Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
They start to shriek and scream, unable to defend themselves because they have never been hurt before. I am the worst thing that has ever happened to them. I feel like the worst creature ever to be hatched on this world. I become exactly the thing the nurses think I am. Unworthy. Evil. Wrong.
“Easy, easy! Little man!”
Large hands sweep me up off the ground as Matron picks me up. She is soft in a way none of the other nurses are soft. She has a long neck and very large eyes that always seem to be lit with kindness. I can hear the popping and cracking of arthritic limbs as she lifts me to her bosom and carries me away. Later I will realize that holding my hefty frame must have caused her pain, but she picked me up because she saw that I needed to be picked up.
I am shaking and I am crying, and I know I have been very bad, but she does not say a single cruel word, or censure me in any way. She takes me to the kitchen and she sits me on the counter, and she makes me something to eat.
“There is nothing wrong with you,” she says as she offers me a spoon of mashed meat and grain. “There will never be anything wrong with you. You are special, and you have your place.”
In that moment, she cements this childish outburst into a memory I will never forget. She teaches me that it is possible for some saurians to see the good in me even though I don’t see anything good in myself.
We are supposed to stay in the nursery for the first fifteen years of our lives. Matron dies when I am five years old. I am six years old when I first run away. I am brought back and beaten. I am ten years old when I run away the second time. This time I am not brought back. They do not look for me. They are relieved that I am gone.
I find myself on the streets of Grave City. I am cold, I am hungry. I scavenge what I can, and I sleep curled up in dry corners that are sometimes warm. Grown saurians do not pay me any attention. They know very well that the young are the responsibility of the nursery. I am not their problem. I am not anybody’s problem. I am happy. The happiest I have been since I last saw matron.
I can find food out here, and though I might be small and strange, nobody seems to feel the urge to point it out. Sometimes they walk through me, stumble over me, sometimes they curse me, but it’s not personal. They swear at me the same way they swear at curbs and each other sometimes. It feels good to be cursed at by someone who doesn’t tell me what a creepy little whelp I am.
I work my way through the city, following my nose for the best food. So much is discarded, more than enough for me to eat. They throw it into the garbage and I take it out again. I am eating better than I have eaten in a long time, and with every day that passes, I get better at finding better food.
I move slowly but steadily from the poorer parts of the city to bigger, fancier houses. Some of these are harder to get food from, though the food is better. They have guards patrolling, and they chase me away if they see me. They also have tall walls and spikes atop them and sometimes they’ll even fire projectiles at intruders.
I don’t worry about getting into the houses. I don’t need to. All I need is the trash, and they don’t defend that. I find the best pickings in the garbage cans outside the alpha’s place. It becomes a matter of habit for me to visit multiple times per day, and the offerings always seem to get better and better. Over a period of days, they throw away more than scraps. They start to throw away what seems to me like entire meals.
I cannot believe my eyes when I sneak into the can and find a wrapped package of freshly roasted meat deposited there. I so rarely get meat, because meat is hardly ever thrown away. I don’t even bother to leave the garbage can. I sit atop all of the other trash and I start tucking into the meal with so much enjoyment I don’t notice that I am not alone.
“Hey!” I growl angrily as a big red hand pulls me out of the garbage can by the scruff of my neck.
“What are you doing, whelpling? Are you lost?”
I bite him. Hard. I have sharp little teeth, and they sink through the flesh on the palm of his hand. He holds me regardless, even as a slow trickle of blood runs down his hand and over his wrist. He does not seem bothered by the injury. For a moment, his eyes seem to twinkle with a sort of indulgent mercy I once saw in the matron’s gaze.