By Dyce

I hurt.

That was definitely the first thing I noticed when I woke up. Pain. All over. I felt like somebody had pounded me all over with a mallet, or put me through a mincing machine, or thrown me out of a plane...

{{Waitaminute... somebody DID throw me out of a plane. That bastard!}} Yes, it was all coming back...

Logan and I had gone to do a favour for an old friend of his. Nothing big - the friend was getting leaned on by some guys to let them use his land, and he wanted us to convince them it was a bad idea. I didn't bother with the details at the time. No, it was just suppposed to be a fun little jaunt in a light aircraft into the mountains. We were thinking of leaving the plane at an airfield and heading up to Logan's cabin for a couple of days. Very nice, very relaxing... I winced as I tried to move. I was lying on rock, wherever I was, and I was chilled to the bone. I HATE cold. Worse than anything else, including getting dropped out of planes.

Anyway, the guys doing the leaning didn't take kindly to our interference, so while we were on our way home a couple of them showed up on little personal flyer-platforms. And one of them, the bastard, who has NOT LONG TO LIVE, grabbed me outta the plane and just dropped me over the side. Dropped. Me. Off the side. He's meat. So'm I, by the feel of it, but that's not the point.

{{This is all Logan's fault. HE'S the one who wanted to take the dinky little plan that you can't even fit your whole body inside, but just has the two little seats one in front of the other, and your head sticks out into the air. Oh, sure, it's FUN that way, but you're just begging for some crazed assshole with a flying tea-tray and a deathwish to come and drop you off the side.

{{Am I rambling? I'm rambling. Concussion, probably. Damn. Okay, Kai, open your eyes and answer me two questions. Where am I? And WHY is someone sandpapering my head?}}

I opened my eyes. And closed them.

{{Kai, either you hit your head a lot harder than you think you did... or there's a big green cat licking your hair.}}

* * *

The cave female was definitely having an unusual sort of day.

It had started that morning. She'd been out hunting, and just as she was about to pounce on a nice juicy looking rabbit, a human thing had fallen out of the sky only a few body-lengths away.

The cave female wasn't sure if this was something that happened a lot. After all, she hadn't seen all that many humans, and they might fall out of the sky all the time. On the other hand, she'd never seen humans IN the sky, just birds and the annoying buzzing things that passed now and then. And birds usually didn't look quite this meaty when they landed.

She sniffed at it experimentally. Maybe she wouldn't need the rabbit. Humans didn't taste all that good, but you didn't turn down food that just fell out of the sky in front of you. This one looked small enough to drag home. She poked at it with an experimental paw.

It moaned and the cave female jumped, skittering away to a safer distance, and stared at it. How could it be alive? Nothing that had that many bones sticking out of it could be alive. She edged closer and prodded at it with her paw again. It twitched, whimpering. Yup, definitely alive. The cave female washed her face and considered this for a minute. It was badly hurt... maybe she should just put it out of its misery. No point in letting the pain-taste ruin all the meat.

On the other paw, though, under all the blood and hurt it smelled sort of like a predator. You didn't eat other predators. It could make you sick. And this one was...the cave female sniffled dubiously at it... *probably* female. It was hard to tell under all the blood, but yes, she thought it might be a female. She washed her tail absently and considered some more. So it was a female predator. Not food. An enemy? No, probably not. It wasn't big enough for bear, and while there was a whiff of dog animal around it, that seemed to be a picked-up scent rather than one that belonged. She remembered the weird human-animal things she'd seen once before. Maybe this was one of those things. They'd gotten what looked to her like fatal injuries, then gotten well again almost immediately.

The cave female scratched behind her ear and made up her mind. It might be human shaped, but it was a fellow female, and it was in trouble. The cougar females had taken HER in when she was lost and hurt from the stones the humans had thrown at her. The least she could to was take this human thing back to her lair and clean it up. The holes in it had already stopped leaking blood, and some of the smaller ones were starting to close up.

The cave female carefully closed her jaws on the black stuff that covered the newcomer's body and started the slow drag back to the lair.

That had been this morning. It had taken her quite a while to get it home and clean it off, but it looked a lot better with all the blood and dirt off it. A bit pink and scrawny, but the cave female was fairly sure that pink and scrawny was the way it was *supposed* to look. It was shivering a little, but that wasn't surprising, since it was almost completely bald, poor thing. She lay down beside it, letting its back rest against her warm side as she licked its head-tuft clean. There were twigs and things stuck in it, but she managed to pull those out with her teeth. There was also a thin tangle of something clumping it together near the bottom. After several attempts to wash it straight, the cave female just chewed the whole thing off. That made the now-shortened tuft much easier to deal with. She almost had it neat when the human creature woke up.

It opened its eyes and looked at her, then mad a weird squeaking noise and tried to roll away. Of course, moving jolted its broken paw, and it subsided with a yelp. She laid a paw on its uninjured shoulder and resumed washing the last tangles out of its fur.

* * *

{{I don't believe this. I don't fucking believe this. I get thrown out of a plane, right, that part I'm used to... but waking up with a big green lion licking my head? I'm definitely hallucinating.

{{Hah. Not fooling myself. I can SMELL her... and she's definitely a her... plus a couple of others. And blood, but faintly. Look down at self. Wow. I fall however many thousand feet and go splat and that's all the blood I've got on me? Oh, I get it. My chartreuse saviour gave me a bath. Ugh. I'm covered in lion spit. Wonderful.}}

I tried moving again. "OW!" Okay, so it was undignified. There was no-one listening except my feline friend, and as long as she wasn't attacking. I just hoped that 'ow' wasn't green-lion-ish for 'eat me!'.

Apparently it meant 'put bloody great heavy paw on me and keep sucking on my head.' God, I was starting to feel like a damn lollipop. Still, she had to mass at least twice what I did, and I wasn't in any shape to fight, so I just had to put up with it. It wasn't all that bad, really. Her breath wasn't great, but after Logan in the mornings, halitosis held no fear for me, and she was being very gentle.

I was just starting to feel sleepy again when a slight click of pebbles against each other brought my head up suddenly - and smacked it right into the green lioness's nose. {{Oh shit... she's gonna eat me now...}} I was sure I was a goner then, and me without even a stick to defend myself. But she just shook her head a bit and gave me a reproachful look, then jumped down off the flat rock we were both lying on.

Twisting my head around, I could see a smaller, apparently normal cougar standing there with a dead bunny hanging from her mouth. Female, and fairly obviously nursing cubs, she sniffed at the green one, then lifted her nose in my direction.

Big Green grunted, shaking her ears and shrugging. The smaller female dropped the rabbit on the floor and nosed the green one, then left the cave. Did I mention that we were in a cave? We were. A largish one, too. The little bones - and a few BIG ones - scattered around were a fair indication that I was in Big Green's den. Whoopee.

She picked the rabbit up and carried it over to the big flat place, leaping up with a grace that turned me nearly as green as she was with envy. Getting a look at her, it was fairly obvious that she was a human mutant instead of just a cougar who happened to be green. Her proportions were just a bit wrong for a big cat, and her breasts were small, but they were definitely there, and there was only two of them. Her head and face were pretty feline, but her eyes had a very definite gleam of intelligence.

I was either luckier than I deserved, or I was in big trouble.

She calmly butchered the rabbit, slicing through the skin to get to the good parts. My mouth started to water at the scent of the fresh meat. The trouble with a healing factor is that while it'll patch you up and keep you on your feet, it can't work miracles - like replacing lost blood without a nutrient supply. I WANTED that bunny. Big Green took a bite, then nudged the corpse with her nose, moving it closer to me. I wasn't sure whether trying for it would get me a meal or lose me a hand, though, so I didn't move.

* * *

The cave female shook her head. The human-feline was obviously very stupid. It didn't even know enough to eat when it had lost blood. She nudged the rabbit a bit closer again. Maybe it just didn't like to eat food it hadn't killed itself. Still, it wasn't in any shape to be picky - if it wanted to recover enough to hunt its own food, it would have to eat what it was given.

It reached out a thin, mangled looking paw for the meat, looking at her with its big brownish eyes. She purred encouragingly, and it picked up the small corpse and started trying to worry it apart with teeth and those poor, useless front paws.

It was good that the treefall female had brought a rabbit. The cave female hadn't wanted to leave the poor squashed human thing behind. It might die, which would be a waste of all that dragging. Besides, it might be useful, if it could be trained. Not for hunting, of course, not without claws and fangs, but it would be able to watch young cubs while their mothers hunted and... she looked at it again... it was very clever with those front paws. Yes, it was bound to be able to make itself useful.

She washed herself absently, rubbing her paws over her face. The human creature finished its meat and did the same, licking the blood off its paws and wiping its face. Not very efficiently, but at least it tried. That was a good sign. Scavengers didn't usually bother to keep clean, since dead prey couldn't scent them anyway. A good predator, however, kept her fur clean of death-smells, so that the prey wouldn't scent her as easily. That was sense.

Something the new one didn't have much of, obviously. The cave female huffed out a sigh, reaching out to plant a firm paw on the creature's chest. It stopped trying to crawl away and looked warily at her. She pressed lightly on it and it grunted, flopping down on the rock again. Hm. Fragile as well as scrawny. She'd have to remember not to be rough with it.

It had strange eyes for a predator, she mused, helping herself to the remains of the carcass. They looked more like eyes belonging to a big horned animal or one of the little fuzzy things that lived in trees. She shrugged. As long as it could see out of them.

* * *

I was grateful to Big Green for feeding me and cleaning me off and all, but I _really_ wanted to know what had happened to Logan. Not that I was worried or anything. nah, not me. He's a big boy, he can take care of himself. Probably wandering around looking for me right now.

{{Or maybe he's lying in the wreckage of that plane hurt too bad to move, with no helpful green lions to feed him or-}} a nasty, unhelpful part of my mind worried. I squasehd it firmly. Logan was fine. Of course he was fine. He's always fine.

Big Green didn't seem to like the idea of letting me move, though. I really didn't want her to step on me again. She'd nearly cracked my sternum the first time, and she hadn't even been _trying_. Now she was staring at me while she polished off the remains of the rabbit. Great big green eyes staring right at me. Every single instinct in my body was screaming that this is a _predator_, idiot, get _away_, grab a rock, _defend_ yourself, dammit!

{{Of course, the minute I make any hostile moves she's going to EAT me...}} I tried to move and whimpered. My elbow was shattered. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the last time that happened. Lying in a cave full of old blood scents and predator musk didn't make that one bit easier. It was all too easy to see blond hair and fair skin around those big green eyes instead of soft emerald fur...

Nope, not going there.

Big Green didn't suit her. I tried to focus on thinking of a better name. Emerald? Nah. Too girly. She was definitely a babe with attitude. Heck, she even had ME doing what she wanted, and it's been a long time since _that_ happened. Hm. Jade, maybe? She was the right colour. Yeah, Jade was good. That's what I'd call her.

My elbow ached. {{Not thinking about it...}} My knee had been sprained... or broken. {{Not thinking about that...}} My whole body hurt...

I nearly screamed when a big paw poked at me carefully. I must have been leaking fear scent like crazy. I could smell it. She must have been able to as well. {{Bad move, Kai... bad move... smelling like prey when you're lying hurt in a predator's den is a BAD fucking move...}}

She looked at me with those wide green eyes, and snuffled at me cautiously. I wondered if I could move fast enough to get away if she decided I was dessert. Since there was no way in hell that I would even have been able to duck, it was lucky for me that she just flopped down next to me with the obvious aim of sharing body heat. Heat was good. I like heat. It was mid-afternoon by the look of the sunlight outside, and she was obviously settling down for a nap before going out to hunt in the evening.

There wasn't much else I could do, so I snuggled down against the soft green fur and went to sleep too.

* * *

The cave female yawned, stretching lazily as she opened her eyes. It was just coming on to dusk - the perfect time to go hunting. There had only been a couple of bites on that rabbit, and she was getting hungry.

The prey-eyed female didn't wake up when the cave female jumped down from her sleeping place. She flicked a long green tail and trotted towards the entrance. She owed the treefall female for that rabbit, and the prey-eyed female was going to need plenty to eat and she was still hungry herself... she wondered if there were any moose around. Or at least a good sized deer.

The cave female sniffed at the wind. Yes, there were deer not too far away. And... she sniffed again. Very faint, almost undetectable - the smell of wolf. Sort of.