Valen yawned as he woke up, stretching his arms until they met unexpected resistance. Now properly woken up, he opened his eyes… And chuckled at the sight. The Valstrax had curled up around him once again.
Probably woken up by his accidental touch, the Elder soon yawned as well, revealing the two rows of teeth that lined his beak. It then blinked a couple of times, and then turned to look at Valen, emitting a rumble of appreciation. Valen petted him for a bit before retrieving his hand. If he wanted to carry on his outlandish idea of the previous evening, he had to act quickly.
Waiting for the Valstrax to uncurl and walk a bit, he then picked up a rock and started smacking the ground, emitting a loud thud, making the Elder’s attention snap to him. Then he repeated the action two more times. Thud thud. Then, with his free hand, he drew an X in the air and smacked the ground two more times. Thud thud. Finally, he drew two parallel lines in the air, one above the other, and smacked the ground once more. Thud thud thud thud thud thud.
The Valstrax was now tilting his head to him, clearly confused by the turn of events. Valen smiled and smacked the ground once more, five thuds resounding in the chamber. He repeated the X in the air and smacked four more times. And drew the parallel lines once again… But then placed the rock on the ground, being careful not to cause any noises, and gestured to the Valstrax with a hand, inviting him to complete the sequence.
The elder was clearly tilting his head, his gaze unfocused, and Valen was sure that he was deep in thought, either trying to understand his action or, Valen hoped, trying to complete the sequence. He wasn’t sure if it was a mistake trying to start with multiplication instead of basic addition… However he couldn’t explain why, but he was confident his host would be able to complete the challenge.
Then suddenly the Valstrax raised a claw and clacked it on the ground, creating a loud Tick. Then he did it again. Tick. Valen held his breath. Tick, tick, tick. He mentally counted in his head. ‘Six, seven, eight’ tick, tick, tick ‘Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen’ tick, tick, tick. ‘Nineteen...’ and with a final Tick, the Valstrax went still, just as Valen counted. ‘Twenty.’ He raised his head and looked at the Elder, who seemed to be expecting something. And then Valen nodded, smiling while clapping his hands. He couldn’t believe it, that the Elder was able to understand what he was expecting him to do, and answer correctly at the same time! He truly surpassed his expectations. The Elder rumbled in pleasure in the praise.
‘Maybe… Maybe this has a chance of working after all… I better get on with it now, else I won’t have the time to finish before I have to leave.’ Then a thought occurred to him. ‘Do I even want to leave? Do I want to carry on hunting as I have before, knowing that everything hunters hold as true may be wrong?’ Then a flash of a memory appeared in his head. Yellow scales. Valen immediately shook his head to dismiss the memory before he descended into a panic attack. ‘Yes, because it is also our last resort to save civilians. As much as I hate to admit it, we don’t really have an alternative… But I won’t kill only to get better equipment and will only accept missions where the monster proves that it will wipe out everything in its path if not dealt with. That is my resolve.’ Satisfied with his resolution, he looked at the Valstrax and took a deep breath. ‘Time to start an idea that’s as crazy as a Jho.’
Then, looking at the elder, he pointed to himself and said “Valen,” then pointed to his host, saying “Valstrax.” He waited for a bit, but the Valstrax only tilted his head to the side. The non-reaction didn’t discourage Valen at all. He just continued. He picked up the dried-up sponge and then mimed drinking something. He then pointed to the rest of yesterday’s meal and made the action of picking it up and eating it. Valen then repeated the action for several other things in the vicinity, turning on the fire and doing a wave towards the top with his hand, picking up a rock with his left hand, and then making a fist with the other.
After Valen pointed to his notebook and mimed opening the book, he was forced to stop for a moment as he searched for a new item to match a sign to when the Valstrax emitted a rumble that made Valen snap to attention. The Elder poked the book with his beak, seemed to think for a bit, then it backed off and shifted the position of his wings so that they faced forwards, then pressed the membrane of them together, and opened them… Almost exactly as Valen did just a moment ago.
Valen gaped at the Elder for a long time, until the reality of what the Valstrax did sank in and he broke into a huge grin before mentally smacking himself for slipping up. What if the Elder took it as a sign of aggression? His worries proved to be unfounded a second later, as the elder made a weird noise in response. Several quick rumbles in succession. It took a moment for Valen to realize that the Valstrax was laughing. He was laughing at Valen for thinking that he would be offended by the human’s teeth. Valen couldn’t stop himself from joining the Valstrax in laughter, the act releasing tension that had been steadily built up over the last few days. It was so freeing for Valen that it took several minutes before the giggles stopped and he could breathe normally. Once he had calmed himself down with a big breath, he looked back at his host. The dragon was approaching. He then nosed Valen’s cheek delicately, who took the opportunity to rub the Valstrax’s in response. They continued the contact for a bit before the elder disengaged, a strange look in his eyes, that Valen would describe as ‘determined’ if he had to put an emotion in it.
Then the elder nosed the rock, curled the claws on his right foreleg, and lightly tapped the limb against the ground. Valen immediately understood it was his own sign for “rock”, and engraved the gesture into his memory. He figured he would have to note them down in a book eventually, but he would do his best with memory alone for these first few until he could grab his journal. The Valstrax continued by nosing the pot and gave his best attempt at reproducing Valen’s gesture for fire. Then he made the act of tearing out a strip of meat from a carcass with his beak, an action Valen had become intimately familiar with over the days he’d stayed in the cave. And finally, the Valstrax put his head close to the ground and then made a strange motion, like a single wave that left his head pointing upwards, but Valen quickly guessed what it was for, a mirror of his own gesture for drinking.
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Quickly taking a moment to scribble the gestures in his notebook, Valen then paused to think about what the most important things to define right now between them were. The answer was immediately obvious: The concepts of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ should absolutely be the first thing he tried to explain to his host. The issue that arose, however, was that defining those two concepts next to no available context was very, very tricky.
Valen tried to think for a while, long enough that the Valstrax eventually tilted his head in question at him. At that point, he decided to just go with the flow.
Picking up the sponge, seemingly replenished by the Valstrax after Valen had gone to sleep, he poured some water in his mouth, then looked at the Elder, and nodded his head. Then he squeezed out some on the ground and shook it. Then he picked up one of the sticks still lying around. He feigned sharpening the tip and nodded, then suddenly, without any prompting, broke it, the SNAP of it breaking feeling way louder than it should. And repeated the ‘no’ gesture.
He was thinking about what to demonstrate next when suddenly the Elder moved with purpose clear in his eyes and picked up a rock with his beak, then he put it back down and did a sharp nod, the sudden motion looking very bird-like. Then he raised his right forelimb and smashed it on the rock, splintering it, accompanied by the sharp shake motion of his head.
Valen beamed. Having a way to communicate agreement or disagreement between them would definitely help him in the future, or even aid in learning new words. The Valstrax crooned in agreement in response, he seemed happy to have gotten a new way of communicating too.
The joy that Valen felt was so much he felt the rest of the day passed as a blur. He mostly remembered it when looking at the countless notes he took in his manual, detailing which motion the Elder did for each word, and it became quickly apparent that he preferred to use his wings whenever possible, the dexterity of them being far superior to his front paws. Several words used them exclusively, from ‘stick’ being him wiggling the outside spear of his right-wing, to ‘flying’ which involved the Valstrax pointing down with them and doing a quick burst of dragon energy (the equivalent being Valen doing a ridiculous flap motion with his arms, which caused another episode of laughter from the Elder).
The next few days passed quite similarly, with the Valstrax going to hunt, harvesting some herbs if Valen ran out, and returning to eat, the hunter also tending to his leg. Once both were sated, they spent the rest of the day deciding on new words, each was taking more and more time as they had already run out of easy descriptions and actions, and Valen was trying to use their limited vocabulary to explain concepts. The one he was the most proud of that he managed to explain to him was the idea of currency, basically using an agreed-upon object to exchange. He wasn’t sure the Valstrax got all of the intricacies, but he was satisfied with what he managed to do nonetheless. (Valen's motion was mimicking dropping coins in his hand, while the Valstrax choice in response had been… to tap his right paw with the tip of his left wing.)
However, nothing beat the shame Valen felt when he finally summoned the courage to finally attempt to assign gestures for genders. Even though he knew that monsters had no concept of shame, especially considering their lack of clothing, the act left him flustered and embarrassed. Still, by the end of it, the two of them had finally agreed on a gesture for ‘male,’ and building off of that, agreed on another for ‘female’… And the Valstrax immediately shattered the assumption Valen had made a few days earlier by referencing as female. It took a while for Valen to finally make the mental shift of designating him as her instead, but still, it didn’t stop the embarrassment Valen felt when he managed to explain his pickle to the Elder, which immediately started another episode of hilarity from her.
The days passed so quickly that it was only when he was chatting with the Elder that Valen realized he had barely used his crutch in the past few days, and that the only pain left in his leg was a dull ache from his leg. He still had a slight limp, but he expected that he would always keep it. At least he could push himself through when he wanted to. And that it was minor enough that it wouldn’t hamper his hunting. In his condition, Valen guessed he could even go back that day without trouble if he wanted to.
The realization hit him hard. Valen could get back if he desired so… But did he? Did he want to go back to hunting, with the new friendship that he nurtured with an Elder? He was sure he would immediately lose his hunting license, at least, should his relationship come to light…
However, the thoughts of his home also made Valen remember that not every monster was capable of such coherent thought or compassion as she was. Most of them were simple wyverns, more intelligent than a common bird, but still animals who defended their territory. Then… There was the fact that some of them got mad, either from an illness, or territorial dispute, or something else, and they became uncontrollable, expressing their fury and pain on anything living around, no longer killing for food or protecting territory, but killing for the act itself…
And should an elder reach that state, as intelligent as he now knew they were… They could wipe out entire communities. So Valen raised his chin and spoke to the air, a firm resolve filling his spirit. “I probably won’t hunt for the sake of hunting anymore… But that doesn’t mean I’ll not hunt to protect. And this I swear: I’ll make sure any quarry I seek will not be unjustified. Because… I wouldn’t be worthy of her anymore…”
Clenching his fist in resolve, he looked to the Valstrax, who was tilting her head in confusion and smiled. Then he signed to her, ‘Tomorrow I leave.’
He almost expected her to protest, however, she just nodded and replied. ‘Me carry you near village.’
Looking at her now, graceful, with her scales reflecting the sunset’s sun, Valen finally had a revelation. He now knew how to make sure he never forgot his savior, his companion, his friend.
‘Thank you, everything…’ “Nikki.” The last word he said out loud while making a motion that was like scratching a wall with two fingers… It was the greatest gift he could currently give to the Valstrax, a gift that would cement their friendship, making sure neither would disrespect the other. A name.