-"Who am I?"
That was the first thing that went through the young woman's mind when she opened her eyes. She couldn't remember anything from her past life, where she came from or who she was, but she was sure that was not her place.
First of all, she was in an illuminated room, with walls covered in pictograms made from a translucent material, the walls glowed in an orange light. Second, the air felt strange, with a slight rancid smell. She gasped breathlessness, as when you climb a very high mountain... "How can I remember the lack of air up in the mountains?" She asked herself.
Slowly, she sat up in the bed, and immediately felt a throbbing pain in both legs, her back also ached. Upon examining herself, she saw strange bandages covering the part of the leg which hurts, and underneath these a blue gelatinous substance was covering four large scratches on her skin.
The color of the liquid reminded her of when the sea shone at night. "How can I remember the color of the sea at night?"
She heard a strange clicking somewhere in the half-lit room and with narrowed eyes she saw the glow of two yellow eyes at the end of the room. Suddenly, she felt an adrenaline rush. She didn't know why, but she had vague memories of yellow eyes lurking in the dark, followed by screams, the smell of blood and death. The girl trembled.
The clicking became more intense and it was when the girl saw a fairly humanoid figure standing motionless in front of her. He was taller and more muscular than her, with a yellow-greenish skin covered in dark grey spots. Sharp teeth adorned his mouth and his hands had black claws at the tip of each one of the five fingers. His yellow eyes were placed in sunken eye sockets, surrounded by short quills. His hair… if that was hair, they was braided into dreadlocks like hers, adorned with metal rings at regular intervals.
She freaked out; instinct warned her to stay away from anything with yellow eyes, sharp claws and fangs; but the creature walked on two legs like her, not four. It wasn't an animal, the creature was wearing clothes; furthermore, as far as she knew wild animals' reaction to humans was limited to two things: fleeing or killing, not looking curiously. She calmed down but remained alert… just in case.
The humanoid made a clicking sound by moving its set of four mandibles.
-"Is it a He or a She? Why am I sure it is a He?" she wondered.
She assumed the humanoid was male because it had a bare torso, and his crotch was covered by a metallic protector. For the rest, he wore a leather loincloth and a bone necklace, over a body mesh.
The creature clicked again, but she remained silent, not understanding. Then the creature consulted a strange metallic object that was on his wrist and immediately, he spoke with a voice that sounded metallic and guttural. Her head ached again, those voices, now she could understand them, but they were vaguely familiar voices. "Clan leader? Grandsire?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing.
-"Can you understand me?" the humanoid asked and she nodded.
-"Yes…" She said, and then he asked "Where am I? Who am I?"
The creature didn't responded, instead it passed her a bowl with something nasty looking inside, he smelled it and made a gesture of disgust, but the creature insisted, this time, with a feminine voice "Eat, it's good for you" She really didn't want to eat that, but her stomach growled with hunger and she eventually accepted it. It wasn't too bad after all. It was a familiar taste but she couldn't recall it.
-"What is this?" she asked again.
-"You ask too many questions, Little One" the creature responded with the voice she recognized as clan leader. "Here, dress up"
Only now, she noticed she was wearing only a silken loincloth covering her genitals, her small breasts were exposed; instinctively she covered them but the creature didn't seem bothered about her smooth cinnamon colored skin. "Where are my clothes?" She wondered about the woolly mammoth fur parka that protected her from the cold and immediately questions flooded her mind again. How did she know what a woolly mammoth was and how did she know it was cold where she lived?
Her head ached from thinking, so she decided to finish the meal and after that she dressed in the thin cape and leather belt he offered to her, and then followed the creature after he gestured.
They passed through a corridor that showed different objects inside niches on the walls. She recognized some of them as weapons. Some of the niches also contained skulls of different shapes and sizes, some of them clearly human.
Seeing the skulls made her fell distressed, she had a vague memory of bones scattered across a cavern floor, meat pieces, blood and a putrid odor. The lair of a wild beast... she remembered, and again wondered if the strange creature in front of her was not a predator that had learned to use tools and to speak like its prey. She touched her face, feeling her own bones under the skin, wondering if she would end the same way.
- "Don't worry, that is not your fate" the humanoid said, pushing her away from the niche with one hand on her back. She noted that each time he spoke, he resorted less and less to mimicking and used his own voice.
When they went outside, the first thing she noticed is that it was very hot, too much for her taste. She discovered the reason when she looked up at the sky and saw two bright suns.
-"Where am I?"
-"My home" The tall humanoid said.
She looked around, towards the horizon where the suns were, a large expanse of orange water stretched, to her right, she saw that they were near the coast and the black sand gave rise to a dense jungle of blue-green colors and to her left were high mountains of ocher-colored with no vegetation on them.
She thought about escaping, looking for a place where she could run and hide. The closest trees were about 100 steps from where she was.
-"I would not try to run away. There are dangerous beasts out there in the jungle." He warned, guessing the female's intentions.
-"I want to go home… my home!" she cried. "Although I don't remember where it is"
-"This is your home now." the creature's voice rang in his ears.
- o -