A new day came and went, then another. He rationed the dried and salted meat which had been given to him, however, after even a single bite of the foodstuffs he was always fiercely thirsty. It was due to the salt which preserved it.

Now, as a reminder, the ocean flows into this cave with the tides daily, causing the subterranean rivers to swell with brackish water. Most water here is no good for drinking. All but that little hot spring pool up in the chambers where the ooman dwelled were tainted with the salt of the sea.

Cir'ide was thirsty enough to make the venture but much too proud. He was too suspicious of unexplained aid and that trait would last all his life. Had this been a part of an elaborate trick? Did she mean to lure him into her lair to kill him? That was the accusation forming in his thoughts, anyway. He was to be proven wrong yet again.

With a few more hours of procrastination, he found the urge to seek out drinking water overwhelming. So, he took his wary self and his parched throat up into the corridor which led deeper into the chambers where that feral ooman lived.

He could go a few days without a drop to drink and do just fine, but that generously salted meat had him at his limit when it came to tolerating the sensation of thirst. Upon entering the room decorated with scrawled portraits of ooman faces, he scanned the area carefully. He saw no heat signatures to indicate that the ooman might be here. Just the warm glow of that glorious hot spring which bubbled with wondrous fresh water.

Like before, he knelt and dumped his face into the warm life-giving liquid, drinking greedily and deep.

As he gulped down mouthful after mouthful, he thought about the ooman. He had not seen her enter the cavern since their last interaction. That had been two cycles ago when she'd tossed that bundle of food his way before stomping off.

That didn't necessarily mean she was not creeping about somewhere. He had slept since then and she was quite the stealthy creep, so she may have gotten by him while he slumbered.

Cir'ide lifted his face only once he absolutely needed to take a breath and as always, thinking of something too deeply will surely bring it upon you.

After lifting his head and shaking the excess water from his jowls he was met with familiar wide eyes bulging in their sockets. It was the ooman, and she growled at him from where she stood shoulder-deep in the warm waters.

In truth, it was he that was startled first. He yowled in surprise, she yelped in response, then she purposefully thrust her hands forward against the surface of the water to assault his face with a distracting splash.

He reared back so quickly from the harmless attack that he fell backward from his heels and onto his ass. Meanwhile, she clambered out of the pool on the opposite side while he was busy shaking the water from his face once again.

At the precise moment he had his eyes clear of water he was under attack yet again! This time she was throwing stones and they did incite pain when they landed direct blows against his wounded side or his still raw thighs.

"Stop that at once! Ki'cte! KI'CTE!" he roared, and she paused, still holding up the next stone she intended to hurl at him.

Cir'ide glared from where he stood, noticing now that the ooman was nude, not that he cared but he was well aware of how shy and shameful her kind were about their naked bodies. So, why had she been naked in the drinking water?

He almost retched when he realized that he had, in essence, been drinking an ooman's bathwater. He was not permitted his moment to be disgusted, the final stone was thrown with ruthless accuracy and he was left standing there with a palm clapped over a new bruise forming just under his right eye. He howled angrily as she hurried off into the even deeper recesses, away from him.

Cir'ide caught himself before he launched another furious pursuit. Her reaction to his appearance at such an inopportune moment was not unwarranted. Had she been one of his own kind, a yautja female, he'd have been subject to far worse punishment. It is somewhat of a crime to interrupt a child maker in the act of grooming herself. Such a blunder like that could result in loss of limb.

He must have overlooked her in the pool when he entered, either because she had been submerged or her body temperature matched that of the water. Now that she was gone he had the time to be repulsed at what he had been drinking. He could have gagged. It was not that the water had tasted at all tainted, it was simply the idea of having drunk the soup of an ooman's filth that made his guts lurch.

Cir'ide spent a moment longer glaring at that pool of water; then turned his attention elsewhere for the sake of dispelling the sudden onset of nausea.

The walls in this chamber were, as he well knew, decorated in scratchings and crude paintings. Most of the works were of portraits. All but one of these were other oomans or scenery that one of her kind would find familiar. He approached the wall artwork that seemed most out of place. There was one, to the far right of the largest and most prominent paintings, which appeared to be new. He could tell that this one was the latest because some of the complementary medium smeared over the carefully applied scratches was still wet. It was also only half-finished; only a partial face.

It was hard to see such a thing clearly, as his way of seeing the world was very different from how any ooman painter might… Paya. It was him .

In the two days since he'd last seen her, the prey whelp had attempted to paint his face. He looked quite fierce in the crude depiction, so he was sort of flattered, but mostly he was unnerved by it. It was all just a little too eerie to contemplate.

Some ooman hermit painting his face on a wall, in a cave, on a deserted island. If someone had told him a season prior that this was what future he had to look forward to, he'd have laughed in their face.

A sound interrupted his examination of the faces on the walls. It was the ooman, she had returned to the chamber and grunted at him.

Cir'ide turned to look, she had herself clothed in the tatters she normally wore. Her clothing barely qualified as proper coverings. It wasn't that it was scant, it was that nothing she wore fit properly. She was forced to wear articles that she had long outgrown, though it was hard to fathom the little runt ever having been any smaller than she already was.

He stiffened in reflex, expecting further violence from the strange savage. But nay, she had not returned to follow-up her attack with another. The pup held a tightly lidded container and then gave it a shake to indicate that the contents were that of a liquid. If it was water then it was what he'd come here in search of. Perceptive, then again how bright do you have to be to guess that someone is thirsty after watching them drink your bathwater?

She took a step closer, holding up the container full of fluid like an offering. He was, naturally, wary of accepting such a thing from her. Could it be poisoned? Maybe, but that would defeat whatever purpose she had in choosing to share her reserves of dried foodstuffs with him two days before. She could simply have tainted that bundle of salty meat if her intention was to murder him. With great effort to try and discern the truth from her alien expression, he found no ill intent. So, he reached out to curl his talons around the container.

Although the thing appeared to be the size of a proper drinking cup in her tiny hands, it felt as petite as a c'ntlip sip server in his much larger graspers.

He was deeply confused about the lid and how he was expected to open it. He turned it over a few times, shook it as she had. Then he turned it again in his hands looking for the way to undo one of the ends.

The ooman must've grown weary of watching him fumble with it. She snatched it from his hands, and with an expression on her weird face that looked none too amused, she turned the container right side up before pushing it back into his hands. Finally, she pulled up the tab he'd not seen or been aware of before. Now it had a little hole to pour from.

She made her alien babble at him. He only understood fragments of it but to the best of his recollection, what he heard that day was: "You had better like that" Roughly, and something else about the stuff being in short supply.

A sniff first as always. Oh, gods, that did not smell like water at all. The scent was sweet, yes, and the taste reminded him of ripe naxa fruit on warm days in his childhood.

"Pineapple," she said. The extract of some produce probably. Oh, it ran down his gullet like a sip of the heavens. What a shame that the human only had a limited supply as he understood it. There was perhaps only half left after only one gulp, so he considered handing it back.

Cir'ide tried, but the human seemed to be refusing the gesture. He could tell that it wasn't a hospitable nature that prevented her from taking back the remainder of the beverage. She seemed rather unnerved by the container now that he'd had a drink from it. Their faces were anatomically very different. He could see where that would breed hesitation about touching anything the other has had their face on. Of course, that level of understanding did not stop him from whining in his native tongue about how he had already been forced to eat after her.

And damn it, all ooman mouths are uglier than the business end of a brood mother's ovipositor. Not that he had ever seen one in person, his clan did not test their would-be warriors on the hard meat. What his clan did to test their young in the Blooding Rite is another story for another time, let us return to this one.

Time went by, he and the human spent a long while seated on opposite ends of this painted chamber. Even after sharing food and drink with her, she was still wary and did not dare to come too close to him.

There was only so much to look at as far as the ooman herself went. She sat crouched by a stalagmite with one of her crude weapons, the stick, held in her lap in both fists as she scrutinized him. Any time he glanced in her direction she made the distance more comfortable for both of them and shuffled a bit further away.

The shipwrecked youngster quickly realized that the notion of leaving that particular place was not a happy thought. It was warmer here than anywhere else on the island. His kind relish in heat. A fair amount of their deities are patrons of warmth and fire as a matter of fact.

He did not want to leave. The ooman though? Past her sense of caution he could not tell much about how she felt or thought of him being there. He found it damn puzzling to decipher these creatures and their expressions. Impossible, they have no tusks to bend in a grin or curl and bristle in anger.

All there was to look at on her head was the immobile, fleshy horn in the middle of her face which served as a nose. She also had stiff useless ears that also didn't move. Hm, the brows on these aliens move up and down frequently, which may be useful if he could figure out what any of those movements meant.

Understandably, his eyes wandered to something more interesting. He was looking at the artworks scrawled all over every surface in here and he was well aware that only she could have created these paintings. He decided to open his mouth and speak, asking questions he already knew the answers to, but doing so might be an easy avenue into a conversation which could be an excuse to stay longer.

He made no attempt at her English, but when he spoke in his native tongue he made certain to motion first to the scratchings on the walls and then to her.

"Did you do this?" he asked, but it was only the sound of his voice that caught her attention. He asked again, wording his question a bit differently this time and making far more dramatic motions with his head and flexed upper mandibles.

"The slakk'en. You did all of this?" She seemed even more confused. He sighed, most oomans, save for few of their near-extinct cultures, used their fingers to direct another's attention somewhere. His people used claw-pointing as accusatory gestures. Doing so was the only way to make her understand that he was questioning her about what things she had carefully etched into the walls. It still went against the years of scolding from his elders to point his claws at anything or anyone that he had no intention of beating to a pulp, but he did so anyway. Perhaps the fatigue was taking its toll and making him desperate for some sort of interaction with another, arguably intelligent creature.

Finally, when she seemed to be understanding that he was curious of her work, she tilted her head and began to inch closer.

Cir'ide tensed at her approach, even if she kept her stance low and submissive, it was because of the eye contact which she never dropped. It was all a great deal of mixed signals to him. He could not tell if she was trying to be friendly or readying to deliver another attack.

She was within arms reach when she lifted something from the floor by the wall, something which had a vague resemblance to an edged weapon. He snarled and she froze in place momentarily, but despite his following warning hiss, she moved again to reveal that she meant no ill will.

What he had perceived as a weapon was, in fact, a chisel. Was that a shard of volcanic glass? She had fashioned a comfortable handle for her tool as well; torn scraps of cloth tied around the end held in her palm. This was a savvy use of naturally occurring minerals.

She had her tool held fast to her latest work but had not begun to make any motions in order to start carving out new lines. He thought she wanted to be sure that he understood what she intended to do.

Well, at least efforts had been made on their parts to avoid further confusion and aggression. He nodded to affirm that he understood and soon she was using him as a live muse to complete her depiction of him. It was not exactly the conversation he'd been looking for, but sitting still while she drew his countenance on the walls served as another excuse for him to stay here. He had no issue remaining in an area where there was no draft, perfect humidity, and high heat. He was a little bit too comfortable in here.

He did not realize that he had fallen into sleep until he woke alone in that chamber next to the completed slakk'en. It could be considered a fairly decent window into what most of his prey sees in their final moments. His brave and furious face was pleasant to see, but below this great work was a smaller sketch that he found himself less approving of.

"Gods, how flattering," he muttered sarcastically. Below the slakk'en of his head and shoulders, there was a much smaller illustration of his sleeping form, curled against the cave wall. That's not something anyone truly wants to be carved into stone. In a hundred generations someone might venture to this island, see this, and think that he was much too fond of sleeping.

Cir'ide glanced around to see if the ooman was still in the chamber. No, she was nowhere to be seen, but a familiar scent faintly reached his nostrils. Somewhere in the grand main chamber, the ooman child was roasting meat.

How long had he been slumbering? Long enough for the human to finish the slakk'en, an additional sketch, find prey, kill it, and return to the caverns to begin charring it over a fire. He had been asleep for a full day perhaps? He had not rested even for a moment on the cycle she had attempted to lure him from hiding, so it was plausible.

Cir'ide meandered groggily toward the place where she typically prepared and consumed her meals. As he expected, she was squatted by a small fire, gnawing on the badly burnt carcass of some unidentifiable creature.

Cir'ide had only meant to sit nearby- No, that was a lie and she knew it too. As soon as he was within arms reach she turned her back on him with a hiss and continued eating, facing away like an animal hoarding its kill away from another.

He snorted irritably, he knew he was imposing by sitting there waiting to scavenge or goad her out of her food. She was aware of his intentions quite clearly.

Cir'ide groaned. This must be why he had been sent on a path journey. Had he always been so pathetic? He had a weak spirit under extreme distress. He was totally useless. So there he was listening to the ooman chewing and gnashing her blunt teeth into the fruit of her daily ventures, pondering his worthlessness.

He was startled out of his thoughts when something prodded at his underbelly. his natural reaction was, of course, to growl with menace. It was merely the human poking at him with the end of the stick she had burned her kill upon in order to get him to take it. There was still plenty left on the bones to pick off. How shameful. He was allowing this prey pup to look after him.

Cir'ide ate after her, yet again, and felt absolutely and irreversibly dishonored. Gods, if anyone found out about this? Hell, the fact that he knew what was transpiring meant that one person too many knew of it. As he sat there he even considered having the memory of all of this illegally scorched from his brain before returning home.

The ooman pup drew his attention away from his thoughts once again. She was making odd sounds and looking at him, but not aggressively in the eye for once. Her eyes were drifting everywhere else across his skin.

The imp whimpered out an anxious string of her babbling and reached forth as if meaning to touch him. He prepared a warning hiss in his throat and swiped his talons at her to tell her that she needed to back off, but she tried again, then again.

On her third try he'd had enough with her, his palm pressed flat over her entire face as he shoved her way with everything he had. She rolled in somersaults backward, almost gracefully with the force he had used to fling her away, that is until she landed on her head.

The savage was determined, she rose to her feet and only took a moment to rub at her bruised skull. He'd seen that look in her eyes before, whatever the hell she was trying to accomplish by touching him, she was too stubborn to heed his protests.

This was going to be a problem.