I rolled onto my back, bringing Tor with me so he hovered above, his body in a rigid position so he didn’t touch me other than the kiss we shared.
“Don’t laugh at me,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” I smiled at him, and his smirk reappeared.
“I don’t... I don’t know how this works.”
“I don’t either. I’m sorry, Tor. I wasn’t laughing at you. I was just surprised.”
Tor’s tanned skin warmed to a reddish hue, and he turned away from me. “Oh.”
“Tor?”
He looked back at me, his nose only fractions of an inch from mine.
“Do it again.”
Tor’s breath hitched, and for a moment I was afraid he was going to move away. Instead he shifted above me and settled between my legs. When he kissed me, our entire bodies came together. The heat of him spread through the thin sleeping clothes I wore, and while I knew about love and sex from books, I’d never thought the feelings washing over me really existed.
We kissed and touched and moved together until the world faded away and there was no war, no secrets—only us. Tor’s hand cupped my breast, and the fabric turned to ash until nothing separated us.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and I tried not to giggle again.
“Ada’s going to wonder what’s happening to all my clothes.”
He pushed against me again, eliciting another breathless gasp from me, making me forget about anything other than his body against mine.
It seemed like hours passed as we explored each other, but eventually fatigue settled in. Our kisses slowed until I was curled into his side, my head on his chest, his arm wrapped under and around me so his hand rested on my hip.
He placed gentle kisses in my hair while our breathing slowed. Shortly thereafter, I fell into a blissfully perfect sleep.
26
Morning came too soon, and I had no idea what time it was. The first things I realized were my top had turned to nothing but ash, and I was sleeping next to Tor. I was lying on my side, facing the wall, but he had curled up behind me, his body flush against mine. Suddenly, I was wide awake. And I had to go to the bathroom.
Tor snuggled closer, his breathing deep and steady. I widened my awareness to see if anyone else was up. Jai lounged in the main room, eating something. Lock was up and about in his room, and Sal was in the kitchen. Everyone else was still asleep.
Tor’s his heavy arm made it difficult for me to disentangle myself. Once free, I threw on his shirt and my boots and crept past a snoring Elgon. In the main room, I waved at Jai’s garbled hello.
I hated wearing shoes in the morning. Without socks they felt hard and strange against my sensitive feet.
After going to the bathroom, I filled the sink with water and dunked my head. This was my new ritual. I savored the water seeping into my pores. I needed to swim—or get back in the tub Ada had called the pond. But I didn’t dare go back there. The risk of someone seeing my feet was too great and wearing these stupid boots in the tub would doubtless draw attention.
Once I felt somewhat normal again, I wrung out my hair and walked back to our room, water dripping down my back.
“Hi, Sera!” Traz said a little too cheerfully from his door as he walked out. “Did you sleep well? Where’s Tor?” He shot questions at me with nervous giddiness before I glared at him.
“I’m fine, Traz,” I grumbled before rolling my eyes and heading straight to my door. “Tor’ll be out in a little while.”
“Okay! See you both then.” Traz’s forced grin followed me.
How were we ever going to get away with anything if he acted like a rabbit in a fox den?
Back in our room Tor was lying on his stomach, our sheet draped over his lower body. Closing the door behind me, I sighed while watching his sleeping form. His back rose and fell to the easy rhythm of relaxed breathing, and his hair spread like a wild mane on the pillow.
The enormity of our kisses last night struck me as I gazed at him—the scars running along his back, the desperate plea for me to leave with him. Tor was everything I had now. He and Elgon, they were my life, but somehow it all meant so much more to him. I couldn’t help the Sualwet side of me, the side my mother had nurtured and encouraged, which saw our partnership as a complication.
I wanted to be with him—in that moment there was nothing I wanted more—but if something happened, if we weren’t together, I would be okay. Would he survive it, though?
With a shake of my head, I dismissed the thought. That wasn’t even a possibility. I vowed to go anywhere he went. The magnetic pull radiating from him was too strong to keep us apart.
I sat on the bed next to him and placed my hand on his back. It felt warm to the touch, and his skin remained soft despite the raised planes of his childhood. I didn’t want to spend the day away from him, with Dr. Vaughn in the Hub. I didn’t want to be anywhere near what the Erdlanders were doing. But we needed that disk, and I had to learn whether the rumors of captive Sualwets were true.
Tor murmured in his sleep, and I lay down next to him, resting my head on his shoulder, rubbing his back in gentle circles. Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t survive either if something happened to him. I snuggled closer and breathed him in.
“Morning,” Tor mumbled, turning toward me and pulling me into his chest.
“Morning.”
“Sleeping in a bed is strange.” He kissed me on the head and pushed my hair out of my eyes.
“I didn’t even think about that. When’s the last time you slept in one?”
“Not since I was six, maybe. So a while.”
“I always had a hammock or the sand, so it isn’t that different.”
“I had rocks.” He laughed, but I didn’t think it was funny.
“Why didn’t you ever make yourself a home?”
“I don’t know. Why didn’t you ever leave the beach?”
“I wasn’t allowed to leave. You know that.”
“I don’t really see you not doing something just because someone told you not to.”
He had a point.
“I guess it never really occurred to me. I would explore, but there was no way I could’ve left my mother.”
“I wish I’d known my mother. If I even had one.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I mean, you know what you are. You had a family and a childhood and someone who loved only you.”
“In her own strange way, yeah, she did.”
“Was she really that different?”
“She never understood me, but she was my mother, so I just accepted it.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Been trying not to think about it.” I looked up at him, the grip of my loss tightening in my chest, threatening to asphyxiate me. I was so tired of crying.
“Tell me about her,” Tor encouraged. He settled back on his pillow and pulled me down with him.
“There isn’t really much to tell.”
“Sure there is, Sera. Come on, what was her name?”
“Nilafay. Her name was Nilafay.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“She never went by Nila, though.”
“But you shorten your name.”
“She called me that, and it’s not like there was anyone else to talk to. For Sualwets it’s really intimate to shorten someone’s name. No one outside of family ever does that.”
“You called me Tor when we first met.”
“I thought it would make you feel safer. You were so afraid.”
“Do you mind me calling you Sera? Should I call you Serafay?”
“No. I like the way you shorten my name.” I pecked him on the lips before propping my head on my hand. “Before we met Lock and Lace, I’d never talked to anyone else but you and Mother, so Serafay sounds weird to me anyway.”
“Really? You never talked to anyone else?”
“No. Sometimes Mother would swim out to meet someone, and she brought me along once or twice, but other Sualwets always acted so u
ncomfortable around me and would pretend I wasn’t even there.”
“That’s awful.”
“Well, I’m a freak, remember? For me to be with them, with this?” I pulled on my hair roughly. “When I was about nine I tried to cut it all off so I’d look like them, but it just grew back.”
Tor’s hand rested on my hip, and his thumb rubbed the skin under my shirt. He waited in silence for me to come back to him from the abyss of memories I’d dived into. Just watching, he gave me all the time I needed.
“She was really strong, you know? She didn’t have anyone. She was only my age when the Erdlanders captured her. But she fought back. No matter what they did to her, she never gave up.” I shivered, recalling the stories she’d told me. “She escaped.”
“Really?” Tor’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, and she ran, made it back to the water, but it was already too late. She was already pregnant.”
“So? She got free. She could go home!”
“You don’t really know much about Sualwets, do you?”
“All I know is what I remember from when I was little. But I don’t exactly trust Erdlander accounts anymore.”
“Good.” I smiled. I didn’t want him to think of them the way the Erdlanders did. “Sualwets don’t get pregnant—at least not anymore. They lay eggs.”
“I knew that.”
“Well, think about it. Someone showing up pregnant among egg-laying Sualwets? Everyone got scared and told her to... to get rid of me. But she wouldn’t. And before I was born she ran away. She was all alone when she had me.”
“Jikmae,” Tor swore under his breath. “Lots of Erdlander women die having children. It’s just too hard.”
“When my mother had me and found out I couldn’t breathe underwater, she found us a home in the cove. She hunted and scavenged and took care of me. And she never complained, but I knew how lonely she was, how angry she felt about it. But Sualwets, they don’t talk about things like that. They don’t get angry or tired or happy, and when they do, they just deal with it, alone. So when I would cry, she’d just stare at me. She never held me, even when I was little. I don’t remember her carrying me or even really hugging me.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“It was. Until you showed up.” I smiled and found his eyes pulled together in deep thought. “Why are you frowning?”
“I don’t like the thought of you being alone. I don’t like you being sad.”
I shrugged, unsure how to respond. “I’m not.”
“Back then, I meant.”
“Nothing can change the past. It’s all I knew, Tor. She was my mother.”
“And the Erdlanders took everything from her, from you!” The fire returned to his eyes as he processed everything I’d told him. “And they don’t even care, don’t even think it’s wrong! And... and they’re probably still doing it!”
I lay back down, resting my head on his arm. His hand remained on my hip. Both of us lost in our own thoughts.
“We should get up,” I said finally, pulling the sadness that had seeped out back in and locking it up tight.
“Yeah” was all Tor said before he kissed me lightly and smiled. “Sera?”
“What?”
Tor closed his eyes. “Do you want to be with the Sualwets? I mean, instead of”—he paused and took a deep breath before continuing—”instead of with me?”
“You’re so painfully stupid,” was all I could say in response.
“I know we’re different. I don’t even know what I am. At least you know where you came from.”
“And you set things on fire,” I added with a smirk.
“Sera, I’m serious.”
“I know you are, and it’s infuriating. How many times are we going to do this?”
“I don’t know. Until you make me leave I guess.” His voice sounded hollow with inevitability, and it broke my heart.
“Tor, I’m not one of them. I’m not one of anything. I’m just me, and since I met you, I’ve never felt more me.”
He said nothing, just examined me for a time. Silence filled the room like water rushing in, until Elgon yipped behind me.
The giant mountain hound pushed on my shoulder with his nose and then laid his head on my chest, staring at Tor. Elgon snorted.
“I think he wants something,” I whispered through a giggle.
“Good morning,” Tor said, lowering his head to Elgon, letting the hound lick his cheek.
“Eww!” I sat up to separate them.
Tor laughed as Elgon jumped on the bed behind me to sit on my pillow and paw at Tor’s chest for attention. I got up, clearly in the way as Tor and the only friend he’d known for years said good morning.
I dressed at the head of the bed, out of Tor’s line of sight, although a part of me wished he could see me. After pulling on black pants and a long-sleeved green shirt, I dropped to the edge of the bed and wiggled my feet into ill-fitting socks.
“First thing we do when we get out of here is burn all your shoes,” Tor joked as he got up. He faced away from me, and in the morning light his strong back flexed as he moved. Bands of muscle stretched beneath his skin—not the upper body strength of the Sualwet or the stocky, broad strength of an Erdlander. Instead each cord of muscle moved individually and in combination with the rest of him.
When he reached for his pants, I stood up, suddenly very aware that he was about to change in front of me.
“I’ll go find something to eat.”
“All right.” Tor smirked. One eyebrow lifted, and a knowing glint twinkled in his eye.
Elgon jumped off the bed and followed me to the main room, warily eying everyone we walked by. Most of the pod members were awake and milling around in various states of morning preparedness. No one talked, just shared a few nods and smiles. Or maybe that was because of the spiky-haired monster who accompanied me.
In the kitchen I found the panel with the food everyone else was eating and took out two packages. Elgon whimpered and bumped my elbow with his nose.
“Looks like he’s hungry, too,” a low voice said from behind me.
I turned and found Ash leaning against the arch of the doorway, eating an apple and watching me rummage.
“Yeah, do you think it’d be okay if I—?”
“Don’t think anyone would care, if they noticed.”
He pushed off the wall and came up beside me, reaching past my head to grab something from one of the high shelves. His body brushed against mine, and Elgon growled.
“He doesn’t like anyone getting too close to you, does he?” Ash asked, a nervous undertone to his voice.
“Not really.” I petted Elgon’s head affectionately.
Ash nodded with a strange smile before handing me the box he had taken down. It was labeled “CEREAL.”
“Thanks.”
Ash didn’t move away as I leaned over to get a bowl and poured some of the cereal out before placing the dish on the floor.
It felt like he was studying me, and since I had no idea how to prepare the food I’d just taken out, I wasn’t putting on a very good show. Inside the packages I was relieved to find instructions telling me how to set the oven. I’d never used an oven before, but it was easy enough to figure out.
Before Ash could say anything else, Lock entered the room. He looked tired and remained the distant shadow he had been yesterday. Only two days here and he was so much unlike the Lock I had met in the forest. What had happened to him? “Hey, Sera,” he said, “I need to go over to Life Services before Linguistics. Do you want to go with me, or can you make it to the Admin floor by yourself?”
“Um, I think I can make it,” I said.
This would be the perfect chance for Traz to show me where the disk was kept. The desire to just run out and tell him what I had come up with was astounding, but I waited, standing next to the stove, counting down the seconds it would take for our food to cook.
Ash threw his apple core in the compost tube and nodded to us before lea
ving the kitchen. He turned back and smiled at me one more time before disappearing around the corner.
“You and Tor not being official has gotten around,” Lock said with a cock of the head toward where Ash had been standing.
“Oh!” I gasped, heat rising to my face.
Lock shifted his weight and looked around the kitchen. Before long, Elgon finished eating and stared at Lock, as confused as I was by his behavior.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“I.... Never mind.”
Lock hurried out of the room, leaving me alone in frustration and unable to go after him thanks to the meal cooking in the strange, fireless contraption. The day had hardly started, and I was already annoyed.
The oven buzzed, signaling it was done, and I pulled the packages out with tongs and placed them on plates.
Back out in the living room I found Tor standing by our door talking to Lace. I guess word about us not being official really had made its way around the pod. Everyone here was obsessed with being Matched. I just didn’t get it.
“Here.” I shoved Tor’s plate between him and Lace with a glare and more force than I intended. What did I care? I’d just been talking to Ash and Lock, and was now off to find Traz. Tor could talk to whomever he wanted. Still, did it have to be her?
Sitting in the chair we’d found him in last night was Traz, fully dressed and curled up around a book.
“Hey, Traz.” I sat on the table next to him, trying to look casual.
“Oh! Hi!” he responded, a little too loudly.
“Lock has to go to Life Services this morning, and I don’t quite know my way to Linguistics yet. Would it be too out of your way to walk me?”
“Sure, I can do that.” His reply was softer, and his eyes refused to meet mine.
I needed him to do this—just this one thing and then he could go back to his life and forget all about Tor and me if he wanted to. I wanted him to stay with us, wherever we were going, but I wouldn’t force that on him. Right now, though, Tor needed to hear that other recording.
Neither of us had turned out to be who we thought we were. I wasn’t the childish weakling who depended on my mother for everything, and he wasn’t the brash loner who didn’t need anyone. Tor needing that melodisk was more important than anything, and I would get it for him.
Two Moons of Sera Page 17
