Page 9 of Resisting the Alien Rider

As Killian set up his tent and Magnolia set up mine – now hers – I set to work tracking down water for the shuldu and bracku. I found a decent little creek less than half a span from the place I’d chosen for our camp. I snapped open my collapsible pole-and-stretched-hide drinking trough and filled it, then lifted the long, dripping weight of it onto my shoulders to haul back.

As I walked, I mulled over my interactions with Magnolia thus far. It did not seem to be something I could help. Thinking about it. About her.

Well, I did kill someone.

I sighed at myself. It was true, of course. I hadn’t lied to her. But the reason I’d said it…

It had been like lobbing a weapon at her. Not to hurt her. Just so that she’d flinch. Something about her big eyes and her softness and the way she quietly accepted the sleeping arrangements after I’d brought up Killian’s feelings had made me feel like I was fallingsideways. Like my body’s centre had been wrenched violently, and the only way to right it was to knock her off-balance in return. Remind her what I was.

A part of me regretted having reminded her.

Another part was blustering.It does not matter if she thinks well of me. She needs only think well of Oaken.

That would likely not be difficult. I hadn’t seen Oaken in cycles, but he’d always been good. He was very likely the only one out here – besides perhaps the warden – who came close to deserving someone like Magnolia. They would be well-suited.

Assuming he was still alive.

I clenched my fangs together. He’d broken his foot out here and nobody knew precisely where he was now.

There was a chance my cousin was dead.

The thought was like two successive, blinding blows. One, my own pre-emptive grief.

Two, the thought of what it might do to Magnolia.

Just how the blazes did I end up like this? Can barely manage my own feelings half the time and now I’m flailing about trying to take care of Killian’s and Magnolia’s.

I was fairly certain I was very bad at it.

I exited the trees. This stretch of forest went on for spans. It was far too dense to get through with the herd. We’d have to traverse around it to continue making our way to the mountains beyond.

The land we’d come from, where Silar and Fallon and I had our ranches, was flatter, dotted with trees and swaying with grass. It was that grass, that grew in tufts up to the treeline, that my bracku and shulduwere eating now. I squatted and then carefully set down the trough of water for the shuldu. I grabbed my second trough, currently collapsed into a flat sort of frame, and turned to head back to the creek.

There was no reason for me to stop at the sound of voices. I recognized the voices as instantly as if I had spoken aloud myself.

But I stopped anyway, hesitating at the dark edge of the trees. Magnolia laughed at something, and the sound struck my spine like a scythe. But… a soft one. Like a scythe wrapped in hand-made quilting. Or flowers.

Or eyelashes.

I twisted to look back at them. My chest gave an odd, hollow sort of pang at the sight of them.

Something clearly had gone very wrong with the setting up of Magnolia’s tent. It was so wilted in the middle she’d likely be brushing her nose up against the ceiling of it even while lying on her back.

I wanted to be irritated. Irritated that I had Killian and Oaken and the herd to worry about and now I’d been saddled with this human female who could not even set up a tent. But I only felt a twitchy sort of urge to fix it for her, something akin to an itch I could not scratch. And that was even worse.

Killian was fixing it. His wiry blue-green arms tightened and tugged, slowly shaping the tent into something somebody might actually be able to sleep in. I supposed that was what had caused Magnolia’s mirth.

“Thank you,” she was telling Killian. She took off her hat and laid it down on top of her bag. “We havetents back home, too, but they’re a bit more high-tech than these ones. You basically just toss one down and it snaps open!” She laughed again. “I definitely could have set up one of those!”

Laziness, I grunted internally. Imagine just snapping something open and expecting it to –

I looked down at the collapsible trough in my hands.

Yes. Well. That is different.

Killian made short work of fixing the pathetically drooping tent. His own was already standing. When I noticed how close he’d put it to Magnolia’s, my chest gave another odd twang. The sides were practically touching.

I had to stop watching the two of them. It was making my lungs feel wrong. And I needed my lungs to get through the rest of this blasted journey.

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