A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 19

The skin patterns and the mottled hair, he thought, - all for camouflage. His face had to be that way, because in their past, his ancestors had to be able to rip meat from their prey to eat – preferably while it was still warm. As long as that had been developing, their noses had to be long, but not stuck out there in the wind, they needed long nasal passages to have at least a chance to warm the air which was inhaled before it had a chance to freeze their sinuses.

That's why his nose was long and yet built into the top of his short snout, much like a certain breed of large cat here on Earth that Billy had read about by accident once day, a cat who lived in high mountain ranges and needed the same protection for its sinuses – the Snow Leopard.

The color of his eyes just went with that, for camouflage and to be able to block out a lot of the light reflected from snow.

It all made sense suddenly as he looked at the adult demon there in front of him in his winter plumage. He looked rather primitive and violent, which made him smile, since he wasn't really either one or at least, he didn't think of himself that way. He looked like a very powerful wild thing, used to living on the hard edge of a very hard environment. As far as the way that demons looked, what he looked like now was a barbarian of demonkind, whose young body had decided that if he was going to live in the cold, then it had better step up for him so that it was at least a little easier. He looked, ...

Like his father.

That day had brought a ton of memories crashing down on him that he was still working through.

But none of it would keep him fed, and so he'd gone back to looking more like a human who was a surfer – whatever that was.

He moved his hand very slowly and turned on the laser sight. A red dot appeared instantly over the point of impact on the doe's shoulder. Neither of the animals noticed it. Billy thought about it. If he squeezed the trigger now, he was in for a lot of work, since she was a big doe.

Still, he thought, on balance, life was now a lot of work out here, no matter what task one undertook. If he fired now, he wouldn't have to worry about something to eat for the next while. He wondered how he'd know it when they had their big finish. He supposed that he'd wait until they uncoupled, he thought as he moved the dot onto the stag.

Yuan didn't know what to do. She thought about just backing away, and so she did that a little, but then the ice which she'd backed up onto chose that moment to complain as it broke and then she was falling over backwards.

Billy snapped his head around as he heard the sound and he watched something surreal happen in slow motion. A naked human, out here in this, and she was falling into the stream.

He cracked his head on the low tree branch that he was hunkered under as he stood up and ran.

When he got to where he'd seen her, she was gone. He looked down and saw one foot in the water, just under the edge of the ice. That was all that he could see. He set his rifle down and jumped in. Just as his boots hit the surface of the freezing cold water, he had a thought where he questioned his sanity.

Yuan struggled weakly, the shock from the intense cold of the water just seemed to paralyze her. She knew that she was no good at fighting off cold like this in her present shape, but she couldn't summon up any sort of will to do anything. Acting on an impulse which she could not control, she opened her mouth to inhale, but her throat slammed shut a half a second later. In that time, a little water had gotten into her throat and lungs and the pain of that, ...

She thought that her heart would stop.

She didn't feel it when something clamped itself around her ankle, but her world blurred around her then and though she thought that it was an untimely end to her life, her passing would at least stop the icy cold pain – she hoped.

But she felt it when the pressure of the water against her body was gone and she found herself on her back being held, and being shaken. She knew that it wasn't her, she didn't have anything to shake with. She opened her eyes and found more cold water in them, but at least she saw that she wasn't in the stream anymore. As her vision cleared, she saw a human whose features were contorted and he looked angry as he shivered violently.

She blinked twice, thankful that there was something on her which was still under her control, since nothing else seemed to be. The thought that came to her was that he wasn't angry. He was in pain from the cold as well. She couldn't understand what he was trying to tell her as he gasped. In a moment, she wanted to tell him something as well, she just didn't have the way to warn him. The water in her lungs was on its way down and her body wasn't going to allow it to remain.

Billy was trying to get his own breath through the cold that he felt, and he had only been in as far as his navel. He needed another moment to ride this through, and he even felt it as his testicles contracted as though they too were in shock and only wanted to hide from the cold by clustering tightly against his cold body. He couldn't feel his penis, not that it was terribly important at the moment here. He had a thought that it must be nearly microscopic now. It was a good thing that he didn't need to pee. He doubted if he could find it right now.

Yuan's lungs bucked inside her once from the motions of her ribcage. The next time, it was helped by her diaphragm, which had come back to life, though not really ready to allow her any conscious control just yet. She raised her hand. It was all that she could do to warn him. She wanted to cry for the loss to her dignity that she knew was coming. It came to her that she was having the strangest disjointed thoughts to be thinking this way.

Well, she was looking at him, he thought, so she was conscious, but she was moving, or trying to as he carried her away from the stream. When her saw her first motions, he just knew, and so he flipped her over a little, and he tried to give her the room for it while he did his best to keep her out of the snow. He reached with his right hand to get as much of her long black hair out of the way as he could.

Yuan found herself looking down a little as she began to retch and the water in her lungs began to lose the fight and was worked up into her esophagus again on its way out. It still felt cold to her. She felt stricken, so absolutely weak and stricken, and worse, she knew what was coming with the next heave.

Billy's right hand was against her lower belly and he felt it as her body tried to divest itself of everything. In a surprising flash of insight, he remembered what had happened those times when the Colonel had spelled him and Hank really hard, and they'd had to vomit so forcefully. He just knew that this wasn't one bit milder for her than that. His right knee shot up gently and he pressed it up a little to let her know that she could sag over it if she wanted to.

Yuan's dignity chose to fly from her then and she was thankful that she couldn't see his face. She was choking and coughing up water and vomiting and her other end was doing far worse as her intestines voided along with her bladder.

A moment ago, she was certain that she was dying. Now, she was certain that she wanted to in her shame. His left arm was under her collarbones, holding her up, and his right was over the back of her hips, holding her so that she wouldn't slide off the thigh and knee which held her back end up. Yuan groaned and tried to curl up into a ball and if she could have had her wish then, she'd have just disappeared. She had the ability, but not the control or the strength at the moment.

Billy only needed one look at what lay in the snow behind her and he knew that she had the fever which had killed billions of humans the world over for centuries now. They either had immunity to it, or they didn't. He'd seen it before on his occasional trips into Lozenjellis with the Colonel. The ones who were in the throes of it died almost every time. He'd heard of a few who'd lived through it, but he'd never seen one.

He sighed then. As far as he could tell, she'd be dead in twenty-four hours – forty-eight at the outside. He had the strangest thought then when he asked himself just how he was going to dig her a grave in the frozen hard ground. He hadn't even really gotten a look at her, and he knew that it was likely only his want to know somebody after being alone, but it made him sad.

He had his own issues now, being frozen cold himself, but aside from that, it wasn't as though he had a lot of other things to do in the next day or so. He decided to try to help her as much as he could. It would likely only be what he could do to ease her passing, but she was another person out here alone, and he couldn't do as a lot of humans did when they saw one of their number with these symptoms. Billy wouldn't kill her, and he wouldn't leave her here to die alone. He looked at the mess and he scooped up some snow. She was making some sounds now at least.

Billy didn't know it, but Yuan was trying to thank him.

Her sudden gasp almost caused her to begin to cough and choke again, but she realized that it wasn't as bad as what she'd just come through when she felt the cold of the snow in his hand as he tried to clean her off and the words that he spoke sounded very apologetic to her.

When he was a little satisfied that it was as much as he could do weighed against the two of them out here in the breeze, Billy picked her up to move her a little to another place in the snow and he eased her down. She was on one hip and holding herself up a little as she watched him walk to the stream a little stiffly to wash his hands grimacing from the coldness again. He looked back, and then he came to her to wash her face for her with a little water cupped in his hands. As he rubbed her lips a little, he looked over at that she'd thrown up and saw that it was only water and bile – no food. He shook his head.

The buck had finished with the doe for the moment, and he'd heard the sounds not far off. When Billy looked up, he saw the buck paw the ground about thirty feet away and remembered that bucks are very aggressive during the rut. He's never get to his rifle in time.

Yuan raised her hand to point to the enraged animal, and Billy wanted to tell her.

"I know," he said, "I see him." He stood up and decided that this poor woman was now about to have a vision which ought to complete her journey into terror – surviving a drowning to see how a demon can rip something apart.

But before he could do anything, the buck disappeared in a blast of flame from the woman's hand. It was gone a second later and so was the buck – mostly. The doe had been watching, but now bounded out of sight into the woods.

Billy looked at Yuan in shock, but he recovered in a second as he thanked her. She didn't understand what he'd said, but she knew what he meant and she tried to smile a little, as amazed as she was that he'd accepted what she'd done. Billy smiled back, and he walked to where he'd set his rifle. Slinging it over his head onto his back, he came to where she lay and he picked her up and after getting her balanced in his arms, he said, "Just tell me if you need me to let you down, ok?"

He already knew that they couldn't understand each other, but he was going to try anyway to tell her.

Yuan looked up at him. She'd have preferred to walk, but she knew that she'd be really shaky and anyway, up against him like this, she felt warmer, so she guessed that it must be why he was carrying her, but she was only a little correct.

Billy was carrying her because he needed to. He'd found a person who needed help. He hoped that if she could fry a buck the way that she had, then there was something to her that might just carry her through the rest of the fever. He hoped so anyway.

------------------------

As he carried her onto the ledge, Yuan had tried to tell him that she had clothing and blankets and she pointed off in the direction where she'd spent the night, trying to tell him that there was another person there. Billy had a clue, so he took her in that direction until he was confident about the doorway that she pointed at. He nodded then, saying that he'd bring everything that he could find to her, but that right now, they both needed to get warm.

He looked down, "I'm sorry that you can't understand me."

Yuan looked up and shrugged with that little smile that she had and she told him pretty much the same thing as he'd said to her in a language that he couldn't fathom at the moment either. He walked to the part of the settlement where he lived and there were no sounds then, other than those made by his soaked boots and the wet jeans which flapped a little at his ankles.

He set her down and helped her to stand by a doorway. Taking her hand, he led her inside, stopping only long enough to point through a doorway into a chamber which had no roof or ceiling, but it did have a hole in the floor and one look told her that this was where she had to try to get to if she felt the cramps in her returning. She nodded her understanding as she waved her hand past her small and pretty nose. He got her out of there and they were walking down the corridor farther.

He took her to a warm room. She was very pleasantly surprised, and she walked to one wall and felt the bricks there, wondering what was doing this. From what she could see of the rest of the room, this was where he spent his time when he slept. The corridor curved and she followed him to other rooms where he had things stored, and again, the one wall felt warm to her touch. Billy noticed the questioning look on her face, and he would have told her, knowing all the while that she wouldn't understand her.

But her face developed a worried look and she was gone back down the corridor, and as he followed, he knew the reason for it as he heard the sounds that she made in the room with the hole through the floor.

As Yuan tried to hold still and see if the moment was past, she looked at what she'd thrown up as well and she groaned. She'd made a mess in his home.

She gaped again as he set a pot of water in front of her there on the floor and he offered her a bowl of it to drink. Yuan looked at it for a moment and then up at him, blinking in shock as he smiled to wash off her lips for her again.

"It's ok," he sighed, "I know you can't help it. There's no harm done, and the floor in the whole room slopes toward the hole anyway."

Yuan was still in a bit of shock, but she gasped again as he wet his hands in a larger pot on the floor and washed her again, a lot more thoroughly this time, thighs, calves, and all. He didn't say it, knowing that she couldn't understand, but he hoped that she'd see that this large pot was here for the purpose. As she got to her feet and stood in the doorway, she watched as he rinsed the floor off.

"Come on," he said with a wave of his hand – as though what he'd done was nothing, "I need to get some kind of food into you that might stay there a little while, long enough to do some good, hopefully."

Yuan' surprise hadn't left her yet, and he laughed at her wide eyes, "Don't just stand there like that. If you keep that up, I'll just lose my nerve. I'm trying to make things a little better for you and I don't mind."

He saw that she was weak, and so he just shrugged and reached down to pick her up again. They looked at each other and after a moment, Yuan put her arms around his neck to steady herself against the mild vertigo that she felt. As he carried her as carefully as he could, Yuan felt a lot of quiet amazement as she looked at his face. He was so different to the humans that she'd ever seen. She knew that people looked different on this side of the ocean from what the dragon had told her, but there was more to it here.

She'd killed the buck to protect him, and yet he seemed far more delighted over it than she'd have thought. She thought that after something like that, a human might have thrown her back into the stream.

She knew somehow that he wasn't human and that he liked her, since he was caring for her the way that he was, not even blinking at how she'd fouled herself – he'd just cleaned her without a thought – twice. She didn't know what to think anymore, other than she liked him as well. She couldn't understand him, but that didn't matter other than the unfortunate way that they couldn't communicate.

She tapped his shoulder and he stopped to turn his head to her.

"Please, do not stop talking to me," she said in the dialect of the Chinese that was prevalent where she'd been born, "I like to hear you speak, and maybe I can learn."

He didn't get it of course, but he smiled, and she liked that. "I have enough meat to make you a soup, and I have some dried vegetables in a package, so I'll throw some of them in too. I know you're sick, but you need something inside you."

He took her to where he slept and he got to his knees and set her down on his sleeping bags, pulling one of them over her. He held up one hand, "Just stay there," he said as he sat down to untie his boots.

She watched him as he removed his wet clothing and hung it up to dry. She was a little shocked, knowing that humans are usually embarrassed to be naked, from what she'd heard and seen. But he wasn't and she could see that there was other clothing that he could put on. But he didn't appear to be about to do that and she liked that as well about him as she looked at him.

She wished that she wasn't sick now, for other than the obvious reasons of how she felt like she was hanging around Death's door. A male like him was good to look at, she decided, for only the tiny hope that she felt. It did make her feel better to see him.

He turned to leave the room, and she got up to follow, but he didn't seem to want that. He gently forced her to lie back and he covered her with as much care as if she was a child again.

When he got to his feet and stepped away, Yuan pulled off the sleeping bag and made to get up again, but he heard it and spun to point and tell her to stay put. "Just stay there, ok?"

Even she could understand what he wanted and his concern showed plainly on his face. She smiled at him.

He smiled back and turned, and then she began to get up.

When he spun back in disbelief, Yuan managed a weak laugh at the look that he wore. So stern, and yet it wouldn't fool a four year-old.

He told her again, but she shook her head and got to her feet, pulling the sleeping bag with her and wrapping herself with it. Her expression told him that while she appreciated his concern, she'd found a way to warm up like this, and she was going to come with him.

Billy threw up his hands and walked out," Ok," he said," Have it your way."

Yuan followed him, knowing that he didn't really mind anyway.

She leaned against the wall watching him. This room was hot from the large fire which burned low in the center of it. He threw a couple of good-sized logs on it and it responded quickly. She looked around the room and saw all of the wood that he'd placed there to dry before it was needed. He reached to move a piece of metal away from the flames.

"This place is really old," he said, "Since there's no metal anywhere in it, I guess that it goes back a long, long time. I found this out on the woods a long way from here and I just bent it to suit so that I'd be able to hang a pot from it." He shrugged, "It's pretty hokey but it works."

He pulled a burning stick from the fire by the cold end and he lit a second fire under what looked like a long trough. "This water isn't really cold anymore, but I think you'll want a bath later. I got this old tub out of a half-fallen in house a ways from here. It was a big pain in the butt to get it down here, but it was worth it, just for the feeling when you sit down," he chuckled, "Gonna take a while anyway to get hot, though."