Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Lydia
Running away takes a lot of work. Had I more time to plan, I might have been enjoying myself. Acting on the spur of the moment isn’t something I’m practiced at doing well, and I keep worrying I’ve forgotten something important.
I also haven’t gotten far for someone who’s been walking as fast as she can.
I want to put a fair amount of distance between me and the others, in case someone decides to come after me.
I don’t want them having an easy job finding me.
But I’m still in the brothers’ farm, traipsing from algae lake to algae lake, searching for a way to reach the unexplored section of the caves.
The only tunnels that have been artificially widened by Killan’s family are the ones they use for the farm itself.
And while I keep finding cracks in the rock wall through which I can glimpse brand-new caves, I can’t fit through any of them.
Hours must have passed, and I kept glancing over my shoulder, half expecting to see Killan stalking up behind me.
If that were to happen…I admit to being afraid of how I’d react.
Our kiss cemented in my consciousness exactly how physically attracted to him I am.
It’s a fact now, not the mad ravings of my imagination, not an untested hypothesis.
Right when I’m on the verge of despairing that I’ll never get away, I finally find a natural tunnel that I can squeeze through. My duffle bag almost gets stuck, and I have to turn sideways, but I eventually make it through by holding my breath.
My mouth drops open. The natural cave is stunning.
It’s roughly half the size of a sports field, with stalactites clinging to the ceiling like icicles and stalagmites reaching out of the ground toward the cave roof.
Some are as tall as me and twice as thick.
Others are so spindly I’m sure they would break if I leaned my weight against them.
In a few places, the stalactites are so long and the stalagmites so tall that they meet in the middle, creating elegant columns, like what you’d see on a holiday to Greece.
I dump my duffle bag on the ground. Maybe running away wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
At the center of the cave, where the floor dips lowest, is a small lake.
More of a pond. What little light creeps through the crack from the farm cave into the natural cave is reflecting off the perfectly still and perfectly silent water, creating a halo that dances over the closest columns.
Beyond that, the rock is so black, I can’t distinguish between what’s stone and what are shadows.
Which…makes me realize I did, in fact, forget something important. A torch.
I can hardly go exploring in the dark. The floor of the unexplored cave hasn’t been artificially smoothed, and I can easily imagine myself face-planting straight into a stalagmite before I’ve taken three steps beyond the circle of light.
Fuck. I’ve come too far to return to Killan’s house to search for a torch.
Besides, it’s surely daytime, which means he’ll have found my note and know that I’ve run away.
It would be extremely anticlimactic to get caught, and I don’t think I could run away a second time.
That seems a little too selfish, even for me.
I squeeze my way back into the farm cave, hunting around for a possible solution. This cave is illuminated by a series of sconces mounted intermitted along the walls. There aren’t any wires as far as I can see; maybe they’re battery powered.
Retrieving my bag, I use it as an inefficient stepstool and pull one of the lights off the wall. It comes away easily enough, having been sitting in a metal bracket. Hopefully, the batteries are long-lasting because I can’t see an on/off switch to conserve power.
With a light, I’m able to explore the natural cave in all its fascinating details.
I’ve got no idea if caves back on Earth are this cool; there aren’t exactly any caves in Sydney for me to have explored.
So I take full advantage, counting stalagmites.
Watching waterdrops clinging to the points of the stalactites.
Playing with the dancing shadows cast by my light over the walls.
I wish it was enough to drive Killan from my mind, but the harder I try to suppress thoughts of him, the more they surface. I’m fighting against myself, and I’m losing spectacularly.
When I see a particularly interestingly shaped column, I find myself wondering what Killan would think of it. And when I study the layers of the rock, I accidentally start wanting to ask Killan about how they formed. If anyone’s going to be an expert on Ril II geology, it'll be him.
He’s as proud of this planet as I am of my bread.
That’s when I notice a narrow streak of pale crystal running through the ceiling, looking almost as if someone used a fine paintbrush and white paint to fill in one of the narrowest cracks in the stone.
I follow it into another natural cave, where it splits into two veins running parallel to each other.
And then each of those lines split into even more lines until the back of the second cave looks like a topographical map.
The stalactites are the mountains, and the veins of crystals are the rivers.
The pool of water is even smaller in this cave, as if the farther I move from the farm, the less water there is.
The stalagmites and stalactites are smaller too, and the few columns are hardly thicker than my arm.
It’s still a stunning cave, though, and I walk around as if in a trance, tripping on the uneven ground as I stare up at the ceiling, following the twisting, swirling rivers of crystal.
I wish I could touch it, but I’m not tall enough, not even when I stand on my duffle bag again, squashing all my food.
If this was Earth, I’d guess they were quartz veins. But this isn’t Earth, and the crystal could be absolutely anything. The possibilities are endless.
Which is kind of amazing when I think about it. How many Humans can claim to have visited an alien planet? Or explored alien caves and admired alien crystals?
Kissed an alien?
Automatically, I glance over my shoulder, for what feels like the hundredth time. But of course, Killan isn’t behind me. Even if he saw my note and decided to follow, he couldn’t have fit through the narrow tunnel I took from the farm cave to the natural caves. I’m all alone, exactly as I wished…
Killan
It takes me hardly any time to find where Lydia has gone. There are only a few places in the farm from which it is possible to reach the other caves, and she has found the first of these.
I do not need the datapad—currently tucked into the pocket of my boot—to keep track of my location.
I have lived here since I was a youngling of seven Common years, and I know my way through the complex cave system as well as I know the pattern of my scales.
Our nursery lakes were not chosen at random.
My family conscientiously mapped the caves and meticulously surveyed which natural tunnels could be widened safely and which must be left alone.
Sorin, Roan, and I played for hundreds of hours down here, watching our parents work and helping with what small tasks we could.
I strike the wall, the rock cutting into my palm. The last time I took this particular passage from the farm into the natural cave, I was considerably younger and significantly smaller. Now, I cannot fit.
So I take another, much longer route, intending to double back around.
Lydia cannot escape me.
Lydia
I’d naively thought it’d be a simple thing to remember my route through the caves. But with a realistic idea of how untamed the natural caves are comes an understanding that relying on memory alone will be too risky. If I get lost, I could die down here.
I’m stuck on that problem for a long time, and eventually I find the least lumpy section of floor and make a bed, using my duffle bag as a pillow. I can’t be sure it’s evening, but I’m hungry and tired like I would be at the end of the day, so I decide to trust my internal clock.
Of course, I dream of Killan again. He’s kissing me, and I’m writhing against him, desperate for so much more than his lips. He never talks in my dreams. Neither do I this time. Which is a shame. It would be so much easier to demand he fuck me if I could use my words.
I wake, my panties soaked and my body unsatisfied. I slip a hand between my legs, and when I close my eyes, I can almost recreate Dream Killan. Almost. But the ground is painfully lumpy, and a drop of water hits my cheek, making me jerk upright.
What the fuck am I doing? Even in my dreams, he’s the focus of my attention. Despite my reservations, despite my best efforts, and despite the force of my unbendingly stubborn personality, I’m obsessed with him.
I clamber shakily to my feet, my back and neck stiff after sleeping so uncomfortably. Then I change my clothes, desperate for a fresh pair of panties that won’t remind me of my wet dream every time I take a step.
And that’s when I realize I can create a trail of breadcrumbs with my clothes to keep from getting lost. I tie a T-shirt to a stalagmite, marking the exit from the second cave back into the first cave, and when I start my exploration of the third cave, I hook my soaked panties onto a stalactite, marking the exit back into the second cave.
I can explore as many caves as I have articles of clothing.
If only the problem of Killan was so easily solved.
Killan
Some distance away, Lydia tips her head back, tracking the pattern of kameen crystal in the ceiling with her gaze. She has been like this for hours, and she spent most of yesterday the same—exploring caves with the special pleasure that comes with it being her first time down here.
I remember feeling that same way as a child.
I cannot keep my eyes off her, relishing the awe with which she examines my home planet.
Even separated by the vast expanse of this cave and hidden in the shadows, I am mesmerized by the way her brow creases as she studies the lines of crystal.
The distracted and careless way she pushes her too-long hairs away from her face.
The way her shoulders slope forward, ever so slightly, when she is calm and loose-limbed.
I pretend she is looking at me like that—her eyes heavy-lidded, her bottom lip trapped between her blunt teeth. My cock twitches in response.
The silence of the underground is suddenly oppressive.
I swear every strained breath of mine echoes off the walls, and I freeze, convinced Lydia will turn around and see me spying on her, my head filled with perverse thoughts of how I would like to press her against the nearest stalagmite and fuck her senseless.
Would she be able to read my thoughts in my expression? Would she take one look at me, across the vast expanse of the cave, and know exactly how completely I crave her touch?
“What the hell?” Lydia’s voice is edged with sharpness.
Renewed tension grabs me, but she has not sighted me.
Instead, she has her hands on her hips and is still staring at the cave ceiling where the lines of kameen crystal are thickest, bands of light through the otherwise black rock.
The crystals have always reminded me of algae, a web of threads tangled together, and the ceiling of this particular cave is covered in them, leaving hardly any space free for stalactites to form.
Is it…moving? But that is not possible. It must be a trick of the shadows. Crystal does not move. Rock walls certainly do not move, not ones four stories underground.
Unless…
Dust drifts lazily through the air, and Lydia raises a hand, as if to catch the particles on her palm.
I surge forward.