Page 29 of The Wild Prince's Favorite
She took the small bowl, full of still lukewarm food. There was some new foreign mixture at the bottom that smelled sweet with slices of fruit on top. It smelled good, and this time, she didn’t hesitate before trying it. The taste surprised her. It was so flavorful and filling. The pieces of fruit were white, crisp, sweet, and a bit juicy too. They had visibly been cut in small chunks from a bigger fruit, and she wondered if the warrior had cut it for her, or if this was the breakfast all their people got... If so, they were lucky to be able to have that thing every day. She ate slowly, thankful for this.
While she was still busy eating, someone walked into the habitation.
Alezya expected the warrior, but instead, it was a tall, scrawny man wearing a coat two times too big for him. There was so much fur around him, all the way up to his neck, that his head seemed to be small and just popping out of a bundle of dark brown fur. He had long black hair, thin lips, a small nose, and skin strangely covered by hundreds of little marks. She was almost sure it was the man she’d heard chatting with the warrior a few hours ago... He stood at the entrance for a little while, staring at her with a deadpan expression.
Alezya wondered if she should put the bowl down, but really, she felt no threat coming from this man... or, to be exact, he looked like the weakest man she’d ever seen.
For a little while, he said nothing, just staring at her. And then, he let out a sudden and big sigh, as if he was annoyed. Alezya frowned.
He walked up to her bed, and she prepared herself for anything, but he rummaged through the depths of his coat, and suddenly took out a small little bottle, handing it to her. She was confused. He looked reluctant to give her something that just looked like... water? The bottle itself was really pretty though. She put her bowl aside and took it.
“Ti. Shrib.”
He spoke loudly and excessively clearly as if she was deaf, which annoyed Alezya. She showed the bottle and asked with one of the two words of their language she’d learned.
“Mahi?”
She wasn’t sure of her pronunciation, but at least, the word and the context should have made her question clear...
She waited, expecting an answer, but the man just stared at her with that deadpan expression of his for a couple of seconds, before rudely rolling his eyes and turning around to leave without a word. Alezya had already decided she didn’t like this man.
He left, and she was alone with that bottle thing.
Was she supposed to drink it? She checked it up close, and the cap had visibly been sealed. If she opened it, it would be obvious. Did he expect her to keep it to hand to the warrior when he came back?
But he could have just left it for him on the table... While she wasn’t sure, Alezya decided to leave that thing aside and finish her bowl of breakfast first. Now she wished she’d been up when it had been brought; this thing ought to be delicious when hot...
“Ti ha shribahu?”
The man’s voice took her by surprise; she hadn’t heard the warrior come back into the habitation.
Alezya glanced up, and she realized he was questioning her about the bottle on the little table. She put her bowl aside and grabbed it, showing it to him. He walked over, and after kneeling in front of the bed like he usually did, gently pushed it toward her, his fingers only touching the bottle. With a little nod, he confirmed it was for her to drink.
“Shrib.”
Shrib. Drink, she guessed. Another word for her vocabulary.
Why was this bottle for her to drink? It was strangely small and preciously conserved, it couldn’t just be mere water... Mistaking her hesitation, he took it from her hand and opened it, breaking the seal effortlessly.
Then, he handed it back to her without the cap. Alezya smelled it. It just smelled like nothing, like water... She touched it with the tip of her tongue. Just water? It had a very, very faint taste, something mineral maybe. Seeing how the man encouraged her with another nod, she gave up and drank it. It had to be something safe, right? It would have made no sense to poison or drug her now... She emptied the bottle.
It really was just water, or at least that was her deduction. Nothing strange about it, no alcohol or weird aftertaste oranything. When she finished it, the man seemed a bit relieved and took the bottle back. Why had the other man seemed so reluctant to give it to her? Alezya knew she was missing something there, but she had no idea what.
As the man stood back up to put the bottle away, Alezya felt the strange need to say something. She hadn’t said a word since she’d woken up, but if she was to use that man to regain her health and get back to the mountains, she had to get him to understand her a bit. And she needed to understand him too.
“Thank you,” she said, in her language.
The man, surprised, turned around and stared at her.
“Thank you,” she repeated, still in her language.
There was no way to know if he’d understood, so she hoped to convey it through her emotion and expression. The man stared at her, confused for a few seconds. His eyes went to the almost finished bowl of food, on the jug of water that had been left on the table for her, on the blankets. Alezya faintly smiled. At least he was as bad at understanding her as she was understanding him...
The man suddenly walked over and kneeled down again in front of her. Every time he did that, she felt deeply uneasy and uncomfortable, but he didn’t seem to care at all. More importantly, she was curious as to what he was going to do next. Was he going to ask her to repeat until he understood what she’d said? He stared into her eyes and suddenly said another word she’d never heard before.
“Kassein.”
She frowned. What was that word supposed to mean?
