Primitive Instinct: The Journey Home

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when Diesel and I started walking closer. They were already butchering the two enormous creatures and sleds pulled by people were being loaded with meat and pulled along to be cooked, smoked, whatever it was that these people did with that much meat to keep it from going bad. Obviously, with such big creatures, the work was messy and grisly to witness, but I wasn’t a stranger to that kind of thing. I figured there would be some kind of confusion or shock, finding some random person and her dog out here and very poorly supplied, but human nature would come into play, and I’d have some kind of assistance. Hopefully.

The shocking part was that, as I got closer, these people just kept getting bigger. A lot bigger.

“Sweet cheesy bits,” I breathed as shouting echoed from the hunters and company and the work of butchering was stalled as weapons were picked up once again and aimed at me and Diesel. Not at all what I was expecting, but beggars can’t be choosers and I’d be a fool to walk away from probably the only people around.

I held up my hands away from my body and clicked my tongue at Diesel, signaling him to lay down. It didn’t at all mean that he wasn’t going to attack, but the position was reassuring to people and that led to deescalating tense situations like this.

“English?” I called out as some of the braver hunters moved closer. “Does anyone speak English?”

They looked fierce and confused, which was an interesting combination to see, but it did nothing to help me relax. No English meant no communication and judging by the spears and bows, I wasn’t banking on there being any kind of phone or computer.

Diesel grumbled near my feet as one of the hunters slowly stood up from the crouched defensive stance and held his spear in a much more relaxed manner. He lifted a hand and approached slowly, and I could feel my eyes going wide as he got closer.

First, it was a ‘he’ because none of these lunatics were wearing heavy clothes. In fact, they made what I was wearing look like a parka and snowsuit. They all wore some type of soft hide for pants, and I assumed some kind of woven material for shirts. My money was on mammoth hair. The males, I noticed, wore something more like vests with no sleeves and an open front, exposing bare chests.

Second, these ‘people’ were not human. If the bright golden eyes that reminded me of an owl wasn’t enough to give it away, and the fox-like ears poking out of his black hair went unnoticed, the huge feline-like paws, complete with opposable thumbs, were enough to convince me.

“Oh God, Diesel. They have paws. What the actual hell is going on here?” I asked my pet desperately, praying he somehow developed the proper vocal cords to answer me.

The closer this guy got, the more I looked up to him. And I mean that literally. He had to have been close to, if not more than, seven or eight feet tall. He had the same double elbow legs that Diesel had and the paws that were his feet were probably as big as my head. There was fur covering both sets of paws and while I couldn’t see how far up his legs it went, it did fade to skin about halfway to his elbow on hi.

Diesel growled and the hunter’s pupils blew wide before narrowing to pinpoints and relaxing slightly once more and I slowly lowered to my knees, holding the gaze of this strange human-like creature, until I was all the way down.

“Shh, Dies. It’s fine,” I quietly soothed the protective pooch and started stroking his head and body to help him calm himself down. “There is jackshit either of us could do against one of these people, so let’s make friends, not enemies, okay?”

After a while of this, Diesel stopped growling and even lifted his head slightly to flick his tongue out just enough to touch my wrist, telling me that he was okay now.

“Good boy,” I smiled at him and gave him another good rub between the ears before standing up slowly, watching the strange, non-human person carefully. “I don’t suppose you know what I’m saying, do you?”

I gestured from my mouth towards him, the universal sign of speaking to someone and his big brow drew down as he slowly shook his head once.

I groaned and looked upwards, before I pushed the hood of my jacket off my head and used my teeth to pull one of the socks off my hands to run my finger through the sweaty strands that had stuck themselves to my face during my hike inside the mammoths trail, since I was smart and let the big guys do the work of clearing and packing snow for me to walk across easier.

“Great,” I muttered, running through the different languages that Rudy taught me. I didn’t know a lot, but if they knew any language I spoke, then it would help me figure out where I was, at least.

I went through the list of most likely to be in the northern reaches of the northern hemisphere and got no hint of recognition before I moved along to literally every language that I knew even the slightest bit of until I hit rock bottom and still got nothing. I even tried sign language. Granted I knew maybe two or three words of most of them, but even with my undoubted massacre of nearly a dozen languages, one or two familiar words should have been enough.

I ran my hand down my face and groaned again when I ran out of options.

The male spoke, then, gesturing towards my hands. I assumed he was speaking, anyhow, but it didn’t sound like any form of speech I knew. It was like the syllables were stretched out into a lilting warble with the beginning of each new break in the word's syntax sounding like a gut-punch of consonants. Diesel, however, seemed to like it, since he sat up and tilted his head back and forth before he did ′the thing’.

Anyone that knows anything about huskies knows two things about them. The first is that they like to pull things. They’re sled dogs for a reason and that was that reason. The second was that they were very, very vocal. They ‘talked’ with their howling and grumbling and Diesel, thankfully, didn’t do it often, but when he did, he was impossible to miss. Whatever breed was mixed in with his obvious husky lineage was something enormous enough to lead to over a hundred pounds of dog and a very loud voice.

“Oh, sweet God above,” I groaned as Diesel went to town with his ‘talking’.

The hunter, it seemed, was finding it amusing, since he looked on the verge of laughter until I put my hand back on Diesel’s head, right between his ears and he looked at me, happy faced and wagging tail.

“Are you good now? Got it out of your system?” I asked and he hung his tongue out, satisfied. “You sound like a dying walrus, you know that, right?”

I looked back to the hunter and shrugged. Dogs are going to be dogs.

The hunter spoke again, and Diesel’s tail wagged slightly, but I had no clue what was being said so I just shook my head. He stopped and stared at me, looking thoughtful before he looked over his shoulder, then back to me. He looked like he was deep in thought about something and having an inner debate before he gestured for me to follow him.

“I hope my ability to pull off Charades has improved since I was eight, because I have a feeling that I’m going to need it in the very near future,” I told Diesel as we approached the big hunter and followed him along the line of sleds once again being pulled behind more of the large people. “And I feel so puny. Best stay close. I feel like they could easily step on me like a bug, but you... Lock heel.”