I Am A Flyer

Kidnapped

Jett's eyes slowly blinked open, his mouth stretching wide in a yawn. He reached out with both hands, trying to stretch out the sleepiness that invaded his body. Strangely, he didn't feel rested and his muscles ached as if he'd slept on a hard dirt floor all night. Had he rolled off his pallet while he slept?

Wait a minute; he was on the floor.

Why wasn't he in his bed? Why on earth did he sleep curled up in the corner? Jett blinked in confusion for a minute before it suddenly hit him. The stranger! His head jerked up and his gaze shot over to where his pallet lay –

 He froze.

Cool gray eyes met his own, trapping him in their icy depths. Jett went rigid. The strange man's helmet was gone, having disappeared to who knew where. Now propped up on one elbow, he merely regarded Jett impassively. The man had the strangest features Jett had seen – a young, rugged face crowned with cropped white hair.

There was no way to tell what he was thinking – for all Jett knew, the man might have been planning to skin and cook his host for dinner. Or maybe just give him a grateful hug for saving his life.

. . . Probably option one, Jett morosely thought, growing extremely uncomfortable beneath the weight of the stranger's stare. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to bring him here.

Jett swallowed nervously, afraid to tear his eyes away from the stranger. Barely aware of what he was doing, he pressed his back against the wall of his hut in an attempt to get as far away as he could. Yet he still couldn't break their locked gazes, couldn't move - the man was simply watching him, but he might as well have been sitting on top of him.

For a long moment, he struggled against rising panic, his heart jumping into overdrive. Then mobility suddenly found him and he leapt to his feet.  Grabbing his unstrung bow, Jett rushed outside, letting the three deer hides fall quietly into place over the hut's entrance behind him.

He paused just outside the door, trying to calm his nerves. The cool dawn air helped to clear his head, as did the peaceful silence of the wildlife around him. He let out a shuddering breath.

The man had one frightening stare. It was nearly cold enough to freeze the blood in Jett's veins. Couple that with freakish silvery-white hair  - old man hair – and there was an A-class super creep. Jett wondered what he had been thinking yesterday. Maybe the village boys had done the smart thing when they ran away to tell their daddies. 

A frown crossed his face. That still didn't mean that the creeper deserved to fall into the villager's hands, though. The Elders would probably string him on the giant oak tree in the middle of their little market square, while making up all sorts of false reasons why he had to die.

Just who was this man, anyway? Why did he fall from the sky, and why was everyone so afraid?

It made no sense at all. Jett sighed, his brain growing tired from all the thinking. What a mess this was turning out to be. The sooner the strange man left, the better.

Feeling a bit better, Jett leaned his bow against the side of the hut then went over to the stone fire pit. Kneeling down, he used a stick to poke around in the ashes, seeing if there were any hot coals.

As he did so, Ravia swooped down to land on his head. With a friendly crawk she nestled down, her talons scraping gently against his scalp. She began preening. Jett barely noticed her arrival as he was used to her comings and goings. Since the day he'd found her beneath her nest, she had immediately latched onto him as her favorite perch and nothing he tried could dissuade her.

Throwing on dry grass, and then progressing to splinters of wood, he got the fire to a healthy, roaring size. He worked quietly and methodically, creating a stew of sorts out of the liver he gotten the day before.