Pacho ate ravenously. Everything was good, though the taste was unfamiliar. Tloche was eating mostly the same, too, from a bowl. Watching the giant woman eat was both mesmerizing and petrifying. She munched prettily chunks of the pastries and took large bites of a (giant) fist-sized fruit. Each bite would easily tear my body in half, he mused. She gulps more than a hundred pounds down her gullet and still manages to seem ladylike. After a particularly noisy bite at said fruit, she noticed Pacho had stopped eating and was staring, mouth agape. She looked at the damage she had just inflicted onto the fruit and then at Pacho. She blushed slightly, apparently realizing how she must look to his tiny eyes but continued eating.
When they both were finished (she finished first), she took the leftovers away and then she stood up, holding something behind her back. Again, Pacho had a hard-time trying not to stare at her exposed legs. In particular, the curve of her thighs just before joining her crotch was very enticing. He looked up with an effort to meet her eyes. As soon as he did, Tloche produced a book. She set it down on the table. It was a bilingual picture book.
Pacho stood and walked to it as Tloche opened it carefully. It depicted everyday situations and objects with captions in two different scripts, both unfamiliar, one squarish and other rounded. Pacho was not sure which was the one of the magazine Tloche had shown him earlier, that is, the one native to this particular province he was in. In any case, he could not read either. But the discerning Tloche had thought of everything.
She flipped through the pages and reached some of the last ones of the booklet, where a table of the roundish characters was shown. Then she pulled open the drawer he had been into and produced a thin rod wrapped with purple cord and a small (to her) notepad, setting them in front of Pacho. It took a moment for Pacho to realize the rod was a kind of pencil: the point came out gradually as you unraveled the cord.
Then she put her finger to the first column, first row of characters of the picture book and said: “E” then she slid down her finger to the next row and said “KE”, and then she kept sliding her finger down and uttering “TE”, “TRE”, “TLE”, “CHE”, “SHE”, “TSE”, “SE”, “ZE” and so on. It’s a syllabary, Pacho realized. She is going to teach me how to read and write. He lifted the pencil and got to work. Tloche smiled as he started to write his own equivalency table into roman characters on the notepad. As he looked up at her, she continued dictating.
Tloche sat there watching with a smile at Paah-tshoh flipping through pages of the book and consulting on his newly-made character table. He was starting a vocabulary table of his own. He was thoroughly engrossed in his work. But Tloche was now feeling decidedly unwell and she wanted to change ASAP into something NOT white and put on one of her sanitary pads before any accidents occurred and she stained her clothes. Normally she would do it in her room, but of course she could not (should not, she amended mentally) pull down her shorts and do that in front of the little guy. And, small as he is, who knows if he can… well… catch that smell once it starts to flow… don’t wanna find out…
She stood up from her chair, and walked to the wardrobe, collecting the black leggings she had worn earlier, a new, dark loincloth, a sanitary pad and a small vial of perfume, trying to block what she was grabbing from Paah-tshoh’s eyes. Then she walked to the door, opened, and walked out, with an apologetic smile at Paah-tshoh, who had stood and watched her go, concerned. Again, she locked the door. Gotta be quick, can’t take him with me to the bathroom… this time, and I cannot put him in the drawer right now… he would not thank me for that, that’s for sure.
Tloche was not gone very long. When she was back, Pacho noted with surprise she had changed back into the black, close-fitting suit. She was paler than usual, her face drawn. She smiled at him, but she was clearly unwell. She lay down on her bed on her side and kept looking at him as he worked. The next time Pacho turned to look at her, her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and regular. A while later, Pacho stopped writing, his back and arms aching from holding the giant pencil. What time is it? He was pretty sure it was over twelve hours since dawn on that damn tree branch.
He realized there was no way to measure time in Earth’s units, as he had no watch, and his cellphone and tablet were aboard the plane, now lost too. He would have to adapt to the local’s measure of time. Tloche was still asleep, but now her back was turned to him, long hair draped over the pillow. The curve of her hips and waist was very alluring, indeed; the leggings hugged her butt, showing off her round buttocks, as she was in a fetal position. He recalled how her already pale complexion had become ashen during the day. A sudden thought coursed through his head… is it possible that I brought some disease to this world? It would be terrible if he was the cause of the death of his benefactress.
Deep in these gloomy thoughts, he sat on the notepad and watched Tloche sleep…. Such a lovely face she has! How many hours till dark? And would the night be as long as the day? He got up and walked around the table. No lamp. Looking at the ceiling, he saw a ring contraption that could perhaps be a lightbulb. No sign of a switch anywhere on the walls, though. The window was too high for him to see anything but blue sky. A walkaround on the table confirmed there was no way to climb down, and it was close to ten meters high. Now that he thought of it, he was not sure being on the floor was a good idea. It was too easy to be stepped on. But what if he needed to take a leak? Or number two? ¡Qué maricada! Stuck as a marooned sailor in a desert island… within sight of the continent. The continent of enthralling womanhood.
The drawer was closed and out of view, along with his makeshift bet. A few hours ago, he would have laughed at the idea that he would want to get back inside that dark wooden box, but if Tloche was sleeping, there was little to do besides getting some rest himself. He was done with studying for the day; his experience with language learning (he already spoke Spanish, English, Hindustani and a smattering of others) told him it was useless to learn more words for today, he could only assimilate so much in one sitting.
He called for Tloche in as loud a voice as he could manage, but she did not stir even a bit. The distance between the table and the bed was perhaps under a meter and a half (giant) meters, but to Pacho it might as well be the Grand Canyon: no way to leap across 15 meters. Annoyed, he flipped the notepad, which was roughly bed-sized, to a blank page and lied down in it, and closed his eyes to get some sleep. After some consideration, he took off his purple velvet pants, rolled them up, and using them as a pillow, he laid back again.
****
A cramp woke up Tloche. She sat up on the bed, wrapping her arms around her abdomen. It was already nighttime, and dark. It was quite hot and humid. She could feel the sweat under her neck and between her breasts. Paah-tshoh! She groped for the light switch attached to the bed post and turned it to a dim setting. Paah-tshoh was lying on the notepad, fast asleep, seemingly not bothered by the light.
He was naked, using his pants as a pillow, but lying on his side, so she could not (regrettably) see his penis. That looks so uncomfortable! Poor guy… how long has he been like this? Turns out I’m not so great a host… She went to her purse and produced her pocket watch. Five hours… Shit… She decided not to put him back into the drawer, not now and not ever. What if I’m detained or something happens to me outside the boarding house? He would starve to death in there. She carefully pulled the drawer open and picked up the towel. She set it down besides the notepad and carefully transferred the limp figure to the towel, pillow and all. He did not stir.
She looked back at her cot, so narrow. She was not a quiet, tidy sleeper. She knew she tossed quite a bit during the night. I wish I had a bigger bed. The words of Trano came back to haunt her: We are not wealthy, you and I, Tloche. She longed to put his bed on a bedside nightstand that she could not afford, did not have and would not fit in the room anyway. It would be better if she could set him in a pillow near hers. But doing that in her narrow, broke student bed would be dangerous, she could send him flying with an unconscious toss, to broken bones or worse at the foot of the bed. Or she could be crushed, smothered under her. Not to mention it would be too forward… we’ve barely talked besides some gestures.
Then again, leaving him asleep on top of the desk felt wrong, like sleeping on the middle of an empty sports field, too exposed, too forlorn. For sure Paah-tshoh had friends, family (a wife?) back home. A home he would not be coming back to, possibly ever, unless a rescue party came his way, which was admittedly not impossible, but unlikely. So many things to ask him… we are, after all, strangers to each other… yet. Struck with an idea, she put the chair, companion to the desk, near the bed, and transferred Paah-tshoh to its center, carefully. Then she changed into her sleeping shorts, checking her sanitary pad, which confirmed that time of the month had indeed come, all the while stealing nervous glances at the tiny sleeping figure to see if he was copping a look, but he was completely tranquil in his slumber.
Standing bare-chested beside the chair, she looked one last time at Paah-tshoh before deciding, unlike most nights, to wear an old top despite the heat. She made a quick exit for the bathroom to take care of some feminine hygiene and to take a leak. When she came back, soon after, the little guy was still asleep. She reached, as quietly as possible, into her wardrobe for a clean, silk handkerchief. She kneeled near the chair, and giving in to an errant impulse, she lightly kissed the tiny, naked form before covering him with the insubstantial cloth.
Forcing herself not to linger there staring… and touching some more, she climbed into bed and dialed the lights off, before covering herself and drifting into sleep as quickly as only the young can, utterly unburden with regret.