Flashback A Chance Encounter (Caelum)

[Alea Davenport]

The goat made it too difficult to stay mad at him, so Alea didn't bother trying. Besides, he had a peace offering: a new game she had not tried before. Sure she was always sneaking around, but that was self-preservation (from fish guts). She'd never had anyone to play with before.

She concentrated on the man-goat's form, trying to figure out how to mimic it. Not understanding what he was going for, she spread her feet wide apart, leaning slightly to one side which was more comfortable at the moment, only bending the knees when he mentioned it. His last instruction was confusing to the point of frustration, and only her allowance for him being a goat prevented her from interpreting the game as an expression of malice. At his instruction, she wrapped her arms around her body, and tried to think really hard about where her hands were. It didn't occur to her that time that legs counted as limbs too.

She did her best to follow him, but she was concentrating so hard on the strange instructions that she was even less graceful than usual. She waddled over toward the edge of the rock--fortunately the next one was only a couple inches away--and awkwardly swung her hip around to plant one foot heavily on the next stone. From there, she was stuck. She was straddling two stones, contorted in a truly uncomfortable position that, at this precise moment, following the rules of the game, she wasn't quite sure how to get out of. Her face was a mask of all kinds of unpleasant emotions, but it never occurred to her to ask the goat for help. She wasn't used to anyone wanting to help her.