26
Fásach held onto my waist as we slowly crested snow dunes and navigated treacherous mountain passes laden with new, sound-sensitive snowbanks. But once the craggy coast descended into flat, glacial valleys, we were flying. What would have taken us four days by foot took us only three hours.
I followed internal maps downloaded from the needle’s global navigation system rather than activating the vehicle’s HUD. It was faster once I got a feel for it, and it allowed me to take us well off-road. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have had to worry about the terrain at all since we were on a hover model, but the needle’s rear sled skirted the ground with its caterpillar tracks and buoyant suspension under the weight of our equipment.
The valleys quickly gave way to permafrost wetlands bathed in a golden orange light just this side of pink. The ground—previously jagged cuts of black rock and ice—was now overflowing with teal moss, softening the edges of the ground like a bed of pillows. Tiny white flowers reached towards the light at the edge of Big Blue, their petals round and bowl-like to absorb as much of the sun’s rays as possible.
By my clock, it was early afternoon when we crested a smooth hill like half-kneaded dough and found an abandoned outpost. Dark, hollow holes watched us where windows had once been on the three prefab pods. The moss had overgrown them entirely, inside and out, trapping the rusted doors in the walls so they looked like silly pinched faces. Their long shadows were devoid of flowers that bloomed in the pink and orange light.
“Let’s stop here for the night. Hide the needle in one of those,” he said through his linguitor directly into my head. I was wearing a helmet while he was not.
“Got it,” I responded, easing us down the slope.
We dismounted before raising the needle’s hover clearance with a burst of its charge and guiding it into the largest pod. Fásach jumped up after it, testing the integrity of the building. He nodded, grabbing his pack as the needle wound down. Then he took the helmet from me and set it on the seat, crouching in the raised entryway so our faces were closer to level.
“Let’s check the others, see if either one is good for bedding down.”
“We aren’t going to stay with the bike? It’s warmer.”
He met my eye, running his tongue over his teeth. “I”m worried about putting more weight on the floor.” Fásach pulled a vantablade from his pack and handed it to me. “Just in case.” Then we split up.
I unlatched the front of my coveralls and removed my gloves, clipping them to my belt. Compared to Svargapan Samudr, this place was balmy, and I craved that weak sliver of light on my skin.
Unlike the other two, the smallest pod still had a ramp. [Analysis] It held my weight without concern, even if my boots slid on the damp moss and rot. I breathed in the smell of fresh foliage and was hit with a memory of flower shops back on Earth. Slightly sweet, fresh with the scent of clean air. It made me smile. So different from the sulfur and heated rubber of Huajile. I breathed deep again—
And someone moaned. I froze, my eyes wide, skin pebbled in fear. When it happened again, I recognized the slight haze of an echo or memory. The sound of vomiting came next, prayers in Rosy’s native language, a man crying. My stomach cramped uncomfortably, watery pain sapping the strength from my limbs.
I clutched the entryway of the pod and swallowed hard. My heart still pounded in my chest, but the immediacy of danger dissipated. I waited for her memory to pass, easing my way inside.
It was overgrown like the larger pod, save for bumps along the wall that could have been the remnants of a table and a bed. Out of the corner of my eye, the bed was draped in yellow eyelet sheets. Tall white candles flickered in the corners. I heard Rosy’s papi praying behind my shoulder too, but every time I turned around, the moss swallowed up the yellow and the candles, and her papi shuffled away out of sight.
Fásach’s boots thumped up the ramp, and I gasped, turning to meet his eye.
“Everything okay?” he asked, hackles rising.
I licked my lips and nodded.
“?Lo siento!I mean—” I patted my ears and shook my head. “I’m fine. It’s just Rosy.”
“Take your time.” Fás chuckled a deep and soothing huhuhuh for me, joining me inside. He squeezed my shoulder and looked around the room. “This one’s in better shape, but we don’t have to stay here.”
“Thanks,” I said weakly.
“Come on, let’s eat outside,” he said, jumping down to the ground. He held his hand up for me to take, and instead of steadying me as I slipped down the ramp, he picked me up. I slid down his front with a swish as our coveralls rubbed against each other, and his ears pressed back. He stared at my mouth when my toes found the ground.
“Eat?” I asked.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
Fásach concentrated so hard on rations, you’d have thought he was making a three-course meal. He smashed a bag of liquid on the ground and massaged it in his palms as we both watched the horizon.
“That’s Dawn’s Razor,” I told him, nodding toward the black ridge of trees in the distance. “According to the maps, we’ll ride through there for two days, then hit the jungle.”
Fásach’s ears perked up with interest. “That soon?”
“Mm,” I affirmed, transfixed by the sun, already setting and fading before we’d had lunch. Fásach handed me the bag of liquid and I poured it into my mouth. Savory broth of some kind that warmed up my chest and hands. While he prepped his own, I pulled up Gilladh’s maps of the jungle, heart in my throat.
Traveler was right. The maps of Yaspur had been doctored. But Gilladh’s hadn”t. [Analysis] A lot of things about the station clicked into place. The high volume of encrypted transmissions, the isolation, that they weren”t pushy about hearing stories from Renata… Perhaps Pahadthi 03 was a watch tower as much as it was a planetary antenna. The only reason they”d have correct maps was because they were part of the force that protected the colony.
It took almost no time to find what I was looking for: a river that wound through the jungle like a snake, gouging a deep path through a valley basin I didn’t have a name for. The cliffs that overlooked it were relatively bare, a rare patch of black grasslands at a high enough altitude that one could see the valley as far as the horizon when they stood at the edge of the playfield.
And when Rosy snuck up to the top of the tower to take vid comms from Roka Lokurian—to make plans and check in on the progress of the doll that would replace her rather than flirt with her supposed venandi boyfriend—she’d stare out at the horizon and imagine what was next for her.
In one direction, she’d see the Pahadthi Mountains.
In the opposite, the valley.
And she’d think to herself just how much that valley looked like a crater.
My lip trembled, overwhelmed with relief and gratitude. She’d spent so much time up there hoping that her ruthlessness would lead to a stable life, and it had paid off for us. I wiped tears out of my eyes and flipped on my holowell to share the map with Fásach.
“Renata is along the southern bank of the Saphed River,” I told him, highlighting the hundred miles or so where it could be. “It’s built on black, grassy cliffs overlooking this crater. The…” I sounded it out from the map. “Valiya Kooyidthi Crater.”
Fásach stopped massaging his bag of broth, hands dropping into his lap, awestruck.
“There’s a hundred-mile length of the river that it could be—”
“But it’s definitely along that river?” he asked.
I smiled, emotion still lodged in my throat. “No question.”
He sat back, watching the map just like we’d watched the solar flares inside the cave.
“It looks so close,” he murmured, wide-eyed. “Gil said three weeks by foot.”
“A week now, if their snow needle can work in the jungle. I’m sure there are trails we can use. If we have to search a lot, it could be much longer though.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember through Rosy. “I think I saw trails along the banks. And Vindilus’s people had needles too.”
Fásach settled into faraway thoughts with me, comfortable sharing silence as the wind whistled across the valley, a mere breeze compared to the tundra. He cleared his throat with a thoughtful chuckle as the last of the sun’s weak rays dipped beneath Dawn’s Razor, setting the points of the black trees alight like matches.
He grabbed the bedroll from the needle, and when he caught me laying a couple blankets over the vital pods, he smiled. Warm and sweet. We both knew they were thermoregulated, but I felt the compulsion to tuck them in regardless. I had a feeling that if I didn’t do it, he would have anyway.
“Good night, Safia. Good night, Misila,” I said, patting their displays.
Fásach laid out his bedroll and sat down on the edge.
“Roz,” he said.
“Hm?”
“No charging bay tonight.” His hand slipped to the bedroll beside him as he swallowed hard. “Let me keep you warm.”
And just like that, my core temperature blazed between my legs. My pussy throbbed thinking about his hand on my clit, his claws pinching my thighs. It was obvious he was thinking about it too, vitals elevated and short of breath.
“How much do you want me to take off?” I asked, breathless.
Fásach snapped his teeth together, the glint of white in his mouth shining in the light of our lamp. He licked his snarl down with effort and shook his head.
“Tomorrow morning,” he growled, then cleared his voice again. A chuckle bubbled up his throat, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t tame the aggressive wrinkle at the top of the bridge of his nose. He flexed his fists, sheathing and drawing his claws. “When yiwren go to war, they chase their thuais in a ceremony to spin them into a wild rut. It’s the fastest way to transition.”
“Aren’t you in a rut already?” I asked. “The last time you chased me—”
“I didn’t do what bucks usually do when they catch their doe,” Fásach said pointedly. He closed his eyes tight, licking his teeth between words and huffs of breath. “I was ready to kill Gil, but they were going to win. I was lucky, Roz. That’s all. And I can’t afford to lose the next time. The next time it’ll be Vin. Or Sizzle. I need to be stronger than I was before Safia and Misila lost their mara.”
“You will be,” I promised him, toeing off my boots and unlatching my coveralls. I kept them on but opened them down to the groin with shaking fingers, focused on assuring him that he was enough. “Your transition is moving faster than before, and I can help with my full spectrum senses—”
“Tomorrow morning,” he forged ahead, looking down the deep vee that exposed my thermals. “I want to chase you again. And this time, I don’t want you wearing anything at all.”
His words stalled us both in a heavy, warm silence. I heard him swallow like a thirsty husk of a man before he spoke again, the white glint of the lamp caught in the reflective discs of his eyes. The eyes of a hunter.
“I’ve been transitioning for what, two weeks? With a rut hunt, it would have been done in two days. Do you know what that is?”
My vision shook with anticipation. “You… you want to hunt me?”
Fásach snapped his teeth and groaned, stretching his face to the ceiling with a whine. “Roz—” He interrupted himself with a tongue-lolling pant before slurping that tongue back into the cradle of his jaws. “I want to catch you. Which means you need to keep your clothes on right now.”
“Oh.” [Analysis incomplete.] “Wait, why? I don’t understand. I liked telling you no before, but I really do want y—”
“Don’tgive me permission. Not yet,” Fásach warned. “I’ll take it in a snap of my teeth. Just, come here.” He patted the bedroll. “Let me teach you how—”
“To snuggle?” I interrupted with an excited jolt. Fás’s eyes locked onto my breasts as they bounced, the chill air hardening my nipples to points that dragged on the fabric. I gasped, clutching my coverall latches closed with bright cheeks. “Sorry!”
A smirk lifted the corner of his mouth despite the pained stutter in his chest. He closed his eyes and grimaced, adjusting his pants. When he reached out his dark palm to me, his claws caught the lamplight. “Come here.”
I took his hand, the thick pads warm and cushy, and sat beside him. He laid down, dragging me with him, and engulfed my waist in his thick arms. Face burrowed into the coveralls hiding my breasts, he breathed me in, swiveled his ears, and couched a thigh between my knees.
“This is much better than when I was charging,” I sighed, carding my fingers through his relaxed hackles. His shoulders twitched, and he nipped at my clothes, the impression of his teeth catching my nipple in warning.
“The harder you make it for me now, the harder I’ll chase you tomorrow,” he growled.
I pinched his ear in retaliation, remembering all the times he’d snarled at my denial in the past. “Is that a threat? It’s not a very good one.”
He chuckled, deep and vicious, making my skin pebble as he rubbed his velvet face against my pillowy chest. “I can’t guarantee…” His posture stiffened as he swallowed the confession. “Your skin is so delicate, and my claws…”
“When you chase me, will you be able to stop?” I asked, looking down at his heavy, drooping ears, how the wispy edges of his fur caught the stark white lamplight. He was quiet a long time before nodding into my chest.
“Yes,” he rasped. His anxious breath moistened my thermals, hot on his exhale and cold on his inhale. Then he shook his head and held me a little tighter. “I don’t know. Gods grant me strength, I hope so.”
I pet his tresses, working a snarl out of their lengths. “My dermal mesh has a safety feature. I can shock you if I need to.”
“That’s not the point,” he growled. “Yiwren aren’t mindless animals. I should be able to stop without you defending yourself first. And I will, I just… I’m worried about being too rough.”
[Analysis] I cocked my head, considering the uncertainty of the dawn. Fásach had been unpredictable, swinging between extremes. But I liked it. Being with Fás was like a dance in which the lead moved from partner to partner. Whether he was rough and demanding or bashful and quiet, it was all facets of him.
“If I speak out loud, will you know how I feel?”
Fásach looked up at me with wide eyes. “Yes.”
“Can your symphony tolerate if I feel bad because of you?”
He blinked, his shoulders easing. “No. I don’t think it could.”
I smiled, patting the wiry tresses between his horns. “Then we’ll be fine.” [Generating safe word] “Boosh is the new safe word. Got it?”
“Boosh…”
“Boosh,” I confirmed, beaming. “But I promise that I’ll knock you out cold if I have to.”
“I believe you.” Fás smirked, one large fang catching the light. “Thank you.”
We fell asleep soon after.
Entangled and warm.