The Dead
EIGHTEEN
Elena
My hair falls around me, a wet veil against the pounding rivulets beating on me from the showerhead.
Steam rises in the air as I stare at my bare feet and the water pooling around my toes.
Too tired to move, I stand there for what seems like hours, barely managing to sway back and forth as the past few days wash off me.
I shouldn’t be wasting water like this, but I can’t muster the energy to care.
After a brief nap, I climbed in here. I’m thankful enough to have what I have.
Giving into the fleeting luxury—because it is fleeting—I lift my good arm and push my hair back, streaking my nails through it to rinse out the last of the shampoo still clinging to the strands.
Only when the water turns cold and I’m woozy with hunger and adrenaline do I step out of the bathing unit and into the bathroom.
I take the time to dry my body before dressing in a pair of Jenna’s loose workout pants that I pilfered from her closet.
Luckily, she has stuff stored on the ship from long ago and we’re almost the same size.
My clothes are all gone—lost within the Lukys’s cave. I wiggle Jenna’s loose black tee shirt over my bad shoulder, taking an uncomfortable few minutes to get my arm through it.
Once dressed and cleaned, I’m finally willing to face whatever’s waiting for me. I open the door and leave the bathroom, walking down the hallway to the middle of the ship. Glimpsing outside as I dash into the kitchen, no forms—alien or otherwise—appear.
I’m… alone.
I think… I hope.
But then there’s a shift in the reflection. I stiffen before bolting to my room. When I peer around the corner, I don’t see what caused the movement. If there is a culprit, they’re out of my sight.
It’s okay. No one can get me while I’m locked inside… The glass is too thick to break.
If someone is lurking outside my ship—if he’s lurking outside my ship—I want to know. I want to know if he’s done with me or not. It could just be Greg or Levy.
I creep forward.
The meadow, now partially trampled from recent activity, emerges.
Lukys and the other black and gray naga, Ixi, are on the far side near the hills.
I pause a short distance behind the glass so they don’t notice me.
Thankfully, they’re mostly turned away and paying attention to something on the ground. I squint, trying to see what it is.
I hitch.
The other naga that tried to take me…
He’s… dead?
Lukys and Ixi circle the body, their mouths moving as they talk. Eventually, Lukys stops at one side and Ixi pauses on the other. In tandem they reach down, and with Lukys grabbing the dead naga’s arms and Ixi grasping his tail, they lift the body off the ground.
Lukys glances my way as they carry the corpse away.
I take a quick step back but not before his eyes narrow on me—and not before I witness the grief in his expression. Fleeing into my ship where he can’t see me, I grab the side of the bar to steady myself when my vision grows dizzy.
They mourn and care for their dead too. Of course they do.
Suddenly overcome with my own grief and the toll of the last few days, tears well in my eyes and I stumble to my room.
Curling up on the bed and wishing more than anything that I had my blanket, I cry myself to sleep.