Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
This time when I smile, I show the canines I threatened the guards with a while back. Unlike the males who flinched and shrunk at the sight, Selina beams back at me.
No fear at all.
Not a drop.
Just like that, I wish I was touching her again. Or rather, that I hadn’t let go of her in the first place. Just for that look alone, I would pull her in closer.
“Does it?” she asks again.
It’s funny how much I forget around her. The whole world. My own name. A simple question.
“Bey,” I tell her.
Yes, spada means no.
*
“Show me,” I say.
At the request, Bothaki’s brow dips and he looks at me off to the side like he’s contemplating.
“Show, see,” he replies, one hand lifting to wave, five claw-tipped fingers wide, back and forth in front of his face. “Eyes. Show?”
I am pretty sure that is the most words he’s ever strung together in English, and all at once, I realize two entirely different things.
Somehow, Bothaki is learning my language. And pretty fast, too. According to my father, they’ve shown him photos of the human body, naming parts with explanations and comparing what they can visibly see, although my father wouldn’t tell me his reasons for doing so. I didn’t dare press for more without risk.
The second thing I now understood about Bothaki? How cute he is, confused.
“Show so I can see and understand.” I walk over to the table where I finally set the container down. Bothaki doesn’t come closer as I take the different sealed containers of fruits and veggies, raw and cooked for some, out and spread them on the table like a platter of choices. I gesture at the food with one hand and grab the last two things left inside the container. A black marker, and blank white paper I cut in half.
Like the flashcards.
Blank ones give me a bit more creativity for communication than pre-printed flashcards might. Or, that was how I got the idea past my father, anyway.
“Show me,” I tell Bothaki again. “If it’s a no to sitting at the table, then what?”
I open my arms wide to the rest of the space. A mostly open floor.
“You show me.”
A handful of seconds pass, and I remain standing next to the table, but facing the room. Bothaki points to the floor, holding his container in the other hand.
“Is that where you want to eat, the floor?”
He nods.
Okay, then. I grab a couple of containers of food from the table. I move first, and let him decide what he wants to do after. Finding a comfortable position, I sit with my legs crossed one over the other and fold my hands in my lap. Looking up, I find he still hasn’t moved.
“Here, right? Are you coming?”
“Bey,” he rushes to say, quickly, but gracefully, finding himself in a similar sitting position to mine directly across from me.
Once there, he waits for me to open up one of my containers first before he opens his own. My father was helpful enough to tell me Bothaki would choose fruits and vegetables over the offerings of meat, cooked or otherwise, but I wondered if that was just a fear of the unknown. Could he be careful about what kind of meat he ate? Would he try the fruits and vegetables because he recognized the colors or the roots that showed they came from the ground?
I open a container with carrots. Cooked on one side, raw on the other. Bothaki makes no noise as he uses the tip of his claw to pull back the rest of the container lid in his hand, but he watches me and pays no attention to the food in his hands.
“Carrot,” I say.
He nods.
I bite the tip off a cooked slice and offer another to him. He takes it and puts it into his mouth instantly, chewing far slower than me and swallowing only a bit at a time, considering the way his throat bobs repeatedly.
“Is it not good?” I ask. I point to my mouth, and his gaze narrows a bit. “Taste—does it taste bad? No?”
It tastes like it always has to me. Crisp, but a little bitter, with a slightly unpleasant aftertaste that reminds me of a cleaning product. Cooking it makes the taste of carrots better, in my opinion.
Bothaki’s lips, black like his eyes and hair and the markings on his body, purse. In consideration, I think. I’m starting to grow familiar with his expressions, and how similar they are to my own. His ears might be sharp and pointed, and his eyes dark and unmoving, but he uses them just the same as I do.
And I think he understands the same way, too.
The more seconds tick by without an answer from Bothaki tells me that he probably doesn’t have the words to explain his dislike. Instead, he reaches into his own container to pull out a piece of fruit I cubed for him. The fruit my father said belonged to Bothaki. I wasn’t brave enough to sneak a piece to try for myself upstairs, but when Bothaki holds the cube out for me to take, I don’t hesitate.