Lost Continent

Episode 3

Yang Fan looked at the sun. She had a feeling that time here was different—the daytime seemed way too long.

After eating the meat, he put out the fire and then grabbed her and brought her out under the sun.

They sat on the ground, and Yang Fan saw him start licking his hands. After licking off all the meat grease, he licked his arms, his stomach, hugged his tail and licked it, and he could even twist half his body around to lick his own back!

Yang Fan could sort of understand that he was cleaning himself, but she was amazed at how flexible his bones were. Soon she realized that after he finished licking himself, his next target was actually her.

Yang Fan watched calmly as he first licked her hands. When he found the blisters burned onto her palms, she suddenly got the feeling that his tongue had scales too. It was like a thin, soft layer of scales on the surface of his tongue suddenly stood up and easily scraped open the blisters on her palms.

She held herself back from pulling her hand away through the intense pain.

From her hands to her arms, from her shoulders to her chest, then all over her body. Yang Fan kept her mind blank and didn’t think about how weird this situation was. She convinced herself it was normal by thinking of lions or tigers cleaning their cubs’ fur—he was a monster, after all.

After the cleaning was done, he let her lie on the grass beside him to sunbathe, but about ten minutes later, she realized he had actually fallen asleep!

Yang Fan lay stiffly next to him, stealing glances at him while he slept. He was lying on his side, and his thick tail was still swishing nonstop. If his eyes weren’t closed and his breathing hadn’t started to slow and soften, she would have thought he was just resting.

She lay there for a while, then tentatively got up and slowly moved away from him.

She found that he didn’t care at all. He just opened his eyes a slit to glance at her when she first got up, and then ignored her.

What was he even thinking?

Yang Fan guessed that he probably didn’t think she was running away at all? Maybe he thought she was just wandering around nearby? Either way, she ran away again. This time she picked another direction.

For her second escape attempt, Yang Fan mostly wanted to confirm her guess. On the other hand, she was just too exhausted. So much had happened today, she was tired, very tired, and the wound deep inside her body kept aching faintly. She did her best to run, but she didn’t have much hope of escaping this place, or of getting somewhere she could ask for help.

So when he came looking for her, she felt very calm.

He brought her back again.

She felt she could be sure now. He didn’t think she was running away. It was probably like a lion letting its cub play freely within its territory. He might have treated her escape as a walk or a game.

This time he stuffed her back into the stone cave, then followed her in and blocked the entrance with another rock and some grass. The cave instantly became pitch black.

She couldn’t see anything. She could only feel him putting her back on the grass mat, and then he lay down too. He held her from the side, his big tail curling into a circle around them both. Now she knew his tail had to be longer than he was tall—maybe even longer.

Half out of curiosity, but more to test him, she wanted to know how far he would indulge her. So she reached out to touch his tail. At first she only dared to lightly touch it twice. When he didn’t react, she reached out and slowly pulled the tip of his tail over.

He held her from behind. Maybe that was also a protective position?

She kept guessing what his behavior meant.

He made a sound from his throat, like a pigeon cooing—gurgling. It didn’t sound angry or scary. Yang Fan judged that the sound meant he was in a pretty good mood, probably relaxed.

She kept holding the tip of his tail. The scales on it were very hard. She touched the edges of the scales and measured their size with her palm. Maybe her exploring made him find it interesting? He grabbed her hand and made her touch the scales, and then the scales suddenly opened and clamped down on her fingers!

His scales could open!

Yang Fan screamed in fright. He had been holding her from behind the whole time, and now he seemed to happily let out a light string of coos from his throat.

Maybe that was his laugh.

After calming down, Yang Fan reached out to touch the opened scales again, and he didn’t stop her. That show of trust made her a little excited. Did it mean her situation was still relatively safe?

The edges of those scales were sharp as knives. She only touched them lightly—she probably hadn’t even really touched them?—but a sharp pain already came from her finger.

He grabbed her hand, pulled it back, and licked it twice. A gentler coo came from his throat again.

Yang Fan thought it sounded more like a sigh.

Then she fell asleep. She was too tired, and she had realized this monster probably wasn’t planning to eat her as food, so she relaxed and quickly fell asleep.

That sleep was longer than she expected, because she woke up at least twice in the middle of it, but he was still sleeping, so she didn’t get up either. When she really couldn’t sleep, she stared wide-eyed into the pitch-black darkness.

She thought, maybe time really was different in this world. Not only was the daytime especially long, the night was long too. But her phone was lost in the forest, so she had no way to judge the time more accurately.

When she woke up again, she found that he had finally woken up too. He cooed behind her for a while. She didn’t understand what he was saying, but his next actions made her understand.

She had thought that accepting this kind of thing while awake again would be difficult, but unexpectedly, everything was simpler than she had imagined. He licked her in the important places like a real animal first, and then did it. When she felt pain and flinched, he would stop and lick her again, and only continue after she wasn’t hurting anymore.

After it was over, she fell asleep again.

This time she only slept for a short while before waking up. The cave entrance had already been opened, and she could see daylight outside. She crawled out of the cave, careful not to fall to the ground.

He wasn’t nearby. She was thirsty and hungry, so she left the cave for the third time. But this time it wasn’t to run away—she wanted to find water. She walked around near the cave. Although there were plants on the ground and a forest in the distance, she couldn’t find any river, stream, or water source nearby.

She got thirstier and thirstier, and felt like she was going to die of thirst.

This time she didn’t go too far from the cave. She would walk for a while and then come back. She hoped he would come back soon. He definitely knew where there was water.

The sun never got too hot, as if it were also stuck in one spot in the sky. In her hunger and thirst, Yang Fan started letting her mind wander. She didn’t know whether time in this world was too slow, or whether the sun really was stuck in that one position. She thought, if she could see the sun here, did that mean this place was also somewhere on Earth? Or if it was a new planet, then was that planet also in the solar system? Not far from Earth?