12. Mazituz
TWELVE
It’s early morning and Camille hasn’t woken yet. I lie next to her, unable to move. It’s like I’m paralyzed, forced to watch her chest rise up and down and listen to her breathing.
The color is slowly returning to her cheeks, and I feel a deep satisfaction within me that the healing moss is working. I want to take care of her and nurture her. Something about it feels so right.
It’s only been about three days since I carried her here with me, but she’s already becoming more comfortable, or so I like to think. She certainly doesn’t seem as scared as she was that first day.
Camille stirs, and I can tell she’s about to wake. I recognize the slight change in her breathing and the small twitch her forehead makes right between her eyebrows. It’s the same every morning.
Sure enough, her eyes flutter open a moment later. She blinks the sleep away, stretching her arms out and flexing her fingers and toes. A small smile appears on her lips as she looks down at her body, like she’s happy that the pain is going away.
My heart thunders in my chest. I did that. I’m the reason for that smile.
She relaxes into the moss bed, closing her eyes for a small moment before opening them and turning to face me.
“Good morning,” she breaths, before pinching her brows together. “Wait, is it morning? How can you tell down here?”
“That’s what I love about my underground world. We are not slaves to the sun. Morning and night can be whenever you want them to be. But, yes, the sun is currently risen in your world.”
She frowns like she doesn’t approve of my answer. “I like the sun. You talk about it like it’s a bad thing.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s easy for me to dislike it when the sun burns my eyes if I go outside.”
“It does?”
“Yes. It’s tolerable but extremely uncomfortable for me.”
“I didn’t know. That must be terrible.”
“It’s not so bad. I’m made to be underground, and I’ve lived my whole life like this, so it doesn’t bother me.”
I stand up, walk across the room, and change the subject. It annoys me to talk about the world she so clearly misses. I want her here. I want her to love this world.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “I got you some things.”
“You did?” she asks, sitting up for the first time today.
“Just some fruits I thought you might like. I also brought some fungi for you to try. The food variety down here is pretty limited, so I thought it best if you get used to eating different things. But if you don’t like any of it, I will find other options next time.”
“Fungi? Is that edible?”
“These are. Would you like to try them?”
“Sure,” she says a bit apprehensively.
I hand her two different kinds of fungi, one of which is mostly purple, and the other tan with a bright orange head. She takes them, and her skin grazes mine, sending a shockwave through my body. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop feeling like that when she touches me.
She bites into the purple one, and I watch her facial expressions intently, gauging her reaction to the unfamiliar taste. At first, she scrunches up her nose. I’m afraid she’s going to spit it out, but she doesn’t. She continues to chew and even takes a second bite.
“That one wasn’t bad,” she says once she’s finished. “At first it was a little weird, but I actually quite liked the earthy aftertaste.”
Next, she bites into the orange-headed one. She seems to have the same reaction to it, although this one seems to gross her out a little less than the first one.
“I think I like this one better. I bet it would go very nicely in some stew.”
“Stew?”
“Yeah, like soup. You’ve never had soup?”
“I don’t eat the same foods as you. Is it easy to make?”
“If you had something to warm the pot, I suppose it’d be easy.”
I can’t help but frown at the thought of not being able to provide her with what she wants. Shaking this thought away, I hand her the rest of the food I scavenged for her.
“Two more fruits for you to try, and some more of the fungi if you want it.”
“Thank you.” She gives me a soft smile before biting into the supple skin of the bright red fruit I gave her. “Oh, this is delicious!”
I nod, satisfied.
“I also found you some clothing,” I tell her as she eats, standing and rummaging around for them.
Grabbing them, I set the clothes on the moss next to her for her to peruse once she’s ready.
“Where did you get them?” she asks after swallowing another bite.
“From the miners.”
She stops dead, a horrified look taking over her face.
“Did you… kill them?”
“No, of course not. Sometimes, they camp out down here for a night or two, so they bring extra clothes with them.”
Her face turns to a look of relief, but she doesn’t say anything else.
Once she’s done eating, she looks at the clothes, holding the shirt up to her frame and looking down at it. Suddenly, she looks up at me, shyness evident as she bites her lower lip.
“Um, should I change now?”
“Yes, if you would like.”
“I would, but…” She trails off, looking around the room.
It takes me a moment to realize what she is too scared to ask, but once I do, I turn away from her, giving her the privacy she wants.
“Thanks,” she mumbles.
As she changes, I listen to the shuffling sounds and try not to focus on her naked frame behind me. She needs more time before anything can happen between us, I know that.
“All done,” she says a moment later.
The clothes suit her well, though they’re a size too big. Perhaps she can grow into them, or I can search for smaller ones next time.
“I love them,” she says, doing a twirl and smoothing her hands over her new clothes. “Thank you for this and the food.”
I can’t stop the satisfied rumbles that come out of me upon seeing her happy and knowing I caused that happiness. She stops suddenly, looking at me quizzically.
“What about you? Don’t you eat breakfast?”
“I can wait a while longer, but yes, I usually indulge a bit after I wake up.”
“What do you eat?”
A smirk spreads across my face at her naivety. “Would you like to come see?”
Her face lights up and she nods. I can feel an unfamiliar but not unpleasurable warmth filling me at her expression. It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, even better than my most prized treasures.
A few minutes later, I lead her through the tunnels in search of some mineral ores. As we walk, I point at different things and quiz her on their names. She does her best to repeat them, but her pronunciations definitely need some work.
The air is filled with the sounds of her giggling as she gets the names wrong, followed by the deeper noise of my more guttural laughter echoing off the cave walls. It’s such a genuine moment that fills me with deep pleasure.
Eventually, we come across some ores, and I show her how I scrape them out with my claws. She watches with genuine wonder and fascination.
“What’s this one called?” she asks, pointing to a black ore that I have a particular taste for.
“Jamseloite,” I tell her, hiding my smirk at the way she repeats the name, trying to mimic my accent.
I eat some of the jamseloite, enough to last me most of the day, before walking her toward a dead end in the cavern.
“I want to show you something,” I say, gesturing toward a dirt wall.
Camille watches curiously while I show her how I use my claws to sculpt the dirt. Her appreciation for my art is visible in the way her eyes light up.
“Fascinating,” she murmurs. “You like doing this?”
“It’s one of my favorite ways to pass the time. Why don’t you try?” I step away from the wall to give her space.
She approaches the wall and begins tracing the dirt with her fingers, creating a beautiful scene.
“What is it?” I ask her.
“The sun,” she breathes, continuing to work.
“Tell me about it. Tell me why you love it so much.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful. When the light catches in someone’s eyes just the right way, making their pupils smaller and causing the color of their eyes to pop… That’s my favorite. It could make your blue eyes sparkle like the sun shining on the ocean. It could make mine appear like ice over a lake.”
I listen as she talks, describing her perfect day, describing a world I’ve never known. I expect to feel jealous, or angry that she loves it that much. But the joy on her face is so real that it’s hard to find any desire to deny her that simple pleasure.
Instead, I absorb her words and my eyes become distant as I try to imagine this perfect world she describes. A world so foreign that its concept is alien to me, causing me to frown at my own inability to picture it the way she paints it to be.
After a while, her longing for the surface world is evident in the shift of her wistful tone, and I let her trail off as we walk back to my lair. I try not to let it bother me, convincing myself that the life I can give her is far better than that which she yearns for.
Back in my cave, we spend the rest of the day learning about each other. I teach her as much as I can about my life, and in turn, she tells me about the different things we could make with the food I find down here.
Despite my sadness that she has yet to appreciate her new life, I enjoy our banter, noting how easy it is for the two of us to talk to each other. I thought it would be harder to adjust to her company after my prolonged solitude, but she feels like an extension of myself, and the rhythm between us is natural and effortless.
Besides, she will learn to love it here. She has to.