After enjoying her struggle to dress a little too much, I offer a reprieve. “Would you like something dry to put on?”
She huffs out a breath and stares at me, one hand still caught in the fabric of her shirt and her body exposed to me. “Yes.”
Heat swoops through my veins, and I want her again. I’d been happy living without desire, and I’ll have to go back to living without it when this aberration in my existence is over.
How long until I forget her?
I turn away before I am tempted to take her here. I’m sure no good change will come from that. I hear her footsteps as she follows me along the tunnel toward the area where we live.
“Why do you have spare clothes?” Her voice is soft, like she is scared to ask.
“Because I can’t wear pants?” I don’t remember when I stopped worrying about clothes, but it was before I had a tail.
“Horn doesn’t wear pants either.”
“Pants would be in the way, but he likes to keep his junk covered because he worries about someone biting his dick off.” That would be a bit of a mouthful, though Julie managed fine. “We scavenge whatever might be useful. Clothes and weapons mostly. Though people sometimes drag the weirdest shit through.”
“Like?”
“There’s a car out there, or at least what is left of it. We found a lamp one time, and a sewing machine.” There are often plates, or cups, bottles half full of liquor—they are valuable. No one here seems to forget what it’s like to get drunk and be oblivious, and many still crave it regardless of where they are in their change.
She’s quiet as we step back into the cavern. Horn left before I went in search of her, grumbling about memories, but I’m sure he’ll be back. A part of me wants Julie to tell me everything about the world I have left. The rest of me doesn’t want to know what I am missing. I don’t want to long for a life that’s so out of reach that it is best forgotten.
I rummage through the pile of bits and pieces we haven’t traded or found a use for and hand her a purple, silky bathrobe.
I am given another glare as thanks.
“If you don’t like it, you can go naked.” I won’t complain about watching her tits swing with each step. But if we take her out there naked, others might find the heat awakening in their blood. It’s going to be hard enough defending her without dealing with hungry and lusty monsters.
“It’s fine, just not practical.”
“You aren’t practical…no claws, no sharp teeth…”
She wraps the robe around herself. It’s too big, but that doesn’t matter, as she’s right. She will need something else.
“I don’t want those things.”
“I know. So we need a plan.” One that involves none of us dying would be ideal. Unfortunately, I don’t have one that ends happily. I don’t know how to get her home. And since she doesn’t want to change, that means she dies. And I don’t want that either. Not because I like her, that is ridiculous, but because I want to see what other changes she can cause. I feel like I used to do that before, study how things worked, run experiments, only this time I am the lab rat. We are all lab rats, as no one has tried to do what she wants.
Or maybe they have, and they escaped, though it is more likely they died.
She licks her lip in a tempting manner despite the knit of her eyebrows. “Horn said it wasn’t him who pulled me through, he doesn’t have that power, and he was simply near the puddle when I appeared. Is that true?”
I nod. “Only one monster has the power to pull people through.”
“Who?”
It’s a bad idea to tell her, and I can almost taste what she’s going to ask next, but I have to because while my tongue might be forked, I can’t lie to her. “There’s a queen. She lives near the center.”
Her scowl deepens. “Then why did I appear out here? Where is the center, and if there is a center, is there an edge?”
They weren’t the questions I was expecting. The tension I’d been holding in my tail eases. “After running away from the first monster I saw. I kept running. I thought I could walk out of here. I walked for days, I think, and all that happened was that the puddles petered out until there was nothing for me to drink. The center is in the center. The edge is as good as a desert.”
She lifts her gaze and holds mine like she has no fear of me. Like she trusts me not to kill her. “Then maybe the center is where I need to go.”
Ah, there it is. My tail rattles before I can stop it. “That is a really bad idea. The center is where the biggest and most changed congregate.”
“Why? How do you know if you’ve never been?”