35 BULLETS

We walked until the sun was high in the sky and I was all but limping. Something about trying to hold my back still, balanced out on my legs and made the opposite leg scream with raging coals.

At a small clearing, I slumped against a large boulder. "Thann. I can't. I can't go any further. My leg. Hurts." I rubbed over my thigh, maybe my sciatic nerve.

He came and bent down before me. His hands moved over my leg, watching my grimace. "Hurt."

I nodded and leaned back into the boulder. "Can you carry me? You did yesterday." I signed baby and then reached around his shoulders.

He stood and my grip was secure enough that I went with him. I wrapped my legs around his front and giggled even through the hurt. "Okay. Now you can go."

"Cha!" He yelled. "No El. No Thann." He disentangled my limbs from him and set me back on the rock.

I pouted.

He bent down to eye level, getting serious. "No El, no Thann. Yes El, yes Maza."

"No Maza," I protested.

"Yes Maza."

"MazaMazaMaza," I grumbled rolling my eyes.

He nodded like I had agreed and pulled his basket off his back and rummaged through it. He handed me one of the oniony apples.

I sighed and took the offering. "Thanks. Guess lunch would be nice."

He handed me a strip of dried dragon and began eating through some jerky of his own. He sat down a reasonable distance away from me.

"Really?" I asked him. I was getting very irritated with his lack of contact. "You can't even sit by me now? Am I really that ugly? You saw me half naked and now won't touch me?" But I grinned knowing that that was surely not the case. "Let's see how ugly I am, shall we?"

Quickly, I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it to the ground.

I kept my eyes on my apple, like it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen and kept munching.

"Wokuduma?"

"Hmm?" I answered politely and brought my hair over my shoulder.

"El."

"Yes?" I finally looked at him.

He pointed to the shirt and lowered his eyebrows in warning.

"Something wrong, Dear?" I asked in a honey sweet voice and then looked over my shoulder down my back. "This wound just hurts so much with that shirt on! I figured I'd air it out a minute. You don't mind, right? I mean you walk around shirtless."

He stood and grabbed the shirt, tossing it in my lap.

I got a little playful. "What are you suggesting there, Thann? I just can't understand you when we don't speak the same language." I leaned back on the rock but puffed out my chest as I finished my apple in delight.

I almost wanted to take my bra off.

No.

No, I didn't.

Thann huffed and turned away from me, finishing his jerky. "Eat. Wheelbarrow."

"I can't eat a wheelbarrow." I then sat up, all playfulness waning. "I really can't Thann. All this walking hurts." I looked at the sun high in the sky. It was going to waste a whole day, and I was down to ten bullets in my pouch. We needed to get back to my supplies asap.

But I couldn't do it.

I bit my lip in defeat. "Night Day. Then go wheelbarrow."

He turned back to me. "Sleep?"

I nodded and looked at the grasses at his feet. "I can't walk. No El walk. Hurt."

"Hurt?" His eyes widened in alarm for only a second before he corrected to his blank face. "El hurt. Walk day. Yes."

I'm sure I surprised him. I walked until I blacked out with Aunt Flo's kind of pain, even with him badgering me to stop. If I was asking to stop, he probably thought I was dying.

I twisted my knee around and grimaced.

Maybe I was dying.

He walked around me and touched delicately at my still bare back.

I held my breath so I wouldn't hiss out in pain.

"Hurt," he commented and then walked back to his pack and dug out the white paste again.

"No," I shook my head. "No medicine. Hurt little." I groaned. "And I'll probably need to ration those meds. Let's just stop today."

"Medicine no?"

"No."

He nodded and replaced his bowl.

Actually, I already longed for the morphine paste or whatever it was. But I had to be strong. We only had that one bowl and it would have to last a good few weeks with how deep the gash was.

"You could still carry me?" I held my arms out like a toddler begging their parent.

He twisted from me like he wouldn't even look. "Stay," he motioned to the rock and started walking into the forest.

Jerk barely left me alone to even pee the last day and now he needed to run?

I was very tempted to run my butt the other way, but with my back and leg how they were, I pretty much could not move.

At least I could go to a different rock. Maybe that would tick him off good enough.

After a moment, I huffed.

Now what?

Sometimes he left for hours.

I slid down the rock and sat on the ground, resting the good part of my back against it and let my legs relax.

My eyes had closed, and the sun had traveled an hour over the sky when I opened them again.

A strange soft crow had woken me. Much lower than any bird call on Earth and immediately my eyes scanned the area, looking for the source. And a grin tilted my face when I found its owner.

Well hello Mr. Unicorn Chicken.

Pleasant seeing you around.

He was plump and round, almost like a beach ball. Brightly colored with a toucan beak and single shimmering horn.

I let my breathing get slow and movements still as I watched him.

He was using his horn to scrape at a tree trunk covered in a purple moss. When bits of moss would fall to the forest floor in front of him, he would press around it with his beak and pick the pieces he liked best out of it.

He really did have a chicken air about him pecking away.

Something a moment later spooked him and he flapped his wings in warning away from his ball body. And when he was worried, so was I.

If some hunter was tracking him, I was sitting on the ground with a messed-up leg and cut open back. Talk about sitting duck.

In the slowest of movements, I pulled the gun from my shoulder and pointed it the chicken's direction.

Darting the scope around at any slight leaf sway in the breeze, after a few minutes of nothing, I began to relax, but my gun was set and ready. Thann did have jerky left from the indezawo whatever dragon thing, but a nice roast chicken might make a good meal.

Setting the scope on him and laying the butt of the gun firmly in the pocket of my shoulder, I tensed. It already pulled on my wound enough to bring a sneer to my face. The kickback from a fire was going to be a witch, but I better deal with it and try on the little guy instead of waiting and worrying about what it would be against a panda or something worse.

A breath blew out as I timed the fire.

The trigger was pressed.

34 BULLETS

Two things happened.

I missed.

And the kickback nearly suffocated me with its scalding blow. My gun dropped to the ground and I cried out in anguish, grabbing the affected area.

My eyes pressed tight and teeth set in a bone breaking hold as I tried to keep in the pain. Breathing through my teeth was only a marginal help as I wailed.

But I couldn't decide which hurt worse.

I completely missed. It had been six years since I missed that close of a stationary target. This wound had done a number on holding my arm still.

Next thing I know a giant grey werewolf was crashing through the trees and on top of me, huffing like the big bad wolf.

"Holy!" I screamed and forgot about my arm careening back into the rock with shock. Then I hollered out in pain again as the jagged edge sandpapered my shoulder.

The large wolf's head zipped around to check the clearing and once was certain nothing was there, intelligent brown eyes set on me. The wolf shimmered for a flash. Suddenly Thann was over me, pantsless beside some dangling Tarzan cloth.

"Holy." I said again, but this time for a completely different reason.

"El? Hurt?" He bent and palmed down my hair.

"Uh... yeahwhat?" I tried not to stare. I couldn't see his package, but he was assuredly well endowed and right in front of me.

When my oh-so-obvious fumbling became apparent to him, he chuckled and stood, reaching into his pouch and unwrapped his pants. He placed them back on and then tightened and cleared his throat as if he just remembered he was not supposed to be playful anymore.

With the distraction put away, I remembered my shoulder and hiccuped the hurt. My other hand pressed into the area to ease the burn.

"Shoulder hurt?" He bent back and pulled me from the rock, placing his warm hand over my shoulder blade. As soon as he did the pain dulled.

I closed my eyes in relief and hunched forward giving him better access.

He stilled for a moment and then stood, taking with him my relief.

"Wait," I called in hopelessness.

He rummaged around his pack and brought out a leather pouch. With a pour of water into it, he stirred the substance with his finger and then poured it into his hand. It was a dark green colored paste.

"Is that the heal leaves?" I asked as he slid the paste over my back. I tensed at the coldness, but was soon lulled into relaxation when his medical hand turned into a massage hand.

He smoothed over my muscles and deep into tissues following patterns like I had done to him one night in a tree. Oh, it was heavenly, warm large hands hitting all the right spots and easing the tension away from so many nights without a bed and walking for days.

I leaned forward allowing him all the access he wanted and was even tempted to undo my bra strap. But I was sure he wouldn't like that, so I tried to just feel the glorious moment.

When he sat back before I was ready for him to be done, I looked over piteously and signed. More?

All done.

I pointed to my leg and pouted. "But my leg hurts too."

He smiled that grin, the one that said I was being irritational and chucked my shirt back at me. "Shoulders."

Sighing, I placed the shirt over my head and adjusted it slowly over the paste on my back. "Better Dothraki?"

And then he put his hands on my leg. He rubbed up and town, palming over my jeans and making up his own massage technique. My head fell back against the rock and I made a growl of appreciation when he rolled over a particularly sore spot.

He stopped, hands stilling around my thigh.

"No, it's okay. It's really good. Like, Like. No hurt. Keep going please." Without looking up, I placed my hands over his. "Please."

His hands continued their kneading, like he was painting a piece of art. He worked so tenderly and so thoroughly, one would think he'd been trained.

"Thann, so good." I whispered to the sky.

When he went up and down my first leg, he moved over to the next and I was all but a pool of melted jelly next to a rock. My breathing was deep and low and he kept pushing me into some different dimension.

I probably was nearly asleep when his hands came off me and he murmured, "El?"

"Yeah," I mumbled back.

The snapping sound of a smile brought my eyes open and a yawn to my chest.

Good. I smiled and stretched through my fingers.

He was grinning a sunny smile. "No hurt?"

I moved my foot around a bit and twisted at my knee and hip. "It's lots better, thanks."

He looked at the rifle beside me. "Ear. Umdumo wokuduma kwezulu? Meat?"

"Oh, you mean did I kill anything?" I grabbed the rifle across me.

"Kill."

I looked down at the metal and bit my lip. "No. No meat. I missed." I ranted to myself. "I can't believe I missed! It was such an easy target! Completely still and barely far away at all." My eyes met Thann's pathetically and I made my admittance. "I missed. No meat. Shoulder hurt."

"No kill."

"Yeah. But hey?" I tried to look on the bright side. "At least nothing ate me. It was just a chicken."

"El eat?"

"Uh, I guess I am a little hungry. Yes."

He nodded once and went to his pack for a snack.