I ask her. I inhale deep, intending to roar a little, intending to vent some frustration… but I freeze. The moment her scent coats my nose, the bumps on my tongue plump. Their texture becomes more noticeable. Not rough enough to abrade the roof of my mouth, but each bump itches to be buried in a very particular substance.
From a very specific female.
My claws want to dig into Isla’s clothing, hold her fast to feast on her. Just picturing it has me unable to temper a suggestive growl.
Isla twists her neck, craning her gaze up to me, holding her closest eye wider than the other. “Am I allowed to back up so I can see what it says?”
I consider this. My scales rise with my next sniff. Isla citrus. Then I relax my tail, letting it fall from her waist.
Giving the coiled heap of scales and blades and prehensile muscle a pointed look as she steps over it, she backs a few paces from the wall inscription, her eyes roving from left to right. Then she smiles.
“What?” I grumble blackly.
She shines me a very entertained look before biting her lip. “Oh, Not-Grumpy, you’re gonna love this.”
“Will I.”
“It says, ‘Be Alert… Feelings Can Get Hurt. Days Without Making Someone Cry: 1.’”
Mystified, I make a face. “What nonsense is it speaking? Is it some sort of riddle?”
Both of Isla’s pink lips disappear. She’s sucked them into her mouth.
The sight has parts of me swelling uncomfortably.
I shake myself. “Speak, Isla.”
She waves her hand at the words. “It’s like an Injury Counter.” At my look of incomprehension, she explains, “On Earthen worksites, it’s common to have these counters that add up days without injury. They act as reminders to be careful, and as an incentive because everybody likes to achieve a high score, and accidents mean work time gets lost.”
“Hnh,” I grunt. “I can see the wisdom.” Then my eyes turn to slits, moving over the alien characters scratched in my quarry. “Someone compares bodily harm to tears?”
“Uhh…” Isla starts.
My tail cracks against the ground. “Emotional versus physical harm is nothing alike. Perhaps someone needs a demonstration of the difference.”
“Yo, Bash!” a voice calls—and tevek me, but I know it is Gracie this time. I’m growling before I even turn around. I’m technically growling before she finishes addressing me. I will go to my pyre hearing her voice. She’s like an ear mite that no amount of miticide will drown. She’s a fearless, unpleasant, persistent spokesperson for all these troublesome foreign intruders.
“What is it now?” I snarl in warning, my muscles swelling as I turn on her. I bare my fangs. “Did you do this?” I stab a claw at my canyon’s wall.
“Oh, God save the Queen! I call the chair,” Gracie groans, almost waddling for my throne.
I slap my tail down in front of her, the blades sinking into stone. “Do Not. Touch. My chair.”
Unshaken—unfortunately literally and figuratively unshaken—she holds up her hands, unperturbed. “No touchie on the big brick Lay-Z-Boy, not even for the pregnant woman, you font of sympathy, you.”
“I was thinking that it looked more seven-kingdoms’ sword-thronesque,” Isla admits.
Gracie snaps her fingers. “That’s what it is, and fuck—we’ve probably missed the end of that show by now. We’ll never know who gets the throne.”
“Tyrion, obviously,” Isla says, for all the worlds appearing as if she’s pretending to be ruffled.
“Nah, gotta be Danni-girl. She’s got dragons.”
Both of them eye me.
Isla whispers, “Dragons can be pretty intimidating.”
Gracie’s expression sharpens on Isla, her eyes and smile and manner turning sly. “But you’re not intimidated, are you?”
Smoke curls up in front of my vision as I exhale through my nostrils. “I’m only going to order you once to tell me who dared to do this. If you don’t know or if you don’t answer then I’m going to shake the truth out of the other humans.”
Isla holds up her hand. “What if they don’t know?”
“Then I will have shaken a lot of humans.”
Gracie heaves a loud sigh and rubs at her lower back like it’s paining her. “Krispy Kremes on crutches, Rakhii are so aggressive.” She meets my stare. “Who cares who did it? It doesn’t hurt anything.” She strolls past me and over to the wall, drops her gaze down to the ground, searching, and finally selects a hand-sized rock, which she retrieves with much muttering and some show of discomfort when she bends down. She tests it, finds it makes the same mark of stone-on-stone that made the inscription, and she adds