Page 18 of Defiance
07
Maybe I'd missed him.
Maybe I’d taken too long in the shower. I’d blow-dried my hair afterwards, but it had taken me a few minutes to figure out how. It had always been an option, but one I thought I’d never use. I crossed my arms, shaking my foot back and forth where I sat on the edge of a large boulder by the river. My stomach rumbled more with nerves than hunger as I sat waiting, watching the time tick by as it glowed along the length of my index finger.
Had I been stood up…?
This wasn’tactuallya date, but the possibility that they’d decided someone else would be better suited stung. Not a word. Not a single message. I was missing something.
I scoffed at my own self-doubts, jumping to my feet. Whether I was hangry or righteously fuming, I couldn’t say, but I’d put in effort for this. Trusted that it was real and not some prank, a thought that came unbidden and sent ice through my chest. I’d set up a picnic blanket, a lamp, some dinner with a cloth over it to keep theshiviesoff. I even wore a frock. It came with our start closets and lots of women wore them around the colony, but it still counted for something.
“The cheek,” I grumbled. A fuming blush ignited my cheeks like hot coals as I snapped my waders off the tree branch I’d hung them from to dry. I slipped off my sandals and stepped in, the hem of my skirt bunching up around my waist.
Surprisingly, the thing that stung hardest was the lost opportunity to contribute. Iwantedto be integral. Iwantedto help. I wasn’t keen on repeating the cold, empty life I’d left behind. This time round, I was choosing me own people and path, dissenters be damned.
I latched my suspenders and stopped, taking a deep breath. Closing my eyes, I reminded myself that I contributed a lot. Squinting suspiciously at the colony drainage was about health and safety. So was moonlighting at the clinic. I was even developing a marine biology class for the school pod.
It was enough.
Iwas enough.
Feeling centered, I shlomped out into the river clay. If my date was going to be a picnic for one, I might as well do my first night survey. Water splashed over my knees as I picked my way through a minefield of slippery rocks and sediment, correcting for the gentle pull of the current on my boots. Big Blue cast the nights in an eerie green glow when the skies were clear, so I found my first cage without issue.
A curl popped from behind my ear as I sank my hands into the water and hefted the cage to the surface. I balanced it on my hip and activated the light clipped to my front so I could search for those little clams, mind my fingers and their sharp edges as I turned over the algae-covered rocks. A couple had opened their shells and closed them tight at the first touch, squirting streams of cloudy water.
“Sorry, sorry,” I murmured, setting them back down with care. The algae had grown considerably since the day before, climbing up some river grass that skimmed the surface. The resulting circular patterns of decay reminded me of Pom Pom’s disease, labyrinthula, and I creased my brow in concern, forgetting the rendezvous with Novak entirely.
Labyrinthula was a genus of slime molds that parasitized cephalopods, mollusks, and other sea creatures. They suffocated the skin and produced lesions that could be fatal. Just like humans had good and bad bacteria in their gut biome, shilpakaari had good and bad labyrinthula living on their skin. Pom Pom had contracted one of the worst when she was a tot, and now lived with an incurable case of parasitism. Her treatments carved away flare ups with a precision laser and managed symptoms with harsh antifungal medications.
It was probably nothing, but the circular scars on Pom Pom’s arms and back flashed in my mind. I hoisted the cage higher on my hip and made my careful way back towards shore where my bag still held its usual supply of sample cubes and antiseptic. I would take several clippings and examine them under a microscope at the clinic in the morning with Ezra’s blessing.
“Stay there, Ms Halloway,” commanded a deep, silky voice.
My eyes snapped up to the riverbank with a full-body shudder. A tall black shadow stood on the rocks just past the clay, out of direct light from the toxic water planet haunting the horizon.
“Shite,” I swore on an inhale as my heart pounded in my ears. Novak hadn’t stood me up after all. I lifted my free hand and blew a stray curl from my eye, giving up any chance that this could be a romantic evening. “Didn’t see you there.”
“I wasn’t trying to be seen just yet,” came his reply. Was that a hint of amusement? Flirtation?
I breathed a laugh somewhere between disbelief and hope. “Let’s start over then. Hi.” I placed a hand on my chest. “Charlie. Lend me a hand, would you? This thing’s a killer.” I hefted the waterlogged cage back onto my hip where it was leaving a bruised patch.
The ferns behind Novak shivered as something ropey and long slid across the ground. I nearly dropped the cage in a panic, assuming it was a snake. Instead, a tail nearly twice his height carved a trench through the clay that separated us.
“Don’t move,” he said again with more tension in his tone. His tail curled itself into a tight, perfect spiral as it retreated. “It’s safer for you.”
I blinked at his shadow, then bit my lip. “Sorry,” I laughed. “I can’t decide if the cloak-and-dagger routine actually makes me nervous or if it feels like when Americans come to Ireland to roleplay druids and knights. Could you at least stop brooding in a shadow, for feck’s sake?”
The man I assumed was Novak slid out into the green night and my laughter caught in my throat.
If I were still on Earth, I might think he was Anubis with upright ears as long and slender as his muzzle. His back was wide and his hips were narrow, emphasizing how lithe and long his body was. Rather than fur, shoulders clad in iridescent scales caught the teal glow of night, so although his shape was that of Egypt’s god, the details were draconic. Regal. Godly. Deadly beautiful.
As I looked up and down his figure, he stood frozen. Waiting, staring. I cleared my throat and mustered up the sort of smile one used during small talk. “That’s better. Nice to meet you, Novak. Assuming you’re Novak. You haven’t said.”
“Yes. Pleasure—” His word choked off with a shiver and he shook his head. “Good to meet you, Charlie.”
“Grand,” I said in a chipper voice, trying to fill the tense breaks between words with something benign. “You hungry? I’ve brought a picnic for us.”
“Starving, but we should speak first,” he growled, tail curling around his ankle in a slow spiral.
