And, More Details On What I'm Going To Do Here:

Due to some personal reasons and lack of personal time, I'll publish the chapter a lil later... Be patient a little, my bunnies 🤞🫰🐰

Assure, I haven't disappeared. It's just that March 12 was my Birthday — and I got caught up in the holiday hustle and bustle, as it happens. I'm a bit burnt out, so I moved the publication date — but it will definitely be delicious ☺️😋💗💞🎊💐

Yeah, somehow I'm still alive. And

due to hormonal imbalance, I received a recommendation from the doctor to review my diet and consume more animal protein 😶🍽️🍗

Well, I really felt very bad in the last few days. I don’t know yet how exactly, but I will make adjustments...

Just some fun about me and my hyperfixation. To take a break from writing the next chapter of "Creation", I... watch Nomae edits and videos of baby chimps. Yeah, this universe holds me captive😅

"Creation" Masterlist Noa x Fem!human reader (updated 08.05.25)

Synopsis: Watching the seasons change, the Moon and Sun circle across the sky, and your mistrust disappear, Noa waited for you to let him into your heart - just as he kept you in his from your first meeting among the blood, silence and leaves.  A feeling grew between you two.  Sometimes it was painful - but day by day it brought closer to something beautiful... Like the universe itself.

Songs for series:

Purity Ring — Begin Again,

Mother Mother — The Sticks

~Prologue

~Chapter 1. A scream that almost sounded

~Chapter 2. Moment that stretching out for minutes

~Chapter 3. Fantasy Vision

~Chapter 4.1. Forest sprinkled with poison

~Chapter 4.2. Forest filled with fragrance

~Chapter 5. If time had been kind

~Chapter 6 will be posting 23.05.25

The way he thuds his fists here! I need more angry Noa 😍

Please! 🥺🤭

Just so you know what I'm made of 💖

Song: DPR IAN — Ballroom Extravaganza

"Creation" Chapter 4.1. Forest sprinkled with poison

A/N: I got behind schedule because of an unexpected feeling of illness, loss of consciousness and a visit to the city hospital... The adventure was so-so. I will monitor my health more carefully so that this does not happen again. I hope the events of the chapter will justify me

Word count: 4,1K

Warnings: brief mentions of death, hints of rape, sexual oppression and abuse, use of children, themes of parenthood and breeding, mentions of blood, injuries and mutilation, swearing, animal torture (oh... it will be fine, I promise you - because I consider the last point inhumane and it is only necessary for the plot twist)

🎧 Power-Haus, Christian Reindl, Lucie Paradis — Gefion

Crystal-clear sky. White with a dash of blue and grey. Not a cloud, but the feeling of mischievous rain is hovering in the air.

You were three or four years old then, not more. You didn't pronounce letters well, were distracted by this and that.

And you keep this memory far, far away in memory, like a ward.

Sitting on your father's shoulder, you hold your mother's hand. You point your parents to the strawberry patch visible at the fork in the paths, like an experienced lookout. Your parents take heed to your babble with laughter, your father lowers you onto the short grass, flattened by the summer breeze, and your mother hints you how to pick berries from the bushes. The handbusket you hold is filled in a matter of minutes.

Happy, with your plump palms stained with berry juice, you hand the dainty to your mother — a gesture, that she praises your efforts, is full of pride. She ruffles your unruly curls. Lifting you into the air, your father places you back on his shoulders.

Parents questioning you about the recently learned words, asking you to name everything you see — you swing your legs and name every grass blade, every bug on the way home.

Scarcely the slanted, moss-covered ruins could be called home. But here you lived the brightest years of your childhood.

The door creaks as you stomp inside, hallooed out to your mother and father. They are standing behind.

The sun is hiding, but the rain doesn't drip.

Parents look at you with a love that you will never be able to forget — and will barely find anywhere else.

***

The turned-down edge of a yellowed, worn book. The letters on the pages are ghostly. The illustrations are bright.

Your foster parents always encouraged your curiosity — for your seventeenth birthday you received a book about the world structure. A book about all the phenomenas and inhabitants of a planet that has been continiously changing — there, upstairs — for many billions of years.

You kept book with carefully and cautiosly. Just like every story told by your foster mother, imbued with wisdom. Just like every instruction from your foster father, aimed at save you from scourges.

A year later, running away, you didn’t manage to take a single thing. Not a single memory.

These parents also look at you, buried under layers of metal and earth, with love. It's a different feeling — but just as eternal. And that you'll also barely some day find.

***

You wake up with a naive gust to get at least a little warmth of your mother's hands from your hair. Straighten out yourself, lying in a nest warmed by the sun — this warmth can also be settle with. Albeit with a creak, even with aching sadness.

Since your blood parents died, have passed thousands of days, filled with darkness. Since your foster parents died, have passed months, and your heart is howling.

The book was left there, in the rotten underground prison. One of the bastards dropped it on the floor of your room. In a fight where life was at stake, you still managed to take the most valuable things from your involuntary home. Only one was mattered — hide, strike a blow, and get out of the shackles to the surface. Had to sacrifice the book, in order to run without looking back. The pages and the binding were probably already trampled. While they were prowling, sniffing out your footprints.

However, the grey backpack with one strap, in which you had raked the remains of the past, also remained somewhere not far from their lair. You held it to clouding tightly — until fell off the bridge.

Rolling tumble, smearing in mud, you prayed — if only they wouldn't find what belonged to you. If only they wouldn't plundered it, wouldn't messed it.

If only backpack remained lying somewhere in the grass.

You'll have found it, you'll have be able to... If it hadn't been mortally dangerous to go back there.

The guilt that you were unable to retain even one complete memory of your former life rises in your throat. Everything is lost there. Your daily, worn-out clothes. Your comb with bent teeth. Your locket turned into a bracelet. Notebook. Prayer book. Drawings of how you remember your blood parents. Photo album of how you remember your foster parents. Old camera with several empty rolls, that could have been used to capture something important... You had to try to catch at least something... But what is lost cannot be returned.

You look at the rising sun.

Providing your face to the rays crumbling across the hut.

Tears don't flow, eyes don't sting. And lungs don't cramp in desolate spasm. Maybe, this is what means reconcile.

During the time you spent in the clan, summer had almost blossomed from the spring buds. The daylight hours had increased, the working hours — too. It was strange to realize this. You had asked only to wait out the cold night, without hoping for anything more. Now you've lived here for the rest of the cold spring.

The shades of the seasons, while you were freezing among cruelty and heresy, did not change at all. Spring remained elegant and tender, like a wreath woven from wild flowers. Summer remained playful, like many-colored pebbles glittering on the lake bottom.

Raising your head to the sky, admiring its palette — and look around, searching for differences from the past. Except for your broken growing up, everything is the same. Like in distant childhood memories. Can't even believe it.

Everything is exactly the same. Even the feeling warmth of mother's hands.

The warmth of a mother's touch, carreeing through the roofs of the huts and through the space under open sky.

Through the past, the present, and, definitely, through the future.

A touch that came before civilizations and wars. A touch that cannot disappear as long as families exist. Unforgettable, unshakable. Repeated in a multitude of meanings and forms... Once upon a time, these were the hands of your own mother, who silently told you all the basics for a child's mind necessary.

Now these are the hands of a female chimpanzee lulling her cub.

Yes, the same one who hurried to move away from you, saving the most important she has - her children. Now Kantis and her husband (it's incredible, but in fact, apes unions, bonded with rituals, and not with spots of seals, are mostly stronger and durable than humans), who perceived you with hostility, are much more favorable. As you managed to find out by chance, the age of people and apes is calculated nearly the same - which means that Kantis was a not much older than you. But at first, with grumpiness, she let you under her wing. Like an unfledged chick.

You admit, that this is how it is.

The shells cracked on you just as they did on those eaglets you watched with awe among the sticks, rods and softly carpeted perches. Even if those shells were not visible, you were afraid to climb out of the egg.

You needed help, from start to finish, to feel like you weren't out of place. The decision was made unspoken. When both Kantis's little cubs, Nober and Febri, who can only slither and babble, took their first clumsy steps towards you... More and more often you visit them, for a short time or for many talkative hours, to remember the feeling of family, unbreakable kinship.

***

The cuts healed, leaving almost no scars. As Dar had said, you no longer dragged your feet, but ran like a little deer. Together with the apes children, having memorized all the ringing names. Especially the names of the five mischief-makers who attacked you with curiosity and naivety. Insightful as adult Kaidy, modest Lum and her little brother Lup, thoughtful Elan, and, of course, brave hooligan Paco. Answering their pouring like rivulets questions, you found real joy. Forgetting about the bothering wounds, you played unknown games with them — and taught them the games you knew. It was an honest, pure exchange.

The apes children were no different from the human children — and you were both a strict adult and a noisy child with them at the same time.

Uncorked yourself from the iron jar just recently and re-learning the outlines of everything familiar, you responded to many things with the same childish delight as the five apes cubs. They didn't draw out dark secrets out of you — they only asked for exciting stories and catch-ups. It was easier for you to find with them a common language.

Watching the incessant, peaceful flow of weeks, you yourself sometimes questioned them with genuine curiosity.

This seemed to you that, what would make you happier.

As much it possible while hidden from everyone mourning.

In the dungeon, too, in your free time from back-breaking work, you did not miss a single chance to mess around with the children. Here you eagerly awaited the moment when you could bring at least some slightly advantage. But this moment never doesn't coming.

Everyone was busy, but the Elders were in no hurry to assign any businesses to you. Even though you yourself asked for responsibilities. Even though the crumbs of kindness that you kept within yourself and joyfully gave to the cubs, softened the initial sharp edges. Still, even though you received shelter here — mistrust outweighed virtue.

Mistrust settled in Vikima's blind, transparent pupils. She not drive you away. She called all people grief-sending spirits. The teen-chimps, who adore her stories of the past, told you of the fresh grieving that lay in her wrinkles. She had lost three sons and a husband. Fault for that — human and the disfavor of fate.

Without daring to express it, you shared her sadness. And, as if seeing what was happening in your soul, the Elders replaced their disguised, justified anger on mercy.

Once you've adjusted and healed your wounds, assured Dar, you'll be able to do work that you can handle.

You were flattered.

You were guessed, that Dar means taking care of the children. Just as like you dreamed.

And then, maybe you'll join the healing. Elders know about this your skill. The opportunity to mention it already presented itself, when one of the cubs got a splinter and you helped to take it out, without a single childish tear. But it's better not to rush events.

***

So far, under the constant, mentoring supervision, you have learned to live as is commonly in the clan. And surprisingly, you have done well.

The traditions of the apes, maybe, been foreign to you — but their culture and beliefs were certainly not about vandalism and widespread wrecking. They revered Mother-Nature and all her bountiful gifts, lived in harmony with her powers. In contrast to the settlement where you could never exist. There was no respect for anything that existed. The teachings of that place hummed: tear out, hack away. Destroy.

Resounding in a bass voice heartless choir. Consisting of hundreds of pests, tormenting you in nightmares, and only occasionally interspersed with pictures of an unblemished childhood... Here this raging choir died down, giving you brief moments of peace.

Finding yourself in the womb of forest, among strangers who were being vilified by gossips, you seemed to breathe for the first time in many, many strained years.

Let in not air, but entire grassy expanses inside yourself, your consciousness.

You couldn't know in advance, that what evil tongues were telling might turn out to be true.

You couldn't know nothing, until you convinced it personally.

This, of course, would require many more seasons. But despite their wariness, the apess welcomed you with cordiality. And when you were about to leave, gathering your meager belongings — Noa suggested, that you stay until you found a better place. And you, and he knew, that such a place simply didn't exist — and from anywhere you would be like a patch on a cloth that did not need to be patched. This was an offer not to huddle as a guest, but to settle down forever. With this wording between the lines you agreed. Here you were not subjected to any violence, not even an indirect hint of violence. Here you were granted, to some extent, freedom of thought, speech and action. In the settlement, leniency was granted only to slaves, living commodity as a reward, when the slave owners achieved whatever cruel aim.

There were not many aims and needs for which girls, young women and women were needed there. Only two. Small, painstaking labor and childbearing. If your escape failed — you'll would have suffer, like pretty, until one of these men who had no right to be called men disgraced you in the most painful way. The rapes would have continue until your womb bore a child. If it were a girl — she would be left in your arms, waiting for her to become a resource. If it were a boy — he would be removed to a compartment located just below the surface as soon as you finished feeding him with breast milk. It is difficult to determine which fate is worse. A doll for plaything or a mannequin for huntmastering?..

Children were born rarely, but there they meant nothing. Children were just instruments.

Attachment to children was conditional. Parental love was frowned.

A crime against all the precepts that has bequeathed God... Aimless childbearing and equally aimless labor. If from the chosen victim could be obtained neither of these  — or if the result did not satisfy the tormentors — victim was thrown into the garbage. Exhausted and used. It was a hellish cycle. It was written in blood and flesh law...

Regarding life as burden, you had never before considered, whether you would ever want to have your own children. Here you thought about it in the silence of the night, ringing among the animals calling.

There was no point in looking around too intently. In every hut, in addition to the nest that served as a bed, there was something reminiscent of a cradle for newborns. Your hut was no exception. This uncurtained cradle distracted you from your work, all your thoughts circled around the cradle... You know, there are more such seeds-prisons scattered underground, made of an alloy of cold metals and glass. These seeds will not germinate through decades or through centuries. You are doomed to loneliness, cutting yourself off from imprisonment — and from human men.

Maybe, it's for the better?.. What life could live children who were born not for unconditional love, but for the preservation of a morally fallen race? Hardly a happy one.

This aim was disgusting to you, but understandable. The desire of the bastards, who got what they deserved, to possess you was at least explainable.

You were already a working unit, serged and darned for days. And you would have become a good mother, even if you had no chances to give your children a childhood with a clear sky above their heads. Now you are deprived of the chance for motherhood...

But, given the theoretical possibility of helping in the apes manger, would you be so useful? Several generations of females manage this perfectly well without you. Your help is as great, as a grain in a sack. Not to mention that here you are useless as a vessel for conceiving and bearing offspring. Everything in you is breaking under the weight of questions and breaking through, for the first time in months, selfishness. If you stay here, you will inevitably end up an old maid. No matter how you look at it, are you needed here for any aim?..

But, otherwise, why would Noa teach the stubbornly silent you everything he himself knew?.. Obviously, he made your stay in the clan easier. He shared with you the tricks, necessary for survival — as he himself let it slip, the second time luck will not save you.

Indeed, it was not luck that saved you, but he, Noa. One of the apes. One of those, whom people admitted as evil incarnate. One of those, who did not drive you away, when all the people around were deaf to your despair. So, you were convinced only that the slander is a lie. Because you see in apes much more humanity, than in the hateful dungeon, teeming with unhappy people and inhuman cruelty.

And, living side by side with apes, you want to strengthened in this conviction.

You would like to thank Noa even, perhaps, more — only thanks to his contradictory act you see, what this whole world can be. Only this act of his already roots your withered, eaten away by fear, like parasite, hope. But the oath, that rumbles in your head, prevents you from saying just one word. The fact, that he is not a human, does not cancel your prejudice. You will not utter a single word, intended for a man. Even if his thoughts are pure.

It feels wrong to use gestures for explaining — but your tongue feels like it’s falling into your stomach, when you try to even imagine a conversation with Noa. And your lips feel like a needle is piercing them, pulling tiny stitches of a nonexistent thread.

At your silent request, Noa tells you what these strange, small wooden blocks are that have caught your attention. It's sort of ward. You can find them in every hut, as you noticed when you looked in on Soona. Trinket with a mystical meaning. And everyone in the clan makes these blocks for themselves single-handedly.

Tiny blocks laid in a row in your hut were made by Noa.

Without knowing why, you get in earnest angry when you find it out — and you ask Noa to take them to his own home and teach you this skill. So that there in your room will be nothing foreign.

If you said it out loud, would sound absurd.

But even from the crumpled gestures, your hands nervously twitched.

It was further proof of Noa's good intentions towards you, which you couldn't be angry about. But you couldn't pacify the vague indignation. How and the crudely expressed movements of fingers.

To your sincere surprise, Noa once again does exactly as you asked. By sunset, not a single wooden trinket remains in your hut. The next dawn, Noa begins teaching you how to handle wood.

If you dared to ask for such a stupid little thing there, among the boors seething with anger and bile — on your face would already be turning blue hematomas.

Here you shake off the sawdust, use one of the gestures you learned over the spring to ask Noa if you’re doing well — and twirl in your hands a crooked short peg.

A snarky laugh is heard. Jeru and Nigig, who's else, damn...

They are no better than what is happening in the place you fled from. They have been trying so hard to ridicule you, to vomit more vileness at you since the day Noa brought you into the clan. No matter what they say, you remain silent. Not because Noa insisted on such tactics, although you did listen to his advice then. You just do not consider Nigig a representative of the female kind. You could have answered her a hundred fold more painfully, but there is no need.

Jeru keeps Nigig around not as his woman, but as his empty-barking henchman. He treats her like a mutt. She behaves accordingly, indulging in his unreasonable attacks.

Listening to their dry conversation one day, you are perplexed. They have nothing to talk about, if not to insult. They are united only by malice. For a brief moment, you wonder — why do they live under the same roof, if their union is based on the desire to verbally mock someone, and not on the desire to while away the evenings together, to raise offspring together?..

Such abscesses are present on the body of any society, you suppose. Without them, good treatment wouldn't be appreciated.

Spending even a sound on them both — squandering. You put the unfinished trinket aside, folding your arms across your boobs. You close yourself off from the male's gaze rummaging your body, and don't understand, how his companion allows it. You involuntarily step behind Noa's shoulder, he growling, bristling fur and losing his patience. You look through their grimacing foreheads.

"In a long time haven't seen... such muck" Jeru laughs, grinning. And you can hear from his intonation, that he's not talking about your unskillful work, but about you.

"Don't amuse me... What else is capable of this... bedding?" Nigig looks at you dismissively, stretching out the last word into syllables.

"I'll pretend that you... didn't yipedd nothing. Now get lost" Noa replies, shielding you with his back. The indignation in his voice makes you stupefied.

Wooden block fall to the ground, when Jeru tries to grab your wrist.

Without a second thought, Noa knocks him down. You scream and stand rooted to the spot, and Nigig's trail went cold. Who would doubted it.

The second time Noa fights is because of you, damn him. You take a step back, toward the wood chips and shavings. You beg to stop, as splashes of someone's blood are drif apart. Sound of crushing bone. Noa stands up, shaking himself. He's unharmed, save for the blood trickling from his nose. Beating he gave Jeru, on the other hand, was more than serious. Tucked tail, that's what he lacks.

Your impressions of what happened are controversial. There is no one here except you, Noa, and the future wooden amulets. He clearly didn't get into a fight to maintain status, his or yours.

Noa protects you selflessly. With arguments and fists. In every way. From that night, appearing as a saving shadow, and to this day. Even if this aim is not voiced — now it is understandable to you. But why?..

It takes a few moments to indecisiveness, but you hesitate, for what feels, like a whole summer. You walk up to Noa, quickly wiping the blood off his face with the back of your hand. And run so fast, that you can't catch your breath, when you get back to your house. Those are still not the words you want to say. But at least it's something.

***

You dream of a backpack. Nothing but a backpack and the area where you dropped it.

A steep hill right behind the lake, surrounded by thin-armed trees. Cobblestones, small pebbles. Tenacious bushes. A bridge...

***

In a dream the realize, that you went back for your backpack and lost it again very close to the place where Noa found you, gives you unprecedented strength.

You'll find. You'll be able.

You run at your two legs, as if on a galloping horse. Along the way you fall into the dried on sun mud, suffocate in a column of rising dust. You see a stone bridge in sight. You run faster, hoping to meet the almost lost memories...

Hear a squeak, from which your heart is ruptures.

Like sick infants cry. Only more shriller. As if death was breathing down neck again, pacing somewhere nearby...

Beneath a low-growing gooseberry bush, rendingly screaming a rabbit. Its hind leg caught in the jaws of a trap. Noa towers over it, aimed a spear.

"Hey, owl!" you yelling at the top of your throat. Louder than the poor rabbit. Louder than the birds flying in all directions. Louder than a weapon falling with a crash.

Hands down, Noa looks straight at you, turning around. You're holding a sharpened spear. You're learning fast. And you're filled with dissapointment.

"Yes, Noa, I'm talking to you! It was you, who spoke of owls and rabbits. So you were feint? Well, I'm glad, that I saw your deception with my own eyes"

Forest sprinkled with poison of your words.

These weren't supposed to be the first words you spoke to Noa. Not at all. You rehearsed them in your head, wandering through the swirls of ornate phrases — waiting until you were ready to speak them without fear. Now you're waiting to see if Noa will pick up his spear and if you strike a blow again.

Leaning down towards the incessantly squeaking lump, you open the trap with incredible effort. When Noa tries to help, you don't let him near and hiss.

"Or you move away, or I'll stick your hand there!" you say in a weak, loud whisper as he reaches for the rabbit you pick up. "You wanted to kill him..."

"I wanted to kill whoever... set the trap. Look. Too big for... a rabbit" Noa says confused. You hide the wounded animal in your hands, seeing yourself as if in a reflection. "Someone is hunting echo"

"Creation" Chapter 1. A scream that almost sounded

A/N: It was difficult in a good way. No more, no less

Word count: 4,2K

Warnings: Brief descriptions of murder and death, mentions of blood and injuries, swear words, child kidnapping, hints of rape and sexual harrasment (oh Jesus...)

🎧 Senn — Lone Wanderer

The wind blows the twittering of birds across the endless plain. Its gusts are benevolent, soft - but instead of bird trills, you, having woken up, hear heart-rending cries.

The ones you heard every day for almost a twelve years.

The ones in which you yourself risked losing your voice very soon.

Still not daring to open your eyes, you involuntarily wrap your arms around Noa again - after all, you have nothing else to grab onto except him. You exhale a scream that almost sounded.

If you weren't sitting in the saddle now, you would curl up into a small, unnoticeable ball.

Like that morning.

***

It was not yet dawn when they burst into your home on a hill that was probably now trampled. A dozen men in dirty uniforms, weapons at the ready. They killed your silent mother, who loved you unconditionally - and her every gesture became a voice in your ears. They killed your fearless father, who protected you with strength and wisdom - and his every word became a silent anger flowing through your veins.

But then you were too young to see your parents die. You were too young to fight.

Running to the attic, closing your eyes and curling up in a ball in the closet, in a pile of clothes - all you could do while strangers mockingly talked to the bodies of your parents.

Just a few minutes ago they were alive... And now they were getting kicked by dirty soles.

A single sob gave them away where you were hiding. The wooden closet door shattered into splinters. You shuddered as they told you in a disgusting chorus that you had a cute face. One of them twisted your arms and you burst into tears. He covered your mouth with his cruel palm and blindfolded you, ordering you to be obedient.

Even then you wanted to bite off the rough fingers that touched you.

Tied up tightly, you shuddered as one of them, then another, scooped you up and put you down in God knows where. You knew from the sound of the wheels on the gravel and embankment that it was a cart. It was impossible to tell where they were taking you. You had lost the way to the house where the memory of all the good things that had happened to you. And that made tears roll down your cheeks again. But you cried silently, so that they wouldn't hear.

In the dungeon, the blindfold was removed from your eyes - but you saw nothing more. Only blood and the glassy eyes of your parents.

There you were given to people for training.

But these people, contrary to the laws, became attached to you. And were as kind to you as possible. Your foster mother taught you to adapt to the present and the future, whatever it might be. Your foster father taught you to use your inquisitive mind and defend yourself from encroachment.

After a few months, you were given work - you sewed and patched clothes in a cramped room.

And everything you were taught came in handy.

The times of day and seasons here, many meters underground, were indistinguishable. And only by the holidays marked on the distorted calendars nailed to the walls, you could count how old you were.

The numbers were becoming increasingly frightening. Not only you. There were many such stolen girls here.

Here, working as assistants, you had no time for chirping girlish conversations. You had no time for friendship. If you managed to talk to girls like you, it was only about the danger lurking around every corner. Older and younger than you - they were all afraid of the blood that appeared on their clothes every month.

It meant only one thing - sufficient "ripeness". That's what they called it. Then they took the girls downstairs, locked them there, tied them up and raped them. Sometimes they involved their sons in this. Sometimes the girls they abused were their daughters who had been born and grown up here. When you found out about this by accident, you were bitterly glad that you had no relatives in this decaying pit.

They glorified the human race, they wanted to revive God's plan. They shouted about it through megaphones. The screams coming from below were unbearable... You don't know a single prayer, but you know - it was blasphemy.

It was Hell, depriving you of reason and dreams.

The first time you saw the red stain spreading on your skirt, you wanted to cry. But you couldn't cry. Just as you couldn't go up to the blessed world. Just as you couldn't refuse food that looked like scabs. Just as you couldn't know too much. Just as you couldn't find a way out of the iron leper box.

Having propped up the door of the sewing closet with a wooden box, you burst into tears from helplessness in the face of your foreseeable future. You prayed that your tears would remain among the needle cases and junk. But, damn, one of them heard and swung the door open.

He didn't do anything then. He just remarked on how pretty you were when you cried. You wanted to bite off his omnipresent ears.

Months and years now dragged on like centuries. They had long ago noticed you.

They circled around you like a pack. Only drool did not drip from their beards. It was scary to work and return to the assigned room, through the hooting and darkness.

When one of them sniffed you lustfully, lifted the hem of your dress and grabbed your thigh like a meaty game - you pierced his prickly, bristly cheek with a needle. Blows rained down on you.

From now on, when you heard the approaching shuffling of boots, you hid anywhere.

Under the bed, among the hanging, matted sheets. Or in the kitchen, among the pots filled with stinking brew. Or among the things that their previous owners would no longer use... Sometimes it helped against the peals of men anger. Sometimes - no.

Then only running away was your salvation.

The dungeon was a labyrinth, and as you ran away, you remembered, studied each corridor. The flickering dim light. The turns leading to nowhere. The room, from top to bottom filled with sharp objects - suspiciously clean among everything that was happening in every corner.

They found you from everywhere. But they wouldn't look for you there. Knowing their intentions, your foster mother told you about this room. She worked there with several other women - those who God did not give their own children. Those who had a lot of time for this frightening place that smelled of caustic alcohol and poisonous solutions. Children conceived on the lower floor were born there. Wounds, burns, suppurations were treated there. And too severe beatings. Entering there without orders was strictly prohibited. You understood what would happen to her if you violated this prohibition. You avoided this room.

Until the ill-fated day that crossed out everything. That day they chose you. They told your foster parents about it. And killed them, having eloquently thanked them before that for their contribution to the development of the commune.

They, these inhuman people, took away your childhood. Growing up. Learning. Twilight, glare. Joy. They took away the last thing from you.

You had nothing to lose. Except for your damn virginity, which they decided to feast on without haste. Dumb boors. You won't give it to them.

The accumulated anger that filled you to the brim finally spilled out.

Reaching the glass room was a miracle. Opening a similar glass cabinet and taking out scissors from there - not at all like the ones you used to cut the tough fibrous fabric - was a gift. Stabbing one of them to death was too insignificant. Yes, it was he who sniffed you, letting out dirty jokes. But it was not he who squeezed your body until you had bruises, who pulled the knot of the bandage over your eyes. It was not he who killed everyone you loved.

Confused tracks in the crooked corridors, you did not even notice how a sharpened kitchen knife pierced your shoulder. You did not notice how you bit into someone else's slimy skin with a squeal. You did not notice how you spat out someone else's disgusting meat and rushed into battle with a vengeance.

Desire to get to the surface was stronger than you yourself then...

***

Inside, from the throat to the stomach, it’s as if small bones are scattered, scraps of food scraping the insides - it’s so painful... You simply fell asleep from the shallow but numerous wounds eating you alive - but it’s as if you’ve returned back to the dungeon. Into the darkness.

From the tormenting memories, you almost fall off the slowly walking horse. Your stomach is twisted with a frightened spasm, horror crawls up your spine. Noa palm catches your slipped fingers at the very moment when you remember that now you will not return to the dungeon.

You convince yourself that this will never happen again, and now the past can find a loophole to you only in restless dreams - and you don’t trust your own convictions.

The horses walk slower. So, the clan, scraps of conversations about which you heard, is already nearby. Many dragonflies with bright wings flutter near the lake spilling in the shadow.  Before, you had only seen them in a colourless, time-worn children's book - you had looked at the pictures so often that the pages had turned to dust under your curious touch. Now these strange insects are so close, and you are enchanted by their shimmering dance.

The apes are talking about you again. Worried about you. They don't say a single bad word about you. You try to read between the lines - but there is no hidden meaning in their actions. And you don't know what to think.

"What will the elders say? If they... refuse?" listening to Anaya's words, you understand that this is indeed an important question.

"But who else can... help this echo? And if so... What will we do?" Soona answers him, looking at you with compassion.

"Even if they refuse her to live... among us... she needs to be cured. She needs food. Clothes. Weapon" Noa's voice is quiet, but determined. You do not understand his actions at all. "To avoid being caught by them. To survive here"

An echo glides across the crystal water of the lake.

You, now an echo too, have many questions in your head. And they torture.

There must be more people nearby. Lost and wandering in the pouring rain, you came across huts and asked for help. You knocked on boarded-up windows, peered into the huts inside. You screamed at the top of your voice, you begged. No one helped. But these people are not your family. You are a stranger on this earth, so why would these people should let you in?..

Are all people like this?.. And why then did you so tirelessly cherish the hope of someday meeting people better than those who keep prisoners locked up by force and public humiliation?

What would have happened to your body and soul if you hadn't managed to escape? If they had caught you, knocked out your teeth, dragged you downstairs and tied you up? Or if death at their hands, soaked in the blood of so many innocents, had overtaken you in the ravine?.. They wouldn't have been averse to having fun with you anyway. You know that about them, too. You don't need the answers to these questions anymore.

After all, neither your lost tracks, nor the drops of yesterday's rain, nor the blood that flowed down the stones mean anything anymore. The earth has absorbed everything.

These two of them who took both your families set out to chase you. The realization that Noa killed them gives birth to gratitude in your soul. Now the impossibility of revenge will not gnaw you from the inside.

But what has now been decided by the forces of nature,

who have left you alive?

What will happen where you are destined to end up? Surely, grins and reproaches? Primal hatred directed at you? Mistrust, contempt? What use could you possibly be to the apes? Do they treat people as human stories say? .. What if this salvation is just a deception, akin to human lies? Besides, now you, almost mute, dirty and frightened, resemble an animal much more than they do. So why shouldn't they eat you, their easy-to-catch prey? Or stuff you? ..

Or why shouldn't they have fun with you?.. Carnivorously. Carnally.

Just as the guards of the dungeon from which you escaped straight into the monkey's paws would have been amused.

And now, no matter how hard you clench your hands into fists, you will not be able to break free.

You are shaking as if the wind has become winter.

Noa's calloused fingers place your twitching hand almost at his heart, just a little higher and to the right. Broad shoulders rise from your coldered breath.

All this, his words and movements, seems like... a desire to protect you? But you are a human. People and apes have been feuding for so long that no one can answer how the feud began. But it is ineradicable. So why does he need you not to get hurt or trampled?

Be that as it may, you do not trust anyone or anything.

The fur on Noa's back - where you press your scratched cheek again - is wet. Probably because your temperature has risen. You don't know why he helped you. You are afraid of him no less than the men in the hopeless settlement. You look at him with gratitude, with a doubt tearing your throat... You want to believe him. Because there is no one else to trust in the world that you are getting to know anew. But you will not ask him questions that soak you with fear and foreboding. Just as you will not be able to tell him words of gratitude.

You are hot. And you are overcome by an unbearable thirst again.

The lake, reflecting the sun's rays, is left behind, replaced by a meadow, deciduous trees and fruit-bearing bushes. The berries that you tasted only in your too-short-lived childhood smell sweet. Has their taste changed as much as you have changed over the past years?

Bees scurry around, and their buzzing calms your restless thoughts.

Somewhere in the distance, where Noa directs a long glance, the wings of iron birds are visible.

They are planes, it seems. Old, rusty, forgotten. You have seen them only once. Blueprints on worn, yellowed paper. Then they were like fiction — alien, huge structures that could touch the clouds. And now these piles of metal, embraced by ivy, are like an extension of the forest. Noa looks at them as if they might one day fly again.

How long have they been chained to these ruins? Have they flown over other distant lands?

What would it be like to soar into the sky?..

You are shaking. Everything you see - trees, grass, and the sun hanging somewhere impossibly high - floats and spins. Your mouth feels like it is full of hot sand.

The glitter of dew. You think it looks like gemstones.

You're swaying from side to side, and you're clutching the fur on Noa's shoulder with cottony fingers. It's not helping at all.

Noa huffs as he realizes you might fall again. He squeezes your fingers tighter, now on the very spot where you can feel the unwavering thump. Warm blood still seeping from your hand is spreading across his chest.

If you could think of anything other than the dew scattered beneath your feet, you'd try to figure out — was it any different from a human's, beating in ape's heart?..

Consciousness is slowly returning to you. The unknown world, stretching for many miles, stops spinning.

Through the sweat running down your forehead and the tangled hair stuck to your face, you peer at each thread of the huge canvas above the horizon. With delight, trepidation and awe.

And with unspoken fear. With your last breath, you are still thinking - where to go if the apes rightly decide that you have no place among them? And how to escape if the apes decide to deal with you?.. But nothing betrays the apes's bloodthirstiness that you have heard so much and so often about.

You are just a stone's throw away from buildings you have never seen before.

Gusts of wind blow around you, embracing you. Morning flows into day, the forest flows into a built-up village humming with routine.

The beaten path along which the apes take you leads to surprisingly well-equipped dwellings, towering above the earth heated by midday. And these dwellings are not at all like the walls, floors and bars from which you emerged. There are no cages and tools designed to force submission, and there is no torture chamber.

Families live here. And these families are not molded from circumstances, as if from clay. These families — are blood families. Kinship among those who talk and those who are silent, imperceptible to the eye. It feels different.

Here the industry is seething, here and there the noise is heard. Here is unity and freedom.

Houses on the surface, life on the surface, among the clean air and the many-faced sky seems incredible...

A smile touches the corners of your lips. Your palm reaches out to outline the place in front of your eyes - but then falls back, squeezing the wool on Noa's elbow in the approaching fever.

"Echo needs help getting down... to the ground" Noa assures, freeing his long arm from your weak grip and dismounting.

His hands reach for your waist to help, and you squeal in protest and dodge.

"Is something... wrong?" Soona, who is walking ahead, turns around worriedly.

"I can do it myself" you say hesitantly in response, stroking the horse's mane.  "I don't need his help"

When your body was overwhelmed by the pain that clouded your consciousness, Noa had already done so, helping you to mount. And you, unconscious, held on to him for many hours on the road. Feeling him so close was not scary. It was necessary. Like grasping at a straw. But after a terrible dream, you don't want him to touch you... No, not now.

Stepping onto the ground from the back of a snorting horse seems easy to you. But without the slightest idea of ​​​​how to do it, you fail.

Anaya hides in one of the dwellings when Noa gives him a sign that seems vaguely familiar to you. Soona remains nearby, ready to help you - but she is unlikely to be strong enough to cope with this.

The sign language of the apes differs from the one you are used to only slightly, and with the help of this language you repeat that you will manage without help.

Without support, you risk flying like a tiny leaf from a branch. You grab the reins and the horse's mane in vain attempts to get out of the saddle. The horse kicks. The cape you're sitting on slips - and you, trying so hard, almost fall backwards.

Stuck in the stirrup, you don't even have time to squeak - Noa catches you, when you almost hitting the ground with your shoulder blades. He holds you almost the same way as when you were exhausted in his palms, in the middle of the plain.

"I told you. You need help" A disgruntled growl escapes from his chest.

Only now, as Noa releases you, your bare, punctured feet finally meeting the ground, you can understand what in the stories about the apes were right.

Is it how different they are in their wild nature. And their size.

Even Soona is taller than you by several inches. Not to mention Noa, towering over you like a mountain range. The wind picks up the many voices and the rattling of abandoned work. The apes emerge from their homes and stop working. Their humming and whispering makes you uncomfortable. The wounds immediately remind you of themselves with a dull ache. You look through the crowd at the neatly laid roofs, bathed in rays of sunlight.

Noa lets out a wheeze and hides you behind his broad shoulders. He asks you to walk beside him and be quiet. You follow him without complaint, and because of his furry back you can hardly see anything - except for the feathers in the braided bracelet on his forearm, shimmering in shades of blue.

Step by step, you make out the expressions on the apes's faces. Some of them are confused, some do not hide their irritation. You see a lot, but you do not see malice. Only this calms you down when you stop at a spacious structure and dozens of monkeys look at you with an unspoken question and a respectful bow, directed straight at Noa.

Now you understand that he must be the leader of this clan.

And his action is not presumptuously, but magnanimous.

An approaching hostile sounds.  Noa assumes an obviously protective pose, and you press yourself into the fur on his shoulder again. This time consciously. After all, it seems that you were wrong not to see the malice.

"What is this? Another echo?.." the voice of a stocky male chimpanzee is heard, drawing level with Noa and casting an appraising glance at you. There is something unkind in it. "Did the animals batter her? Or did someone... play with the curiosity?"

"Let her go back... to the pasture"  the female picks up his intonation, letting out a nasty laugh. She looks like a hanger-on, not a companion.

"True" another male grins, clearly younger and trying to assert himself in this way. "There... is her place!"

They hardly guess, reveling in their slander, but for you, everything they spew — pointless. You were never part of the whole. You shattered into pieces, long ago. You became a fragment with broken edges.

That's why there is no place for you anywhere.

A shirt, sticky with rain, blood and weeds, torn at the seams - your only refuge.

"...She swallowed her tongue?" you hear, insulting and goading, somewhere in the distance.

Soona, standing next to you, gasps at the insolence of her fellows. They laugh at your helplessness, continuing to curse. You regret that you cannot lash them with curses now.

Listening to their rumble, Noa straightens his back. You are almost invisible behind him.

"This echo is wounded. By other echoes. They wanted to... play. They lose" After Noa's short and clear words, bewilderment is visible in the apes's eyes. Baring his fangs, he finishes. "And she will not return... to the pasture. She will graze here"

The phrase is sharp. Noa stands his ground, his nostrils flaring menacingly. This, of course, silences the ill-wishers. But you feel the sediment prickling.

What if they'll treat you like a thing here too?..

You can hardly breathe. The lead of a frightening assumption presses on your collarbones. You take a step back from Noa, upset and ready to break from the despair that has washed over you. It takes even more effort not to recoil from Noa when he turns and leans towards you. He had to say this to stop the vile discussion.

His green eyes apologize to you for what he said.

Something in his piercing gaze tells you to trust. It speaks louder than his answer to the clan, who doesn't stops talking and doesn't notice.

Five baby-chimps run up to you, distracted from their game of tag.

The first thing you do — is sit down so that you are the same height as the children who are asking you questions. They reach out to you, and the pain that has been increasing with each passing second becomes unimportant. Soona follows your lead, her actions clearly supportive. The growing rebellious tension disappears, as does the hubbub that has surrounded you from all sides.

Seeing that you are kind to the clan's most valuable treasure, the apes stop arguing and return to their work. Only the adults who are looking after the little ones do not leave.

Even now, laughing, Noa is still ready to rush into battle.

The children are impressed, but they don't understand what is happening - and you are undoubtedly happy of their attack. It seems like a serene meadow in the chaos that is playing with your fate.

"Are you hurt?" a very small boy babbles, tilting his head to the side. You nod.

"What happened to you?" a girl who looks like this little one like two peas in a pod timidly puts her hand on your wounded shoulder.

"This echo fought... With opponents and the forest" Soona tells the curious cubs.

"Did you get a scar in battle?" an older boy looks at you with surprise.

"This battle could have been my last..." you begin your story like an instructive fairytale. "But the journey was worth it"

"So who hurt you?" seeing the sparkle of tears in your eyes, the liveliest boy asks, putting his hands on his hips importantly. "Do you want me to protect you?"

"You already have a protector, right?" a smart, dark-eyed girl looks at you and Noa with mischief.

Not expecting this, Noa freezes. He looks at you, captured by the curious crowd. He still shields you with his back and his presence. He smiles indulgently - which you can't help but notice. He is confused. But you are not taken surprise by spontaneity, but are warmed.

"Yes, and he is very brave" you agree with the girl, expressing gratitude to Noa at least in this way.

"So who did the Master of Birds save you from?" everyone is curious in one ringing voice.

When Noa sits down next to you, his weight almost touching yours for the umpteenth time in the day that has just begun, you don't move away.

"From evil, cunning... predators" playing along with the fictional plot, Noa ruffles the children's heads.

Staying with you and naive chatter, Noa still helps you tell the fascinating truth. Having plopped down nearby and forcing Soona to snort good-naturedly, Anaya returns to the company.

While you are enthusiastically answering the children's questions, you do not immediately notice female chimpanzee in venerable years approaching you. Only when Noa raises her head, still sitting on the ground, do you see that everyone is moving aside. Her robe, like the feathers indicating Noa's dominant status, is a deep blue.

"Time goes by... And you, my son, remain the same" hearing both reproach and pride in her words, you cannot help but look down.

Who else but parents could say that?..

Noa rises with a gesture that you will not confuse with anything - this is how you asked your blood mother for advice.

The children say polite greetings, holding on to you like tenacious little crabs. You don't know what to say - and cannot make a single sound.

"Nobility is sometimes worse than vices" sadness sounds in the voice of another, an elderly female chimpanzee with a wooden cane. "With her, to our homes comes... troubles. Again."

"...Is she hiding something?.." the young female asks impatiently, taking her two cubs away from you. The male calms her down in a way that husbands never calmed wives in a settlement unfamiliar to you.

The unknown frightens them as much as it frightens you. It hovers in the dying wind and the sparks from the fire crackling in the distance.

Squinting from the sun and your exhausted appearance, Noa's mother sighs.

"This soul is innocent" she looks at, it seems, every scar and every aspiration. "Come here, child... Your path has been... thorny. You need to rest"

"Thanks..." you whisper from the bottom of your heart, when her palm touches your burning forehead.

Taking Noa's outstretched hand, you rise. Your hideously cut thigh, under the equally cut leg of your trousers, pierces with pain. You whining through cracked lips. The children don't want to let you go, but you promise that very soon you will tell them an even more fascinating story.

The smell of smoking fish tickles your nose. Everything tilts and fades...

***

You dream of water dripping from holes in the basement pipes - rusty, almost red. Streams flow down the cobblestones from grinning skulls.

Their eye sockets are empty. Worms have settled in their decaying bodies, laying larvae. Their hands reach out to you. They strangle you, they tear your dress. Their toothless mouths shower you with stench and obscenities...

***

Waking up in the hut, you scream. Indistinguishable from the animal cries that echo in the twilight. Your eyes are filled with unshed tears. Dreams have been cruel to you for as long as you can remember. The dreams of future nights, you are sure, will be merciless.

And there is no way to escape this.

The bed you slept in resembles a perch. Someone is scurrying around at the head of the bed.

The woven nest creaks as you jump up, drawing your knees up to your cheeks. You are not wearing a shirt - only a T-shirt, trousers, and a viscous ointment applied to your exhausted body. And animal skins, serving as a blanket.

Turning around at the noise, you see Noa with two bowls in his palms. He places them closer to you, and you pull the blanket up to your neck. The contents of the bowls smell pleasant. In one of them the same ointment that burns and heals your injuries. In the other a lake fish, large and ruddy. Your stomach rumbles. You forgot about hunger - and now hunger is devouring you.

When Noa's large palm reaches for the blanket, you crawl away to the edge of the nest in panic.

"When they were treating your wounds, I saw you without... this" Noa admits, taking out your shirt among other things. "It will hurt, inside... Take that"

Pointing to the thin sky-blue robe, Noa explains with a gesture that it will be safer this way. Then he insistently brings the bowl with the fish to your closed lips.

You coudn't refuse food. You learned this rule over the years of life on a leash - a hearty meal was a reward for following commands and orders, and starvation was a punishment for disobedience.

You was only punished. So you use what you learned from your foster mother.

The fish in the bowl dissolves into a scent in a matter of moments. And only now do you respond with gestures that it would be safer if Noa left your assigned dwelling the same way he came. You don't believe in the security provided. You admit that you're scared. And you ask if Noa has taken you in as a curiosity pet?..

If you said it out loud, you would cover your mouth with both hands in shame.

Noa slouches and turns to go outside. His steps are sharp. The wheezing in his heaving chest is low and abrupt. You look at his back, expecting anger and insults. He stops, looking at you and the untouched robe.

"To heal, an echo needs sleep... A lot" is all Noa says before leaving the hut.

You scold yourself. You admire the fabric of the robe flowing between your fingertips in the dim light.

The sparkling hanging lights lull you to sleep. All you want to do — lay down, as like fetuses laying in wombs, and forget about all the nightmares you've experienced in reality or in broken dreams. But you, without closing your eyes, stare at the glow.

❗ Bunnies, it's unfortunate, but I can't write in a hurry...

And I also really want to spend New Year's Eve with my family. The chapter will be written next year. I promise that I will try my best to live up to your expectations.

And yes, here is that ai fragment of y/n and lil bunny that I mentioned earlier - so that at least y'all have something from me as a gift and compensation 🫶🩷