He reached out and brushed her mind.
>
She stirred, her long, snake-forked tongue flitting out reflexively to taste the air. She opened her eyes.
> she said, her voice soft and fond.
He did, and he knew it had to be a little annoying, even if she kept forgiving him for it. It was just that sometimes it was hard to tell if she was still breathing.
Touching her mind should have been enough to reassure him, but it wasn’t. He kept needing to hear her voice in his head.
> he said sheepishly. >
>
This left him aghast, which was at least a distraction from the hunger and fear. >
>
>
> He could feel her smiling. >
His hellhound objected to all this in the most strenuous possible terms. It was a fierce, powerful predator, a fiery-eyed appraiser of souls, one of the most fearsome creatures in all mythology, and if it snored, it was sure it snored in an intimidating, awe-inspiring way and that its nose remained perfectly still the whole time.
Logan kind of agreed with it, but there was no getting around how much he liked the idea that he’d made Iz smile.
She thinks we’re cute, he said to his hellhound.
It glowered at him, the embers in its eyes smoldering with distaste.
Well,it said huffily,that still doesn’t make it true.
His hellhound’s defense of their innate, terrifying dignity was interrupted by the sound of the food chutes in the animals’ pens opening.
The rich smell of meat filled the air, and Logan’s stomach clenched.
Iz let out a desperate, keening noise.
Focus. Try to distract her.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to. Nathaniel the winged greyhound did it for him.
Nathaniel’s mind clumsily pushed up against theirs, like Nate himself was jumping up against them to request some petting. Logan felt Iz’s attention stir, like the psychic equivalent of a furrowed brow.
> she said.
Nathaniel walked to the edge of his cage, his jaws clasped almost daintily around a large hunk of bloody meat.
> Logan said. >
Nate’s tail beat back and forth in a kind of affirmative wag, and then he tilted his head back and flung it sharply forward again, tossing the meat as far towards them as he could.
It landed just a few feet short of the bars of Iz’s cage, falling there with a thick, wet slapping sound.
Nate looked at it and whined miserably, rustling his wings around in obvious agitation. He promptly turned around and padded back to his food, returning with another hunk of meat, obviously readying himself for another toss.
If Logan thought he would have made it, he would have let him try again, but the distance was just too great. Apitchercould have maybe hurled a steak from Nate’s cage to theirs, but a greyhound couldn’t.