I wonder if pain has a different sound, she thought. I wonder if death is a whole new language?

By the time she reached the fledge miner where he sat shading his eyes, the horse was dead.

“Breakfast?” she asked.

Trey looked around, glancing at her hands, evidently expecting to see her carrying chunks of fresh horse meat. “What is there?” he asked.

“I’m sure we can find something.” Alishia knew from her reading that there were grubs living beneath some of the layers of moss in these foothills, and the flesh of the pirate plant was sweet and full of nutrients, and that it was possible to lure in a flightless pheasant with a softly sung lullaby. She sent Trey to look for some grubs while she went in search of a copse of pirate plants, keeping her eyes open for pheasant all the time.

There was a cool breeze from the north, even though the sun was rising to warm her skin. Alishia kept glancing northward, not sure what she was expecting to see but conscious all the time that there was something there.

My master my queen my god.

She was still suffering from the bump to her head. Her scalp was a cool burn where the cut lay open to the air, and as she bent to slice the stem of a pirate plant she felt the cool trickle of fresh blood through her hair. And yet although it hurt, she enjoyed the pain. She had been hurt before but this time she analyzed the sensation dispassionately, relishing it, turning her head so that it ran across her scalp like water, prickling in and down to her neck where the bruising was already spreading.

So good to be alive!

“So good to be alive,” she whispered, and then wondered whether she had already said it. She had thought it, that was for sure, but speaking it gave her a sense of déjà vu that refused to go away, even when she stood and turned and walked, looked down at a small beetle crossing her boot, glanced up at a circle of skull ravens drifting on thermals a mile high, went back to where she and Trey were planning on eating their breakfast . . .

Trey had found several fat grubs and was trying to stop them from crawling away. The sunlight had them agitated, as if they knew what was about to come. He glanced up as Alishia approached and offered her a smile. She had a sudden, shockingly intense image of kneeling on the ground, hands fisted around clumps of moss while he rutted at her from behind, pounding his pale yellow cock into her, feeding her fledge in tiny crumbs with one hand, and grasping her breasts, her hips with the other.

Alishia stopped, wide-eyed, sat down carefully and avoided Trey’s eyes.

“Do we cook these?” he asked.

“Yes.” Where had that come from?