The Other Way Pt 2

I figured it was time for another installment of my alternate reality short of my trilogy Emperor's Blood, 'The Other Way.' In this regrettably last part, we get to see into Eva's head a little and we start to find out how a carnivorous drakoon kitten (the drakoon word for baby cat and for baby drakoon is one and the same - their language is so much more simple than ours) survived without its own kind, especially its parents to look after it. It was from this story and pondering Ki's remarkable survival as an infant without his real parents that I decided that drakoon are born independent, as reptiles are though still needy enough that they need the protection of their parent(s).

These are the glory days of Ki's young life. It is here, in his youth that he is strongest and most capable, but this is also the turning point, because like the dinosaurs in at the end of the Late Cretaceous, traumatic change is coming for him...
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The paper in her hands wasn’t promising. Eva bit her lip, noting direly that her foster son was still barely managing to keep above failing in most of his academic courses, though he had excelled, getting the top grades in the entire school at Equestrian where his instructor commented that Ki should really be in a grade or two above, he was so good. He certainly wasn’t being challenged by his equestrian course. The instructor recommended the seven year old as a potential for making his career with horses. He’d be good at it. Meanwhile in Art, Ki’s grades were very strong, but not the best and the instructor comment was ‘…shows general disinterest in drawing anything besides horses, which he is very good at for a seven year old, but I’d like to see him draw other things too. His dragon was good, even though it was purple. It had a striking resemblance to the Fallan God Riveera, the sky dragon god of the afterlife with the tail spines Ki drew it having.’

Ki was ever a peculiar child. He was moody, as highstrung and flighty as a sand horse yet as stubborn as a cow while at the same time he was quiet, so quiet that sometimes you could forget that he was there. He had always been quiet though, for as a baby he had been unnaturally silent, so silent that Eva and Mattie had both worried, but all for not, because eventually when he had spoken – he never cried or bawled; you had to gage his mood from his facial expressions to see if he needed anything – he had spoken better than most four year olds, at only six months from his adoption. Of course they had had no idea how old Ki really was, but from his tiny size, Eva had guessed not much older than Hunter. At first the baby Ki had seemed rather put off by his new surroundings and had crawled under the bed many times before they had thought to block it off. Now, at seven, Ki was still crawling under the bed to hide and worse, because recently he had discovered a way onto the roof and there was simply no coercing him down from there.

He was also a very picky child. As a baby when they had offered him milk he had turned his nose aside just like a food critic. Ki had refused to drink any of it and had clamped his tiny jaws shut when they had tried to give it to him anyway. Eventually Eva had given up; perhaps Ki was older than she thought – and she had soft boiled an egg up and while not altogether sure that what she was to try was healthy at all for the tiny orphan, she had mashed the egg up, than offered it to Ki who had barely sniffed it before gobbling it up. This had seemed alright, until Eva had gone to Seamist to ask for advice with feeding the fussy baby to make sure the egg was alright and a woman had told her she’d be better off with carrots. Ki had taken only one bite of that, barely a lick before he had rejected the rest of it and refused to ever eat anymore until at least a year later. Eva had tried all matter of vegetables with him, since they were supposedly better, but her son had not wanted vegetables. He had wanted egg. Worried that he might not be getting his proper nutrition, Eva had then cut up some fish from her own dinner one night, very fine and against the better judgment of mothers everywhere, she had given it to the seemingly newborn orphan, who, Eva realized in a heartbeat, liked fish even better than he liked egg. Deciding to trust that the baby knew what was good for him, for he would have turned aside from anything else, Eva had next tried chicken with him, then a bit of beef and mutton.

Ki had taken to meat like a falcolf to the sky.

Next Eva tried mixing small amounts of vegetable into Ki’s eggs, which worked, but the baby didn’t seem to like it as much. While Hunter was still being nursed Ki was getting a full set of teeth and Eva set out to introduce him to more solid food which Ki rarely liked unless it was heavy in protein like the egg. He didn’t like bread or grain. He hated oatmeal. He did eat cheese, after a careful introduction grew to love it, so long as it was the tasty, salty kind that wasn’t bitter. Ki absolutely refused to consume anything bitter. As he had grown up he had stayed picky, disliking raw vegetables and constantly trying to sneak anything they gave him that was vegetarian to his brother, complaining that it would make his stomach hurt. Hunter never complained, but Hunter was large and hale, as healthy as a horse with an appetite to match. Hunter ate nearly anything. Eva was lucky if she could convince Ki to take a lettuce and salted butter sandwich, even with threat of punishment hanging over his ears and it was becoming painfully apparent that Ki would rather starve than eat even the most well dressed of salads. If there was any egg or cheese cubes in the salad, Ki could be trusted to ferret them out from the humble greens which he would then do everything in his power to ignore as he ate the tastier bits.

Ki was an abnormally finicky eater, Eva had long decided, but there were other things which were strange about him which she had no explanation for. She could not explain how he had never caught even a mild sniffle, all the times that Hunter had been sick. She could not explain that dreadful incident the first Krissmus when she had turned around to see him standing under the turkey in the fireplace, his socks aflame yet seemingly unaware of the fact. She had screamed and had been terribly relieved when she had seen that his feet were completely unscathed, but then she had been a little disconcerted by this later, for time and time again Ki demonstrated that he did not have even the slightest notion of when things were hot or when they were cold. He didn’t seem able to feel temperature. More confusingly, he didn’t seem effected by it at all and he could go out in mid winter wearing next to nothing for hours when the temperatures were at their worst when most children would have froze and come back absolutely unaffected, as if it was summer with not even any frost in his hair. His nose never ran when it was cold. Hunter always returned with his nostrils running like a broken well pump and hoarfrost stuck to his hair, but Ki always returned pristine. He never even got cold hands.


Eva had to make Ki layer up in the winter, fearing that people would call her a bad mother and whisper that she was an unfit parent for the orphan if she let him go about as he wanted. In summer it was a struggle to keep a shirt on the boy, because she didn’t want anyone to see how his ribs stuck out, or how painfully thin he was no matter how much she fed him. Ki seemed unable to get fat, even enough to cover his sharp bones. Eva made a compromise with the child by making him very light summer clothes, enough to cover him but still let him feel the wind. Ki seemed to very dearly like feeling the wind though Eva had no idea how he still could with no sense of temperature.

Eva put down Ki’s grade paper and rubbed at her temple. So many of his grades were close to failing. She knew he was smart – he could beat her at chess, which everyone agreed was very difficult – but he didn’t seem able to apply his intelligence to most of what was taught in his schooling. Eva gloomily checked his score for Fallan and saw that that at least was one academic course that he was good at. He wasn’t terribly awful at Science or Biology or History either, but he wasn’t great. He was rated very good at English, so long as no serious grammar or creative writing were involved. Ki didn’t care for technical things.

The subject of all her thoughts rushed in like a hurricane, skidded to a halt beside her, heaving and panting, then opened his hands to show her that he had caught a little green grass bug. Eva barely had a chance to look at it before he was rushing off to show her sister, than throw it out the window, all the while breathing as hard as horse after an entire day of hard riding. Eva frowned at that, stepping out to catch him as he came back and feeling his skin beneath her fingers burn, as warm as it was stone if heated by a fire, an unnatural heat. Nobody normal got this warm after merely running. Ki giggled at being caught and hugged her arm, clearly wanting to play with her, but Eva was worried.

“That’s enough roughhousing Ki. Come help me make dinner.” said Eva, hugging him from behind so that he couldn’t see the worry on her face.

“But I wanna play!” complained Ki, writhing in her arms like a puppy. A very, very warm puppy. Eva could feel his body heat through her thick woolen sweater.

“After dinner.” promised Eva. Ki twisted and peered at her, his large inquisitive eyes as golden as the twenty-four karats that her mother’s wedding ring had been made of, a ring lost in Eva and her sister’s childhood. The loss of the relic had always haunted Eva’s father – it had come from Earth and had been a family heirloom. Ki stared at her, sniffing, suddenly no longer hyper.

“Momma what’s wrong?” asked Ki and Eva blinked, astonished as always by her foster son’s uncanny perceptiveness. He always knew exactly how she was feeling. Exactly. Mattie and Hunter too. Ki never just asked how any of them were feeling – he just seemed to already know. When Mattie had been angry at Ki for chasing the chickens when he was three Ki had somehow avoided her for a week straight, hiding in all manner of places until Eva had finally managed to trap him so that Mattie could reassure him that she didn’t hate him. Ki had been so emotionally wounded and traumatized from that experience that for a year he had barely gone within twenty feet of the chicken coop and had absolutely refused to collect the eggs for another two, going in through the gate to the run like he was walking to his death, all the while acting like a cowering dog fearing a beating. As far as Mattie had said, all she’d done was yell at him for spooking the biddies. Instead it seemed she’d put a fear of divine retribution into Ki’s heart. He still wouldn’t touch a chicken unless it was dead, which was rare, since they only ate the cockerals that they didn’t want. The hens they kept until they died of natural causes, then they traded them to be made into dog food.

“What are you worrying about Mom?” asked Ki, his face turned to hers, tucked under her chin.

“Nothing you should worry about.” said Eva as gently as possible, putting him down and kissing him on the head, then spreading her arms to try to make him excited. “Come help me wash potatoes!”

“I hope you’re okay.” said Ki worriedly, staring at her gesture rather blankly. Eva grabbed his hand and led him to the sink, grabbing a stool and putting it down so that he had a leg up. She turned the crank on the water pump that loomed over the stoppered brass sink and good spring water gushed out. They both drank a glass of water each as the sink filled up, then in went the potatoes to be scrubbed, golds from the autumn before, a bit wrinkly and eyed, but still good enough for the frying pan. Ki scrubbed them with the dish brush while Eva set to work cutting away the bad bits from the potatoes that passed her foster son’s meticulous inspections, putting the potatoes she finished in a bowl with a bit of water to keep them from browning from oxygen exposure. After all the potatoes were clean and edited of inedible parts Eva gave Ki a plate and a grater at the table while she built up the fire in the stove from the morning meal’s embers, then with fresh butter she greased the big old cast iron frying pan that her mother had taken so much pride in. Flicking water onto the stove’s metal surface, she tested it for heat and when the water spat back at her, she moved on the frying pan, throwing in another spoonful of butter. Ki gave her his first plate of potatoes which she threw in the pan, tossing in some dill weed and sea salt for seasoning.

“More potatoes Ki!” said Eva and Ki quickly brought her plate after plate of gratings until all the potatoes were grated and in the frying pan, sizzling in the butter. Eva turned the potatoes over and over, making sure they were evenly seasoned and crispy on all sides, than she directed Ki to go get Hunter and Mattie, as well as some eggs. Ki was torn between being leery and excited about the latter demand, but he obeyed anyway and soon as their family was sitting down Eva was cracking tiny bantam eggs into the frying pan beside the potatoes, the yokes as orange as sunset. One more dash of seasoning, a flip, than Eva served everything out onto four plates and placed them before each member of her family. Making sure everyone was seated and comfortable, Eva took her place, than they held hands and thanked the planet and the horse goddess Spiira for the bounty before them. They thanked the god of catastrophe for letting them have it.

And, I pray, Eva added silently, that my son gets better someday.

In the flickering light of the tapers, dyed green for Spiira, they ate their dinner.

Eva tried not to notice how the candlelight made her son’s eyes glitter like a cat’s.

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In this sequence, one other thing which I got to do was explore the diet of northern Escavians and think about how they lived. Like the Irish in historical times, Escavians use potatoes as well as other hardy vegetables that keep well for survival and the recipe described for fried potatoes is actually one that I use, only I use olive oil for my pan instead of butter. Olive oil wouldn't be very common on Rimer, if it exists there at all, so since there are plenty of cows and sheep about, Eva uses butter. I thought pretty hard about this part; potatoes are plants after all, and thinking about Ki's carnivorous biology, I wondered if this would be okay. In the end I decided it was; potatoes in this sense are 'predigested' - aka cooked, so the starch in them has been broken down, so while the carbs in the potatoes do nothing for him, he can at least have them run through his digestive tract without them causing him any pain. Also, he's eating eggs here too, the item from which he has mostly survived his childhood through. Eggs are a perfect protein rich food, so by eating them, Ki's at least somewhat meeting his youthful need for protein and luckily, if there is one thing which farms have a lot of, it's eggs. Ki has access to an almost limitless supply of them and I can imagine that on nice days, when the tide is out, Ki and Hunter might run out onto the tidal flat and gather food there.

Time and time again I've questioned Ki's survival and what he can and cannot eat. The answer is, he can't metabolize most of what humans eat, because most of what Escavians eat is imported from Earth. Just like chocolate, garlic and onions are all deadly toxic to dogs and cats (NEVER feed them to your pet - NEVER!) there's a great many alien things from Earth which just don't sit well with Ki's stomach or the stomachs of most other native carnivorous Rimarians. Come on - it's logical. Humans are still basically eating a diet from another planet, so why would specialized creatures like the native carnivores be able to eat their food? Carbohydrates of any kind do nothing for carnivores (that's right and that's why your pets should be eating grain free diets) and carnivores don't have the capacity to digest starches, (only hardcore herbivores can really do that) so it makes sense that Ki would be allergic to a lot of the things which the humans would be eating, especially the salad greens, which are raw. His poor digestive tract just can't handle the hellish culinary roughage known as salad, nor could he eat a potato if it was raw.

To date, I have firmly decided that drakoon are allergic to at least spinach, possibly also garlic, onions and cacao as our pets are.

Also, the reason Ki won't eat anything bitter? Bitter things are often poisonous!