by Lauren Esker
Tamir turned out to be right outside. He'd stirred up the fire and was sitting next to it, legs stretched out, looking scruffy and uncomfortable.
"Here." Meri shoved the cuff at him; he took it back and clasped it around his wrist. "I didn't go to all that trouble of taking care of you just so you can get yourself eaten by a velocirex."
"By a what?"
"Dinosaur ... thing. I guess you wouldn't understand." She glanced around with a shiver. The thicket around the ship seemed suddenly much too close and dense, and she was all too conscious of her current undressed state and the ground prickling her bruised, bare feet.
"They don't seem to be around," Tamir said, stroking his fingertips across the cuff on his wrist to seal it. "I brought your shoes, by the way." He gestured across the fire. "And your, er, other garments. They were a little ... muddy. I washed them in the spring."
Meri looked in surprised gratitude at the items spread out to dry by the fire. "Thank you," she said grudgingly. "Uh ... I don't suppose you saw any sign of my phone when you were down at the spring?" She held up her hands to demonstrate its shape. "About yea big, square electronic thing."
"Sorry, no."
Great. Probably stepped on by a dinosaur or buried in the mud. RIP, phone.
"I could go look for it," Tamir began, but Meri shook her head.
"I'll survive without it. It's not important enough to run around unarmed and hurt, looking for it."
"I'm never unarmed, any more than Lyr is." Tamir glanced up and smiled. "I guess there are a few things he hasn't told you about Galateans."
"Oh, let me guess," she said, testy. "You turn into a dragon too."
"Not a dragon ..."
"Seriously?!"
He shrugged, then a spasm of pain crossed his face as the movement tugged his healing injuries. "I'll show you later. Not right now. Shifting took more out of me than I expected."
Wordlessly, she handed him one of the ration packs, and then sat with her back against the airlock door to eat; she didn't quite trust Tamir's assertion that the dinos were gone. She'd almost forgotten how awful the ration packs were. She would prefer charred lizard.
"I feel like we got off to a bad start back there," Tamir said suddenly. "I've also realized that I never asked your name. I'm very sorry. I'm Lieutenant Tamir adn Kynn. You can call me Tamir."
She heard his name with an odd overlay from the translation implant, giving her a sense of the meanings. Lieutenant was his rank, of course, though a different word that the implant translated to something vaguely familiar to her. Adn meant something like son of, with the implication of belonging to a family or group. Kynn was his clan.
"Meri Rowland. Call me Meri." She held out a hand without thinking; Tamir looked at it in confusion. "This is something that my people do. We shake hands when we meet someone."
He clasped her hand carefully in his big, callused one. Meri gave it a shake, at which, startled, he let go.
"And this makes us friends by your people's customs?" he asked cautiously.
She had to suppress a smile at his earnest desire to get along with her. "No, that part comes later, if it comes at all. But at least now we know each other a little better. Look, I'm not going to apologize for getting angry at you. It's just ... the more I find out about what he's been through, the angrier I am about it. You were there for all those years, Tamir. And you didn't do anything."
"I know," he said quietly. "I do know that. I raised those kids. And I sent them off to die. Can you imagine what that was like?"
"My husband was a soldier. Of course I can. But he wanted to. Where I come from, we have an all-volunteer army. He was proud to be part of it. And I was proud of him. This ... this is different. Those kids that he told me about—they didn't have a choice."
"Most of our army is there by choice as well," Tamir said. "It's a proud profession. My clan always sends a certain number of warriors to serve the Empire, firstborn sons especially, like me."
"So what about Lyr and his sept? Child slaves, he told me. Did they choose that?"
"They're conscripted from our subject worlds." Tamir held up his hands when she gathered for an angry retort. "I know. I don't like it either. It's more like indenture than slavery, for whatever that's worth. They serve a term of twenty years and then they can go home."
"Unless they're dead."
"I know."
"Or hostages like Lyr. How many of those are there? How many of them get to go home?"
"I don't know that," Tamir said softly. "I'm sorry. I don't have answers for you. I don't even have my own answers."
They sat in silence and she choked down the rest of her ration pack. Tamir had already finished his. Maybe they were less terrible when you'd been eating them for years. She was going to have to ask Lyr to hunt more lizards, when he was back on his feet—she refused to imagine Lyr not getting better before they needed to replenish their food supply.
Could they eat the dead dino by the creek, maybe? There was plenty of meat on it, if they got to it soon, before it started spoiling. But they didn't have a refrigerator, or any way to keep it fresh. It seemed pointless to risk their lives to retrieve it when they still had plenty of food, even if it was kind of disgusting.
She went inside to check on Lyr. He was just as she'd left him, feverish to the touch, lying very still. Meri wet down the scraps of blanket she was using to bath his face and wrists, and then knelt beside him with her hand on his forehead and thought good thoughts at him. She felt a little silly, but maybe he could hear her.
When she looked up, Tamir was in the doorway. Meri got up quickly and gathered their trash together, the remains of the ration packs and scraps of the blanket she'd been dissecting for bandages.
"You are very close to him," Tamir said thoughtfully as she cleaned up.
"Going through a crisis makes people closer; it's a documented fact." She didn't meet his eyes.
"Lyr doesn't get close to anyone. Not anymore."
"Maybe I'm just special."
She meant it to come out flippant, but Tamir said, "Yes. I think you are."
***
Meri spent most of the day sitting with Lyr, who continued to drift in a feverish state of unconsciousness. Sometimes she thought she could sense him around the corners of her mind, like someone saying her name just on the edge of hearing, but when she closed her eyes and listened, there was only silence.
Feeling self-conscious at first, she sang to him quietly, a mix of half-remembered pop song lyrics, lullabies from childhood, and hymns from her youth choir days, even Christmas carols. Tamir listened quietly, and after awhile, worn out from his morning's explorations and still healing, he fell asleep.
So she was the only one awake when there was a sudden pattering on the ship's metal skin. She stared up at the ceiling, clutching Lyr's limp hand and wondering if they were under attack from something else. Were those the footsteps of a whole herd of tiny dinosaurs? Then a breath of damp, cool air washed over her from the airlock door—left open a few inches for ventilation and light—and she laughed quietly at herself. It was only rain.
She got up, laying aside the cloth she'd been using to bathe Lyr's temples, and went to look outside. The light filtering down through the thicket had turned gray and dim, and rain beaded on the plastic sheeting and ran off in streams. Under the edge of the plastic, the low, banked fire was still burning, although occasional raindrops hissed on the coals when the wind blew it sideways. Water dripped off the overhanging trees.
Meri took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of the rain, overlaid with woodsmoke and the sharp scents of plant sap and unfamiliar flowers. She waited for the bitter, aching grief of Aaron's death to rise up and overwhelm her, but it never came. It was more like the old ache of a broken limb, long healed but still giving twinges of pain in the damp.
And then, she looked over her shoulder into the dark interior of the ship, where Lyr was just visible in the dimness, and tears sprang to her eyes. A bone could heal th
e first break, or the second, but how many times could a shattered heart put itself back together?
She went back inside and, for the fortieth time, checked on the bite wound on Lyr's shoulder. Was it just her imagination that the swelling had gone down slightly? It still felt hot to the touch.
"Lyr, please," she whispered. She pulled back the blanket and crawled underneath, and stretched out against him, skin to skin. Pulling his head against her shoulder, she whispered into his hair. "Lyr ... I think I might love you. Please don't go. Please come back to me."
16
___
I T WAS PEACEFUL HERE, wherever he was. Dark, quiet ... like the still cold space between the stars. No one else but him. No one to fail, no one to betray, no one to watch die. Just him, alone.
But it was lonely.
Terribly, terribly lonely.
How had he never noticed the crushing weight of that loneliness before? It was a pain he'd learned to live with, pushing it down until he no longer felt it. But the pain was still there, and now it threatened to smother him.
It was so dark, and he was so alone. It seemed the cold would overwhelm him, and he fought as hard as he could to hold onto the spark of warmth inside him—but he didn't know the way back, there was only darkness and cold ...
*Lyr.*
Until there was, in that darkness, a faint tendril of answering warmth, like a hand reaching out to clasp his. There was a song curled around it, a song half-heard, unfurling down to him in the void.
*Lyr. Please come back to me.*
All he had to do was reach back. Yet he hesitated, because to answer that call was to open his heart once again to loving and hurting. It would mean acknowledging that he cared.
But really, he'd known all along, hadn't he?
He reached out, not with his hands in this bodiless place, but with his mind, stretching and straining for the offered lifeline.
*Lyr!*
Her sudden warm delight blazed up like a flame. It felt like her arms coming around him, holding him, guiding him back.
No ... her arms really were around him, and he was clinging to her as he shivered in her grasp. Alternating waves of hot and cold washed through him. He felt terrible. He felt ...
Alive.
"Lyr," she whispered, stroking his hair. "Lyr, Lyr. Don't do that. You scared me so much."
"I think I scared myself," he whispered. He couldn't stop shivering in her arms, haunted by the memory of that cold, dark place—that prison in his heart, where he'd spent too much time.
Now all he could do was hold her ... feel her. Feel her in his arms. Feel her in his heart.
A feeling too tentative and new to give a name to, but real nonetheless, sang inside him like the resonant song of his people.
He wasn't sure what she felt through the link, but she clung to him just as fiercely, and then her lips were on his, and he fell into the heated eagerness of her mouth. His body responded to the fierce urgency of her kisses, rising against her—
"Lyr," she mumbled, and then she was the one to pull away, though her hands were still tangled in his hair. "Lyr, um ... we're not alone."
"Huh?" he said intelligently. In the dim light of the ship's cargo hold, he could see her looking over his shoulder. Lyr rolled over, wincing at the pain from his injured shoulder, to find out what kind of threat she needed to be protected from.
Tamir, in his own tangle of blankets, was propped up on his elbow, looking both embarrassed and amused.
"I didn't want to spoil the moment by saying something," he said.
"Aargh," Lyr groaned. He rolled over and turned his back to Tamir, clasping Meri tightly. "Trust you to ruin everything."
"How are you feeling?" Tamir asked. Lyr, still obstinately not looking at him, heard little rustles as he sat up.
"Shouldn't that be my line?" Lyr demanded. "Last time I saw you, you were—" Half dead and not likely to live. A confusing mix of pain and relief stole his breath at that thought.
"He saved us," Meri said. "On the path to the spring. Do you remember?"
"No," he said with automatic stubbornness, but come to think of it, he did remember something: a voice shouting at them, a confusing whirl of sky and trees and ground as darkness swallowed the world ...
"I should check your wounds." Meri untangled herself enough to sit up. Lyr ended up with his head in her lap, which he was fine with. "Tamir, could you give us some light?"
The cargo hold lit up with the glow of Tamir's cuffs. Lyr submitted to Meri's painful poking and prodding at his shoulder. He kept his eyes half closed; he didn't particularly feel like he needed to know. He didn't feel like he was dying and that was the important part.
"This is amazing. The swelling is almost completely down." Her cool hand touched his forehead. "And I think your fever is down too. I wish I had a thermometer—oh wait, your cuffs can do that, can't they?"
Tamir's cuff clinked against his own. "His temperature is half a standard degree off from normal for his species, but not enough to worry about."
"How are you feeling?" Meri asked. Her face above him was a study in light and shadow, sharply drawn in the cool silver-white light. In any light, she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Better," he said, stirring himself out of contemplation of her features. It wasn't even untrue. The shivering had mostly stopped, though an occasional tremor still ran through him. He recognized it as his body's attempt to burn the poison out of him. Mainly, he was ragingly hungry.
Which Tamir, who had been dealing with him for a long time and had many of the same needs, would know. Lyr was not about to ask, but small rustles nearby, followed by footsteps, indicated that Tamir had been thinking along similar lines, and a moment later, a ration pack landed on his hand.
"You should eat," Tamir said. "I could use another one, too. I'm still replenishing the reserves my body used up while it was healing. Would you like one as well, Meri?"
They were on a first-name basis? Apparently a lot had gone on while he was unconscious.
"Not quite hungry enough for another of those," Meri said ruefully. "Not yet. Give me a little while."
Tamir sat on his blankets with a pained grunt and pulled the heating tab on his. "They're vile, aren't they?"
"They taste fine to me," Lyr said, mostly to be contrary. He tried to sit up and flopped back down ungracefully in Meri's lap.
"So stubborn," she murmured, and her soft, strong hands were there under his shoulders, helping him sit up. She propped him with a warm shoulder as he popped the tab to eat.
It was very peaceful here, with Meri leaning against him and the rain drumming outside. He managed to finish about half the ration pack, but found his eyes drifting shut, and forced himself awake again. He needed to keep watch—
"Sleep," Tamir said. "Other people can keep an eye on things for a time. You don't have to do everything." His voice was fond.
Lyr wanted to argue, but sleep was pulling him down. *Meri?* he said, not wanting Tamir to overhear.
*I'm here.*
*Would you sing to me again?*
Embarrassment-pleasure-surprise raced through her thoughts. *I'd love to. Anything in particular?*
*Whatever you like. I enjoy all your music.*
After a silence, she began to sing him a song about something blowing in the wind. He didn't understand what half of the words were talking about, but that wasn't important. What mattered was the warm lilt of her voice, and the way the song's words and melody were laced through with emotions. Someone in her family used to sing this song to her when she was a little girl. The sound of her voice and the gentle tide of nostalgia carried him away to sleep.
***
The rain slackened to a light drizzle later in the afternoon, leaving the world damp and dripping. Meri sang herself hoarse and then fell asleep. She woke from her nap some unknown time later to find a cool, empty spot in the blankets next to her. Lyr was up and about in the dim gray light of the ship's interior.
&
nbsp; "Where are you going?" she asked sleepily.
"Hunting," Lyr said. Meri got a vague sense from him (she wasn't sure if he meant to send it) of "bring food back for mate" that she found adorable, flattering, and ever so slightly weird. However, her nurse instincts reared up immediately.
"Oh no you don't. You almost died earlier today. You're going to sit here and rest."
"I'll go," Tamir offered, rising stiffly. "I could use the exercise. I'll see if there's anything salvageable on the carcass by the stream, and scout for small game."
Meri sighed. "It's useless to point out that you should be resting too, isn't it?"
"Yes," he said, with an amused glint in his cat's eyes. "Besides, I don't think you two would mind the alone time."
Lyr looked like he wanted to say something but stopped himself.
"I am about to shift," Tamir added, hooking his fingers in the waistband of his trousers, "and for that I need to be naked. I suggest anyone with nudity taboos look away."
Meri averted her eyes, mostly for Lyr's sake, but she couldn't help sneaking a glance back, just in time to see Tamir lean forward as his muscular fur-covered body rippled and flowed into the four-legged shape of a tiger, still wearing the gold cuffs on the ankles of his front paws. He was smaller than an Earth tiger, with a lean, long-legged physique.
He gave Meri a sideward look, as if to say, Impressive, isn't it? and then limped to the door, with a pronounced hitch in his step from his healing pelvis. Meri couldn't help thinking of a cat waiting to be let out, which made her grin. She got up and pushed the door farther open for him. Tamir lashed his tail and slipped through the opening. Meri watched as he vanished into the forest.
"You don't need to look so impressed," Lyr said in a grouchy tone. He'd joined her in the doorway, looking out after Tamir.
She laughed. "It's not a competition. Anyway, your dragon is much bigger than his tiger."
He was still staring after Tamir. Meri nudged at him until he let her steer him to sit down on the blankets.
"He's not well," Lyr grumbled while she checked his healing wound again.
