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If I'm honest, I didn't expect that.
The young thing lay asleep in bed, and I watched, leaning against the door frame, as the little person's chest slowly and gently moved up and down. No visible nightmares, no twitches, no signs of experiencing a restless sleep.
Simply put; Weird.
The girl appeared inconspicuous, brown eyes, brown shoulder-length but matted hair. The only thing that was certainly not normal, or maybe it was, were all the scarred welts, bruises and other injuries including poorly healed bone fractures and joints. At least that were the things I could sense when I used my trait "Progenitor of evolution" on her body.
And by far the strangest thing was the way she looked at me.
Without fear. Like being her savior. Okay, the latter was perhaps easy to understand, given the situation in which I had found her again. And with the slimy scum of humanity.
Or was the race even called human? Questions about questions... Not even this odd group of B adventurers, whom they had apparently sent in search of the monster of the robbery, had wanted to answer my questions. Before I feasted on them.
Maybe she can answer some of them for me, huh. That would be helpful. Especially if she should react so unimpressed by my shape even after waking up. Would be the first time! A throaty half-man half-monster laugh escaping my throat, while the wood behind me crunched and creaked.
Oops! As much mass and density as I've gained, maybe I shouldn't strain the poor house. Hahaha.
And I woke up the sleeping princess. I chuckled to myself, tapping one claw thoughtfully and expectantly on the spot where my human nose would actually be if I weren't standing here in wendigo form.
But i just felt so COMFORTABLE in this form!
A moan snapped me out of my thoughts, and I crossed my arms in front of my black-haired chest, while my tilted head looked down intently at the fragile thing in the room.
With my two meters, and on desire in the meantime also more, if I wanted to reach more mass but renounced body density for it, I had reached a quite imposing stature and could measure myself with the tallest people of my former life.
The girl groaned again, and a slightly scarred, pale and callused hand came out from under the blanket to run over her still sweat-soaked face before her glued eyes slowly opened.
She struggled with the crust that her overworked and strained eyes had porduced while she slept, and gave a soft whimper as she moved her head a tad too quickly.
"W-where..." Came a croak over her parched and cracked lips, followed by what was probably an equally dry tongue running over her lips, only to wince as she scratched over the bloody cracks of her lips.
Why I had left her alive in the first place? Out of curiosity.
If she did not meet my expectations and disappointed me, despite her interesting performance in the forest, then she would also end up as a meal between my teeth. Hrhrhr...
Back to what just happened in front of me.
Two pale brown eyes stared at me, still not fully awake, unfocused, and with sleep residues at the edge of the eyes clearly visible. The hand, which had just rubbed over the eyes, remained suspended in the air.
No further sound came from her lips. But in contrast to other creatures, I also felt no trembling or smelled this annoying urine, when many of the humanoids in my presence wet their pants.
Only a pair of brown eyes that became more and more awake, and rigidly as well as silently looked into mine.
My head moved from the right inclined position to the left in the opposite tilted position, and not even a blink could be seen on my face. But on the other hand, a very, very fine grin!
So intriguing! It went through my head, as this small creature in front of me, with which I could definitely compare myself from my old life before the reincarnation, continued to look back silently but intensely interested!
When the girl saw my gruesome grin and her gaze wandered from my eyes in my bony skull down to my pointed teeth, her eyes only lit up more, taken with the deadly tools in my mouth.
And as if that had triggered something, her gaze wandered frantically over my entire body, as if someone were drowning and wanted to quickly drink the saving liquid. And how she drank my form! At all obviously dangerous places, like my claws or the antlers, she lingered for a few seconds with her gaze, only to wander on.
Forgetting the bed completely, her sickly and emaciated figure moved forward, pushed the thin bedspread aside, and shakily stood up on her scraped feet.
The next step made her fall, and she scraped her barely scabbed left knee on the wooden floor, but except for a brief pain-filled wince that flashed across her face, she got up again and took her next shaky steps toward me.
How I reacted? By watching, of course. With the greatest interest and curiosity!
My grin grew by a hair's breadth, and apparently enough to intensify the glint in the girl's eyes as she fixed on my face and took another step between the bed and towards me.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
She tumbled another time, unfortunately on the same knee as before, but didn't let it get her down. Stumbling was just as trivial and moot, her whole focus on me.
And so, after only a short time, she stood in front of me, her luminous, almost fanatical gaze up at me, her head bent back, staring.
I blinked once. Simply to see if it would free her from her rigidity, because blinking was not really necessary and was only left of my old human self.
And lo and behold, her right arm lifted shakily, and her trembling palm moved toward my stomach area. About where she was at the level of her head, too. While she continued to watch me with fascination, and I returned her gaze.
Just before her palm touched my black and exceedingly hairy pointed fur, my grin widened a bit more.
She registered my reaction, and when she finally touched my fur in several places with her scarred and callused palm, her eyebrows twitched upward. She took her hand back a little and turned it around, looking curiously at the fine little drops of blood that were forming by the hundreds on her palm.
Well, if that isn't some pain tolerance, holy shit. I chuckled, and my chest rose and fell, while a light laugh ran through my body.
Her hand remained in front of her face, but her head looked back up at me when she saw and heard my amused chuckle. A childish grin appeared on her face, mirrored by my own cheerfulness, while her gaze wandered back and forth between her now clearly bleeding hand and my face.
"Hello!" it came again with a croak over her dry lips, and for the first time something like shame showed on her face, when with clear difficulties this simple greeting came forth.
I let my gaze linger on her face and stared deep into her eyes, my chuckle long since under control again. I knew that my eyes now glowed red and changed between a rusty red and an intensely glowing blood red, depending on how I felt or what my intention reflected.
My mouth opened and the girl was able to look into my throat for the first time, but again remained quiet. "Hello, little girl." Came back my own greeting in perfect human tongue.
She blinked once, and then several more times, as if waking from a trance or dream. She appeared joyful and suddenly even more taken with it. "You can s-speak!" It came over her lips, but she had to clear her throat once and swallow saliva as she spoke, as her parched vocal cords momentarily failed.
Her hand was about to jerk forward and embrace me, despite her still wobbly knees, but she thought better of it when she apparently remembered her bloody hand.
Arms down again, she ran the fingers of the other hand curiously over the bloody palm and only briefly distorted her face again at the first pain, but immediately afterwards used to it.
"Do you have a name?" Came the next question full of curiosity, her head again turned towards me, but her hands still busy with what she had started.
Unbelievable. Not even a hint of trembling or fear? No stuttering, nothing at all. Hehehe...
"Hmmm... So far I haven't needed one..." Came my answer, when for the first time I had to seriously think about whether I had a name in this world. I didn't want my old one anymore.
"You can call me... - Devi?" Came out of my mouth more like a question, and I looked up at the ceiling for a moment until I nodded slowly to myself and looked back down at the little human girl with satisfaction. It was vaguely reminiscent of the name from my last life, but at the same time was simply the abbreviation of what I now embodied. "And you?"
For the second time in an extremely short interval, another kind of pain flitted across the face of the fragile being before me. "I-I..." And she stammered. Not from anxiety or fear, but from uncertainty as to how I could smell it.
With rosy cheeks and a different kind of shame that I knew all too well from before, she looked sadly to the ground. "I don't have a name of my own..." she whispered, and a tear rolled down her bony cheek to drip from her jutting cheekbone onto the floorboards.
I was... amused. Yes, despite the emotions she was going through, and had gone through, I was entertained. An opportunity arose before me, and I could only laugh in the face of fate!
I shrank.
The floorboards beneath me creaked slightly as the more concentrated weight and shifting of weight made itself felt. And the girl in front of me, now at eye level, looked at me with big wide round eyes dumbfounded.
"Then - would you like to have a name of your own?" Came from me in a very self-aware shuddering smile across my bony lips.
She stared back. My question had not quite reached her brain.
Realizing what I had asked her, and seemingly very aware of the possibility and what it meant to be given a name by ME, she nodded her head up and down frantically.
I already knew what I would call her. And at the sheer enthusiasm of the girl in front of me, my grin only widened unnaturally, while my eyes lit up ominously blood-red, and my blood-crimson on my skull even joined in.
"Then... your name shall be MARY." I proclaimed her name loudly and firmly. "My little Bloody Mary!" Mary nodded with moist eyes as she tasted the name on her tongue.
And as if the universe, the gods and whatever else fully agreed, a small blood-red rimmed message popped into my field of vision, accompanied by eerie sounding fanfares.
A living contract with [Blood Slave: Mary] has been successfully signed by both parties!
Blood Slave: A blood slave is bound in body and soul to the will of the master. A blood slave is immortal and cannot age unless the master of the contract willingly allows it.
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