Dotharl

[Omni]

“Eat,” she says, pushing the plate towards me.

My head rolls towards the dish, my one uncovered eye spying the xaela girl through the bars. Right. The girl. She comes every day and offers me food.

I kick out, or at least I try to. Damn aim isn’t much these days. I can’t see much of a thing past the knotted hair which trails down my face, but that’s godssend. The sun is so bright of late, and my eyes pale and ache to focus. It spits me to be spoken to as some common mongrel, but I have long come to terms with my punishment for failure.

She sits, as always, and watches me for a while. I pay no heed.

“Do you really intend to die in there?” she asks, for what feels like the seven or eighth time.

I feel my headache intensifying but I stay silent. There must be some way out of this cage. I am Dotharl, and I will yet kill this tribe. I will.

Try as I might, my thoughts are as mist and do not condense. In my early days of imprisonment I had energy, long since used up. Now my muscles ache and my bones creak, bereft of sustenance. I must eat soon. But I will not accept charity from my enemy.

I look at the girl. Her black scales clash most nauseatingly with her salmon-pink hair and off-white skin. So soft, and so weak. Through the fog of my thoughts I conjure images of myself bursting from the cage, my hands seizing upon her and my fingers piercing through her skin to pull it apart like the shell of a crab. Sucking out the juicy meat. My dry mouth prickles and I can practically taste the air around her.

But she’s just out of reach. I know because I’ve tried. The bruises and cuts I’ve so recklessly accrued from lunging and struggling do not fade, and sting as if laughter from the gods.

She sees my hungry look and tires, rising to her feet and turning away. I growl in unison with my stomach.

* * * * *

I am in a half-sleep, somewhere amidst the stinging in my wounds and the lethargy which drowns my consciousness. It’s the smell that wakes me first.

“My my my. What a pitiful sight.”

I move as though my fifteen days of hunger had been but a fleeting dream. It is a good thing that I am too weak for my voice to carry in earnest. “Rilani!” I croak.

She is sitting on her haunches in the shadow of the cage. In the pitch black of the night I cannot even see her figure but I know she is there. You just have to look to where you cannot see. Her stifled laughter emanates from the darkness. “Hm hm hm …”