Page 7 of Fathom

I’d take her to my place and figure out what language she spoke, and then figure out what to do next. With the plan firmly in mind, I began to jog to my place, ignoring the rich scent of her blood floating up from the small cuts on her feet.

It would be fine. I coulddo this.

A prey animal could be safe with a predator. It had to be possible. The law that passed last year allowing prey-predator mating pairs wouldn't have passed if there wasn't some possibility of those relationships working out in a fashion that didn't lead to death.

I could keep her safe.

She would be safe with me.

She was mine.

No! She was not mine. She was safe with me.

THREE

LEIJA

Hot water poured over my skin, tracing paths through grime, chemicals, and dried blood as I stared at the sealed lines between the tiles. It was old and stained, the lines veined with rust. The tiles were hexagons instead of squares, and the material used to make them was rough but also porous, acting like a fabric that took in water by swelling to push the previously open cracks between them shut. It was so different and yet also similar to a dirty, old shower floor used by people crammed into closets turned into bedrooms to provide rent for a slumlord. I couldn’t seem to look away as my mind tried to absorb yet another thing that wasn't quite right, wasn't quite the same.

I labeled things around me as familiar, even as they continued to show me their differences.

My fanged elf savior brought me here, a narrow, worn building with a keypad at the front and hexagonal woodencubbies stacked like a puzzle in the entryway, filled with stacked packages and letters, all open to where anyone in the building could take anything. It was all left out, like stealing wasn't an issue in this madhouse. He carried me up the stairs as if I weighed nothing, three flights without even a quiver to his arms, to the last door at the far end of the ragged hallway. There was a small bench outside, in between the last door and the one next to it, shoes tucked underneath it. He set me down on the bench and walked in through the last door.

I’d barely caught my breath before he disappeared inside, only to return with a plastic bucket hooked over one arm. I focused on the small details inside the bucket as he leaned down towards me. A bottle. A washcloth. A packet of something wrapped up with a small jar on top, both tied together with a cloth ribbon. A towel draped over his shoulder. Folded clothes in his hand. There was a band over his nose, pinching his nostrils shut. He hadn’t said a word, just picked me up again and carried me back down the hall to two doors across from a pair of chipped sinks that jutted into the hallway, and pointed to the one on the left, the one marked with what looked like a faded root vegetable drawn in marker.

The other door had a set of fangs painted in clear, fresh white paint, out of place in the worn-down feel of this building.

He knocked lightly on the vegetable door, his ears swiveling towards it.

After a moment with no response, he carried me through.

Behind the vegetable-marked door was a shared washroom, though unlike any I’d seen before. There were three stalls with thick doors; one stall had a door open, and I could see through it to what looked like a small basin on the floor, with two textured rectangles on either side. What I now knew was that the showerwas behind a thick curtain, with a narrow dressing space screened off by another curtain, a sliver of privacy carved into a communal room.

He pushed back the curtain to the shower to reveal a dressing area and, beyond that, the shower itself. One bench was against the wall in the dressing area, but it was shaped like a small staircase that led nowhere, with the padded bench's highest section rising to where my chest would be. The smallest section looked like it belonged to a child, or perhaps a doll. The whole place smelled faintly of soap, mildew, and something citrusy beneath it all. He set me down in the center of the bench, and my feet didn't quite touch the floor.

He knelt down by my feet, getting out the jar and the package. He unwrapped it to reveal a stack of white hexagonal squares, setting them and the jar on the bench next to me. He reached out towards one of my feet, his hand hovering. I lifted my foot and put my ankle into his hand. He lifted it up, inspecting it, then took the washcloth and reached into the shower. There were rows of looping half-circles that looked like twisted horseshoes. He turned one halfway, and water streamed out of the ceiling like rain, wetting the dry, cracked-looking floor of the shower. He reached out and twisted another one.

Then he wet the washcloth.

He came back to me and cleaned my feet with careful strokes.

It stung, but I didn't react. How could I react to anything?

I felt numb inside, cold.

If I let myself feel anything at all, I might revert to that woman I used to be, a memory ago, the one who knew she couldn't reach her dream by staying in place but never got the nerve to leave. That was the type of woman who curled up in acorner and waited to die or be saved, the type of woman who in one sudden, violent moment, I realized I wasn't.

So I sat there and watched him clean my feet.

Because why wouldn't I?

He was taking care of me. I might as well let him until I figured out what the actual fuck was going on. When he was done, he opened the jar and smeared cream on them. My feet tingled a little, but there wasn't any burning or other sensation, which was lucky. I didn't know what was in that jar; it could have had things that were toxic to humans. Because he wasn't human.

None of these people were human.

That long strand of his tail reached out to brush the back of my calf, accenting the point.

When he was done applying cream to my feet, he took two of the hexagonal white sheets and peeled a film off of them, pressing them firmly so they covered the bottom of my feet, wrapping up around them. When he was satisfied they were smoothed down, he rose up, gathered the trash, then reached out to test the water. He adjusted the nozzles again and heated steam began to fill the room. He said something to me, pointed to the pile of clothing he'd put on the bench next to me. He pulled a pair of slippers out of the bucket and set them on the ground near the exit to the shower room, then left, shutting the privacy curtain behind him.