Frightful Weather part 2

Man that was a good dream. I haven’t slept that well in ages. I guess I better go report to Oswald and the rest of the research team…
Right, I’m in a cave in the middle of nowhere with some unknown Mamono. My brain begins to click and whirl. Earlier I was too busy trying to survive to remember why I was out here. That unknown Mamono…could she be it? I’ll talk to her about it later.
 I seem to be alone, covered in animal furs instead of Ki’s silky warmth. It’s pleasant…but not nearly as good when she’s wrapped around me. I yawn, and flex my arms as I get out of the animal skin bed. Everything seems to be working. Looks like I was able to avoid the worst of frostbite. I still have some blisters on my hands and feet, but all my fingers and toes are still attached.  Hell I can even wiggle them! It’s amazing what you take for granted.

The room itself is a fairly small section of the cave hewn into a round shape. The animal skin bed lies in the middle, with Ki’s various personal effects strewn around. The only way out is a narrow corridor.

My clothes are in a folded pile by the bed; I quickly put them on and set off down a corridor to find my host. Torches line the interior of the corridor, giving me enough light to see. As I walk, I smell something delicious. She must be cooking a meal.  I can feel my stomach rumbling. It’s been a long time since I’ve last eaten. I don’t even know how many days I’ve been asleep.
The corridor eventually widens into a large expanse. The room is actually well furnished. There is what appears to be a kitchen with a gaslight stove and several cabinets. There is even a dining table. On the other side of the room is a large bookshelf, with a desk. The floors are covered in fur carpets, and there is even…a couch? This place is surprisingly homey. I’m honestly impressed Ki was able to put all this in here.

Speaking of my host, she’s at the stove; stir a ladle in what looks like a large pot of soup. Honestly, I was so thankful to be alive I didn’t pay too much attention to her looks. She’s definitely stunning. She’s about my height, but with the large width of her furry paws and legs, it gives the illusion that she is taller. Her skin is a creamy, coffee-like complexion, and her stark white fur seems to accent it, drawing out the darker, rich color of her skin.  Much like before, she is clad in her fur bikini but this time, she is wearing an apron to protect her skin.  The effect it has on her figure is magnificent. The apron accents the sides of her curves, simultaneously hugging her large, shapely breasts and drawing attention to her firm hips and cute, round butt.  She sashays her rear to and fro while stir the pot, singing some kind of song in a language I’ve never heard. It at once makes her seem warm and inviting, yet exotic.

I’m speechless for a couple seconds before I choked out a hello. “Hey, uh good morning Ki.”
She turns around from her work and shoots me a warm smile. “Good to see you up and moving about Ed! I take it you slept well?”
I pull up a chair at the table and twiddle with my thumbs while I try not to stare at her ass. This shouldn’t be so hard. “Yeah…that was the best sleep I’ve had in years. How long was I out?”
“Weeeell about two days. I came to check on you once in a while and gave you some water. I’m sure you’re hungry, so I started this the other night. Hope you like Ox and carrot stew!”
My stomach gurgles. “Oh man, I think could eat an entire ox right now.”
She giggles. “I tried that once, I don’t recommend it.”
I laugh. “I think the trick is to pace yourself.” I look around the room. “This place is really nice. Did you get all this stuff in here yourself?”
She shakes her head. “No, my dad helped a lot.  Most of this stuff is either hand me downs from him or furniture he picked up in town. I might live in a cave, but I don’t want it to look like a cave, you know?”

She pours two bowels of soup and sets one in front of me while she takes the other. “Dig in! I hope you like it!”
The hot broth warms my insides as I quickly down the soup. I barely even chew on the meat or vegetables; I’m so engrossed on filling the void in my stomach. Ki looks on in bemused silence. She pours another bowel as I finish the first, and passes it to me. “Well I’m glad to see you like it.”
I take the second bowel and devour it almost as quickly as the second. I pat my stomach as I am finished. “Ki, I have to say. That was damn good. And I’m not just saying that because I was starving.”
She giggles and rolls her eyes “Flatterer.”

With some food in my stomach, I begin to start thinking about my next move.  But first I want to learn more about my host.
“Ki, why are you here by yourself?”
“I used to live with my parents and my sisters, but it was just getting too crowded. I moved out here to get away from all the noise and have some privacy. But it’s been kinda lonely. I see my family once in a while, but there aren’t a lot of new faces out here. The only time I see someone new is when a stranger or an adventurer gets lost. I usually just guide them from a distance, but you were so close to death I couldn’t just leave you out there.”

I want to ask her more about her family, but before I can say anything Ki speaks up.
“Sooooo, what are you doing here Ed? I don’t think an American would be wandering out here without a good reason? Are you a mountain climber or something?” She pulls her arms up to her face and gives me a curious grin.
“How do you know I’m American?”
She starts to speak something in what sounds liked Russian.
“I don’t follow.”
Then she says a little bit in French, and finally in the same language she was using to sing earlier.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t understand any of that.”
She laughs “That’s how. When you were half awake, I tried finding out what language you spoke, and you’d only respond to English.”
I sigh. Man I hate living up to stereotypes. “Yeah I’m American. I’m part of a research team. We’re a group that finds isolate, undiscovered Mamono. If they aren’t hostile, we catalogue them and spend some time living among them. Then we give them the option of integrating into Human-Mamono society.”

She bristles at this slightly. Her carefree disposition becomes more guarded, and I can tell she is nervous. Ki doesn’t seem to be aware of how much of her emotions show through her body language.
“O-oh, well that’s very interesting…so have you had any luck finding any unknown Mamono here?”
Oh don’t play coy with me. “Yeah I think I find a new species a couple days ago. Very large white furry hands and feet, creamy brown chocolate skin, roughly matches up with the cryptid reports for a creature known as the yeti aka the abominable snowman aka the Mi-Go. I think you might have seen one? “
She’s sweating bullets now, her eyes dart from side to side as a crimson blush spreads across her face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m uh… just a mountain Kakuen!”
“Then why are your hands and legs so much larger than the rest of your body? And why don’t you have a tail?”
She tries to make a poker face. It fails miserably. “I uh… lost it?”
I put my hand over my face. “Good grief Ki, I know you’re a yeti. Or whatever Mamono species roughly corresponds to what we thought was the yeti.”
She seems to sag a bit, deflated by my comment “Yeah, I’m a yeti. But you’re not supposed to tell anybody!”
“Why what’s the big deal? We’re an anthropology and Mamono relations team. We aren’t going to hurt anyone.”
“It’s my dad… its complicated okay? “She folds her arms. First time I’ve seen her look so bothered.
I reach out and gingerly touch her arm “It’s okay, you can talk to me. If you need me to keep your existence a secret, I will. I just want to know what’s going on.”
 I can see her cringe.“Let’s just say my dad doesn’t have much respect for researchers or strangers. It was kind of a risk saving you. Dad is…I guess you could say he protects the yeti living in this mountain.”
“So there are more of you…”
She gulps “I wasn’t supposed to say that…I’m such an idiot!”
“Ki I promise, I’m not going to tell anyone about your or your family. You saved my life. If you want me to leave, I’ll pack up my stuff and go. I’ll tell the team I explored the ice caves and couldn’t find anything other than some mountain goats and monkeys. We’ll leave this area, and you’ll never see me again.” I get up from the table.

She looks up at me, face contorted into worry “No, please don’t leave! You’re the first person I’ve ever met from the outside. I don’t want you to go!” She pokes her fingers together, trying not to look me in the face. “I get so lonely out here by myself.”
She gets up and encircles her paws around me, pulling me to her chest. She’s sobbing lightly. “Ki…if I’m going to be a burden, I should just go… ”
Suddenly, I feel weak in the knees. I begin to sink to the ground, but Ki catches me and pulls me back up. My skin feels clammy as well. She carries me over to her couch and sets me down. My body shivers as she pulls a couple blankets over me.
“Thanks… guess I’m still not 100%.”
“I’m not letting you leave till you get better.  And that’s final!” She’s completely changed. Earlier she seemed scared and unsure of what to do. Now she’s not taking no for answer.

She brews some tea and I enjoy a quiet day of resting and conversing with this beautiful yeti girl. I have to say, there are worse places I could be stuck while I recuperate. She tries her best to keep my mind occupied, mostly with questions about the outside world. What’s my hometown like? What are other Mamono like? How can I stand living in a place that isn’t always snowy? The questions pour on and on. But I don’t mind, she’s really curious. I think she’d be a good candidate for a research assistant if could get her approved.  I feel her warmth as she sits next to me on the couch, her arms and body wrapped around me to provide warmth and comfort. She insists it is to make sure I’m getting the proper heat I need, but I suspect she is enjoying getting to have physical contact with another. I don’t understand why a girl this physical is living by herself, even if she does butt heads with her parents.

“Ed? Ed? Earth to Ed?” she moves one of her large paws up and down in front of my eyes. I must have zoned out for a moment.
“Huh? Sorry what were we talking about?”
She giggles, “I asked you about your research.”
I grabbed a massive leather notebook out of my backpack “This is kind of my pet project. Most of the research notes get compiled and entered into a database…this is kind of my field journal. It’s honestly more of a scrapbook at this point. It’s just for personal use, no one else sees it.”
Her eyes sparkled as she looked at it. “It’s so big…How much stuff you have in there?”
“Every species of Mamono I’ve helped discover. I’ve got pictures, sketches; a couple Mamono gave me some scales or fur to put in there. Take a look for yourself!”

She opens the book and begins to flip through it, stopping to comment on some of our more interesting discoveries.
“Oh wow, this one likes scary!” she point to a picture of a salamander like Mamono with bright iridescent scales, the background of the photo was covered in fire.
“Yeah that was Nieeva. She’s a Cheruffe.  They’re pretty frightening. One of the strongest Mamono we’ve ever encounter outside of dragons.  We thought Cheruffe were natural disasters until we ran into one.”
“How did you even get close enough to talk to one? You said you only catalogued Mamono if they weren’t hostile.”
“Turn the page”
The next page had another picture of the Cheruffe girl, but this time she was smiling and holding up a small baby with her husband.
“Cheruffe are terrifying, but whenever they are around their mates, they are the most docile monster girls around. Nieeva was even kind enough to donate a scale. Well, she did try to break me in half; I guess that was her way of apologizing…”

Ki turns the page, this time showing the face of a beautiful inari-like Mamono. “Don’t humans already know about inari?” she asks.
“Ah, that’s Shin. She’s a kumiho. Lot nastier than an inari, much more likely to take a couple fingers off you if you cross them.  They are…pretty intense. Shin was dead set on making me her husband.”
“Why didn’t you take her up on it? She’s really pretty.”
“Honestly? She scared the piss out of me. She was a bit too overprotective. I indeed up playing matchmaker for my friend Cody and got the two together. They’re married now with a litter of cubs. See this is them.”
I turned the page, the picture showed Shin and Cody holding hands and smiling. Both of them wore the same expression, and shared the same strange iridescent purple pupils.
KI smiles “Wow, they look so happy together.”
“Kumiho mate for life and literally share their hearts with their partner. I don’t think I was ready for something like that.
Ki sighs and clasps her hands together. “Oh, that’s so romantic! I hope I can find someone I love that much.”
I shoot her a playful smirk “Maybe if you didn’t live in an ice cave in the middle of the Himalayas?”
She puffs up her cheeks and ribs me hard with her elbow. “Very funny!  Just turn the page, wiseass!”
I laugh at Ki’s outburst. Teasing her is a lot of fun.

We flip through a couple more pages of the book, Ki eagerly asking for the story behinds the Mamono and how I met them. After a while though, she turns to me with a curious expression.
 “Ed a lot of these girls seemed interested in you…How many of those Mamono did you date?”
“Uhhh, none. A couple tried, but I thought it would be unprofessional.”
She gives me a suspicious look and arches an eyebrow. “You just said it was for personal use? I didn’t know you were this much of a perv, Ed.” she teases.
“It’s…not like that. I don’t just want to have this be for research material. Every Mamono that contributed to this book has been someone that was important. They branched out and tried to become part of a larger community. Every Mamono group we studied and catalogued was full of real people. This book is a reminder to me that we aren’t just doing this for science, but to bring people into a larger community where they aren’t looked down on for their quirks, but accepted for their uniqueness.”
Oh god, diarrhea of the mouth. Whenever someone gets me going about my research, I become a regular Kyle Broflovski. She probably thinks I sound like an idiot.
“Wow, that’s so cool!” She looks at me with a bright expression, her eyes practically shining. “I want to be a part of your book too!”
“Ki, you told me you weren’t supposed to tell anyone about your existence!”
“Well duh, but you said this was for personal use right? So no one dangerous will know about it! Can’t you just do some quick sketches? Pleaaaaaase?” she clasps her hands and gives me her best imitation of a begging puppy.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea…”
She quivers her lip and begins to make whimpering noises. “Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase?”
I ruffle her hair. “You’re too much! I’ll think about it. But for now I need to get some sleep. Feel like I’m about to pass out.”

I scratch my head. “Uhhhh, where am I going to sleep? I guess the couch?”
Ki wrinkles her nose. “Nonsense, you’re sleeping with me. It gets cold in here at night with no stove on.”
I feel kinda awkward at the idea of being that close to Ki again while I sleep. “Well uh...don’t you think that’d be kind of weird? It’s not like we know each other that well.”
She gives me a faux stern look and raises an eyebrow. “Al, your dick was touching me earlier. I’m sure spending the night in bed with me isn’t going to be that awkward.” She winks. “Well, for me at least.”
Yeah. Yeah that is true. “Fair enough.”
She gets up off the couch and extends her paw. “ Okay, Let’s get you to bed then.”

I begin to get up but I wince and begin to feel the familiar weakness in my leg. Ki grabs me and pulls my body into her arms in a bridal carry. She’s very strong, something I hadn’t noticed before. She’s so gentle with me, it’s kind of amazing.
We make it back to her bed and she  sets me down among the furs.  She strips off my shirt and pants leaving me in just my underwear. I try to protest but she sticks a finger over my lips. “My body heat will keep you warm. Plus fair is fair, I’m not sleeping in much either.”
I don’t see any point in arguing. One thing I’ve come to learn about Ki, when she sets her mind to something, it’s going to happen her way.

She gently tugs the furs over me before extinguishing most of the torches and scooting in next to me. I try to turn my back to her, so I won’t invade her privacy. She takes it as permission to spoon and wraps her arms around me, and pulls me into her chest.
“Wah! Ki what are you…”
She giggles “Do you want me to stop?”
“No, no I don’t. You feel really nice.”
She puts her chin on my shoulder. “Good, I’d be kinda sad if you didn’t want to cuddle.”
I’m glad my back is turned to her. Otherwise she’d see my blush. “Ki, I assure you. I can’t think of a single straight man that wouldn’t want to cuddle with you.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Man, I hope that wasn’t too forward. “Ki? You okay?”
I crane my neck around to look at her. She’s blushing too. We stare at each other for a second before we both laugh.
We both let the silence wash over us a bit. I let my mind drift for a bit, wrapped in Ki’s warm paws. This is bliss. I can feel her breath gently push over my skin. The only sound I can hear in the cave is our heartbeats. I’ve never felt so close to another person before. I barely know her, it feels strange. But this just feels right to me.
“Ed?”
“Hmm?”
I can feel her body tense up. “Thanks for keeping me company.  It gets lonely out here. I…I think I like you. Is that weird?”
She’s too cute. “I don’t think it’s weird at all. I like you too.” I wrap my hand over hers. “Let’s get some sleep okay?”
Ki nods and I feel her relax.  I’m lucky to be here with her. I try not to think about whatever going on with her father that would force me to leave.  For now, I’m just going to enjoy my good fortune.