Feelers pt. 11

For just a minute, I thought either Grant would run over and give me a hug, or that I would grab onto him, I was that glad to see him. But instead we just grinned at each other and began talking at the same time.

 

"You should have seen...!"

 

"What took you so long...?"

 

"I thought you were...!"

 

"I didn't want to move from here...!"

 

"I've got bruises...!"

 

Finally we caught each other up. I showed Grant the big purple blotch on my side where the creature had clutched me while it was banging me against the ground. He showed me his wound. It was beginning to seep a little bit, and the edges of the scrape were reddish. That worried me plenty, but since I couldn't think of what to do about it right now, I didn't want to nitpick over it yet.

 

"Ok, hand it over!" I said teasingly, reaching out for my backpack.

 

"It's all right, I can handle it," Grant said. "You've got that nasty bruise."

 

"I promise, if it starts to hurt too much, it can be your turn again." He pulled it off his own shoulders and handed it to me

 

"Now," I said, "Let's see if we can figure out just where we are."

 

"Before we walk away from here," Grant said, "I think we should mark this spot. We don't know anything yet. We don't even know if we are back on Earth where we should be." He took a straight branch about a yard long and walked over to the place where I had emerged. It looked sort of like a mostly filled in coyote den. He pushed the end of the stick into the soft soil. Carefully, he tore a slim strip from one edge of the pink bandana wrapped around his arm. At first I was going to protest. It was MY bandana, after all, but then I decided that once you hand a personal item over for a leaking wound-dressing, you sort of give up your ownership of it. He tied it in a knot around the top part of the stick, leaving a couple inches to flutter in the breeze

 

"There!" he said. "Now if we need to, as long as we can find this general area, we won't lose track of where we came from. Just in case," he added.

 

"So where do you think we are?" I plopped down on a little hillock and laid back, my face enjoying the feel of the sun on it, after that long time in the foggy place.

 

"Andie, look at this." Grant sat down beside me. I opened one eye just a slit and saw that he was holding something, a stem or something. "What?" I said sleepily, shutting my eye again. I felt something tickling my nose. It was like something crawling around on me.

 

"Aack!" I yelped, slapping my hand across my face, sitting up. Grant had been trailing the weed stem on me. He was laughing, but his eyes were a little worried. "Unh!" I groaned and sat up.

 

"Look at this. Have you ever seen anything like this?" I took the stem and peered down into the thumb-sized flower on the end of it. It was a pretty shade of blue. I knew that truly blue flowers are rare so I looked at it with curiosity. It didn't look like one I had ever seen before. It had two large petals that flared into sky blue at the top ruffly edges and funneled down into the deep indigo depth. I brought it closer, peering down into it. It was very strange. I hadn't had botany yet, but I did know that flowers had stamens and pollen and stuff that should have been in the center of this one. Instead all I saw was an inky crater.

 

I leaned in closer, my eyes practically crossing as I stared into it. Suddenly I saw two little black holes open up. Or spots, or something. But whatever they were, it felt like they were looking at me. The central tube of the blossom seemed to twist, and then suddenly what I swear were needle sharp teeth suddenly jutted out from the bottom of the flower! I jerked back and flung it away from me.

 

"It's alive! It's alive!" I choked out. "It's like a Venus flytrap or something. But more. It was looking at me!" Grant picked it up and pulled the flower apart. The swelling at the base of the bloom resembled the innards of a small animal, and I turned away in disgust.

 

"Let's go see what else this place has in it," Grant suggested. It was funny, at first I was the one who was more curious, but now I felt strangely reluctant to go exploring.

 

"Ok, but this spot may be our only connection for getting back home. We've got to make sure we memorize how to get back here."

 

"What? No compass in your pack?" Grant teased.

 

"Actually, yes!" I showed him the zipper pull, which held a tiny compass on the end.

 

"Assuming that the magnetic poles work here like they do on Earth, then I think we can head that way through the trees and when we want to go back, we can, uh..." he turned the compass this way and that, trying to figure out how to work it. "We can go South to get back here. I think."

 

We struck off, in spite of the strange situation, in a happy mood. The sun was shining, the air was clear and the view was pretty.

 

And that lasted for about twenty minutes, until we stopped with relief at a little creek of cool water and noticed a deep print in the damp earth by the bank. It was a large, strange, hoof-like paw.

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