New Dimensions Ch. 2

By the next morning Starscream's injuries had fully healed and he stepped out of the hanger to find Lareina had stretched  the deer hide out and was beginning to scrape the fur off of it.

"You humans are such disgusting creatures."  Starscream said.

"Well I have to have clothes for the winter and this is just as warm or warmer than anything I could get in town." Lareina replied briefly glancing up at him, "You look a lot better today."

"Yes, my injuries are fully healed." Starscream replied.

"Does that mean you'll be leaving then?" Lareina asked hopefully.

"I don't know, if Cybertron doesn't exist in this dimension I don't really have anywhere else to go until I can figure out how to get back to my own dimension. I might as well just stay here, at least I don't have to worry about being found here." Starscream said.

"Great, just what I always wanted, an alien robot from another dimension hanging around and disturbing my peace and quite." Lareina said sarcastically, "If you're planning on staying around here and using my hanger, make sure you don't cause any trouble and stay out of my way."

"As long as you don't tell the other humans I'm here, that's fine with me." Starscream replied then walked away to look around the area.

He walked out past a chicken coup and into the barn, one half was filled with bails of hay and piles of fire wood while the other half had stalls with two horses and half a dozen goats.

Out side there was a large garden and a small field of wheat, beyond the clearing sat the lake to one side and thick forests on the other sides.

The clouds, mountains and trees that surrounded the lake reflected off of its crystal surface, a soft breeze blew, rustling the leaves in the trees and a myriad different birds could be heard singing.

From what little of earth that Starscream had seen this place was certainly the most beautiful and peaceful.

Starscream suddenly smirked, if he couldn't figure out how to get back to his own dimension and there was no Cybertron in this dimension, perhaps he could rule earth instead. If there was no Cybertron then there wouldn't be any Autobots to stand in his way and surely the humans wouldn't stand a chance against him. With the power of Primus that he still had, he could easily take over without a single shot being fired, surely once the humans saw that he could make himself bigger than their entire planet they wouldn't dare make a move against him.

He would have a palace built near one of the human cities, something large and intimidating and perhaps he would  have a small vacation home built near the lake for when he needed to relax.

Several hours later Starscream had wandered to the other side of the lake, marveling at the many sounds and multitude of animals that inhabited the forest. Suddenly a loud gunshot rang out and everything went eerily silent. Across the lake he could see Lareina running into the cabin, she came back out a moment later with her bow and arrows slung over her back and a rifle in her hands as she raced off into the woods as another shot shattered the silence.

Starscream flew across the lake and followed Lareina, but stayed out of sight.

--

Lareina raced through the forest, her moccasins barely making a sound as she moved. A few minutes later she could hear men's voices and slowed down. A moment later she spotted two men inspecting the body of a cougar that lay on the ground.

Lareina silently moved to a better position and aimed her bow at one of the men then let the arrow fly. She was quite satisfied with the scream of pain that came from the one man as the other started to run to grab his gun. She didn't let him get too close though, an arrow striking the ground just inches from his fingers as he reached for the gun easily had him jumping back. Lareina stepped out from behind the tree she had been behind and placed herself between the men and their guns.

"What the hell is wrong with you?! What do you think you're doing?" the one man demanded.

"I don't take kindly to people trespassing on my land, and I down right hate people poaching on my land, I'd suggest you and you buddy get out of here as quickly as you can or I'll lock you both up and let the rangers deal with you." Lareina replied.

"Fine, let us get our stuff."

Lareina tossed the backpack that had been sitting next to the guns to the man.

"What about our guns?"

"What these things?" Lareina asked as she picked up one of their guns, "Sorry, but I don't like people running around my forest with guns." she replied as she smashed the butt of the gun against a tree, shattering it then quickly raising her own gun as the man started to move forward to stop her. "I'd suggest you stay back if you want to leave here alive, with thousands of miles of forest no one would ever find your bodies if you just disappeared." she warned.

"We can't go anywhere, my fucking arm is stuck to a tree with an arrow through it and it won't come out!" the second man said.

Lareina rolled her eyes, "Men are such wimps" she said as she started to walk towards them, "Back up." she ordered the man who wasn't stuck to a tree.

Lareina grabbed the end of the arrow and with one less than gentle yank she pulled it out of the tree and the man's arm then stepped back, aiming her gun at the men, "Now get out of here." she ordered.

"But he's bleeding." the first man said.

"Forget it Jerry, let's just get out of here." the other said and they started to head off.

As soon as they were out of sight Lareina dropped to her knees next to the cougar, making sure it was dead. "Oh no." she whispered as she looked at it's belly.

"What? You thought it would still be alive?" Starscream asked as he came out from where he had been watching.

"No, it was nursing, it has cubs somewhere." Lareina replied.

"Cubs?" Starscream asked.

"Babies, and if I don't find them they'll starve to death." Lareina explained, whistling for the wolves then pulling the knife from her belt.

"What are you doing? I thought you were upset that it was dead, now your skinning it?" Starscream asked as Lareina started to clean the cougar.

"I'd much rather have it alive, but it's dead, there's not exactly anything I can do to change that, at least I can make sure it doesn't go to waste." Lareina replied.

Several minutes later Lareina had just finished skinning the cougar when M'hweewa and the other wolf ran through the trees.

"M'hweewa, Wipekwa, come." Lareina called, kneeling down and letting them smell the fur, "Show me where it came from." she said then tossed the skin over a high branch as the wolfs sniffed around the clearing for a moment then headed off.

Lareina followed them and Starscream followed her, after walking for nearly half an hour the Wolves stopped at the base of a large cliff with multiple openings in the side of it, "Guess I'll just have to check each opening until I find them." Lareina said as she started to climb up the fairly steep cliff face.

"There are life forms in the opening halfway up to the right." Starscream told her.

"Thank you." Lareina said as she made her way to the opening then crawled into the narrow opening.

A few minutes later she came out with two small cubs about the size of house cats, "Can you still make yourself bigger and take them while I get down?" she asked.

Starscream hesitated a moment then made himself bigger, but instead of taking the cubs he simply scooped Lareina and the cubs into his hand then set them on the ground before making himself smaller again.

"That works too." Lareina said as she shifted her grip on the cubs a little then headed back towards the lake.

"You're arm is damaged." Starscream said a little while later when he noticed blood pouring from Lareina's left arm when she shifted the cubs so less weight would be on it.

"It's just a scratch." she replied dismissively, then after a moment of hesitation added, "But it wouldn't hurt to have a little less weight on it if you wouldn't mind carrying one of them."

Starscream took one of the cubs who then growled at him, "Watch out for the claws, they may be babies but their claws are still pretty sharp." Lareina told him.

"Is that what happened to your arm?" Starscream asked.

"Yeah, they weren't to thrilled with me taking them." Lareina replied.

Once they arrived back at the cabin Lareina made harnesses out of some rope and tied the cubs up before disappearing into the cabin for a little while. When she came back out she had a couple bottles of milk, a medical kit and a pan of boiling water.

"Here see if you can get them to eat." Lareina said tossing the bottles to Starscream before sitting down at a picnic table then started cleaning her arm up before pulling a needle and thread out of the medical kit and sterilizing them.

"What are you doing?" Starscream asked as he watched her stitch up the deepest of the scratches on her arm.

"It's too deep to just leave it open to heal, I have to sew it shut or it'll just keep pulling open and bleeding every time I use my arm." Lareina told him, "What do you do if you're hurt?" she asked.

"Weld it back together or put a patch over it which is then absorbed and becomes part of our armor." he replied.

When Lareina finished with her arm she turned to look at Starscream and was pleasantly surprised to find him sitting on the ground with both cubs sitting on his legs as he fed them, "Well I guess it'll be a good thing having you around,  when I found M'hweewa and Wipekwa I had a hard time taking care of them and keeping up with the chores. Since they seem to like you, you can help take care of them as long as you're here." she said as she walked over and took one of the bottles and cubs.

"Why don't you have a mate to help you?" Starscream asked.

"Because men are all immoral, stupid, disgusting wastes of time and space. When I was 12 I thought I would find a wonderful man and be married by the time I was 18. When I was 18 I realized finding a decent man was going to be a lot harder than I had thought, when I was 21 I finally admitted to myself that no matter how desperately I wanted to be married that there was a chance I would never find a decent man. When I was 23 I decided that today's society has left humanity with little moral structure and that there simply wasn't much chance of ever finding the type of man I wanted. I figured my chances of finding a decent man in the civilized world were about as good as finding one out here in the middle of nowhere."

"My great aunt had always felt guilty that she hadn't been able to take me in when I was ten and my parent's died, so since she only had one son, who had never had kids and had always been in trouble with the law and had even stolen from her a couple of times, she decided to leave everything to me, which included this land. It's been in my family since my great, great, great, great grandfather bought it about two hundred years ago. He was from a wealthy family, but had run away when he was a teenager to become a trapper. While trapping he met my many greats grandmother who was Shawnee, her village was on this land somewhere. When he found out the government was going to steal the land from her tribe and sell it he went home and patched things up with his family. At least long enough to get the money he needed to buy hundreds of miles of pristine forest which he got at a good price because the government thought most of it was useless because of all the mountains and rough terrain. He came back and lived out the rest of his life with my grandmother's tribe. Eventually though the government forced the tribe onto a reservation, but my family managed to maintain ownership of the land and it was passed down from generation to generation usually with no one even bothering to come out here to see what they had inherited. Then it was passed to me and I decided if I was going to be miserably lonely the rest of my life I might as well do it out here, where I can enjoy the peace, quite and nature, feel connected to my heritage and be happy rather than dealing with the noise, pollution, and stress of living around people." Lareina told him.

"What?" she asked a second later when she noticed he had a slightly shocked look on his face.

"You answer one question and yet now bring up a dozen more." Starscream replied.

"Well what do you want to know?" Lareina asked.

The rest of the day was filled with questions and answers about Native American and American history and humans in general. Starscream even went so far as to help her with her chores as long as she continued to answer his questions.