A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 54

She'd barely come to grips with the fact that she could allow him to hold and carry her and now he was doing this while in the shape of a human? A naked one?

She began to shake and tremble again and he set her down in a bit of a hurry in the large shower stall just as she felt her dignity leaving her again. She hadn't even had anything to drink since the last embarrassment and here she was, standing on shaking knees and pissing in fear again.

He pulled the blanket from her gently and she slowly collapsed to her knees on the smooth surface, her fear running out of her in spite of her mind's commands to her body that it stop. She fell in a heap then, bawling for several reasons, none of which made the slightest sense to her now, but shame was in there somewhere and playing a large part.

Bronn looked at her and spoke another word that she didn't comprehend, just like his instructions to someone as they'd walked in. She heard a word of acknowledgement and the lighting dimmed from its former brightness to something a little more comfortable.

Jayne didn't know it, but like this, he could see her even better without the glare and he knelt close to her as he regarded the one that he'd saved from a terrible end.

As she cried, he found that he liked her on balance, hoping that they could eventually get to some sane conversation. He hoped that she could tell him a few things about Monnie, since pretty much all that he knew about her was what she was and that she ruled the growing flock back there.

He looked down and smirked a little to himself as a thought came to him. It hadn't been intentional, other than his feeling a want to get her out of there, but as he looked at the small female, it came to him that, other than the obvious differences in her body to his, she was rather close in stature and body shape to a female Grotto Demon. She just wasn't one, that was all.

If she was one, he'd have to admit that she was strikingly lovely. But that wasn't the issue at hand, he decided.

First, he had to get her to calm down and at the moment, she was hyperventilating.

He moved forward on his knees, smelling the warm scent of her fear as it ran toward the drain. He gave another quiet command and the water began to spray down in a warm and very gentle mist after the system acknowledged what it had heard from him. When his hands touched her very carefully, Jayne reacted and screamed, trying to fight him off desperately.

He'd guessed that this might happen, but it couldn't be helped and he strained to hear some kind of speech from her so that he might know how to respond.

Oh, he heard words from her alright, but it was a while as he struggled to figure it out.

He spoke to her softly in Japanese and she quite obviously didn't understand him. He tried some of the other languages that he'd learned and he failed rather spectacularly, seeing the way that she remained upset and struggling with him. As he tried to restrain her just a little, it came to him that she wasn't anything like someone who could normally belong to any of the groups which spoke those languages, so he tried others; Spanish, for example, and he saw that she understood a few words before he finally tried English.

That got him somewhere. Her small fist hit him in the eye, but he saw that she did understand him.

"Stop," he said to her quietly, "I did not get you out of that place to bring you here for this."

He grabbed her then and he held her a little tightly, trying all the while to show her that he meant no harm to her.

He held her close to him and he kept up his gentle words into her ear. It was a long while, but he did get her to a point where she stopped struggling with him and she just cried softly.

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The flock was excited. It could be seen in the many pairs of gleaming eyes as they hung flapping in the air or sat perched on anything nearby to listen. There was another hundred or so of them now and those ones looked around themselves and were welcomed by the ones already here.

Monnie was still supremely angry over the incident with Chan and there was a part of her that she recognized in herself which just wanted to say 'Fuck it' and be very specific in adding Goldilocks to the death toll by very pointedly omitting her usual instructions that she was be left unharmed.

But as she turned to see all of her flock, twisting slowly in the air and her mouth opened to speak, she was seized from behind in a pair of large and incredibly strong arms. She tried to fight it off, but it was plain that what held her had strength far surpassing her own.

"Hello, dearest," a voice grated in her ear as she felt the hot lips against her throat, "It is good to see you once more. Shall we begin again where we left off before you left me to perish in that burning hole under the ground?"

Monnie's eyes widened and she fought harder, but she felt herself being restrained by more than only physical force and she groaned as she found herself pushed over while still being held up as he entered her roughly, right there in the air in the middle of a stadium full of humans and surrounded by all of the demons.

Monnie groaned as she felt him begin and she knew that she'd tasted the last of her freedom. She called out to her minions for their help, but as soon as she saw them all clearly, she knew that she'd lost them.

They were his flock now, just from the thought that he sent them. A lot of them were even pleased at what they watched as many of them reached for others of their kind, and it didn't seem to matter to them which gender the one that they found for themselves happened to be. Excitement was what they craved and the lust which grew out of the promise of more excitement easily knocked down the barriers of sex and hunger. The feast was on and as soon as they'd gotten a little satisfaction, they'd drop out of the sky to begin on the humans who now stampeded shrieking from the dark mass writhing above them.

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"What -- What are you going to do to me?" she asked as she'd gotten a little calmer.

He tried very hard to remind himself of the prevalent speech patterns commonly used by people who spoke this language, "To you? I won't do anything to you. I'd like it if you'd wash yourself and then we can see if any of the clothes that we took in the bag might fit you so that you feel better. Are you hungry? I'm having a meal prepared for us both."

"Who are you?" she asked, "You -- you're not a demon like I thought you were, so you're probably not a man like this now, are you?"

He rose a little slowly then, taking her along as he stood up, the two of them under the warm mist. She began to fight him a little again, but he didn't allow it, though he wasn't especially forceful with her. He was mindful of the effect of her helpless urination on him and he knew that he didn't want her to turn toward him completely now.

There was no way that she could understand why he was hard at the moment. To what he was -- the Grotto Dweller, what she'd inadvertently done was to toss him a sign that she was receptive. He knew that she wasn't at all and he understood it all clearly, and anyway, it was only one of the signposts which a receptive female of his kind showed -- though it was a strong one.

But his body didn't think at that level, so before there was any more frightened confusion from her, he picked her up and held her as one might pick up a child, holding her head near his shoulder so that he could speak to her calmly -- hoping at the same time that his erection would subside before they ran out of things to talk about and really hoping that she didn't swing her right foot and bump it into what stood out from his body now.

"No," he said quietly, "I'll tell you anything that you'd like to know and then I'd like it if you could tell me about that Monnie female and what she does. I won't hurt you and I understand how terrifying this has all been for you. I couldn't help the way that a lot of it went. I just knew that you had to get out of there."

"Where are we?" she asked, pulling her head back to look at him and thinking that she liked this body or whatever it was that he was in at the moment, "What is this place?" She was still afraid of him, but at least what he looked like now was better than what she'd seen before.

"This is a ... "he wondered how to say it for a moment, "Well, call it my home for now. Right now, we're underwater and moving slowly to get out of the bay and go a little deeper. I want to get us -- you and I, out of the bay and into deeper water so we can hide better for a little while. We need to do that because there was someone else there near the place we left and I don't want him to know that I'm here right now.

But let's start somewhere, alright? How about a name? I'll tell you my name and we'll go from there. My name is Bronn Qums. What's yours?"

"Jayne," she said, "Jayne with a 'y'."

Jayne thought about his name and she thought that he'd said 'Coombs' as his surname. That's what it had sounded like to her.

He looked at her a little curiously, "I had to study the humans around here a little, and I think that 'Withawye' is about as unusual a name as my own must be to you."

She looked at him, still upset to a degree, but a little intrigued and rather surprised at him and she wondered most of all perhaps why she was in this shower or whatever it was with a naked human man and why he wasn't ...

"My name isn't ... what you said. That's how it's spelled. There's a 'y' in the middle of my first name. My last name is Mazenkowski and you still haven't told me what you are yet," she said and he apologized.

"I am a demon," he said a little uncomfortably, "I'm just not like ones back there. I can shift shapes a little. I was there like that as a disguise, you might say. Right now like this, I'm trying to keep you from being frightened and I think that I must be failing at it at least a little, but I'm afraid that if I show you how I usually look that you'll be frightened all over again -- and I don't want that. I did take you away from where we met, but I'm here to hunt for another demon. I just need to know if you can help me by telling me what you know. I wasn't there to harm you."

"If I help you, what will happen to me?" Jayne asked.

To her amazement, he smiled and she had to admit that he did have an effect on her. He stepped forward with her under the stream of the water and reaching for a tub of soapish fluid, he began in an awkward way to wash her a little.

"Nothing bad, I promise you. We can eat and I hope that you like what my home prepares for you."

"Prepares?" she asked as she tried to slap his hand away from her breast, "Your home? How many of you are there here?" She squirmed a little as he went on washing her gently, "And why are you doing that? I can do it myself."

"I'm alone here," he said, "this is all just ... machinery and systems to provide for my comfort and survival. I just tell it what I need and it does the rest." He stopped and looked at her then, "Jayne, I don't know how to tell you this any other way.

When you were so frightened, you did what must come naturally to someone like yourself -- humans. I mean, and you made water. I don't think I can explain it all to you, but I need for the last traces of that to be off you. We'll both feel better then."

She'd been looking down at his chest and throat for a few seconds, feeling shame for what had happened again, but now she looked up, "I -- I couldn't help that."

"I know," he smiled, "and there's no harm done. That's why we're in here."

"Well let me do it then," she said, "I won't have to worry about you dropping me and where your hand is right now isn't even polite."

His eyes widened then and he gasped, "I'm very sorry. Of course. I'll set you down, then. Please forgive me. I didn't know."

She found herself on her feet again, knowing that there wasn't anywhere for her to run, so she tried to concentrate on washing and reached for the tub of liquid that she'd seen him use. "No harm done, um, Bronn. But it was way too familiar to a girl and I don't know you. I can see that you're trying to make me feel better, but that was just too much. I don't really want to feel THAT much better right now if you know what I mean."

She saw the look of shocked horror from him as he realized that he'd broken what must be a social barrier to her, but she smiled a little at him, "It's ok for now, but people don't just meet and start groping each other, most of them, anyway. I understand that you didn't know." He turned away then and began to wash himself feeling embarrassed. She saw it and smiled as she turned away.

After a moment, she risked a look over to him and he was still facing away from her, washing himself, so she hurried with it, though from what she saw, she didn't mind all that much as she looked.

"If we're underwater the way that you said," she began a little cautiously, "then I guess that there's no way that I can run from you, is there?"

"No," she heard him say over his shoulder, "but you won't have to. After this, I'll make sure that you're warm and dry and in some clothing that might fit. I see even more reason for the clothing that humans wear. We can eat and I'd like to ask you questions. After that, if you really want to go, I'll fly you to land and you can leave. But what I'd much rather do is take you nearer to Lozenjellis, since there are less ... Monnies there, though I don't think that there will be much of a threat to you from her now or soon."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The demon that I'm looking for. He was there at that place. I could feel him. I don't know why he wanted Monnie so much, but it was why he was there. I don't know if he knows about you and I doubt that he'd care much, but it's better for you if you're somewhere else."

He held up his hand and asked a question toward the ceiling. There was a pause and she heard some speech as a reply to him and he said, "We can be there in two days. Would that be alright?"

"I don't know," she said, "I guess so. I don't have anything to my name and the clothing that I saw you grab is meant for a girl of about twelve. I'm twenty-two. I know I'm not very big, but ... well, I'm getting a little tired of always having to look cute. Clothes like that sure won't help, even if they fit me, which I sort of doubt."

She found that she had to explain it to him a lot better, but he did get it, becoming fascinated at the concept of fashion in the clothing which humans wore.

"Well, what do you wear where you're from?" she asked.

"Nothing, for the most part unless the surroundings require it, such as working in an office. Why were you without clothes most of the time when I was watching you with Monnie?"

She looked down at her sodden sneakers, kneeling suddenly to take them off and wash the insides of them before setting them aside. She drew a breath and sighed, "That was how she wanted us to be, mostly, Chan and me." She looked up then with wide eyes herself a moment later. "You saw us?" Jayne turned away from him with a groan and she wanted to die.

The thought also caused her to remember her friend and she began to cry once again, finding that she couldn't help it.

The mist of warm water stopped and he was on his knees in front of her, wrapping her up in a large piece of fluffy fabric which she guessed was a towel of some kind. She'd just never seen or felt one this soft before. Jayne was surprised at the concern that she saw in his face, though she did like the way that he seemed to want to comfort her and even seemed to want to pamper her a little for some reason. As he worked at drying her, she admitted to herself that it felt really good and she allowed it, while sneaking little glances at his body when she could. It wasn't what she'd meant to do, but he was there, close up and she found that she couldn't help it.

"I know why you were kept near Monnie," he said, "so you do not need to feel this shame that I see in you. I see that there is more that you have to feel sadness over, but you do not need to feel shame. I do not know many things about humans. I only learned what they were very recently.

So when you are ready, "he said gently, "Try on what clothing that you find gives you comfort and then walk that way," He pointed and she saw the heavy human-looking muscles in his arm, "I will be waiting for you there and I have a hot meal for you."

She looked up and thanked him, "Do you know what happened to Chan?" she asked and he nodded slowly, "I was there in the room when you ran out. I came to look for you later. I did not want for it to happen to you. The other human perished. I believe that it was what she wished for herself."

Jayne looked at him a little hotly, "No it wasn't. I know -- knew Chan. She wouldn't have wanted to be what Monnie is."

He nodded, "I did not mean to say that. I saw her perish, I think by choking of her own bile in order to escape the other fate. I am sorry."

Jayne nodded and looked down, grabbing the edge of the fabric to wipe the new tears which came to her eyes. Bronn stood then and walked out.

He sat thinking, lost a little in his thoughts and trying to sort out what this day had brought for him to learn when he looked up from the table and saw her.

He had to fight off the need to smile at her more than the caring expression that he wished to show for her comfort and well-being. He knew by now what she'd meant when she told him what 'cute' meant as a concept, but he almost couldn't help himself.

She was standing there with her long, light hair cascading wetly over her. He liked the soft curls that he saw in it but he knew that she wasn't comfortable that way, standing as she was with the child's knapsack held before her like a shield with its limbs hanging over her arms as though she held up a small pet of her own.

"None of it fits," she groaned, "I can't get into any of it, really."

"No matter," he smiled, "Come sit and eat."

She wanted to shake her head, but she knew that he'd already seen all of her long before this point and, well he'd had his hands all over her too. Besides, she was hungry now and whatever it was that she saw there smelled really good to her. She saw and guessed that it was some kind of roast along with vegetables which she couldn't identify any more than she could make out what the main course was, but it smelled a lot like roast beef to her and so she came a little closer.

"That looks and smells like roast beef, "she said.

"Close enough," he nodded as he stood up to hold a seat out for her. It had no back and was only four legs and a curved, padded place to sit on, "The animal is very much like the cows that I have seen illustrations of here."

She nodded and wondered about how to get her butt onto the chair while hanging on to the knapsack. Then she thought about how she could even eat like that.

"You do not need to hold that," he indicated with a nod, "only move your hair to cover yourself if you wish. I will try not to look at you for the sake of your comfort and I have not harmed you yet, have I?"

"No," she said as she did what he'd suggested and tried to climb up onto the seat, "that's true, I guess."

She felt foolish as she sat with her feet dangling a little and she looked around the table, "There are no forks here."

She had him there and had to explain what the utensils were and how they were used by humans. He thought it a little strange.

"We use two knives," he said, "one shorter than the other". She watched as he demonstrated, so she did the same. After several minutes where they ate in silence, Jayne's questions about him began to tumble out. Somewhere in his explanations of what he was and why he was here, he learned the things that he wished to know from her.