Whitestar pushed on for another few hours until she saw a jumble of ruins off to the northeast. She veered that way with her captive, intending to make camp among the spirits of the old ones. She looked down at her prisoner. “What are you?” The creature stumbled in alarm, jerking his head away from her while looking up at her with wide eyes. “Answer me!” She growled.

“I’m uh, I’m a human.” The man cringed as he spoke, expecting to be struck. Whitestar snorted a short laugh.

“Human. Hyoooman. Hmm, never heard of this. Why are you here? Are you invading?” She lowered her head and snarled at him with the last question.

“No, uh, we’re um, we’re starting a new colony. The uh, the uh System put us here? You know about the System?”

“Har, System. Yes, the System has decided to gift the Ur-clan with fresh meat and Energy! The ancestors must bless me to find you first.”

“Um, we don’t have to fight; I’m sure my leaders would want to talk to you. You’d probably get a big reward for returning me safely!”

“Har, human is funny. What’s your name, human?” As she asked the question, Whitestar scaled a pile of rubble and crawled through a gap in some ruined walls. There wasn’t any roof, but the walls gave them cover from three and a half directions. As she looked around the ruined structure, she could hear the human hesitating outside. “I said, what’s your name, human? Go ahead. Run. See what happens.” She heard him sigh and then begin to climb up the rubble.

“I’m Cal. Cal Jennings,” he said as he crawled through the gap and into the ruin.

“So, humans have weak names, too. How will you strike fear with that name?” She sat down with her back to a stone wall and gestured for Cal to sit.

“Well, I don’t think our parents name us with that in mind,” Cal said, sitting down on the hard stone in front of her.

“Can you at least earn a better name in battle?”

“Um, I suppose. There’s a process for changing your name in my society, and someone could, I suppose, pick a scarier name.” Cal rubbed at his bare feet, massaging the soles with his thumbs.

“You should wear better clothes and armor, especially with your soft, furless skin.” Whitestar grabbed one side of her beautiful blue leather vest as an example. The vest was worked with dark amber beads hung on little tassels and dark metal rings stitched in neat rows.

“Right, I should work on that.” Cal nodded, not making eye contact with her.

“Are all your people so soft, Cal? Do you have any warriors?”

“Hey, I’m not that soft!” He cringed as Whitestar bared her fangs and jerked toward him. She laughed, leaning back against the wall. “Uh, anyway, yes, we have warriors, well, I mean we will. We’re still figuring stuff out with the System and everything.” Whitestar grinned when she heard his words; they truly were ripe for the picking. “Well, what about you? What’s your name?”

“Hmm,” she stared at him a moment, “Alright, human, you can know me as Whitestar, but I’ll be taking my warrior name soon; don’t get used to it.”

Whitestar pulled off her pack and rummaged through it, pulling out a heavy skin filled with watery wine. She pulled the cork and drank half the skin in a single, long pull. She pulled it away from her mouth with a gasp. She wiped the droplets from her hairy chin with the back of her hand. Holding out the skin, she said, “Drink, Cal. We walk far tomorrow.” He took the skin and drank a mouthful. To his credit, he didn’t sputter or hesitate; he swallowed it down. He took another, longer pull, and then he actually smiled.

“First booze I’ve had in a long time. Maybe hundreds of years!” he grinned and took another long pull, and Whitestar reached out and yanked the skin away from him.

“You want more; you earn it.”

“Earn it? What do you want me to do?” He clearly wanted to drink more of her wine, weak as it was.

“You sing for it, human.” She sought to tease him. Her uncle, Bladefist, used to make her sing for lessons. It had always humiliated her, but she did it anyway because she was desperate to learn to fight like the warriors. To her surprise, Cal smiled and began to hum. After a moment, he burst into song:

“Twinkle, twinkle, dear Whitestar,

Please don’t drag me very far,

Through the wilderness at night,

After you woke me with a fright,

Twinkle, Twinkle, dear Whitestar,

Please don’t drag me very far.”

He stretched out the notes in a lovely, smooth tenor, and Whitestar found herself savoring the music as he finished, not even bothering to take offense at his lyrics. Urghat warriors didn’t sing like that! “Ha, human, you have a pretty voice, like a maiden cub. No, better; I don’t know an Urghat that can sing so pretty.” She tossed him her wineskin, and he proceeded to take several long pulls, nearly emptying it. “Slow down, human. You have to leave some in there for me to make more, idiot.”

“Oh, er, sorry,” he said, handing her the skin and slumping to the side. Soon his eyes were closed, and he was taking deep, regular breaths. When she looked at his face, Whitestar could see that he had a bit of fur starting to grow on his cheeks and neck.

“That’s more like it, human. Maybe you won’t be so ugly when that fur grows in.” Whitestar scooted out from the wall and laid back, using her pack as a pillow. She was tired, and they still had two days of hard travel ahead of them.

When Whitestar slept, she very rarely remembered any dreams. That night, in the ruins with the human, though, she had a vivid dream that she kept waking from and then going back to as her eyes grew heavy again. In the dream, she wasn’t living with her clan but rather in a small house on a hillside, tending to a flock of holbyis. While dreaming, she kept alternating from worrying about the boyii hounds attacking the holbyis to being inside the little house and arranging the rooms in preparation for visitors. She felt confused and frustrated each time she woke, not knowing why she’d be dreaming about a house and being some kind of herder. She was a warrior! Each time she fitfully rolled over, she’d determine to dream about slaughter and feasts, and each time her traitor spirit-self would take her to the hillside with the flock.

Whitestar woke with the first light of dawn, unrested and feeling irritated. She dug some dried meat and flatbread from her pack, kicked the human awake, and then sat down to eat while he struggled, stiffly to a sitting position. “You look tired and weak, human.”

“Yeah, I had a bad night; turns out I was kidnapped, beaten, and…”

“You want more beating?” Whitestar cut him off.

“No,” Cal replied, cradling his head in his hands and moaning. “Damn, but that booze of yours did a number on me.”

“Har, this?” she lifted the nearly empty skin, “Mostly water, human.” She stared at the skin, concentrating on her Replenish Water spell, and felt her Energy draining out of her and into the skin, and then it swelled and got heavier. “Now it’s even weaker. Hardly any wine left.” She wolfed down the last of her breakfast and drank several long swallows of the considerably weaker wine. She tossed the skin to the human, looked at him as he drank it, then nodded and dug out a bit of dried meat for him. When she handed it to him, he sniffed it, glanced at her, and then shrugged, stuffing it in his mouth.

“That’s an interesting spell you have there, creating water out of nothing. The System hasn’t taught me anything like that yet.”

“Get up, human; you can talk while we walk. Don’t be a fool and expect the System to teach you everything. You need to learn from masters.” She looked at him for a long moment, then continued, “Probably doesn’t matter - you won’t be learning much in this life.” Without waiting for a response, she ducked through the broken wall and scrambled down the loose stones to the grass. Cal followed after, a dour expression on his face. “Cheer up, human; you can sing while we walk today. It will keep the wild boyii away and make time go faster.”