Lokanir made her way back to the hovel she had built. A small place to call home carved by water on the side of the shore. After pulling herself from the water she had emerged onto the bank soaking wet and shivering. She made a small fire at the entrance of the cave to warm herself and ate a handful of nuts she had gathered earlier. How much time had passed here? Could it be longer than a few days? Had it been weeks or months? She was not certain.
She ran her hands across her chest to warm the flesh and sighed. If she concentrated she could smell the musty aroma of his strong arms when they were around her. She pulled away from the thought and the intensity of missing him and turned her attention to the makeshift lab that she had created. She needed to study these different fungi and the biologics as she called them. Reason was the way out of this situation.
The river had been unpleasant, and she reflected upon that fearful time as she watched the clear fluid fall from the ampoule, in her hand, that had been in her ruined clothing. She poured it into an eroded stone and from there it ran through hollow tubes of grass before emptying into a small basin. It was to this that she added three different crushed minerals. A white stone, a red bark, and a peel branch.
Taking the basin, she cleared a space for it and set it on the hottest part of the fire. When it began to simmer she added the fungi then removed the basin from the coals with two thick leaves and placed it on the makeshift table. Overnight, with the blue fungi, the mixture would turn purple if she was successful.
Then as the night turned to deep black and she was sufficiently dry she lay down on her pine needle bed and curled into a ball watching patiently for the dawn. Tomorrow would come soon enough, and she needed to make clothing and reexamine her defenses. As she drifted into a deep sleep she recalled that day when she had been taken.
The chill of that winter morning she could still feel in her bones. Lokanir had made breakfast as she waited for his return from the hunt. Deer had been scarce as the winter had turned and froze the animals whole. The sun was rising as she left the house cloaked in bearskin and carrying a bucket to draw from. She went to gather some water before it froze again.
Lokanir arrived at the deep well and attached her bucket to the thick rope. She gently lowered it down and gathered a full pail from the deepest part of the well. As she strained on the rope and the bucket came to the top of the well, there had been a braying noise. Even as she thought of it now, it sent a shiver of fear through her. This alien sound like metal infused with stone sounded again and again.
“Lokanir!” he screamed. His voice carried on the wind. “Run!”
She dropped her pail, and water soaked her feet as she raced toward the house. The alien cry reached her, and she was swallowed up into powerful arms that took her. The rest had been a blur. She had lost her bearskin covering and had been driven through the shoulder with a stake.
She reached a hand to her eyes on the covered ground of the hollow and wiped the tears. The worst thing about it was that to him, Lokanir was dead. As she was being dragged through the wilderness, he came upon the massive blood loss and knew that she could not have survived.
Lokanir had not seen him since, but in everything she did it was to get back to him. To find him and let him know the truth. That even though she was taken, she was no prisoner, and she would do whatever it took to get home and find him.
Pierce Novak