Chapter 10
He knew staring was rude and didn’t think he had looked long enough to upset anyone, but the teasing flustered him anyway.
The second creature ignored them both, working on some small gadget in his lap by the light of the lantern. The cowed quality the creatures had taken on during the initial confrontation between Big Blue and Oskar was gone. A facade to appease what was apparently a volatile ego.
Oskar pressed the release valve on his prosthetic and carefully pulled it off. The liner he was wearing was going to have to last him a long time, and sand would ruin it. He pulled it off the stump of his right leg and cleaned it with the same shirt from earlier after carefully shaking it out.
Gently, he rubbed sand on what remained of his sweaty calf and then scraped it clean. He held it up awkwardly to dry in the hot air for a minute before brushing off what remained of the sand. He shook out the empty pants leg before tying it in a knot to keep sand from getting inside, and then placed his liner inside the now empty socket. He covered the whole thing up with the shirt to keep it, too, free of sand and sat it nearby.
If they all needed to move quickly, he was going to be the last one moving, but wearing the liner all night wasn't an option. The sweat, trapped in the liner all night with no movement or air, would destroy his skin. Skin breakdown was dangerous, and the only way to heal from it was to severely limit usage of the prosthetic, which was not an option for him.
Nobody talks about skin care in the stories.
Oskar felt eyes on him and looked up to see the second purple creature staring at him through its own set of Goggles. More specifically, it was staring at his prosthetic foot. Oskar pulled it closer, slightly uncomfortable, and laid back with his head on the makeshift pack he'd had to remake. He left one hand on the prosthetic, though.
The PUB had been strangely silent, and each scan he’d initiated was bare bones and completely devoid of personality. Playing around in the interface for a few moments after he lay down, it was apparently “aware” of the other devices, even if there was no option to interact or link with them- not that Oskar was stupid enough to try.
For more reasons than the strange company and location, he dreaded the nighttime.
He wasn’t sure how he was ever going to feel comfortable sleeping again, but it wasn't long before soreness and exhaustion caused his mind and body to shut down, pushed to the breaking point by a day of walking under the dual suns and the fight he'd had- on top of the events of the past six months. Maybe he was just overwrought by a situation that was likely going to kill him one way or another. For the second time in six months, he slept well despite the danger he knew he was in. If he dreamed, he remembered none of it.
He woke abruptly as his prosthetic foot was jerked out of his lax hand. Oskar instinctively grasped at it as Big Blue pulled it out of reach, standing beside their tent. He turned it upside down, inspecting it, and the liner fell towards the sand.
Oskar grabbed it out of the air as it fell and didn’t know what else to do but put it on, hoping and praying that Big Blue was more curious about the contraption, or maybe even the boots, and not using it as a way to force Oskar into another one-sided Gambit. Luckily, after a few moments… and a cruel look that showed exactly how little Big Blue thought of Oskar, he tossed it down into the sand. The Croc laughed as he walked away.
Oskar kept his face as neutral as possible, but internally, he was seething as he picked the prosthetic foot up and dusted off the sand as best he could. He made sure the socket itself was free of sand and put on it on, sliding the prosthetic over the liner. He stood to lock it in place and get it comfortable.
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It was demeaning. Dehumanizing. Oskar wasn’t insecure about the amputation, exactly, but he wasn’t immune to being dismissed like he was worth less than nothing.
I’m going to hurt you.
The words came unbidden. His face remained neutral, but he knew he was flush with anger. He forced himself to calm his thoughts as he felt the odd pressure of a potential Gambit with consequences he couldn’t predict.
The two purple creatures were politely ignoring the situation, knowing that staying out of it would likely be the quickest way to get it over with. There wasn’t much they could do to help anyway, even if they’d been foolish enough to risk helping a stranger. He didn’t hold it against them. He was calmer now, the fiery anger now more of a simmer.
Oskar awkwardly tried to help as they rolled up the tent cloth, which appeared to be as light as it looked even with one third the cloth being more solid than the rest of its sheer length. Taking down the tent was apparently a one-person job, though.
He ended up standing around, trying to stay out of the way for the brief minutes it took to pull it down. All three tent poles came apart in the middle, and the sheer cloth rolled up inside the poles where a strap held the whole thing tight. The two long, thin spikes that held it in the sand went snugly into a hole at each end of the center pole.
It was genius. A fantastic distraction from the lingering anger Oskar felt towards the big Croc. The whole thing took less than two minutes to set up and take down and apparently weighed little enough that the small purple creatures could simply place the tent on the top of their small packs and strap it in with no apparent discomfort. It just looked like a bundle of sticks with some cloth rolled up inside.
Oskar packed his meager belongings and switched the olive drab long sleeve with the tan one he’d been wearing as the top layer when he’d been first transported here. Big Blue watched him with disdain from across the small camp. The female Croc sat nearby, drinking water that was probably from his waterskin as she watched him with apparent indifference. Pale was nowhere in sight.
She held his gaze for a moment, and then casually tossed the waterskin she’d been drinking onto the sand beside her. Water... not much, but still... poured into the sand from the waterskin, wasted. She watched him for a reaction, knowing they were about to set out into the dangerous sands to get more of what she was casually throwing away. He wanted to be angry, but he was certain that was exactly what she wanted, so it had the opposite effect.
She's playing a game, but she's apparently never been to Marine Corp boot camp. I can play along, but I've got to be careful with her. She's spooky.
Oskar heard clomping footsteps behind him and was thankful for the excuse to break eye contact with the unsettling female Croc. She'd dropped the indifference, and was now looking at him like a hungry wolf watching cattle. He could still feel her gaze on him as he turned to the blue snout that was just moving into his view. Blue stopped inches from the side of his face and looked down at him, grinning wickedly.
“Valla insati… ins, …uh, bigly hungry. All the time. You not the first useless one she eat. She consume so much, she not allowed home for a time. Yum! Yum! Yum! How bout you go hunt water before she drink you, too. Seems we getting low.” He laughed at himself, but his eyes were deadly serious. Thick spittle hit Oskar’s face, but he knew better than to flinch.
He turned and walked away. Choking down one’s pride was easier when you had a seven-foot-tall blue scaled Croc inches from your face, and another that felt even more dangerous staring at you like she was about to feast on your soul.
Big Blue called to him across the camp, “Useless pink. Bring back bunches or don’t bother come back, or maybe we eat your other leg. Maybe we eat a Kobold, too. Maybe we eat you all.”
Oskar ignored the threats, though something the Croc said gave him pause.
Did he just say Kobold? I thought Kobolds were supposed to be all hunched over and rat-like. These guys looked more like the Kobolds described in a book he’d read once where a rich guy had bought a whole magical kingdom for a few million bucks.
Lucky me, I got a whole planet… and it only cost me a night in a creepy motel.
He looked over at the two “Kobolds.” Apparently used to both the Gambit and the mistreatment, they stood waiting near the mouth of a valley between the dunes, at the edge of the camp clearing.
In the daylight, he wasn’t sure what side he’d entered the camp in the night before, but his best guess was they were leaving from the opposite side. It was harder to tell with only two tents up. The female Kobold's green eyes watched him as Oskar walked toward them. She said something to the other Kobold, and they turned and began walking slowly to give him time to catch up, apparently just as impatient as he was to get away from these unpredictable Crocs and their threats.