Page 7 of Horns & Heart
Inkiri stopped and looked at me.“Maybe I should carry you.Donna said it’s not right to carry a person without invitation, but you can barely walk.Is it the cramp again?”
“Dude, the bird just scared me.I slipped on the rocks, and there’s no need to make a big deal out of it.”I straightened and brushed invisible dust off my shirt in an attempt to look competent at walking across stones.“Who’s Donna?”
“The other human we helped.”Inkiri was still eyeing me, unconvinced about my walking ability, as if I were a toddler.Maybe I was, in his eyes.Who knew?It was possible toddlers of his species were better at setting one foot in front of the other than fully grown humans.“Does that mean I can carry you?”
“Oh, for the sake of—no, you can’t effing carry me.”I attempted to brush his hand off, to no avail.“It was just the bird, and the stones.”I pointed.“But I can walk.”
“But if stones are difficult?—”
“No, the stones are notdifficult, I’ve just had a long two years, okay?Do you want to keep discussing this, or are we meeting these other people finally?Or I could just go.”
The magpie picked that moment to caw once more, either because they wanted food or because they disagreed with the tone I was taking with Inkiri.To be totally honest, I wasn’t sure how wise it was to be talking to him like that, because swords.Three of them.
Inkiri just made the soothing clicking noises again, calmly pulled another peanut from his pocket, and tossed it to the magpie without even looking.Yeah, he was a show-off all right.
“You are confusing,” Inkiri said finally.“Donna wasn’t like this, but Donna was confusing as well.You are more confusing.”
“Thanks?”
Maybe I should ask him to take me to Donna.Or not?This could still be a potentially very bad situation I was getting myself into here.The fact that I had seemingly lost my ability to give any fucks didn’t change that.I definitely, definitely shouldn’t be letting my guard down around this guy, whether he was tall and muscular and handsome and had made sure to get me my cat socks or not.But those were cute cat socks.I couldn’t wait to wear them.
Just outside the patio door, there was a hole in the ground that looked like it had been intended to become either a pool or a pond.Now, weeds had taken it back, and another magpie was picking at something at the very bottom of it where I assumed the worms were thriving.
I felt Inkiri’s fingers tighten on my arm when I looked at the pool hole, almost as if he was worried I’d accidentally wander over there and fall in, crack my head open at the bottom, and die horribly.It made me wonder whether I was actually giving the impression that I wasthatincompetent at living.
The house itself was large.Construction had progressed to the point that it had doors and windows, so we entered through a sliding glass door in the back.
I blinked a few times, because the inside wasn’t what I’d expected.As with any building site, there was still machinery and tools around, and I saw one of those big long workbenches to the left where the rest of the machinery had been gathered.
What the place wasn’t was dirty.Or, to be more accurate, it had been separated into two areas—one for all the tools, and an area to my right where carpets covered the floor.There were also mattresses piled together, with pillows on top.
At first glance, those looked like seating areas, and a second horned dude actually lounging on one such mattress and pillow pile and reading some kind of manga of all things confirmed that.
I froze when the second horned stranger looked up from his manga.Inkiri made the clicking noises, and the second stranger put his book aside and came over.
Like Inkiri, this one had horns, but smaller ones in charcoal gray, with white tips rather than all blue.He wasn’t blue either, but a silver gray with darker gray around his hairline and neck.His hair was a light grayish blue, and all of it was braided, above and below his horns, the strands gathered artfully behind his head.
His ears stood out darker as well, and I noticed they were pointy.I glanced up at Inkiri, but the loose part of his hair covered his ears, with double braids running up and above them to the back of his head where they were tied together.
My fingers itched to reach up and brush those ink-dark tresses aside, but something like that might send the wrong message to someone who already seemed so preoccupied with my nonexistent uterus.
As the stranger approached, I got a closer look at his horns as well, and the line of white running from their tips all the way down their lengths to his skull.His eyes were the orangey red of burning coals, he was shorter, less muscular, and less broad than Inkiri but like Inkiri, this one moved with predatory grace.He was still a head taller than me, and if I’d ever been in the Bible book club, the orange eyes would have probably made me think he looked like a demon.A pleasantly smiling demon, but still.
He said something to Inkiri in a language I didn’t recognize before turning to me and showing teeth that were human-ish, apart from the extra set of incisors.
“This is Lissir.”Inkiri stressed the second syllable and rolled the R in a way I couldn’t hope to replicate.
“Hello, sweet human,” Lissir said.He spoke in posh English as well, but with an accent that I doubted was from any place I knew.“You look very scared.You don’t have to be scared at all anymore.”
In my experience, when someone told you not to be scared, it was high time to think about running the other way.Fast.As if to support that reasoning, yet another horned stranger walked into the room, this one decidedly taller and broader than Inkiri.
“I smell human,” the newcomer said in a booming voice, and it was all I could do to keep control of my bowels and bladder.
Lissir said something in the other language, and Inkiri hiss-growled.
This new monster looked like something the ocean had spat out just to scare me.He had turquoise skin and horns the color of fresh kelp above striking blue eyes.
“I’m not that scary,” the big monster said as if he’d been chided.Like Lissir, his accent was more pronounced.“Is this one a woman?”He stepped closer and noticeably sniffed the air.
