Chapter 29: Human of superior intelligence

She dared not tell him, but she was afraid he'd go out and hunt them the way he had hunted that Eduki animal. "You have to understand; they feared for my soul and my sanity."

"These woumbers would whip a female?" Pure outrage seemed to show out of every pore in his body. Again, his eyes flashed between black and red and his skin changed color, becoming copper and then green and copper so fast if she had blinked, she would have missed it.

Melisende decided not to ask what a woumber was. If it was something evil that walked the Earth, she really didn't want to know. Having to accept that aliens, as he called himself, existed, had opened up the question of what else existed on this Earth.

She drew in a deep breath. Sometimes, her ability to remember everything was a curse - every lash she had received fresh in her mind as if it happened an hour ago. "When I was three years old, I read a scroll out loud."