Chapter 131: Love and Thunder.
Andrew sat bolt upright in alarm as his dream meshed with reality before finally being pushed back into the darkest corners of his mind where they belonged.
Still, it did take him a minute to remember where he was, he had spent so long being shuttled between settlements and slave sites that they had all begun to blur into one another after a while.
Instinctively his hand went to his throat where his collar of shame had once sat and for the briefest of moments he actually found himself alarmed to find it missing before his memories caught up with his reality and it all sank back in.
"Pretty human has bad dreams again?" a deep resonating yet oddly pleasant and indeed feminine voice said suddenly causing him to look up.
Stood before him was the large Gatorclaw female who called herself Thundertail who had pulled him from the wreckage of the tower that had collapsed on top of him when their leader Seven had smashed through it like an armoured torpedo.
He nodded softly feeling the shame of it burning his cheeks as he did.
Thundertail stepped forward and placed the large tray she was holding down on the table next to the oversized bed that he was currently resting in before crawling herself onto the bed next to him making it sag under her weight somewhat.
"Pretty human no fear, Thundertail is here now and she will make bad dreams stay away, will keep pretty human safe, me's swears it," she said giving him a toothy but rather warm smile.
Andrew still wasn't sure how he felt about her constantly calling him pretty human as it made it kinda clear that she rather liked him in a way that he was rather surprised about.
But as odd as that was, to begin with, he'd actually managed to get a look at the group that had pulled him and the other slaves out of the town and had asked thundertail about them and as it turned out they were a group of humans and non-humans who seemed to embrace the idea, of not only co-operating for a better future but of embracing love together.
But doubts aside Andrew did have to admit that Thundertail was rather charming in an odd kinda way, she was warm-hearted, kind and very caring, she was also highly protective as he had already seen when a small radroach that had managed to sneak in through an open window had scared him.
To his dismay, he had let out a very unmanly scream when he'd gone to climb out of the bath only to find the great ugly insect sat there on the closed toilet lid looking at him.
It had only taken thundertail a grand total of three seconds to burst her massive frame through the door and into the bathroom ready to do battle with whatever had caused his fear to manifest.
Upon seeing the radroach Andrew had learned first-hand why she was so-called Thundertail as she had managed to smash both the roach and the toilet into dust, though she did get scolded by Seven when he'd had to shut off the water and find a new toilet to install in the place, but it had still warmed Andrews heart all the same.
All his life he'd been a slave, as long as he could remember he'd always worn the collar of shame around his throat, he did have brief memories of a time before that was the case, but other than a few flashes of a group of children in a cave like himself he could remember nothing of his family, or his parents, there was simply nothing but blackness.
The first true memories that were burned into his brain like the brands upon his skin from before he was fitted with a collar were the slave cages.
Cages made from wrought iron stacked atop one another filled with people begging for mercy and for freedom only to find none of either.
A place of darkness where humanity and empathy were completely absent, where raiders and other animals came to trade in people like there was nothing more than a box of Sugarbombs.
Torture, abuse, rape and even worse were rife in those hell holes, so much so that they became an everyday numbing occurrence.
He wondered if the reason that his memories were so filled with holes was that he had simply chosen not to remember the darkness of some of those days if they had been so much worse than the stains that were already on his heart and soul that his brain simply could not bare to recall them.
"Me feels the pain pretty human has in heart, he wears it on handsome face like mask of sorrow, this makes me's sad, me's promises pretty human Andrew that Thundertail will help him to pull mask off so he can show handsome and happy smile to world again instead!" Thundertail said softly from his left as she shimmed her large frame closer to him.
Thundertail was a very touchy-feely kind of girl, to say the least, and while at first, it had rather alarmed Andrew, but now after a few days of being tenderly spoon-fed rather delicious soup and even hand-washed down by this large over protective Claw girl he could see there was no malice in her actions or even resentment, she was only too happy to care for him and indeed seem to actually relish the challenge of trying to make him whole again, it was like she had taken on the burden of saving his soul not only willingly but rather happily and for the life of him he couldn't understand why.
What made him so worthwhile to this big Gatorclaw girl to invest so much time in him?
No one had ever seen any other worth in him other than how much grain he could move or how many bricks he could stack before, so for her to ask nothing more of him than to simply allow her to nurse him was rather a system shock to him.
However, it was more of a shock that a member of a completely different species seemed to genuinely care about his well-being, far more than his own species had ever done anyway.
"Thundertail can I ask you something?" Andrew asked turning his head to look at the massive reptilian female who was lying on the bed to his side looking at him curiously with her large golden eyes.
"Of course, you's can ask me's anything!" she said eagerly.
"Why are you doing this for me, taking care of me I mean?" he asked.
Thundertail looked at him oddly, like his question simply didn't make sense to her.
