17 Bullets: becoming the Werewolf Queen

Chapter 13: Surviving the Open

45 BULLETS

When the sun rose to the morning, I jumped awake to the strong sound of a low ribbiting. My now alert senses trying to look around the forest floor for a water pool with some large frog. But my search became frantic when no water feature, nor frog, showed itself.

Thann, also awake and still holding me, tapped my shoulder and pointed up into the tree branches. I followed the gesture and noticed a fat black rough-skinned thing with long thin wings high up. Frog was already on my mind because of the sound, but I could see where this thing might resemble a frog. Maybe frog-bat would be a good describer?

"What is it?" I whispered.

"Kundiza."

He answered so straight forward, I wondered if he really knew what I asked. Oh! I knew the sign for frog! A flipping under your throat. I pointed and signed frog. "Kandeeza?"

He pointed and smiled. "Kundiza."

My smile followed. "Koondiza."

He nodded. "No mouth," he whispered and then gently sat me on the grass away from him.

I watched as he crept around behind the trunk of the tree and then it was like I was completely alone. Any movement of his was silent. It made my nerves return slightly. My heartrate started picking up its tempo but then a small change was above in the treetop. My glance landed on it and it was half Thann's face, peeking out from behind the trunk, on the same level as the... shoot what was it called? Kabookun? Kadzeena? ...As the frog. When he noticed me, he smiled reassuringly with, oh my gosh, a very sexy wink, and then hid back in the branches. My face heated in response.

I assumed him climbing the tree was to get the frog. I was not assuming that he'd leap from out of nowhere calling some wartime battle cry, catching the frog's wings with one hand, do some aerobatics around the wide branches and drop to the ground like some freaking samurai monkey.

Ho-ly Dothraki.

Plus, that was kinda hot.

Okay, super hot.

But I tried to dust off the red patches to my skin and take in his frog.

The bat-frog thing was much bigger than I took it for, up that high in the branches. It was the size of a full-on basketball. And the thing was screeching now some high-pitched bat sound, not the calming frog croak wakeup call it gave a few minutes ago. Thann simply grabbed the head and twisted, ending its life quickly and humanely.

He then handed the whole thing to me with a grin on his face.

Uh... thaaanks?

Mustering up my butchering courage, I stood and took the animal then reached for the knife in my boot, ready to gut it, but stopped when Thann jumped back into the tree. He just bounced and did a pull up, like that branch was not twelve feet off the stinking ground. Maybe calling him Thor wasn't far off. He was freaking superman. He took a minute on the branch where the frog was and then hopped back down, landing easily beside me.

Thann then took the frog back and held a handful off small speckled eggs out to me. "Eat."

I stared at the eggs, exact in size and color to the eggs he gave us for breakfast day one and then looked at him incredulous. "Batfrog eggs Thann? Seriously? I ate batfrog eggs? I thought you gave me unicorn chicken eggs." Then I started chuckling and took the eggs from his outstretched hands. "Thank you. I guess."

He grinned and then headed a ways off to gut the animal. I turned and stared at my butane stove for a few minutes. Now that I knew these were not some normal chicken eggs, I was even more weirded out to just down them, but I already ate them raw once and I was down to my last can of butane and there might be better times to use it. My over easy eggs would have to wait. Making up my mind, I broke the top off and downed them like a slurpee.