Halley #2
I loop my arms around their neck and bury my face in their chest.
“You’re alright. You’re alright.” I don’t know how many times I repeat myself. I don’t know if I’m saying it for their benefit or my own.
They shift in my arms. It’s so smooth I barely register the change, except that now I’m being hugged by four arms instead of two.
“Where’s Rin?” Keelo asks.
“Inside, asleep.” Sniffing, I release my hold of them so that I can more accurately study their individual selves. “She’s safe because of you two.”
What they did to protect us was the most selfless thing I’ve ever seen.
“Let me look at you. I can’t—” My voice breaks.
“Halley—” Eot begins, but before he can say anything, I drag them to the light.
I know what he’d been about to say. Something like, It was always going to be alright, or, Of course we came back to you—the exact sorts of things I told Rin. But I’m not a child, and I don’t want Eot to be the one comforting me, not after he and Keelo could so easily have died.
I don’t want to diminish their bravery by exchanging useless platitudes.
Keelo lifts me into the ship, pulling Eot up after me and following closely behind. They’re completely naked, their pants lost somewhere between this shapeshift and the last. Their skin is splattered with blood and mud and sand.
I run my hands over their chests and backs. No bones appear to be broken. They must be virtually indestructible when in their hybrid form. Because I saw the trikon throw them against the ravine wall. I know what would’ve happened if they weren’t so incredibly resilient.
As it is, one of Keelo’s eyes is bruised, his cheek swollen, the skin across his knuckles cut, the pointed tip of one tusk chipped blunt.
Eot is nursing his right arm, cuts slicing through the muscle, straight through the black band of his tattoo. It might need stitches; it definitely needs disinfectant.
Is there a needle and thread on board this ship? I don’t know how to sew, but maybe I could watch a tutorial…on the, um—alien internet?
“Breathe.” Eot cups my cheek with his good hand. He inhales, his chest expanding. Keelo hovers by his shoulder, frowning at me like I’m an equation he hasn’t yet managed to solve.
“Breathe. Halley,” Eot says again, his voice filled with so much kindness I almost laugh. It’s absurd—all of it. Everything. Crazy. Insane—
“Halley!” Keelo growls, and my name rumbles through his chest, more vibration than sound.
I gasp.
I gasp.
Air floods my lungs.
My head spins.
Keelo catches me before I fall.
I grip his forearm, staring at the contrast between his skin and mine. Staring at my bitten and chewed nails, my cuticles bloody from picking.
So this is what shock feels like, the weight of the past few hours pushing so unyieldingly against my chest that I hadn’t noticed I wasn’t drawing proper breaths.
I inhale again.
“You saved Rin as much as we did,” Eot says. “You jumped in front of her, into the path of the trikon.”
“Oh, yeah.” Somehow I forgot about that, with everything else that had happened. It’s not like I’d planned to do so; I’d reacted instinctively. “Well, I did promise you, on the day we first met, that I’d look after her.”
“Hmm…” Eot says, in that way of his that means he’s too polite to argue with me but that he doesn’t agree. Probably he’s thinking about how I shouldn’t risk myself but understands telling me so won’t change anything.
Rin is absolutely worth every risk, as he well knows.
“I promised I’d wake her when you guys returned,” I say, wanting to change the topic to something more cheerful.
“Of course.” The two of them start down the passage toward Rin’s room, so I slip around them, blocking the door before it can slide open.
“Maybe put some trousers on first. And clean off the blood.”
It takes us a little while to set Keelo and Eot to rights.
Turns out Eot doesn’t need stitches, because aliens have invented a very cool medical-grade plastic that acts as a temporary second skin, sealing wounds and allowing them to remain clean while they heal.
So we disinfect all cuts—on both Eot and Keelo.
And when we apply the second skin to Eot’s arm, he sways on the spot, his vision blurring.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I say, but Keelo huffs a laugh.
“You didn’t hurt him. There’s a painkiller in the glue, and it’s rather strong.”
“Oh.” I study Eot’s face. He blinks several times, as if trying to clear his vision, and then gives a shake of his head.
“Still got a brain in there?” Keelo asks, lightly rapping his knuckles on Eot’s skull.
“Of course.” If Eot thinks he sounds indignant, he’s wrong. His voice is slurred, and it takes my translator a fraction longer than usual to work out what he said.
“You don’t want to take something too?” I ask Keelo, eyeing the bruises already darkening across his skin. Just because it wasn’t his arm that got sliced open doesn’t mean it isn’t in pain.
He only shakes his head. “Rin needs to be able to understand at least one of us, or else we might scare her.”
“I don’t know. I think she’s going to laugh.” I watch Eot shake his head again, like he’s trying to shake his thoughts back into order. He tips sideways, as though we’re actually on an ocean ship and the floor under our feet is rocking in time with the waves.
Keelo presses a hand to the small of Eot’s back, steadying him. The door to their room opens, and they step into the corridor, heading toward Rin.
“Are you coming?” he asks, an expectant glance back at me.
“Er…” As much as I’d cherish getting to see Rin’s face when she wakes to find her two guardians returned safely, I decide to stay behind, wanting her to have this special moment all to herself. “You go ahead.”
Ungainly, I climb into the closest hammock and wave at Rin’s two dads to hurry up. “Your daughter is waiting for you.”