Bebe (9 page)

That first sip never made it farther than her mouth. Her brows pulled wincingly together and her cheeks bulged outward as she shifted the liquid off her tongue. She looked at him, grimacing.

He didn’t for a second think it was because the tea was too hot.

“I think I have some sugar here somewhere,” he said, and wandered back into the kitchen area. He rattled through the tins on his cupboard until he found the one he wanted, nestled well back on his highest shelf where the occasional five-fingered raider might not easily find it. “Ah, here we go.”

He hesitated only a moment before taking the last clean spoon off the shelf—crap, now he was going to have to wash dishes—and returned to sit on the bed again. He spooned a small portion of sugar into her cup. His little stray watched as he stirred the sweetness in, then looked at him again. They blinked at one another until Tral got the hint that one spoonful of sugar was not, in her estimation, going to make
bucca
tea palatable. He added a second slightly bigger one, and then took the little tin away. A little sugar with one’s tea was something he was willing to accommodate; a little tea with one’s sugar, he was not.

After putting the tin back on the shelf, he returned to find her sitting cross-legged on his pillows, her back to the wall while she nursed her cup. She averted her eyes when he sat down next to her. They drank in silence, or rather, he drank while she stole peeks at him from out beneath the shield of her unbrushed bangs. When he pointed to her cup, she obediently took a sip.

“What am I going to do with you?” he wondered out loud, winning another hasty peek from her. “You could be micro-chipped, which would make discovering who dumped you all the way out here incredibly easy.” His eyebrows arched as he contemplated her. He set his tea aside. She shied, almost spilling her tea in her lap when he reached for her. “Be a good girl now. Hold still.”

Eyeing his hand uneasily, almost as if she expected him to cuff at her, she hugged her cup against her chest and then, just to be safe, took a hasty gulp of it. He ignored her ‘I’m drinking, I’m drinking’ look, scooping her long blonde mane back off her slender shoulders instead. Tipping her toward him, he rose far enough to get a good look at the back of her neck. No micro-chip scar.

He tsked, but he wasn’t truly surprised. Anyone smart enough to micro-chip their pet would also be smart enough not to abandon said pet where it could be found and potentially traced back to them. Especially not on a government-sanctioned preserve where illegal dumping carried such a heavy prison term.

“Ah well, it was a thought.” He let her go and leaned back to rest his hands on his thighs. She remained hunched around her cup, watching him warily. In the light of the fire, her eyes seemed even more dilated now than before and her cheeks were starting to flush. He was starting to wonder if he’d got her antitoxin dosage correct when he heard her stomach growl.

That actually made him feel better. Thinking she couldn’t be too sick if she had an appetite, he got up to see what he had to offer her. Opening the pantry cabinet, he spent a full minute staring aimlessly into his larder of pre-packaged, just add water and re-hydrate meals. He had no idea what house pets ate. Of course, he’d seen the wild pack gorge on
ank’ta
innards straight out of the carcass, so chances were good that she wouldn’t be too picky.

Selecting two packages at random, he found a mostly clean pot—he really should do some minor housekeeping in the morning, this was starting to get embarrassing—added both meals and enough water to cover them, and then hung that over the fire now too. He also put together another pot of tea. His little stray might not like the taste, but this had long since shaped into a night where one cup simply was not going to do it.

Theirs was a simple supper: noodles and vegetables with a hint of meat somewhere in the freeze-dried broth. Supposedly, it was very hearty, but it always took at least two to feed him, and here he was, giving the other half of his allotted portion to the stray. And she barely did more than poke at it.

“Five bites,” he told her. He didn’t know if she was succumbing to exhaustion or the toxin, but he could already tell she was becoming lethargic. She only drank half of that first cup of tea, and in the end he had to spoon feed her the required five bites before giving up the effort.

He checked her eyes. Definitely, seriously dilated. The apples of her otherwise pale cheeks were a bright pink hue, as well. Still, having a little something in her stomach must have had a relaxing effect. She yawned, though she tried to stifle it by locking her jaw and refusing to let it open very far.

“You’ve had a busy day,” he granted. “But tomorrow, I’m serious now, you’re going to eat and drink a lot. Agreed?”

She lay down on her side, resting her flushed cheek on a corner of his pillow.

He looked around, wondering where he could put her for the night. He didn’t have a lot of spare floor space and what he did have was cluttered up with both dirty and clean clothes, the occasional book and stacks upon stacks paperwork, the majority of which he hadn’t got around to reading. Or filing. Frankly, most were over two years old and were probably only useful for burning at this point.

He could really stand to clean up a little. Hands on his hips, he looked at her again, but the bed was really the only feasible place for either one of them to sleep. He deliberately avoided looking at her breasts. She was an animal. And sick, but mostly she was an animal and he had standards. After so many years, he had allowed them to go lax, but not that lax.

Clearing his throat, he slid an arm under her far enough to lift her and peel the rumpled blankets out from under her. He made the bed with her already in it. Small as she was, she didn’t take up much room. Especially not after she crawled up by the headboard, rolling her back to him and curling into as tight a ball as someone with arms and legs could get.

She sniffled again, and he said, “No more crying. Pets who cry have to drink an entire pot of tea to re-hydrate, and I don’t have enough sugar to make that palatable for you.”

She pulled the blankets up over her head, hiding herself completely from view. It didn’t quite muffle her sniffles, but he left her alone anyway. Fixing himself another cup of tea, he returned to his work table where he sat, staring blankly at his daily forms before, finally, throwing his hands into the air in defeat. “I can’t work under these conditions!”

He went to the window instead. Frowning, arms folded across his chest, he contemplated the darkness. Sometime during his adventures in bathing, temperature taking and
ulali
oil rubs, the sun had gone down. Now and then, a single fat flake of white drifted past the glass. One could hardly call that spitting much less snowing, and yet in the very back of his mind, he found himself thinking of the last trio of pets some idiot member of his species had decided to ‘return’ to the wild. As cold as it was and considering the condition in which he’d found his little stray female, even if he dawned his warmest clothes and left right now, he didn’t think for a second that he’d be able to find any one else. At least not still alive.

The temptation to go anyway was very strong, but between the snow and the dreadfall wolves, Tral knew better than to try. Morning would be soon enough, he decided, to hike out to the fence and see if he couldn’t find anything. He really hoped she’d been the only human dumped this time. He didn’t think he had it in him to pull any more bodies from the snow.

CHAPTER FIVE

The following morning Tral woke up with less than half his blankets and no pillow whatsoever. Sometime during the night, the little female had taken them all. She still lay curled in a ball at the headboard of the bed, and yet somehow had swaddled herself in the bedding so completely that while his shoulders still had plenty of cover to keep him warm, his feet had none.

They were very cold.

If she hadn’t looked so cute, swaddled up like that, and if she hadn’t been so beat up, Tral might have been tempted to yank his blankets back again and dump her fanny-first out of bed. His bed, he might add. But she did look cute and she was beat up, and Tral just didn’t have it in him to be that callous.

Breathing a disgruntled sigh, he got up instead. Adding a few more logs to the fire, he wandered into the bathroom to answer nature’s call and then started a pot of tea. Although he certainly wasn’t trying to be loud, he hardly went through great pains to be quiet. And yet his female managed to sleep right through all that noisy rummaging, and then the muted clattering as he fixed himself a simple breakfast of re-hydrated eggs. He ate it while watching the morning news on his computer, drank half a pot of tea and then got himself dressed for the day. Through it all, she never budged. Not so much as a yawn or a wiggle.

By the time he was ready to leave, he was starting to get concerned. He was having trouble imagining simply leaving her here unsupervised. If he had any human-sized clothes at all, he would be tempted to bundle her up and take her with him. But he didn’t, and it was utterly laughable to consider dressing her in anything of his. Nothing he had would have fit such a tiny frame, and it was very cold outside. So while he really did not relish the idea of leaving her here, all alone, his options were greatly limited.

He could tie her to the bed, he supposed. Not being an experienced pet owner, he wasn’t sure how much trouble one human could get into in such a small house, but he was equally sure he’d rather not find out the hard way. And yet tying her down seemed rather callous and cruel.

He didn’t want to use up one of his precious tranquilizers either, since under the right circumstances, those things could save his life, and under the wrong ones, he could accidentally kill her with an incorrect dose. She was, after all, very tiny, and the tranquilizers were geared to stop the bigger, stronger, and infinitely more aggressive males.

Hands on lean hips, he stood beside the bed, studying that mound of slumbering blankets, frowning and considering his options. It took a long time before he could make himself accept the realization that he was simply going to have to leave and trust that she stayed put.

Reaching down, Tral shook her by the shoulder.

“Mmphf.” She didn’t move right away, and after a moment, he shook her again.

The mound of blankets raised at one end. Slowly, she dug her way out from under the bottom of the pile. Raising her head, she looked sleepily up at him.

“Stay,” he told her, and pointed at the bed.

She blinked at him twice, and then rubbed her eyes as she pushed herself up into a sitting position.

“Stay,” he repeated, giving her his best no nonsense look. At which point it occurred to him that since he had to use the bathroom first thing in the morning, it only stood to reason that she probably did too.

Great. Good job. What a wonderful way to confuse the hell out of the human.

Tral pulled the blankets back and motioned for her to get off the bed. “Come on.”

Hesitating only a moment, his little stray crawled obediently down off the bed, but she did it on the other side of the mattress where she could watch him from a cautious distance. Already her fingers were beginning to fidget.

He beckoned to her again. “Come here,” he said, and then pointed to the bathroom door.

Following the direction of his finger, she limped gingerly past him and went to stand in the doorway. Fingers tapping nervously, she watched him and waited for the next command.

“Do you have a bathroom command?” He gestured for her to keep going. “Relieve yourself. Pee. Toilet?”

Her breaths were coming shallower and faster, her eyebrows drawing together as she followed his waving hand with her eyes, trying to interpret what he wanted and obviously not quite getting it. He took a step towards her, and finally she backed up a step and closed the bathroom door.

Tral waited a moment, and then crept up to the door to listen. He could hear no movement on the other side. After another minute of strained silence, he took the latch in hand and stole a peek inside.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor only just far enough inside not to be struck by the opening door, staring silently up at him, waiting to be let out again.

“That’s not at all what I meant.” Stepping inside, he picked her up under the arms and set her down on the toilet. “Go to the bathroom. Pee. Right now.” He snapped his fingers to show he was serious and then walked back across the threshold and closed the door again.

Hands on his hips, he waited until he heard the toilet flush. When he opened the door, she was standing at the sink, staring at her reflection but making no effort at all to wash her hands. He washed them for her and then took her back to bed.

“Now stay,” he told her. “Stay.”

She settled herself cross-legged near his pillow, pulling the blankets up around her head and shoulder. Stifling a yawn, she swaddled herself in them again and waited for the next command.

Unsure how long he’d be gone, Tral poured her a cup of tea and made her a small bowl of reconstituted eggs, which he set on the bedside table. “It’s probably not what you’re used to, but it’s filling.”

Making a mental note to contact his uncle regarding an increase in food supplies, Tral left the house.

Winter had well and truly set in. Last night’s snow covered everything, a thick blanket of white topped with crystals of ice that glittered in the pre-dawn light. His breath fogged the air as he walked, heading straight south to the place where he’d found his little stray.

He wondered if she was still sitting on the bed or if she’d gotten down to wander the station house yet. It would be just his luck if she’d already figured out how to open the door. He could imagine himself returning home to find it wide open and the house empty. Would she have enough sense not to walk off into the snow? The wild pack seemed to have common sense in abundance, but what about a sickly house pet?