FanStory.com - Gima: Cunning and Courageby barkingdog

Dear Reader: The GLOSSARY is included by request. It's not a required part of the reading. It's merely to assist a new audience. Thank you for reading. :) barking dog

Previously:
Trell and Gima, two Vertants, rescued Hunter, a human, from a forest fire. Trell has been tending Hunter's burns while Gima left to find herbs for treatment. Gima is lost in the northwest forest toward the mountains.

Hunter who rescued Gima from her Vermel parents and raised her with Asmel knew nothing of Trell. Gima kept Trell a secret. Hunter and Trell bond when Hunter wakes up after the rescue and realizes a connection with Gima.

Blathen( a Vermel) and Zee, Trell and Gima's infant sons, are also in this camp.

Asmel, injured by a black bear, lies wounded on the east trail.

Chapter 25 (currently posted)
Trell and Hunter begin bonding. With Gima missing, Zee needs feeding.Trell goes off to milk a doe, leaving Hunter to baby-sit Blathen, a young vermel who loves to munch and throw apples.
A cougar that's been hunting Gima back tracks her scent to the valley.  And Chapter 26 begins.

CHAPTER 26

It’s sunrise over the meadow, and the interloping cougar crouches low in the corn field, drooling and licking her paws over thoughts of her tender breakfast that she watches, quietly grazing on red clover and dandelions. She hides between the green stalks, planning her attack. Which one do I take?

At the same time, Trell spots the tame doe that's used to milking.

The two hunters have chosen the same target.

As Trell slowly walks toward his herd, he clucks a call to his favorite whose fawn lies safely tucked away in the flattened grass of a small thicket. The doe looks up from the clover toward the familiar call and stamps in place.

Anxious, the cougar edges forward while her babies bound playfully, behind, attacking stalk monsters and tumbling over each other.

Deer ears turn to the swish of the stalks, and eyes catch sight of swaying tassels.

A four-inch wide paw bats the young cubs down, and the mother growls a reprimand, “Be quiet, stay still. Wait.”

Trell lays a gentle hand on the doe’s sleek tan flank. Her body shivers, telling him something is amiss in the corn. His hand retreats. Its fingers curl around the hilt of his knife.

Positioned to charge, the cougar halts, frozen at the edge of the field. She eyes something she’s never seen before—a rangy, two-legged beast. It touches her prey.

Instinct wins out, and one-hundred and fifty pounds of hungry cat surges forward. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty miles per hour, she powers straight for the easy kill—the small, lean, naked mutant-bear.

Deer scatter.

Trell remains—lean, naked and a mutant, but not a bear. He turns to stand his ground … blade drawn. When the huntress lunges through the air, he falls to one knee. With his knife up, she lands, impaling herself through the heart. With only a scratch to his upper arm and back when she drapes over him in death, Trell pushes her off to the side and stands. It’s over.

The largest female of her kind, a queen too confident, succumbs to the Valley’s new protector. The wolves, she feared, elicited her caution. Trell, she misjudged as a sickly altered bear, and she lost it all. Her cubs wait for no one.

With Zee still in his sling, Trell runs back to the creek to wash off the blood, a doe still needs milking.

Hunter, panicked with concern at the streaks of blood, shouts out, “What happened? Are you okay?"

Trell, in and out of the stream in a flash, chorts in a reassuring manner, “Later, we shall talk. Now, you must guard the young.” He plops Zee in Hunter’s lap, draws a second stone-blade knife from his deerskin boot and hands it to the gaping human before bounding off toward the herd.

Hunter is taken-a-back. He can’t believe any of this is happening. He cuddles and rocks the pale, freckled infant, who reaches up for him in the same way it had under the old oak by the Ox Bow River. “My boy. My little boy.” His pale green eyes flood with joy and relief.

Blathen craves attention. After all, he’s been chosen by his father to fight by his side. Why not be Papa Hunter’s favorite, as well? He crawls over and rubs Hunter’s arm with his fist. “Up. Me, too. Up.” Toothy grin gleaming, he reaches his small arms in the air for the human's hands. Instead it’s Zee’s hand that reaches out for his brother.

Hunter sits Indian style, the two in his lap. He rocks and hums memories of his childhood to the oddest pair of brothers ever conceived. Happily bewildered, he offers them both affection.

Blathen’s collector tastes the emotion and learns what the Vermel race has forgotten—unconditional love. He stores this new knowledge in his rapidly growing remembering place for future use, and closing his eye, lies back against Hunter and listens to pleasing human lullabies.

In the distance, a large shadow approaches. It has two heads, many legs and a three-foot long tail.

Hunter stops singing and strains to see. What's that?

Oh, my god, it's huge. Hunter prepares for the worst. He hovers over the brothers. He clutches the primitive deer bone handle, hoping that the blade is sharp enough and that his courage and strength are up to the challenge. He braces for an attack.

Its speed is steady; its gait is wide. Into the camp it comes. It's Trell. He gallops forward with a lopsided gait, waving many tawny arms and legs above his head and growling playfully, all just for show—for the thrill of it.

Blathen’s keen eye spots Trell under the cougar pelt, and bounces up and down, chorting loudly, “Daddy, funny, funny, Daddy.” He rolls on his back, legs kicking, holding his round belly, contorted with high-pitched laughter.

“What the bloody hell, Telly. You scared the blazes outta me.” Hunter, still shaking from the adrenaline rush, lowers the knife. “Way to not sneak up on a guy,” he finally jokes.

Trell jumps toward Hunter and face to face bursts out with a word he learned from Gima.“Boo!” He jumps again and repeats. “Boo, Papa Hunter. Boo.” Trell laughs, and enjoying his joke, he spins around and around. The four legs and tail reach out as if they’re still alive.

Sweaty and smiling, bloodied again, Trell flings the cougar pelt, gorgeous and warm, along with a large cut of meat to the ground.

The sight and smell of ‘red’ sets the little drool machine to proclaim, “Mine, Daddy, mine.”

Without hesitation, Blathen rolls out of Hunter’s lap and motors over to sit on and gnaw a corner of his, momentary, claim.

His confident face bright, his body streaked with blood, Trell lifts Zee from Hunter’s lap. “Drink,” he chorts as Zee latches on to the filled bladder, hanging from Trell's side.

The protector, the provider beams a smile of fatherly pride at Hunter while slurps of fresh deer milk and coos of contentment replace Zee's whining.

And I thought Asmel was unbelievable. Look at this, guy. Shit! And it’s not even noon.

Hunter’s mouth is open, and his eyes are wide. Trell knows this expression of awe and accepts it as Hunter’s obvious allegiance to the dominant male—Trell, Trolious’ son. He smiles his gratitude. This which is necessary is established.

Gima is ever present on Trell's mind. I killed one large demon, but is there another? Gima always returns but is yet to do so.

Hunter’s concern turns to Asmel. What’s happened to my friend?

Trell slices raw cougar meat; they eat and bond one more time in Trell’s valley.

The little one-eyed prince sits with his wolf bone scepter on the final prize— the six foot long pelt with its three-foot, black-tipped tail. Blathen leans over the miscalculating cougar’s domed forehead. He prods the three-inch incisors and checks his own pointed double rows; then he pokes her two amber eyes, gone dark, and checks his one, forever dark-slate gray. His collector sweeps, and he notes the smell of three others.