She Opens Up

It is not until the following morning that the fox-kin girl decides to speak to me again. She sleeps in far later than I do, so I decide to fumble around trying to make her a decent sleeping bag. I didn’t think I’d be missing my opposable thumbs so soon, let alone for such a ridiculous reason. Luckily my enhanced senses mean I hear her waking up and can hide the mess I’ve made before she can see it. Only once I hand her some fruit for her to eat does she finally break the silence with a simple question.

“Who are you?”

In that moment it hits me that despite spending who knows how long choosing my new form and abilities, I forgot to pick a new name for myself. After all, Megan is dead. My brain goes into overdrive going through dozens of terrible possibilities until I get one that is halfway decent.

“You may call me Nabat Al-Tunayn. And if I may ask your name?”

“Lenna.” she quietly responds.

“It is nice to meet you, Lenna. I’ve been lonely for a long time prior to our meeting, so forgive my lack of manners.” There is a hint of pink on the fo- Lenna’s face. Perhaps she’s the shy type? I can use that to my advantage. “Can we at the very least be friends? I don’t want to be alone again,” I cry through crocodile tears.

Leena hesitates momentarily before speaking again “Y-you won’t have to be. I-I’m alone too, I’ve always been.” she stammers out.

Oh this is too perfect. A naive, lonely, easy to manipulate girl. Even back on Earth she’d have been child’s play for me, but here with my new powers she won’t stand a chance against me. I just need to keep stringing her along. “Really? You have no idea how much that means to me, hearing such a thing.” This goes on for some time, with me telling her honeyed nothings as she slowly opens her heart to me. As I suspected, her village cast her out recently as she had no special skills or a family to take care of her. I’m the first person to show affection to her in some time, meaning she’ll quickly become attached to me. Eventually, I let it slip that I was once human and Lenna asks me how I ended up here. Seeing no reason not to, I oblige.

“I don’t know very much about that, actually. Dark forces stole me away from my home in the dead of night and transformed me into what you see here. Most of my power was stripped away from me in the process, and I ended up in this very forest. I hold little attachment to my old home, and am ready to start a new life here, preferably with you at my side.”

There was not a single falsehood in what I just said, although I purposely misled her using phrasing and by omitting many of the details. After that, the conversation begins to turn towards our short-term future, planning out the next few days. Our first priority is making a proper shelter as the clouds slowly roll in…