Under The Wings Of Change

Chapter 17

Bee's POV:

My sense of hearing was the first to return to me as I slowly gained consciousness.

"I have never seen a creature like that. Where did you find this one?"

It was the voice of a soft-spoken female, a kymari I presumed.

Next came my sense of smell and touch. I was lying on what felt like a plastic surface and smelt an abundance of different smells- plastic, metal, sterilizer, rubber, something slightly bitter, some hints of something sweet, something salty, and something sour, kind of like berries.

"Found this little cracker at the mang-nut grove by the west gate."

I recognised that voice as the kymari man that had cornered me. My memories were slowly making their way through my hazy mind, making my heartbeat pick up its pace.

I heard a nearly silent machinery humming, and a gentle warmth at my wounds without anyone touching them.

"I didn't find any mentions of such creatures in our extensive archives, but assuming that this one is a relative of a reptilian family native to this planet, this should work well on these cuts."

The soft-spoken woman was explaining to the other kymari as I felt the warm recede from where it had been working.

"Do you know if it's male, female... they, it?" The kymari man asked, sounding kind of awkward and uncomfortable. "It's kind of difficult to refer to this one if I don't even know it's proper noun."

"It's difficult to say since I have no one to compare this one to. They could be either or neither, we just don't have enough information. The closest I could compare it to would be other reptilians, and by the way that we would differentiate them, I would assume that this creature is female."

The woman sounded almost pained by her lack of knowledge and fascinated at the same time.

At the least, they got that one right. I grumbled in my head.

I slowly opened my eyes to see that I was in some kind of plastic see-through box with air holes at the front and back.

The box was on a metal table and under some kind of flat machinery that had some lights coming from it. I realized that that had made the humming I heard. I looked to see that the warmth had completely healed my smaller cuts, sealed the wound on my side, and the scratch on my face stopped its annoying stinging.

"Since you are the one that found her, how about you name her species? If we ever found more of her kind, they should have a name."

Hearing her voice snapped my attention to the pair of kymaris that stood on either side of the table I was on.

The kymari woman had her long black hair down and was wearing a green dress with golden trims.

"Me?" The familiar male kymari asked, seemingly genuinely surprised.

"Yes, Tethys. You." She answered, her calm voice sparkling with her amusement.

"Alright." Tethys smiled so big I thought his face was about to split into two. He rubbed his hands together in excitement. "How about... honey snakes. No! Sun demons! Oh! How about yellow fangs? Or -!"

Excuse me? Yellow fangs? All my teeth and fangs are pearly white! If you don't believe me, I can properly introduce you to them.

Tethys continued to ramble, completely missing the cringe on the woman that was getting worse and worse with every suggestion he blurted out, like it was slowly crushing her soul that this blundering fool was about to name a whole new species.

"I got it!" Tethys exclaimed, eyes shining with the utter confidence that the name he had come up with was simply brilliant.

I'm almost scared to keep listening. I thought.

I glanced at the woman and barely held back a snort.

And it looks like I'm not the only one.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment before speaking.

"Tethys, just slow down a little. Take a moment to think this through. It might not seem like a big deal, but it is. It will be her species' official name from now on."

"Don't worry, Marna. It's a good one."

Marna let out a relieved breath, an easy smile forming on her face as some tension left her shoulders.

"Alright then. Let's hear it."

Tethys buffed out his chest, looking so proud of himself. With a smirk, he held his hands up to level with his eyes. With a slightly lowered voice, he sounded like a commentator introducing a fighter at the beginning of a match.

"A FIRE LIZARD!"

"..."

"...?"

"Fire lizards?" Marna slowly asked, as if he had just told her that he grew a tail and learned how to fly with it.

"Yeah!" He cheered with that big grin still stuck on his face, seeing nothing wrong with the situation.

Meanwhile, I didn't know what to think. The situation could definitely be worse, but it wasn't exactly a vacation either.

My anxiety was veering somewhere between being the next in line for giving a presentation and chasing down your siblings because they are about to rat you out to Mom for accidentally destroying her favorite garden gnome.

"Look, I just don't think it's that far off. Her yellow and black scales make her look like a little ball of flames, and you yourself said she is most likely from the lizard family." Tethys explained himself, starting to sound a little nervous towards the end.

"You're right." She gave him a warm smile, visibly calming the kymari man. "We know very little about her species. Fire lizard fits well with the little that we do know." Marna nodded at the end as she spoke.

It would fit even better if you didn't have one of the only three Guardians. The only three that don't breathe fire.

"How's her side?"

"Improving already, but I want to keep her overnight just to be sure that the procedure doesn't have any side effects on her."

They are keeping me here?

I tried not to react. They might not be humans, but they are still dangerous. I couldn't let them catch onto my intelligence. Although, my recent decisions were starting to show that I didn't have much of it to begin with.

"I'm going to give her some fotanol and set up a steam transfusion with the nutrients that I already found in her body with the scan I did when you brought her in."

Marna explained as she walked around and fiddled with the machine above me. The machine lowered until it was against my plastic box and she connected a tube to the side of the box.

Suddenly, a light blue light shined into my eyes and there was a low soothing sound vibrating through me. I started to feel drowsy and laid my head down. The last thing I saw before falling unconscious was a gentle mist coming into my box from the connected tube.

"You are going to be alright, little fire lizard... I promise."