Page 29 of Saved By Starlight
Time slows down.
My stomach turns.
I can’t swallow.
I can barely think.
I don’t want to look at Elvis to see what Lyro has done. I don’t want to look at Lyro to see whatI’vedone. So I just lie there, arms cinched around him, waiting to feel him breathe.
I never should have admitted how much Elvis means to me. Iknewhe’d use it against me. But I didn’t think he’d do ityet. He said he was trustworthy today, damn it.
And then it feels like time speeds up again.
Lyro growls and pushes my arms away so he can sit up. He rubs his temple where a knot is already growing, swirling with orange pigment. He’s hurt, but he’s not bleeding. Not dead. So now I can just be mad at him.
“Why?” I croak, scrambling to my feet.
“I thought he might like it.” Lyro sounds oddly vulnerable as he picks something up from the floor, something he dropped when I ambushed him. “It’s sweetgrass jelly,” he adds, holding up the silver pouch, offering it to me. A drop of clear syrup oozes down the side where he’s torn off the corner.
Oh. He was feeding Elvis, not...
My eyes flood, and I turn around so he can’t see me making a fool of myself. “Sorry,” I sniffle. “I panicked. I thought you were...” My throat closes again.
“Hurting him,” Lyro finishes flatly. “That’s fair. I considered it.”
He bends down so he can lower the pouch into Elvis’s tank again, dripping some of the jelly onto a leaf. When Elvis races toward the food, I crouch beside the tank, the sides of our arms and legs pressed together as Lyro and I watch him tentatively examine the droplets with his fuzzy front legs before scooping them into his mouth.
He scurries back and forth in the same area, looking for any he missed, and when he doesn’t find any, he stops and waves his antennae hopefully at us through the glass. He’s so cute. It makes me smile to see him happy and running around like this.
“Good call on the jelly. He really likes it.”
Lyro stretches his arm in to give him more, giving a pleased grunt when Elvis finds the new batch. “It was my favorite when I was a greenling. I ate it every day, twice if I could talk my way into it.”
“But you don’t anymore?” I tease, guessing that the reason he brought it along for his space travel is because he still eats it regularly.
“No. I feed it to ungrateful bugs instead.”
“Aw, he’s not ungrateful! Look at him!” Elvis is waving his feelers again, this time more impatiently.
“That’s greed, not gratitude.”
“It’s the same thing sometimes, isn’t it? If you’ve had something and want more...” I trail off, my voice going a little strange and breathy because of the way his stormy eyes are boring into me. “It’s a compliment, which is a kind of gratitude. Wanting more means you appreciated your first taste.”
“You have strange ideas.” He turns back to the tank, squeezing the rest of the clear jelly onto the leaf. As he watches Elvis busily put it away, he adds, “Greed isn’t appreciation. It’s entitlement. It is wanting what you areowed.”
“Look how happy you’ve made him,” I argue, gesturing to Elvis’s euphoric consumption, complete with two rows of silver legs rippling in what can only be a celebration. “Doesn’t that feel better than athank you?”
“Why do you love him so much?” Lyro snaps, sounding even more pissed-off than usual. “What is it about this insect that inspires such affection?”
“He’s cute, don’t you think?” I scrunch my nose at his disgusted expression. “Well, I think he’s cute. Look at him. Look at his little feet.”
“He’s an insect like thousands of others. You don’t love them. You lovehim. Why?”
He has a point. I do love Elvis more than a random bug. “Maybe it’s because he’smybug? When he’s happy, that makes me happy because it means I’ve done a good job caring for him.”
“His happiness is your happiness.” Lyro says it like he can’t make sense of it. Like it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. “Because it makes you appear successful to others?”
A laugh bursts out of me. “No. It just...makes me feel good. Doesn’t it make you feel good to have a pet?”
