Chapter 14 Sem
A frozen wind howled into the pod when I slid the door open. Outside, the cold, empty abyss of jagged rocks and windswept snow we’d landed in stared back at me. Holding my breath, I shot Elanie an anxious look.
She blinked at me. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you breathing?”
After pointing a finger out the door, I wrapped my hands around my throat and mimed suffocating, lolling my tongue out the side of my mouth. Hoping she’d get can you please tell me if my lungs will burst into flames? from the gesture.
“Oh.” She sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring. “It’s terraformed. Breathable.”
“Thank the Saints,” I wheezed. “This pod doesn’t have a single oxygen converter.”
I poked my head out, then ducked back inside, my teeth already chattering.
Rubbing warmth back into my arms, I frowned at Elanie’s thin pajamas, her bare feet.
“The voice couldn’t have at least compelled you to dress warmly before making you commit high space crimes?
” I asked, but it was rhetorical. “And why in the worlds is this rock terraformed? Who takes the time to make a dwarf planet barely on the map habitable?”
She reached for her harness, but her hands shook, metal clanging against metal as she tried to release the buckles.
I sank to my knees, taking her hands in mine. “Let me.”
“How are you so calm?” she asked while I slipped the straps of the harness over her shoulders. “My systems are all red-lining.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Probably shock. I’ll freak out later, I’m sure.” Rising to my feet, I rubbed my hands together for warmth and tilted my head toward the door. “Hearing any voices? Anyone calling for you?”
“No. Why?” She gripped the armrests. “Do you think they’re out there?”
“It’s possible.” I peeked through the door again. “I don’t see anything right now. No lights, no fire, no signs of life at all. Just a lot of dark, and a lot of snow.”
“I’ve never seen snow before.” Her voice was distant, wary. Maybe she was in shock too.
“We should go,” I said, searching the pod for anything we could take with us. “We need to find somewhere to sleep tonight.”
“Why wouldn’t we just sleep here?” She gestured toward the door. “It’s freezing out there.”
I yanked some cargo webbing off the wall. “This is true.”
“And you’re a Portisan,” she reminded me. “You’ll die, Sem. Quickly.”
Giving her a crooked grin, I asked, “If I did, would you miss me?”
“This isn’t a joke.”
I sighed. “You might be right, but I don’t think we have much of a choice.” I searched the overhead compartments one at a time, finding a basic toolkit, an even more basic first-aid kit, and a pulse-flare with one measly charge remaining.
“Of course we have a choice,” she insisted. “It is safe-ish in here. And certain death out there.”
Wrapping the cargo webbing around our provisions, I explained, “This pod is a bright, blinking beacon of come and get us. And considering how we got here, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say we’ll be better off not being found.
” I sank to my knees, deactivating the maglocks on a storage box next to the control panel and throwing open the lid.
I stared inside the box while Elanie moved closer, the warmth from her body sinking into my skin. Craning my neck, I peered up at her. It was impossible, but despite crash landing on an alien planet, she didn’t have a hair out of place aside from a single stray strand that brushed against her neck.
“What are those?” she asked, kneeling beside me while I contemplated the risks versus benefits of brushing that stray strand back into place for her.
“MREs.” I pulled out a handful of foil packages. “Dehydrated meals. Not much, but it’s something.”
“Sem, we need to be realistic. I can withstand extreme cold, but you won’t survive long enough out there to miss a snack, let alone a meal.”
“Hey, I’m heartier than I look.” As I huffed air onto my freezing fingers, I added, “I think.” Digging back into the storage box, I moved an empty case of powdered orange drink to the side and grabbed a package of water purification tablets and some very expired multi-vitamin injectors. Then I gasped.
“What is it?” She lurched back. “Did something bite you?”
“Salvation,” I said, pulling out a set of metal bracelets and a shiny silver pouch. “Salvation bit me.”
“What are those?”
“Thermal generators and a survival blanket.” I gave the silver pouch a great big kiss. “I might not die out there after all.”
Ten minutes later, after scavenging everything of use that we could find in the pod, I wrapped the survival blanket around my shoulders, clamped the thermal generators to my wrists and ankles, and tied our supplies up in the cargo webbing.
Hauling the makeshift satchel over my shoulder, I said, “Come on, let’s go before my shock wears off and I realize how completely screwed I am. ”
“This is a terrible idea,” Elanie said. She reached for the satchel. “But let me carry this, at least.”
Helping settle the satchel over her shoulder, I prayed silently to the Saints that I wouldn’t end up being something else she’d need to carry.
The wind was a merciless roar in my ears as ice shards stung my cheeks and neck.
The snow was deep and cold and endless. But at least it covered our tracks.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d walked, but it felt like an eternity.
The low gravity, with no traction, no grip, made for slow going.
Each step seemed to suspend me above the ground for a heartbeat before I floated back down.
Like I could leap straight up into the stars if I just pushed hard enough.
What would that be like? I wondered. Floating among the stars. It seemed so peaceful up there. Silent. Calm.
Elanie was invincible in front of me, a juggernaut cutting tracks through the massive drifts in her pajamas and bare feet.
I wished I still had the survival blanket so I could wrap her up inside it, but the wind ripped it away from me long ago.
All I could do now was watch her power on, her pajama legs encrusted with snow, ice crystals clinging to each strand of her hair.
The wind screamed through my shirt, my pants, my bones.
I’d lost feeling in my feet, even with the thermal generators.
My hands were useless blocks of ice shoved into my pants pockets.
I’d never been so cold. Why did my people have to be ectothermic?
Why couldn’t I be more like Rax or Morgath, bound by heat-radiating muscle mass and thick green skin?
Or maybe like an Argosian, built to withstand the long, brutal winters of their planet?
Why was I made for sun and warm breeze and water?
“Just over there.” Her voice barely carried to me through the wind. “There’s a hollow in the mountain. It might be a cave.”
Cave. What was a cave? It was a word. But what were words? And why did everyone use so many of them? Different languages, different dialects, different ways to say the same things. Or to not say anything at all.
Nobody ever said what they really felt. Nobody ever told the truth. Maybe this was why there were so many words, so the entire Known Universe would never run out of ways to not tell each other how they really felt.
There should only be twenty words. Maybe fifty. Fifty was all any being should ever need.
I pulled my shirt away from my chest, suddenly sweating and unbearably hot.
“Are you all right?” Elanie asked, her hair whipping around her head like a halo of spun sugar.
“I’m good!” I shouted back at her, smiling, feeling my teeth beneath my lips.
Teeth were weird. Why did we have so many of them?
Every species I’d ever known, heads just full of teeth.
I tried to run my tongue over my own teeth, but my mouth was too dry.
“Thirsty, though,” I called out. “And hot!” Pulling my foot up out of the snow, I shook the clunky shackle around my ankle.
“I think I need to take these off. They’re too hot. I need to cool off.”
“Do not touch those,” she snapped, marching back to me, her steps crunching in the snow like cymbals crashing between my ears.
Stumbling toward her, I sighed. “Look at you. You don’t have too many teeth.
Your teeth are perfect, like pearls. Like little baby pearls.
And your eyes…” I pulled my hands from my pockets, wanting to cradle her face with them.
But my fingers wouldn’t open. “Your eyes are so beautiful, Elanie. So rich and bottomless. Like caramel. Like coffee. I want to drown in them.”
Grasping my hands, she rubbed them between hers. “Stars above, Sem. You’re freezing. I think you might be going hypothermic.”
Hypothermic. While she held my hands to her chest, I realized that I knew that word.
My body was losing heat faster than I could generate it.
Advanced stages caused vasodilation in the extremities, which led to a sensation of overheating.
Which I was suffering from now. But it was just another word. Only a word. Only—
Understanding rammed into me so hard I staggered a step. “It’s your eyes,” I gasped. “Your eyes are the reason why there are so many words. I was wrong. I need more than fifty. I need them all. Your eyes deserve all the words.”
Her frown was a tragedy. She should never frown. She should never worry. Never be sad or stressed or anything but perfectly safe and warm and happy.
“What happened to your blanket?” she demanded, searching the snow around us.
“Wind took it.”
Cursing under her breath, she undid the buttons on her pajama top and slipped it off her shoulders.
I nearly fell to my knees.
My planet didn’t have goddesses, only Saints. But I was a believer now. Because the woman standing half naked before me while the windblown snow flurried around her was a goddess. And I wanted to worship.
“Magnificent,” I whispered, then I closed my eyes when her gentle fingers wrapped her shirt around my head. I felt swaddled, blessed, immersed in her delicious cinnamon-vanilla scent. “You’re magnificent.”
“You’re delirious,” she returned.
“Am not,” I insisted. “Just need to lie down in the snow and cool off. Just for a minute.”
“Dammit, Sem.” She rubbed her hands over mine again.
I barely felt it. I barely felt anything at all.
Interlacing our fingers, she pulled me along behind her like a child. Or a pet. I didn’t mind. I would be her pet. Her little puppy, jumping up when she came home, carrying her slippers to her in my mouth, making sure she never felt alone.
“Walk, Sem. Keep walking, as fast as you can.”
“Okay. I will. But I’m so tired. I’m so—” A jaw-cracking yawn cut me off.
“Walk!” she barked, letting go of my hand and moving behind me, shoving me onward.
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to be so mean about it.”
“Please, Sem.” Her voice was softer now, gentler. Like the breeze lifting off the waves. The kind that carried mist up onto the shore, onto my cheeks. That was always my favorite kind of breeze. My favorite kind of Elanie breeze. “Please walk.”
And so I did, one foot in front of the other, Elanie urging me on when I slowed.
“We’re almost there,” she promised me again and again.
Almost where? Almost dead? Or almost finally alive? Yes. That’s it. I wasn’t stuck on the ship anymore. I wasn’t trapped. I was the wind. I was the snow. I was the stars twinkling above our heads.
“We’re free,” I tried to say, but my throat, dry and tight, wouldn’t let the words through.
One more push of Elanie’s hands urging me forward made my head fall back.
My eyes met the night sky, vast and breathtaking.
I didn’t know these constellations. But I wanted to.
I wanted to float beside them, above them.
“Stay with me, Sem.” Her voice was strong, steady, pulling me back down. “Stay with me,” she repeated, and it felt like a prayer.
I would stay with her. We were bonded now, on this frozen tundra. We were ice melting and reforming. We were snowflakes swirling through the air, our crystalline branches reaching out for one another, spanning space and time until we finally made contact.
Blue light splashed over the snow, stretching our shadows out long like taffy.
“What is that?” I asked. Headlights? Flares? Was someone coming?
“It’s Delphi,” she said while the ringed planet arched above the horizon, its light turning her skin just as blue as mine.
I wasn’t looking at Delphi, only at her. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
She took my hand again. And while my eyes traced the graceful curve of her cheek, skimmed the gentle slope of her nose, she pulled me forward. In Delphi’s light, I could just make out mountains rising in the distance, jagged peaks piercing the sky, snow cradled in the hollows between them.
“The cave is just over there,” she told me, pointing at a shadow in the rock I could barely see. Her hand was warm around mine, her grip firm and sure. But I was so tired.
She pulled, and I took one more step, then another. And then I was floating, falling, gone.