CHAPTER 21
ELERI
It had been a week since her conversation with S’kasia, and Eleri felt lighter somehow.
She thought having others know the secrets of her brother and crumbling family would be her undoing, but the secrets no longer stung in the same pointed way.
She visited S’samph every morning, although it was clear with his superior healing capabilities, he didn’t need much help from her.
The wound was scarred over with a darker yellow flesh than the rest of his body, but it didn’t look out of place among the other scars crisscrossing his torso.
Now he just argued with her as she tried to drill him through physical therapy exercises.
“If you don’t stretch the muscles properly, you won’t regain your full range of motion. You’re also due for another dose of regeneration solution.” She pressed his shoulder back into the correct position, and he hissed at the stiffness.
“I have healed from injuries before without this physical therapy.”
“When you were a hatchling, perhaps?” The question was meant with levity, but it only succeeded in raising S’samph’s frill.
“I am not so old now.”
“Thirty-six standard years? Seems old enough to me.” Eleri adjusted his grip on the resistance band.
“Push against the tension.” He was only a few years older than her thirty standard years, but some days she felt older still.
They still hadn’t talked about the interrupted holocall and S’samph coming to her defense.
She wasn’t sure what she should say, if anything, but it felt unfinished, the patter of white noise in the background of all their conversations.
“Tell me something of yourself to distract me from this ludicrous exercise.” He grunted as she pushed against the band to increase the resistance.
“What do you want to know?”
“Have you always wanted to be a healer?”
“Not always.”
“That isn’t a real answer, Eleri.”
She laughed. “Do the exercise properly, and I’ll tell you all about my career journey. Like your sister said, it’s nine levels of shell under the first layer. We’ll do the injection at the end.”
“S’kasia told you such a thing?” S’samph leveled her with a glare but adjusted his grip to do the exercise as directed. The skin above his eyes rippled with concentration and the end of his tail curled up.
“She did. I wasn’t offended. To be honest, I’ve never heard anyone describe me so accurately.” Eleri nodded and then tried to decide the best way to answer his original question without turning it into a sad story.
“Most people who live on Gaia don’t have much.
For a time, my family was comfortable as anyone could be on Gaia.
” She pressed a palm flat against his chest, moving the muscle in a more functional way.
“If you want to live a comfortable life, there are only a few careers available. I was fortunate enough to have a formal education, which opened doors for me. I’m grateful for that at least. But it would be a lie to say I never dreamed of other things. Who doesn’t from time to time?”
“And you became a healer.” S’samph took a break from the exercise, rubbing his injured shoulder with his opposite hand.
“A nurse, yes. A healer for humans.”
“What impractical thing did you want instead?”
The question wasn’t unreasonable, but she stilled.
It was an obvious follow-up to the conversation, but she didn’t quite know how to form the answer into something concrete.
She directed S’samph back to his exercises before puzzling together something of an answer.
“I never really had the luxury to consider that.”
“Why not?”
“My family had enough money to put me through my foundational schooling, but the credits dried up pretty quickly after my brother became addicted to iridescence.”
“Ah, they wanted you to become a nurse to care for your brother then.”
“Something like that.” They’d begged her to make money to help save Rhys, and Eleri had sold her soul to late-night food service jobs to pay for her preliminary nursing certification.
She’d managed by running on mostly fumes and caffeine, but the credits were never enough.
As much as the family poured into Rhys, he always drained more away.
“What is something like that?” S’samph asked. She felt a brief prickle of annoyance, but she should have known her non-answers weren’t going to be satisfactory. Not for S’samph anyway. He always seemed to want to delve directly into her soul despite her inclination to keep everything superficial.
“You can be finished with that if you want,” Eleri alluded to the shoulder motion. S’samph showed no disagreement with ending the exercise. Eleri pushed out a heavy breath as she packed away the resistance band and pulled out the injectable.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Only if you answer my question.”
Eleri wrinkled her nose but snapped on a pair of gloves to prepare for the injection.
"My family needed the credits to pay my brother’s legal fees.
His rehabilitation fees too.” The autoinjector made easy work of his tough scales, but Eleri still noticed the slight flinch as the needle went into S’samph’s shoulder.
“And that’s not even including all the property damage.
A nursing certification paid better than pursuing anything else I actually wanted to do. ”
“What is anything else?”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s not meant to be a non-answer.
I never had the opportunity to try anything else.
I finished my foundational education, and my brother racked up thousands of credits worth of debt for my family.
Either I worked or we lost our home. Especially after my da died.
My mother never recovered her senses fully. ”
“Your parents could not earn credits? Were they also addicted to iridescence?”
“They did have jobs once. But then they were blacklisted from everything in their field after stealing credits from their workplace to help pay down my brother’s expenses.
” Eleri tasted the bitterness in her own voice, but for the first time, she didn’t stop herself.
“They decided saving my brother was worth everything they had. Even if it meant destroying everything they had.”
S'samph was quiet for a long moment, digesting her words. Finally, his tail flattened along the floor. “You’re talking about yourself. Because of your parents’ negligence, you didn’t have the opportunity to pursue a career you enjoyed or a life you enjoyed.”
“There are things I enjoyed doing, but they were never going to be a career.”
“Why not?”
Eleri gave him a sidelong glance. “Why did you join the military?”
“Everyone on Latilla served the military in some capacity after our foundational education.”
“But you chose it as a career.”
“I did. I was good at it. I felt pride in serving my people.”
“And I feel the same about being a healer. Even if it wasn’t a choice I made out of pure interest, I am grateful I found passion in it.
I like other things. I like to sing, I like to cook sometimes, even though I’m not very good at it, but none of those were careers for someone like me on Gaia.
” She thought about the people she knew who pursued careers in art or music.
Usually, their families had a lot of money and power, enough to send them to study at the prestigious conservatories on Earth.
“You should feel free to do the things that bring you joy.”
“It’s easier now than it used to be. But I still feel guilty for doing it.”
“Why?”
“Why do I feel guilty?”
“Yes.”
Eleri shifted her weight as she packed the rest of her supplies in the medkit. “It’s hard not to. Even though I know I made the right choice, I always wonder if I could have helped more by staying on Gaia.”
“You cannot save someone who does not wish to be saved,” S’samph grunted. “There is plenty of good for you to do here, if this is what concerns you.”
“Speaking of, how is everything feeling today?” Eleri asked.
“It is well enough.” He stretched and flexed the shoulder in question. “We’re lucky to have you here. I’m lucky to have you here. Don’t say you would do the same for anyone else. You will bruise my pride.”
She snorted. He’d learned to read her speech patterns quickly enough and clearly wasn’t afraid to call her out on it.
“It’s literally my job to take care of anyone who needs help, but I don’t think I’d have conversations like this with anyone else.
But who knows? S’kasia is also a good conversation partner. ”
“She is,” S’samph agreed, “but I’m better.”
“Your ego isn’t as buried as deeply as you claim.
” Eleri finished her organizing and started toward the door with laughter in her eyes.
S’samph’s tail swished in response. “I know harvest season is mostly over now, but if you need to get back to your fields, I feel comfortable clearing you to start working again. I know you’ve been working and patrolling anyway.
My sign off is just for official purposes. ”
S’samph followed her to the door. “When are you going to join me in our nest?”
The question came with more precision than she had anticipated, and she couldn’t find any words to broker a complaint.
Living here with S’samph, it wasn’t an active thought in her head, but the more she thought about it, the more she warmed to the prospect.
It would need modifications for her to live here safely, but she found herself on the brink of agreement.
“Soon,” she responded.
“When is soon?” he asked, his voice soft as though he worried he would frighten her away.
“Once you’re fully recovered. And after we make our mating official.”
“I am fully recovered. We can go register our mating this afternoon.”
Eleri sighed. She should have known better than to offer terms that S’samph could circumvent with literal interpretation.
“You need to give me at least a few days to make arrangements. Besides, we can’t officially register our mating until the IA administrator comes to Laurus at the end of the month. The process requires an IA witness.”
“You looked into the procedure.” His frill stood at attention, and his expression became one she’d only seen described as ‘smug’ in the IA dossier.
“I did,” she confirmed. “So, we’ll wait and do it properly.”
“I’m a patient male.” S’samph bent closer to her until his face was aligned with the curve of her jaw. “You’re my mate regardless of whether you are living with me or not. A few more standard days won’t change anything.”
Eleri found herself leaning toward him rather than away, despite the intensity of his declaration. “Patient people don’t have to announce their patience.” She laughed up at him and he wrapped his tail around her waist.
“I’m almost as patient as you are stubborn, Eleri.”
She pushed him away, albeit with reluctance. “I have to get back to work. The clinic is opening for the afternoon.”
“Let me give you a ride.” S’samph reached for his shirt and pulled it over his head.
“I take it you’ll be driving?”
“You won’t be.” He rolled his shoulder as if testing its mobility.
“How am I supposed to learn if you never let me drive myself?”
“You don’t need to drive yourself. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“That doesn’t seem very practical.”
“What kind of male am I if I can’t at the very least accompany my mate wherever she needs to go?”
“One with a job,” Eleri laughed again. “I’m determined to learn eventually, but I guess it doesn’t have to be today.”
His tail’s grip on her waist tightened as he led her out of his nest. He stooped to pick up her medkit before she had a chance to protest and settled it into the cargo bay of his levibike with graceful efficiency.
What happened next knocked the wind from her lungs as he lifted her bodily with his tail and settled her on the levibike’s passenger seat.
“S’samph!” She wheezed his name between shock and laughter.
“You said I was cleared for work.”
“I guess I did,” her tone softened as he approached her, removed her sun hat, and rested his forehead against hers.
Eleri sucked in a sharp breath. Usually, latil’e were reluctant to enter close facial proximity with another person unless they were mates.
From an evolutionary perspective, it left both parties too vulnerable to ambush, so it was a sign of great love and trust.
“My people don’t have the anatomy for the mouth meeting humans do. This is the closest latil’e equivalent.”
It took all her will not to laugh at his description of kissing, so instead she leaned closer into his touch, the rough texture of his scales firm against her soft forehead. “This is nice,” she said.
“It is,” he agreed. “But I won’t make the same mistake about your sun vulnerability.
We will continue this exchange later when we are both inside.
” He took a step back and replaced her hat, but she noticed his tail was still wrapped around her waist. S’samph mounted in front of her, keeping a hold on her with his tail, and Eleri leaned into him.
She gripped around his broad waist to brace herself on the levibike instead of the passenger handle, and she had to admit she much preferred this manner of riding.
After S’samph dropped her off, Eleri sang softly to herself as she walked into the clinic.
It was a song her mother used to sing when they were waiting for the magtrain together on the way to drop Eleri at school before making her own commute to work.
It was a snippet of a tune, a flittering reminder of the time her family had been happy.
Eleri couldn’t remember all the words, but she remembered the warmth of the melody.
It was before Rhys lost his scholarship for the university.
Before he’d stolen drugs from her medkit.
Before he filled his veins with iridescence.