Page 25 of Taken to Nobu
The grief that shines in her too wet eyes overwhelms my Xanaxana. I falter before her now, even though in front of a fully matured hevarr, I did not.
“Hexa,” I answer her through gritted teeth. If she ran, she needs to be punished, but I find that I cannot do that either.
She is tight and huddled and reaches out to touch a shredded strip of the covering that binds him. The flesh that contained his Xaneru but a quarter solar before is now still. Hands cross over his chest, his body is wrapped securely in the vestiges of his hide coverings. Having been lashed by the hevarr spray, it disintegrated the outside of his suit before tunneling inwards.
“It is thanks to him that the creature was slain. Knowing he was going to die, he advanced on the creature, delivering the blow that distracted it and allowed me to get close enough to the creature to kill it. Without his sacrifice, it is likely more would have died, or been gravely injured. And it is because of you. Because youlied to meand then you ran,” I say, lashing out — not because these are truths but because I aim to hurt her. I am to hurt my Xiveri mate. I am a proud male, yet in this moment, I do not feel it.
Shocking me suddenly, she smashes the heel of her left hand into her forehead while the other wraps around her middle. I reach for her wrists to stop her but she blocks my hands in a well-practiced motion. Furious that she would try to fight me here, I bare all of my teeth and lunge for her.
She gasps, and then she does something very small. Something damning. She lifts her right arm, splays her fingers, and uses that elbow to shield her face and head. She prepares to be struck like someone who has been struck before, many times, and could not fight back.
Time stands still. Outside of the clear shell of the hull, the white world rages. In here, in the warmth we share and create together, I take her suspended arm in one hand and I pull it against me. I pull her against me and onto my lap and I clutch her to my chest so tight so that she might know that she is a part of it and I would no sooner strike her than I would my own flesh.
I allow my Xanaxana to purr its relief, filling the entire hull with its vibrations. Her muscles begin to ease and she hiccups, then covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes are shut tight and she is clutching at her chest.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she finally says, words bursting out of her in a tempest, “An alien wasn’t supposed to die trying to save my life.”
My anger flares as she makes such an inane delineation between us, and I snarl into her hair, “Alien or human. Voraxian or alien. We are all the same. You dishonor his sacrifice by reducing him in this way.”
She clenches harder and trembles now with vigor. Turning into my suit, her fingers clutch at the fabric, pulling desperately. I maneuver around her, caught off guard at the sight of warm water coating her face.
“You make this water again with your eyes…”
A sob wrenches out of her before I can say more. “Just leave me here. Please…”
What does she mean? What can she mean?“Do you suggest that after I risk the lives of four warriors, three trackers, three dozen dreya and myself, I should throw you back out in the snow?What do you think?” I seethe, my voice threatening to shatter the fibers of the hull around us. “You are my Xiveri mate! You are our Xhea.”
“Don’t call me that,” she says and I start.
Of all the things to say to me. Of all the things to say. I release her and rise to my feet and as I look at her kneeling there on the plastic floor of the hull, a surge of emotion comes on so strong, there is no hope for control.I am a controlled male. I was. But not anymore.
“You dare!” The words rip out of my throat like a strip of bark torn from a tree. Scarringly.
She jumps, her bottom jaw trembling. She looks up at me glassy-eyed, but only for an instance. In the next, she rights herself and fumbles for the broken shard of staff I used to kill the creature. Lying there beside Re’Okkari’s body, she snatches it up and lifts it as she rises. In the impossibly small space, she squares off against me like I’m nothing but another hevarr. As if we had not traveled the galaxy’s most distant pleasures just the lunar before. As if we are not all exhausted and wounded and in pain.
“Lower your weapon immediately.”
“No.” She lunges at me, but I bat away her first strike with the plates lining my forearm, and then her second. I back away from her as she advances and when the hull doors open, step out into the snow. She chases me into the falling ice, but does not make it far when her right leg gives out. Plunging staff-first into the snow, she nearly skewers herself when her lower half spasms and she cries out. She grabs for her thigh, squeezing it in her gloved fingers.There are five, yet she calls us alien…as if somehow five and not six makes any difference at all.
I dive down to meet her and wrench her small body across my knees. I reach where her hands are reaching, noticing now tears in her coverings that I hadn’t before. She tries to stop me but I push her hands aside.
“Get away,” she says.She begs.
“Xhea, what has gotten into you?”
“Don’t call me Xhea. I don’t…I don’t deserve…Xhea. I don’t deserve it…” Her head falls back on her neck. Her muscles become slack. There is water on her face carving paths through the ice that has formed. Her lips are blue and her skin is ashen. My Xanaxana writhes wildly in my body and I suddenly cannot breathe.She is dying.
Fear and panic become me, but I do not have the capacity to staunch the rush of color to my ridges as everything she does denudes and flays me to my bones. “Cra’El! Ka’Okkari!”
My tracker and warrior come to flank me just as I again lower Kiki’s body into the ice glider, my remaining dreya stamping their feet before it. They lost a brother and a sister today, two who had grown up with the litter since birth. They too will feel their own form of sorrow.
“What is it? What is killing her?” I say.My fingers fly over her body, unwilling to remove her coverings but unsure how to proceed without. Ka’Okkari answers my question as he finishes fastening her legs to the stabilizers.
“Okkari, here. The hevarr’s spray has maimed her. It has chewed through the top layer of skin.” As he speaks, he takes snow from outside of the glider and packs it against her wound — an effective counter to the effects of the spray.
Though it may slow the effects, it will not bring back the skin that was already stolen.Not like merillian will.I am overcome by shame. Twice that I will have to place my own Xiveri mate in a merillian tank to save her, because it is twice since the Xanaxana named her as mine that I have nearly allowed Voraxia’s creatures to take her life.
I draw my holoscreen and issue quick commands to the healers.At the same time, I command my trackers and hunters to disperse and take the remains of the hevarr to Hurr where she and the xub’Hurr will prepare it and treat it for use during the coming icefall. Such a bounty will go a long way. The hides can be tanned and used for a number of purposes. The acid can be reduced for medical supplies and weaponry. The blubber used for soaps and oils. I should have said this and more to my Xhea. To my strange, wounded Kiki who mourns for those she calls alien.It is as if she hates us, yet still grieves for us.I do not understand…
