“Stop that!”

“Don’t wanna.”

“What in Celestia’s name is wrong with you!?”

I deadpanned at that. “If you’d been listening at all for the last half hour, you’d know that I have a growing drinking problem, a propensity to acting bluntly that tends to drive people away, a father suffering from early-onset dementia, and a mother who skipped out on me as a toddler,” I crossed my arms, still meeting her gaze. “But you weren’t listening, were ya?”

She met my glare with one ten times as hot, keeping it on me as she slowly turned back around. Our walk continued in silence, at least for as long as I could bare it, with me stealing a glance back every now and again, because she was an interesting and exotic creature, and not because she had a fine body and an amazing rack and her coat gathered up into a little tuft of fur perched right between her breasts that I couldn’t help but wonder if it tasted as good as it looked…

Fuck. Time to distract myself.

“Anyway, back to my dog from the third grade…”

I noticed her slow down just then, her walk coming to a halt until she was just standing with one, blue foot hovering right in front of the other. Her ears folded down. I saw a shiver race up her spine. Uh-oh…

“What’s up?” I asked.

Her ears perked up silently and swiveled around. Arching an eyebrow, I tilted my head, searching for whatever it was she might have been hearing…and eventually pulling in the sounds of someone carousing in a weird language I didn’t recognize. I mean, I knew it was carousing, the beats were all right, so it was like whenever your super-Irish friend sang a traditional Irish drinking song for you in the original Gaelic. You might recognize the tune, but the words were so much moonspeak to your ears. That, plus the thin trail of smoke from a fire rising into the sky told me someone was camped nearby.

“Caribou,” I heard a harsh whisper from my unwilling travelling companion, and the sudden fear in her voice was more than enough for me to know: these were the guys I’d been looking for! Perfect!

Satisfied in the fact that nothing really shitty was waiting for either of us, I gave my companion a good shove forward. “Alright, c’mon, no lollygagging! That’s where we’re headed, and I’m not gonna hear any bullshit about raping and murdering!”

She stumbled forward with the shove, but quickly straightened herself. She took a quivering step forward, then another, the shaking totally obvious in her every motion, every part of her quivering down to the tips of the feathers on her wings. I sighed. This was going to be difficult, but once I got her to see past the propaganda, I was sure I could forge a new bond across species, perhaps one that could lead to a little more understanding, maybe even end this war!

Naïve, even then I knew it was all so naïve, but at that point I was still working under the assumption that this was my dream, I was the protagonist, and things were meant to work out for everything I did no matter how stupid or pointless they might have seemed. As long as it was all my dream, I might be determined to build a rocket out of sticks and leaves in this forest and journey to that planet from Avatar, and within a few days’ dream time I’d be shacking it up with a blue cat chick. And hey, maybe meeting with these caribou guys was the point of this dream? To bring these pony-things and caribou-things together in mutual agreement, to symbolize me…bringing my…bad side and…my…good side together? Oh shit, I dunno, figured I’d piece it all together as things went on.

“Come along then!” I said cheerily, ignoring the way my companion whimpered and tried to pull away as I tugged her towards the sounds of the singing, and dead-set in my belief that the shitty times would officially be behind me once we reached the encampment.

So stupid. So naïve.

On approaching the tall column of smoke and the jeering voices, I noticed the quivering in my friend’s step, but chose to ignore it on seeing a face not too unlike my own attached to a furry body, drunkenly dancing and carousing around the fire to a tune he was mewling out his drunken mouth. Every now and again, this guy would scoop up a stick from the fire and hold it up and…

…I can smell my own hair burning oh God not like this not like this Jesus God why…

I nearly fell back, my heart racing, my breath wheezing. I clenched a hand to my chest, trying to calm my rapid pulse. What was--

“Your Highness!?”

I blinked at the weird caribou-guy as he stopped dead in his tracks, eyes wide, gaping at me. The tall stein in his hand dropped to the dirt, spilling something that smelt like paint thinner mixed with silly putty. My nose wrinkled. So much for my hopes of a decent beer in this world. I turned back to the weird, antlered thing, still gaping at me.

“Uhhh…hey?” I asked.

Suddenly, a smile cracked his face, and the antlered bugger ran up to me and bowed. “The king has returned!” He enthused, kissing the dirt by my moccasins. “Lord Dainn has returned in our darkest hour to deliver us from the traitors and whores!”

Lord Dainn? Dainn…weird, almost sounded Scandinavian. At the very least, this was a lot better treatment than I got from big blue here. And wait…Lord? Was I a king to this guy!? Hot damn! About time somebody recognized me for my awesomeness!

Speaking of, the caribou guy sat up and looked my unwilling companion up and down, and I swear if I’d never seen a man fuck someone else with just their eyes, I was seeing it now. Felt uncomfortable just being near it. “And what’s this!? Already, you have captured one of the Element Bearers responsible for our downfall!?” He gasped.

The heat from my unwilling travelling companion’s glare was enough to melt steel, so I just smiled and nodded at my new subject. “Sure did! Rise, oh proud…uh…”

“Tomasian, sire,” the caribou enthused, repeating his bow. “Just another lowly soldier expelled by the bitches and traitors that have overrun these righteously conquered lands, though with your return, I am sure we can put things back to rights in no time!”

“Aight, sounds cool,” I replied, eyeing big blue again. “You said she was…what…an ‘Element Bearer’?”

At that, Tomasian’s face scrunched up as if he’d just taken a bite out of a lemon. “The Elements of Harmony, sire: the Sun-Slut’s greatest weapon against us. You don’t recognize her? This is the Bearer of the Element of Loyalty!”

I turned to my blue companion, my big, blank gaze meeting her dark glare. “Oh yeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh!” I grinned, turning back to Tomasian with a satisfied nod. “Wouldja look at that!” The fuck was he talking about?

“An amazing prize with which to open your triumphant return, m’lord!” Tomasian gasped as he grabbed blue by the shoulder and shoved her in the direction of a group of tents. “We’ll have her ready for you in a second! We can begin just as soon as the others return from their raid!”

“Sounds great!” I exclaimed while giving a thumbs up and doing my best impression of the smiling dad from the end credits of an 80’s sitcom, sans leaping into the air and freeze-framing. All the while, an uneasy feeling began to grow in the pit of my stomach. The way Tomasian shoved big blue along like an uncooperative mule, for instance. I mean, she did look like a horse, one that had tried very hard to kill me, but that didn’t mean I liked watching her get pushed around, knowing she was a sapient creature with thoughts and weird feelings that I didn’t understand. If anything, it was a relief when she and Tomasian disappeared into one of the big, felt tents that comprised the campsite.

Left alone, I was finally able to mull over a couple red flags I probably should have picked up on earlier, like Tomasian’s treatment of big blue and his referring to her country as “traitors” and “bitches.” I didn’t know what “bitches” translated to over here, so maybe that was part of it, but he hardly seemed to be using it in a respectful tone. And traitors? Traitors to what? These guys were fighting for their own country, they could be “enemies” or “others” or “those douchebags what didn’t get born in the same country,” but how were they traitors?

And what the hell did he mean he’d “get her ready for me”?

“That…probably should’ve raised a red flag a lot sooner,” I grumbled to myself, stupid! So stupid! What if these antlered guys were carnivorous!? In that case, ‘get her ready for ya,’ might involve a fine red wine basting with an appropriate honey glaze. “Shit, Tomasian! What didja mean by…”

I was cut off by the sound of approaching hooves on dirt. My ears perked. I turned to the approaching dust cloud just as Tomasian poked his head out.

“The raiding party!” He gasped, stepping outside, notably sans big-blue-chicken-horse-girl. “They’ve already returned, milord! They’ll be so happy to see you alive and well!”

“Heyyy…greeaaattt!” I replied, trying to ignore the little voice in the back of my head screaming that something horribly wrong was going on here.