by T. Rudacille
Brynna
We had believed that we were going in the right direction. I forgave my mistake simply because we had only been on Pangaea for a short while. It was impossible for me to hold myself accountable for not knowing the full layout of the land. The Pangaean boy was by no means going to give us any help. We were walking him to his death, after all.
I was sitting down quietly, watching Elijah as he tried to coax Penny into eating some berries he had found. He had eaten a whole handful the day before in order to discover any toxicity that may have been hidden under their green, scaly skins. Surely, fruit so ugly had to be poisonous. I had given him a long, furious lecture on reckless actions, suppressing my urge to scream and hit him for being so unforgivably stupid. I understood why he had done it. What I was truly angry about was that we had to play Roulette with our lives in order to eat. He hadn’t apologized. He hadn’t spoken at all. He had just let me lecture him on stupidity.
“Stop glaring before you burn a hole in his back, baby.” James told me, and I turned the furious glare he had just commented on to him. “Never mind. Glare all you want.”
He walked down the fallen log on which he was perched. My anger dissolved as I reached up to wrap my arms around his middle.
“I am running out of cigarettes. I stole several packs from one of the storage units on our first night here. I should have stolen rations.”
“Yes, so we could have witnessed a witch hunt to rival the one in Salem hundreds of years ago. That’s a smart plan, my love.”
I beamed happily as he knelt beside me and grasped my hands. He smiled, too, when he looked up at me.
“I was expecting to get an earful for telling you that your plan would have led to disaster, and you’re smiling.”
“I have grown used to your sarcasm, so sometimes, it will not affect me in the slightest. I am smiling because I like when you call me 'my love.’” I told him softly, “It sounds so medieval, so it is similar to the way I always talk. Plus, the endearment is heartwarming.”
He laughed softly and kissed me.
“My love, my love, my love…”
I laughed now, too, and wrapped my arms around his neck as my lips caressed his. We both stopped, looking over to see Penny still refusing the berries that Elijah was offering her. No amount of begging or lying was going to work.
“Are you going to step in any time soon?”
“No, sir. If he wants to eat potentially poisonous plant life, that is his prerogative.”
“Those aren't poisonous, though. The ones he ate earlier have worked their way through his system by now, and if they were poisonous, he wouldn't still be here.”
“I know. But as punishment for the scare he gave me, he can fight Penny to eat. It is a lost cause. She is as stubborn as I am.”
“If you went over there and told her to eat them right now, she would do it.”
“I know she would. That is one of the perks of my job as surrogate mother: She listens to me.”
“You’ve never told me how that came to be.”
“There is not much to tell.” I shrugged, “Our mother had her in order to fill the void left by the death of my youngest brother. Maura and my mother resented us both. I was young and self-interested, but I knew that I had to put that aside and take care of her. There is a difference between meeting a child’s basic needs and actually caring for a child, as I was very much and still am very much aware. During the time that I raised Penny, I was also chiefly responsible for Violet, who was reaching the age where Maura and my mother deemed her stable enough in her own identity and in her own capabilities to stand on her own. She was mostly left to her own devices, which can lead to trouble for a teenagers. I am very aware of that, as well. See? That is not really much of a story, now, is it?”
“Actually, it is. You rarely divulge details like that.” He kissed my cheek, “You must be succumbing to my charms.”
I laughed and placed my hand on his face.
“That happened long ago, sweetheart.” I stood up after kissing him again, knowing I had shocked him by admitting my enchantment with him out loud. He followed after me, and after catching up, he put his arm around my shoulder. I smiled up at him again.
“I have been meaning to tell you that there is a structure nearby.”
He looked at me in slight surprise.
“How do you just randomly drop that into the conversation?’
“Technically, we were not talking so there was no conversation. But I digress…” I linked my fingers with his and pulled him along. “Come with me.”
I had been out wandering, looking for shrubbery that appeared to be non-life-threatening. I led him to the canal into which I had almost tripped. It was an irrigation system of some kind that was quite advanced, considering our surroundings.
“I was going to follow it but I was not sure if I would be encountering any more natives looking for a sacrifice.”
“Good. Let’s follow it now.”
We were careful to avoid falling into the ditch. It was deep, with steep sides fashioned from dirt hardened by the blazing hot sun. Once, I lost my footing, and if it weren’t for James’s quick hands, I would have gone tumbling down into it.
“Graceful, baby…” He told me sarcastically.
Later, he almost tripped, and I reached out, grasped the back of his shirt in both hands, and pulled him away from the edge.
“Go ahead and say it because I know you want to.” He challenged me in good humor, but I sauntered forward, smiling widely as I walked in front of him.
“It is nice up here on the high road, James.” I told him over my shoulder. I heard him laugh loudly as he rushed forward to wrap me in his arms from behind. He kissed my cheek, and for some reason, I found myself giggling girlishly again. We were currently enjoying rare alone time with which we had not been gifted since meeting up with Alice and Quinn. We both knew that we had a task at hand and that romance would have to wait. But that does not mean that both of us were not thinking about it constantly… We were a new couple, after all.
When I broke free of his arms and walked ahead of him, he reached out, grabbed my hand, spun me around, and pulled me back to him. The maneuver was as graceful as a classic dance step and yet I still yelped in surprise. Just as the sound escaped me, I felt his mouth on mine and his arms locked around me once again. We walked further away from the water ditch; there was nothing that would kill the mood faster than rolling down the steep embankment and slamming onto the hardened earth.
We fell into a soft mossy patch. I started to undo his belt as his lips trailed down my neck and chest smoothly. I tilted my head back, relishing in the feeling of his kisses on my sensitive skin. When I felt his mouth moving slowly and sensuously down my stomach and his hands pulling my pants down feverishly, I struggled to draw in a steady breath but once I had, I managed to moan his name only once. Then, I could only draw in deep, heaving breaths.
His lips were trailing up my inner thigh in an almost cruel tease. On the places where his hands or lips touched, my skin tingled sensuously before sending a scintillating rush of heat to the place where soon his mouth would be.
When his lips and tongue were moving against me finally, it was an almost sinful relief. Instantly, my eyes were closed, and I was running my hands through his hair, gasping and crying out his name.
It was while I was clawing the ground beside me and breathing heavily that I began to feel dead eyes watching us. Somehow, the heavy feeling of that eerie presence interrupted the mind-numbing pleasure that James was inflicting on me.
When I opened my eyes, my furiously beating heart lurched upwards. Before I could even process what was before me, my arousal completely evaporated, and I could only feel a sharply painful surprise that streamed through my veins to every part of my body. That surprise dissolved into icy shock and then, to a horror that almost pulled a scream from deep in my stomach.
“James!” I whacked him harder than I intended on the back. When he did not respond fast
enough, I yanked his head up by his hair that was still clutched in my hand.
“Ow! What?!” He asked. But after looking up, his eyes immediately fell on what I was seeing. He jumped up and pulled me with him so that I was cradled in his arms. I allowed myself just one second where I squeezed my eyes shut and burrowed my face into his neck.
“Alright, we're going to go. It's okay, baby.”
I rolled out of his grasp and landed on my feet. The sight before us paralyzed me; all I could do was stare in utter terror and repulsion. Vaguely, I felt James pulling my pants up again.
“Honey, I want to go.” My voice betrayed my fear as did the way my entire body shook. “James, I don’t want to stay here.”
Rows upon rows of bodies were hanging from the trees, their eyes and mouths opened wide in a silent scream that would never be heard. I held James’s hand to my chest, stopping him from walking forward when he went to observe the bodies more closely.
“It wasn’t being hung that killed them. That’s just for show. Look…” He pointed at the body that was closest to us.
I had been so distracted by the morbid way the woman's head was rested sideways on her shoulder that I had not noticed the contents of her abdomen hanging from a gaping, still-dripping wound. My body lurched forward abruptly. If I were to vomit, it would simply be the physical, tangible manifestation of the scream to which I was refusing to give life.
James had not realized that I was going to be so thoroughly sickened by the sight of that woman’s mangled body. I had handled everything else so efficiently, with not even a hint of any kind of emotional distress. After calling my attention to the true atrocity of what we were witnessing, he knew that he had inadvertently frightened me.
“Baby, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head and closed my eyes, struggling to suppress the nausea churning my stomach in sickening gyrations. He rested both of his hands on my face and kissed my forehead.
“There are so many of them...” I whispered in a trembling voice, “James...”
“I know. Come on, we'll go. You're alright. We're both alright. Can you walk, sweetheart?”
I nodded vigorously but clutched him tighter when he released his grip on me slightly.
“I have to start taking care of myself again, James.” I muttered with my eyes still closed. I needed to change the subject in order to keep the angrily bubbling bile down where it belonged. “You are spoiling me with your attentiveness and your care.”
“This is spoiling you?” He cupped my chin, raised my head, and pressed his forehead to mine. “This is what you consider spoiling?”
“Indeed. It is an amazing albeit unfamiliar gift. You are the only one who has ever gotten this close to me.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.” He assured me for perhaps the hundredth time. It did not matter how many times he said it. Every time was a new reminder, a new breath of life to resuscitate a slowly dying idea.
“I know very well that you’ve spent your entire life taking care of yourself. But you need to understand and accept that it’s alright to let someone else carry your weight for you. Don’t tell yourself that you need to start pulling away. Don’t do that again, Brynna.”
His words held a soft plea that I had not heard before. He had teased me on my never-ending urge to run from him and all he represented. He had been both infuriated by that tendency and profoundly hurt by it, as well. Now, he was expressing indirectly that he could not stand for us to be apart again. I looked up at him and put both of my hands on his face now.
“I do not want to leave you, honey. The fact that I have made it this far is astounding. Trust me, you should be patting yourself on the back for hanging in this long. We have been through the worst things that any living beings can experience, and we have gotten through them together. Do you agree?”
“Of course I do. I never would have been able to get through this without you. And I even count your condescending, pain-in-the-ass side, because that got me through, too.”
I smiled and stroked the stubble on one side of his face with my thumb.
“Only because you were picturing all the quiet places on the ship or on this planet where you could possibly kill me?”
“Not kill you, no.” He replied with a teasing grin, “But definitely use my Jedi mind powers to make you trip over your shoelaces or something similar.”
I laughed and hit him lightly in the chest. After standing on my tiptoes to wrap my arms around his neck, I turned my face to him and breathed in his intoxicating scent. Our bathing options were limited. In fact, they were nonexistent on most days. Still, James smelled as seductively wonderful as ever.
“Can we go?” I asked, “I feel like they just watched this entire conversation.”
“You’re afraid of dead people hearing you confess that you have feelings, too?” He replied.
“I am afraid of dead people, period.”
We turned to walk away, abandoning our search for the building from which the irrigation system stemmed. Nothing threw off a hunt for shelter like finding bodies hung up and slashed open in the trees. Just as we began to walk away with our hands clasped together, we jumped at the sound of a loud bang behind us. Immediately, we whipped around, our eyes white in cautionary alarm. We were ready for a fight.
We were never given a chance because when we turned, a spotlight that illuminated the darkness of the forest blinded us. I covered my eyes, only to feel two pairs of hands grabbing me.
“No!” I threw my body forward and flipped one of the assailants over my shoulder. The other let go and backed away as he realized that I was rounding on him to attack.
I stopped before the fight even began, though. I recognized the face of the man who had grabbed me.
“James, stop.” I looked over to see him repeatedly punching another man in the face. He released his iron grip on that one's throat and watched him crumple to the ground. Then, he walked back over to me.
“Are you with Don Abba?” I asked the boy. He was trembling terribly and holding up his hands in surrender. “Do not stand like that. You have not seen half of what we are capable of. You are betraying your weakness.”
The boy immediately put his hands down.
“You’re his daughter, aren’t you?”
“No. My father is the obnoxiously power-starved man with the gray hair who believed that he was fit to be ruler of the campsite.”
“No, not his daughter…” He gestured with his head towards James, “You're Olivier's daughter.”
“I suppose you could call me that as it is factually accurate. It's accurate biologically, anyway. In terms of sentimentality and non-literal connotations of the word, though...”
“Brynn...” James said behind me, and I shook my head slightly, rerouting my mental course until it was back on track.
“You are human, aren’t you? Your thoughts clearly show human tendencies.” I was speaking gently, noting that he was carrying a double barrel shotgun. If I frightened him too severely, I would be shot, and no level of superior powers would heal a wound from a gun that size.
“How do you know…”
“Just relax.” James instructed him calmly, “We're all on the same side here, okay? You startled us. That’s why we attacked your friends.”
“We saw you from inside. We thought you were from here.”
“You thought we were Pangaean?” I asked, and he didn’t respond. The poor young man was shaking so severely that if he were not talking clearly, I would fear that he was succumbing to a seizure.
“You don’t want to go in there, Ms. Olivier. They’re not friends of yours in there. They don’t like you because you’re his kid.”
“Well, I do not like him. I am as disgusted by him as the rest of you are. Just take me to Don. I will explain the situation.”
“No, you don’t understand. He’s… he’s…” The boy trailed off, turning white as the threat of losing consciousness became evident to him.
“You hav
e nothing to be afraid of, sweetheart.” I assured him as gently as I could.
I felt great sympathy for that poor boy. He was younger than Violet, and yet he was sent out with a gun to dispatch a threat. I wondered how many of those unfortunate souls hanging in the trees were killed by that young man who was clearly in over his head.
“What is your name?”
“Andy.” He answered, and I watched as tears welled in his eyes. “I don’t want to do this…”
The conversation we were having should have been all the warning James and I needed to hear in order to convince us that we should turn back. But our need for community was driven by our survival instinct. We could not responsibly continue to trek along on our own, not after Penny had been taken. Our fellow survivors were our only chance.
“Alright, Andy. You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do.” I looked at James and tried to convey what I was thinking. Somehow, I was able to manage it, because he nodded in response to my silent question. “We have a prisoner. We stole him from a large group of natives that live in a cave a few miles back.”
“The cave people are bad. That’s what Adam said.”
“You have spoken to Adam?”
“Don joined up with him. That’s why there are…” He pointed at the bodies, “They aren’t just other survivors. Most of them aren’t. But some of them…” He pointed at the bodies closest to us but did not actually look at them, “Those three… They were in my housing compartment. They slept right next to my dad and me…”
James and I were silent, looking at the three bodies. Andy was wiping at his eyes as tears escaped before he could stop them. There were no gentle reassurances I could give him; in fact, there was nothing to be said at all. So, I returned us back to the reason why we had come, for the sake of all of us.
“We need to speak to Don.”
Andy nodded and wiped his eyes quickly. He wanted to erase any indication of his emotional outburst. I assumed that Don would not take kindly to one of his “soldiers” breaking down into a fit of guilt and regret. I gently clasped his arm, surprising myself with that moment of kindness. No non-family member had ever witnessed my caring nature, which barely existed in silence let alone in visible action.
“I’m Brynna, but I am sure you know that.” He nodded, “This is my…” I trailed off, not knowing how to describe James still despite how far we had come together, “This is James.”
I had to forgive myself just once for taking the easy way out of a conversational conundrum.
He looked between us and smiled ever so slightly.
“Anyone from Earth is alright with me. After all of this…” He shuddered slightly, “Come with me. I’ll take you to Don.”
