Not Quite...

Darkness.

Grey’s eyes fluttered open.

More darkness.

He looked around to see only the pitch black.

‘Am I blind?’ He wondered for a moment before his vision cleared. Above him hover countless stars in the night sky. A beautiful sight he thought. Laying on his back, he looked amongst the many constellations. It was one of things he really wanted to do in Greece before this whole mess.

Then he was jolted. Coming out of his almost trance-like gazing, he realized he was moving. Which he thought odd as he was on his back, on some sort of mat… His fingers lay on the material, barely able to move.

‘Leather?’ Grey lethargically felt it more, ‘No, it’s some sort of hide…’ Leather has a smooth yet tough feel to it, but this almost had a fuzzy texture. Feeling even more, he found an even furrier area. It was much softer than the rest of the mat by far. His hand crept up the extension…

“Eeek!”

A girl screamed, dropping Grey to the ground with a dull thud.

“What is it now?” Growled a feminine voice.

“It touched me! It was feeling up my arm…” replied the smaller voice.

“Pfft, let me see,” A third voice inserted. Grey was too tired to be moaning in pain, no matter how much he wanted to. He was sore all over, and falling to the ground didn’t help the matter at all. He saw a dark shape above him, with two great spheres of yellow light looking down into his eyes.

“It’s awake!” Yelped the third voice, and the mass darted out of Grey’s vision.

“See! I told you!” The first voice said, closer this time.

“Oh, don’t be cowards, it can’t do anything,” The second irritably replied, “See, I’ll show you,” It walked over towards him, making barely a sound as it put one of its legs on Grey’s chest. He wanted to get it off, but all he could do was barely move his fingers.

“See? It’s still paralyzed. It’s probably in a daze anyway,” The foot was placed back on the ground. Now all three of the creatures were standing around Grey.

“What if it hears us?” The third whispered urgently.

The seconded sniped back, “We don’t even know if it can even understand us, Lana, so just calm down!”

“Calm down? Calm down!?” Lana quietly screeched, “What the hell is this thing Sona!? Look at it!” Grey wondered how they could see in the pitch dark, but he could feel a foot lightly kick his side, “I have never, ever seen an animal look like that before!”

“It can talk…” Quietly said the first voice.

“See? Nasha says that it can talk. Does that prove to you that it’s not some sort of strange beast Sona?”

“Hmmm…” He sensed Sona walk over to Grey’s other side. She bent down on her legs, and was just a foot away from his face as she examined him, “It does remarkably resemble a Fenarian, but it sure as hell isn’t one…”

“Some distant cousin?” Nasha offered.

“I bet it’s a spirit tricking us,” Lana piped in.

“I doubt it’s a ghost Lana,” Sona said tiredly, “But Nasha’s idea sound plausible,” She stood back up, “Which is why we need to take it back, so we can figure out what it is for sure.”

“What if it attacks us, like it attacked Nasha!? What about that?” Lana exclaimed.

“Nasha, did it attack you?” Sona asked softly.

A little silence, then, “Well… It was just sitting there…” She mumbled.

“See Lana? It didn’t do anything-,”

“But it was at my flower!” Nasha’s voice quivered, as if it was not used to being so forceful, “That thing was doing something to it, and I had to get it away from my flower.”

“Desecrating Nasha’s flower,” Lana spoke louder than Nasha, venom dripping from her words, “Fighting with her down a hill? You call that a trifle matter?!”

“It didn’t attack Nasha, and I doubt it meant to do anything with her flower,” Sona stated.

“Do you have furballs in your ears Sona?” Lana yelled, “It was doing something to Nasha’s flower! Now what it was doing, I don’t know, but-”

“Exactly,” Sona simple put, “We don’t know what it was doing. We already know that Nasha was the one to attack him- which was ok Nasha,” Sona comforted. Nasha made a small affirmative sound, “-And we know that it doesn’t have any weapons with it. So we can’t condemn it right here and have a clear conscious about it.”

“I could…” Lana breathed, sending a chill down Grey’s back.

Continuing on, Sona proposed, “We need to get it back to the village before we make any decisions. We need to keep it secret, or all hell is going to break loose…” they all seemed to silently agree on the last point.

Then it was quiet. Grey barely heard them shifting around in place, but the light night breeze covered up most of their sounds. He could move all his fingers now on both hands and even his wrists slightly. Other than that, he was still completely immobile, and at their mercy.

Nash’s voice pierced the blank silence, “Well, if we need to keep it a secret from the village, and we need to find out more about it, then we need to examine it right here,” Grey’s eyes would have grown wide if it wasn’t a struggle just to keep them open.

Lana seemed to have recollected her calm from the momentary silence, “I agree. It seems to have strange armor on… It looks flimsy, but who knows what’s under it. We need to find out what it is anyway, if it is Fenarian or something else…”

Grey felt like he was an ant under a magnifying glass. The worst part was he couldn’t even make a sound, or move for that matter. Now the three female creatures were toying with the idea of undressing and ‘exploring’ him. ‘What the hell does that mean!?’ Grey thought frantically. It was up to Sona, who apparently was the only rational one there, to decide if they would play doctor or not.

And it looked like she was having a tough time figuring out what to do.