Chapter 10 #3
Always wanting to do something, like go to fancy restaurants we couldn’t afford for the Instagram pic, take photos of her cocktails that tasted like ass but looked good, she would laugh louder when guys were around, and that would give guys the audacity to approach us, to think that I would tolerate their company, their existence.
Ugh, she would always twirl her hair before tucking it behind her ear, and she had this toothy smile that would appear whenever she was trying look all sexy.
And I could tolerate that in a compromise, because that’s friendship, but there was no compromise with her.
Never wanted to do anything nice, like camping or hiking, or something fun, like a trip to the zoo or the museum. If we went on a trip, she needed it to be party-focused and would sleep off the booze all day.
One thing we agreed on was music.
When she wasn’t being basic and performative, we vibed on tracks.
Oh shit, we have those tickets for Bob Dylan.
That concert was supposed to happen at the end of the year, and I would be back from this holiday from hell…
It has been around eight months since this all started, three months since I first saw the fae marching by, so yeah, we’ve missed that concert.
And Erin is probably dead.
A breath whooshes out of me, too loud. I forget for a moment that I’m meant to be quiet and frozen in the presence of predators.
Boots tug me out of my spiralling thoughts, the soles slipping over the smooth rocks, and a muttered curse in Spanish.
I throw a look up as a captive comes over the rocks to this pool, balancing his steps, wobbling from the waist up.
I know the word he uttered.
It almost lures a smile to my face, a faint almost memory of a song flooded with a variety of Spanish curses to add to my vocabulary.
I doubt many of the fae know what he said.
I wonder if they would understand me if I spoke Welsh. Are they restricted to English?
They don’t seem to know Spanish, because the guy gets away with it and, with his Timberland boots planted on the rocks, he gathers the discarded leathers crumpled on the boulders.
The cold warrior makes no move to stop him from taking his leathers away.
For a while, I watch the man move through camp, gathering leathers along the way to the riverbank. Down there, the others are plating up meals, washing leathers in the river current, huddling together for warmth, or for comfort, or even muttered conversations I don’t hear, and secret smiles.
I wonder what Bee is doing…
I wonder if she’s safe.
Has she gotten away from that fae who captured her? Has she still got her radio? Maybe she’s out there somewhere, checking it every day, waiting for the moment I turn mine on—and we can be reunited.
Or is she with captives in another unit, trapped in slavery, waiting for her moment?
There’s one thing about Bee that is unchanging.
She never gives up.
Determination lives in her bones.
Ambition is in her soul.
She’s so much better than me.
Honestly, what she wants in a friendship with me, I don’t know.
I just know there’s a hollowness spreading in my chest whenever I let myself think about her out there, in the dark, with other fae—
And the thoughts are chucked from my mind when a splash strikes my boots.
I look up as the cold one climbs out of the hot pool.
The water rains down him, a stream rushing over boulders, and I trace the current—until my eyes widen, then swiftly cut aside.
He has no hair.
Like…
No hair.
Nothing on his chest, his legs, his underarms… his pelvis.
My brow tugs, threading together, and I sweep the area, the hot pools, the fae moving in and out of the water.
And just like him, they are hairless from the eyebrows down.
Oh.
He looked.
He said he wouldn’t, but he did.
When I changed clothes on the forest floor, when I pulled on the fresh underwear, I understand now, he was baffled.
Because I have hair.
My mouth twists, uncomfortable, and I keep my gaze redirected, landing on a boulder, as he sifts through his satchel.
Out the corner of my eye, I see the leathers he draws out, folded and packed neat, before he dries off with a cloth, then redresses.
It’s only when his bare body is shielded again that I look away from the boulder.
The satchel lures in my frown for a beat.
It’s not exactly large and lumpy. But it has so much fucking stuff in it, like extra clothes for me, leathers for him, cloths and soaps and phials of medicinal powder and whatever the fuck else, it must be magical somehow.
Mush, mush, mush.
It’s all too much.
My fingertips press into the dents of my temples, firm, and I slowly fall back onto the boulders.
Darkness greets me, a sky full of it, just black.
Still, I pretend to see the stars. I pretend there’s a full moon above, right in the middle of a canvas speckled with glittering stars.
Those were never really my thing, though.
I liked dawn.
Dusk.
The gloaming.
Moodiness and poetry.
In all the hiking trips, camping out there in the mountains, as far as Nevis, that is what I would do. Sneak off, quiet, alone, and watch the transitions paint the skies.
It’s a sad thought.
Because I’ll never see that again.