Page 44 of Eat Me Alive
“No, of course not,” I whisper. “You were sent here to belong to me.”
“I don’t even know what that means.” She steps away and faces me. “Don’t speak riddles with me.” There’s a fire in her eyes I’d never seen before. “Tell me, what was I sent here for? The other women?”
Serpents stir in me, slow, coiling. “Sateva has made a bargain with the humans. They give Esoterra females, I give…what I can in return.”
Disgust distorts her strange features. “Is this why they want me to collect your pollen?”
I’m silent as I loom over her.
“Why me? Anyone could have done it.”
She still does not know she’s been calling to me in her dreams. She does not know even a fraction of humanity’s depravity to even think she was sent here to heal me. To save the sprouts. If only it were that simple.
“Hypothetically, the males produce a rare secretion very valuable to humans if they…matewith one of your species.”
“W-what does it do?”
“It’s akin to a love potion. Pheromones, you humans call it.”For the life of me, I can’t say what else Moriarty has harvested from me. It’s as if humiliation has carved itself into me.
“Oh, my god, mate bonds…” Her eyes are glassy with tears. “The children… No, no, no, I can’t do this. I can’t let them be abused like that.”
Pain lances through me.“This is why you and I are here, Xiaoyu. As long as the Void is appeased, the sprouts are safe. The sprouts will survive.”
“Why? Will the Void stop the humans?”
“The Void will provide what the humans ask…in return for more women.”
“Oh, my god, is the Void gonna eat them?”
This confuses me. I thought she’d understood thatIwas talking about myself.“What? No.”
She begins to panic as she paces around—going against the water current. “I knew it! We were sent here to be eaten alive. To feed some sort of Lovecraftian monster. It’s gonna eat us one by one.”
Shockingly, a headache starts pounding against my temples. I know she had an overactive imagination, but—unfortunately—I did not know the extent of it.
“The Void is a god, not a monster.”My retort comes out defensive. It stings—her thinking I am a monster.
She whips her hands around in frustration. “What’s the difference?! It’s gonna eat us anyway!”
“I just said no, I’m not gonna eat them!”
“Ah-hah!” She points at me accusingly. “I caught you.Youare the Void. Why couldn’t you have told me that earlier?”
I blink twice.“I thought you knew,”I flex my arms, oddly embarrassed that I’ve been bested. Baited.
“Cryptic is for cryptids. You’re a god, so stop it and tell me outright what the issue is!”
Providing her outright answers goes against my Vow of Natural Selection. Well, so does being in this form, trading human females…
“I will provide everything the humans want…as long as they do not disturb my land. One thing I know is you were not chosen by chance. You’ve been calling to me in your dreams.”
Xiaoyu stills, becoming a statue as the gears in her head spin. I have laid out all my cards but one…the most important one. A forest doesn’t grow overnight, but the Void finds ways. It mimics, emulates living beings, but it still isn’t enough to feed a whole island. I needed something to fill the void, and that’s Xiaoyu.
She’s not here to heal me like what she thinks. And once she eventually leaves, it will be as if I’d never existed to her. Fading into obscurity like all things forgotten, removed from memory.
“You’re saying you and I are..?”
“Best friends, yes.”
