The far-off mountains behind us were set aflame as the morning sun rose behind the boat. I looked back with wonder, observing with an open maw as the river's surface reflected a golden, burning glow. I let my tail drift behind slightly, drawing lines of trailing reflections along the clear water.
I gazed upon my reflection. The scales on my left lip were a faint white, which dragged upward and stopped just before my eye. It would probably go away with my next shedding, though I was uncertain how I would shed out in the wild. Another one of those processes Advent had robbed us of. I shuddered at the thought of it, of those cold walls and red lights. The uncomfortable silence within structures and the feeling of forced complacency.
But here, I was free. I could do what I wanted, I could think about whatever crossed my mind, I was allowed to simply exist. Granted, we were still on the run, I wasn’t entirely safe to do what I pleased, but simply the hope of more freedom to come was enough fuel to drive me forward. I suppose that is how I felt, driven, determined. I knew what I wanted and I was going for it with everything I could.
But I knew even back then, that I could not have done this alone. I was ready to face whatever stood in my way, go as long as needed; yet, I was not entirely without something to hold me down. The lives lost that day weighed on me, what I had done before and the punishment my compatriots faced without me… it never left me completely.
I needed to live, if not for myself, then for those that died to get me to this point.
But what was this point I had reached? Driving with a human down an unknown river, in hopes of making it to an undetermined safe place before getting gunned down; only to then have to fight again. I didn’t fear fighting, I was made for it, there was just something different now that I was fully aware. Injuries would slow us down and leave lasting scars or wounds, neither Luis nor I could risk an all-out-shoot-out. Our chances were highest if we could ambush them, catch them out with a surprise attack.
I looked at the human. He was slouched overtop the console, which stood like a solitary pillar in the middle of an arrow tip-shaped deck. Flying was nice because you could feel the forces drag around you, but boating? It was just strange, relaxing, sure, but strange nonetheless.
The water made waves if one went too fast, causing it to buck upwards like a wild animal. The combustion engine was old and hadn’t been cleaned properly, probably ever, causing every taste of the air to become tinted in gasoline. The noisy rattling may not have been much, but to my sensitive ears, my hearing amplified by my hood, it sounded more akin to a machine gun going off. Though again, the scenery, the breaks in between, and my own thoughts managed to make this more calming than unsettling.
Luis noticed my vacant gaze with a shoulder glance. I only brushed over his face with my vision, and still, his eyes caught mine for just a second. My heart seemed to skip a tiny beat in the otherwise calm rhythm, though the feeling disappeared not a second after.
The golden glow of the rising sun deepened his black hair, highlighted the edges of muscles beneath his shirt, and darkened his beige skin. He looked nice in this light, or perhaps it was because his expression had shifted; no longer had he this tense and broodingly serious attitude in his posture. His attitude felt...lighter, a little more expressive, a little easier to read. And what I saw was a warm smile, aimed at me.
“What are you looking at?” Still, his sarcastic and overly confronting tone remained.
“The sun, it reflects off of you in a nice way,” I simply replied.
He changed color again, his mouth pulled together and his eyes adjusted with a few blinks.
“Why are you changing color again?” I asked, chuckling heartedly at the sight. Oh, how I would have laughed if I knew what it had meant back then…
“I...eeh… It’s something with the light,” Luis stammered and I immediately scrutinized him with squinted eyes.
“You’re lying again,” I stated, keeping my tone neutral.
It was a stragedy of the sort, though saying it like that sounds like I was using him or trying to manipulate him; that was not the case. I had simply noticed that Luis seemed to shut off every time I had tried to confront him with reprimanding or aggressive demands. And he could do so fairly effectively, to the point where I knew I would have to change my approach. I instead became more passive, I still confronted, but I offered something in return this time. I offered to listen.
He was talkative, which had come as a surprise at first, but I welcomed that. Luis was...interesting, he occupied a part of my brain, one trying to figure him out, tapping and prodding against the shell he had shown me before and still held on to. And yesterday, I had made a breakthrough. I was still proud of myself for acting how I did at the moment, as it worked out so very nicely. Luis’ previous life had taken a potentially easy way out of our situation, but, being honest, I was not fully comfortable with the plan of calling Xcom.
Yes, they were the ones to defeat the elders, but they did so for humanity and for themselves, not for us. It was likely that they didn’t even know what would happen to us once the network went down, perhaps us just falling over dead would have suited them just right. Although a lie, Luis reminded me that Xcom was, and always had been, a counter alien agency. I had fought them and they were brutal, running rampant with technology designed to kill effectively rather than quickly. Some even used melee weapons, rushing past cover and slicing us apart, it was terrifying.
My last, encounter with them had only been a month or so back, where they simply bypassed our security system and turned our automatic personnel against us. Whatever they had in store for us aliens, I would rather be able to observe from a distance, instead of being the first volunteer.
"Maybe," was his response, a smirk undermined him.
"Do you want me to throw you overboard?" I retorted, pulling my tail up and slithering it over.
"And who's gonna drive the boat if you do that?" He raised an eyebrow at the winding limb.
"Would you teach me?" I asked, my attention shifting quickly to a more interesting subject.
"Driving a boat, sure," Luis shrugged and I immediately shot up.
The deck was small, well, if you asked me. My tail took up most of the back, sprawled about like the rope to an anchor, while I remained at the far edge. I moved over my lower body and arrived at the front, my head level with the humans.
"This is the acceleration, back means stop forward means go. Just don't—" Luis stepped back and pointed out the handle. Before he had finished, however, I had already pushed the switch all the way to the front.
He let out a small yelp, as the boat's motor roared and huffed until the entire vehicle suddenly rushed forward at high speeds. He was forced to stumble backward and tripped over one of my coils. Thanks to the fact that I was essentially all over the boat, I was unaffected by the change in momentum, though I too was a little startled.
Hoping to avoid Luis actually falling out of the boat, or more likely hit his head somewhere, I rushed forward and caught him under the shoulder. I grabbed onto his shirt and pulled him back up, assisting via using my tail below his back. I quickly lowered our speed again, using my tail, looking at him apologetically.
"And that's on following instructions," Luis complained and straightened his posture. "You can let go now," he said and I realized that I was still clutching him.
"Sorry, about both of that," I said and quickly retracted my hand and tail from him. The distaste for physical contact on his part had lessened, but it was obvious from his demeanor and pheromones that he was uncomfortable whenever I made unexpected contact.
"It's alright, just don't pull it up all the way," he said, finishing the sentence from before.
"And how do you change direction?" I inquired, letting him step past me and to the console.
"The wheel, obviously," Luis replied sarcastically.
"It's not as obvious as you think. I bet you wouldn’t have any idea how even a door inside an Advent building worked," I fired back, matching his snarky tone.
"And so speaks the alien serpent. Yeah, I don't mind admitting that I'm not versed in your tech, but this isn't an Advent building. So, as far as I am concerned, I hold more experience here," Luis said, while demonstratively spinning the wheel left and right, the boat moving accordingly.
"You talk very confidently for someone trapped on open water with a species made to swim and dive," I challenged.
He simply pulled up the edge of one lip and raised an eyebrow, seemingly unimpressed.
"Vipers are made to swim? I thought you were infiltration or stalkers," he asked, settling on a different aspect of what I had mentioned.
"Not made to swim, our planet just consisted of a lot of water, even more so than the earth," I explained, clearing up the misconception from my lack of English practice.
Luis glanced to the corner of his vision and took in the information with a silent nod. I wondered how he imagined my planet. I had to fill in many blanks myself, as my memories were hazy at best.
"The water there was a different shade, more yellow and it felt lighter than what it is here. The air above the surface was dense and took conscious effort to take in," I reminisced, looking at the blue liquid beneath us.
"What was your sky like?" Luis' voice carried a calm, curious tone.
"We had no clouds as far as I remember, the days were brighter than earth since our sun was closer. You could see our moons circling the sun, our nights came fast and left almost as quickly. Two stars, their names I've forgotten, swirled during day and night, crossing each other every so often. Their light was my favorite, since it reflected off the water in a nice way, splitting into millions of blueish rays," I recalled the distant memories of staring upwards from below a lake's surface.
"That sounds nice," Luis chimed in, his eyes pointed to the sky.
"I don't remember much, sadly. But earth's sky is also fun to look at. It is more varied, colder, but a lovely shade of blue. You can see far in earth's atmosphere, distant planets in the night," I said.
"You can see other planets from here?" The human looked at me with a bewildered expression.
"When clouds aren't covering them, yes. Not all of them, but Mercury and Venus are visible most of the time," I explained nonchalantly.
"Humans need a high-powered magnifying glass to see other planets, your vision must be better than I had thought," he sounded impressed.
"It is easier to see on earth, I think it has to do with the density of your air. It also makes it easier to taste," I flicked my tongue out for display purposes.
"You say taste, how does that work?" He asked.
I felt strangely flattered that he was showing open interest in me, even if it was just on a biological level.
"I pick up the chemicals with this," I touched the split tip of my tongue. "Then there are sensory organs inside the orla of my mouth," I pulled my tongue back in, tasting the gasoline and Luis' scent.
"Orla?" He repeated.
"The sheath inside my mouth," I added quickly and unhinged my jaw. "Shee?" I asked with an open maw, pointing at the hole at the bottom of my jaw with a claw.
Again, he changed color to a shade of pink. I snapped back and crossed my arms across my chest.
"If you're not gonna tell me why you keep changing color in your face, I will just have to ask the first human I come across. And if they tell me that it's you making fun of me, I will strangle you," I threatened, though both of us knew it was nothing but a joke.
His lips curled into another smirk and he dismissed me by blowing out air through his nose.
The sun rose above us and crescendoed high atop the sky, warming my scales and entire body. I loosely draped over the sides, resting my torso on a few of my remaining coils. Luis continued to steer, avoiding the small outcroppings of rook and intruding shoreline, along with thick trees that stood within the waist-high waters of the shore. The trees shifted from massive pines, which carried their full display of deep greens, to more uniquely shaped and sized trees. I do not know what kind they were, only how they looked.
Their branches stretched and bent outwards and toward the open water, extending as far away from the other trees as possible, trying to reach out into the unused spots of sunlight. Varied in kind and type, these trees didn’t live in symbiosis with one another, they didn’t leave space to grow for the ones smaller than them, they didn’t bother with anything but themselves. And tall they grew. Stretching into the horizon in multiple branches, that met and intertwined, only to separate and widen at their peak.
Though the smaller ones were tiny in comparison to the young pine trees, sickly, and definitely only barely survived the winter. Their leaves were a more dull green, some branches were dead, others had splintered and uprooted. They leaned against one another, but those supports were weak also, meaning there were many rows of collapsed, young trees, carved throughout the forest. Though bushes and tall plants sprung up, about human chest height, in between these newly created spaces of light and dead nourishment.
This cycle, as alien and strange as it was, was beautiful. This is what I had wished to see, feel, experience, this was what I had suffered for, this was what I needed to live for
"Isra, we need to talk," Luis spoke without looking back at me.
"You say that like you don't enjoy our conversations," I replied, righting my posture.
Luis scoffed, then turned to look at me. "I need to just ask you a few things about your training," he explained.
"Sure, what do you want to know?" I asked and replicated the look of someone sitting, by coiling my tail beneath my hips.
"What sort of experience do you have with firearms, not those plasma weapons, just the rifle you have?" He asked.
"Advent used to have projectile weapons, but they were swapped out years back and we haven't been trained in their use since. I know how to aim and the individual parts are similar enough," I explained, while my tail raised the magnetic rifle.
"There aren't a lot of bullets in that thing and I don't have any more. What about improvised weaponry or your biological features, how effective would you say those are?" Luis asked, his eyes raising toward my clawed hands.
I inspected the ends of my fingers, where the calcium-based protrusions stretched out, they were almost as long as one of Luis' fingers. "I can spit a cloud of venom about twenty meters, I can ensnare multiple people at once and keep them from moving, my fangs are good for ripping or simply injecting. I would prefer not to use my claws, but they are strong enough to tear through wood," I said.
Luis noted the different aspects of my combative anatomy with a serious and contemplative expression. "Then you're better off than me but we already knew that."
"Do you think we will reach a safe place before they get to us?" I asked, my distaste for open combat seeped into my every word.
"I can hope that we'll make it past the lake tonight, but I cannot say how much time we realistically have. So I'm planning, I'm trying to come up with a plan that'll keep us from having to actually attack them openly," he tried to be reassuring, at least that's how he came across.
"How much longer is this ride going to last?" I asked, glancing toward the seemingly never-ending horizon.
"At the speed we're going, we should reach the lake by the start of the night," Luis theorized.
"What do you want to do until then?" I asked.
"Eat something first of all," he said and left the console.
He went to grab his backpack and opened the pouch of dried foods. He produced another sealed, white plastic bag. The letters were well worn but I could make out the words apple, strawberry, and blueberry; though there was more which I couldn't read anymore.
"Maybe we could play a game of cards," he suggested and reached into another compartment.
He pulled out a metal box and popped it open. A stack of thin cards lay inside, their edges tattered and some chipped with a yellow hue.
"I do not know how to play cards," I reminded the human.
"I figured, I wanna teach you how to," he responded quickly.
A smile pulled at my lips as I watched him rip open the bag of fruit. The smell was surprisingly strong for the fact that they looked dried and pulled together from a lack of moisture. He turned them inside out and poured the contents into one of the bowls we had taken.
Red, blue, and yellow colorful orbs landed inside the ceramic and I leaned in closer. I knew most of these, I had seen them in digital menus and billboards during the few times I had been in the cities. But some eluded me, a slice of dried, yellow fruit flesh that smelled unfamiliar but nice.
"What is that?" I pierced it with my claw and inspected it closer.
"That's an orange slice," Luis explained.
I eyed him from the corner of my vision and chucked it into my mouth. Though dried to be preserved, it still carried a sweet liquid flavor. I chewed and it tore apart easily, releasing more of the pleasant taste over my senses.
Luis stared at me again, just like the previous times when I had chewed food.
"Something wrong?" I asked after swallowing.
"I've never seen a snake chew, it looks...funny," he replied, a smirk tugging at his words.
"Why shouldn't I enjoy something's flavor? Just swallowing whole doesn't leave anything of taste," I justified and grabbed another piece of fruit, a strawberry.
“Hmm, I suppose so,” Luis admitted and ate a blueberry.
He pulled the deck out of its box and inspected the cards. Then he began pulling some from the front and put them into the middle, slow at first, but increasing in speed exponentially. I could still follow his movements but I could tell he was practiced in this. His fingers pinched the thin edges and the other digits lifted within the deck, then he placed the pulled cards in the created space. I watched almost mesmerized, almost since I snatched a fruit every now and then.
“You have quick hands,” I complimented.
He pulled the deck in two and pressed them against his knee and pushed them down and into each other. They made a rustling, somehow satisfying, noise as they combined once more, seemingly finalizing the act.
“It’s practice,” he dismissed.
“Why do you do it? Is it necessary to start the game?” I inquired, as he began pulling cards from the top and handing them out one at a time, facing downward.
“It makes it a game of chance. I believe there are fewer stars in the galaxy than there are possible combinations of cards. Well, it’s a game of chance if I want it to be,” he added with a slight huff of amusement.
“So you can manipulate it,” I confirmed with a raised brow.
“Yeah, but I don’t do that in friendly games, trust me,” he said and smiled with a leaned head.
I squinted, both trying to discern his features and attempting to bluff him into thinking I could see through any deception. But I found none, nor did he look impressed by the attempt, as his smile instead widened even further.
It was the first time I had seen him smile like that. Many humans had folds in their skin from smiling during a long life. Even humans younger than Luis had these markings, showing that their faces had changed from a lifetime of reasons to smile.
“I like your smile, you should show it more often,” I simply said. I saw no reason to be obscure about it or keep it to myself.
He didn’t change color this time, though his eyes turned downward for a second; it was as if he was looking into himself. I recognized this. The way his jaw softened, how his shoulders began to slump, and how, as strange as it sounds, his eyes lost a little brightness.
Of course I wondered what it was, it was strange, and it was scary in a sense. How a person you are talking to just suddenly...disappears. His entire body, or more so his face, grew vacant. But I also wanted to respect the boundaries I had been stretching before already. He accepted to talk to me about his past under the explicit understanding that I wasn’t going to talk about non-relevant subjects. It was obvious this was personal and, even if I would have offered to help, Luis would surely not want me prodding that far-’perhaps that could change.’
“Luis,” I spoke softly, as if simply reminding him to come back from wherever his mind wandered.
He shivered over his body, trying to activate his body and the lessened color of his eyes vanished. He took a slow breath in and blinked quickly as if trying to adjust to light after being in the dark. He let his head drop onto his chest, eyes nailed to the ground and blinking frantically.
“I’m...sorry,” he said while shaking his head from side to side, refusing to look at me.
“It’s alright.”
“Let’s play,” he nodded to himself and lifted his head, offering another smile; though this one was slightly less bright.
It was quite a simple game, much less confusing than what I had assumed based on what I saw with the two agents guarding us. Matching either the symbol of the card or the number. I held my card how Luis did and tried to keep the best ones for last, the joker. Though the special properties of certain cards brought fun randomness and slight chaos into the game. More than once, we both had only one card remaining but neither was able to actually play it, as it didn't match the last card on display.
This cycle of drawing one or two cards before arriving at a similar conclusion of being unable to finish victoriously, finally ended when I laid down a Joker card and forced Luis to draw another card. I slapped my final card down and threw my hands in the air. He looked at me with a warm expression and laid down his cards.
"Well done for your first time," he complimented. "Next time I won't go that easy on you."
"You lost fairly," I countered.
"Sure, it's still a game of chance," he shrugged.
"We should have bet something," I muttered.
"Oh, now you're making it interesting. What do you have in mind?" I had piqued his curiosity
"Hmm," I tapped my claw against the boat. "The winner gets to ask one question that gets answered completely truthfully," I proposed.
He squinted and furrowed his brow, piercing my thoughts with his green-eyed gaze, then picked up the cards and began shuffling once more. "Alright, I have something in mind."
"And you think you will win?" I teased.
"I definitely could, but I am also curious what you would ask me, so I won't cheat," he promised with a wink. "This will be just a game of chance."
"You better not," I warned him, though I would have no true way of telling.
I followed the movements of his hands with intrigue and watched him slip the cards to us. I snatched my deck up and looked: I had two jokers a seven and two heart-shaped ones, overall, a very nice hand. Luis would be done for.
But, as I schemed as to what I would ask, he turned the final card around and set the deck down. The upturned card, which I would have to play over, was also a seven.
"Oh, bad luck," he chuckled, watching my face turn to the sour realization.
I shot him a glare and drew another card, skipping my turn and allowing him to go first. I drew the ace of spades.
He placed down one of his cards, matching the color. I quickly laid down my seven and snickered at his frustration, as he reached to draw. My retaliation was short-lived, however, as his lips pulled into a satisfied grin; he had just drawn something good.
Still, it was my turn and I threw down one of my less impactful cards, gaining the advantage in card count.
"Now watch this," Luis announced and a tiny gleam of revengeful anticipation flickered in his eyes.
He pulled the card he had just pulled, a joker, and demanded I play a diamond-shaped card next. Maybe he was cheating, maybe it was just misfortune, but I didn't have any of that kind; I had to draw and looked at a black color with dismay. Though the human's smirk only grew and he placed a seven, quickly followed by an ace. He was down to only two cards, while I amassed more and more, landing at seven.
Although the stakes weren't very high, I still felt I needed to try something to win. I mustered his eyes, trying to look past his facade, but lacked the ability to tell what kind of cards he was hiding. I played my first joker card and wished for the black club since it was one of my sevens.
Luis smiled again and prepared to draw, putting the fear into my mind that I had inadvertently played into some sort of grandiose plan; but it was nothing but a small play by the man, as he reached instead for the upturned deck and drew. When he couldn't play, which he announced with a frustrated sigh, I laid down my seven and followed quickly with another joker, evening the card count again.
I couldn’t go with the same symbol again, even if I knew that he didn’t have any clubs. My seven was adorned with a scratched spade, it would be the most optimal choice. I announced the next symbol to play and Luis followed, laying down the queen; a foolish choice. I smirked widely and watched his eyes shift as soon as my seven was displayed. He didn’t lose eye contact and reluctantly drew from the deck, as I played my second-to-last card.
“Getting a fuller hand there,” I commented.
He didn’t reply, his eyes glued onto his deck, trying to find some sort of solution. The only thing he could apparently play was the final joker.
“A one in three chance…” He mused and leaned backward. I did my very best not to look at my final card, the ace of spades, out of fear that he could see something from the reflection within my eyes.
“Better get it right,” I waved the card.
“I...wish for spades,” he settled, a knowing smile on his face.
I suppressed a reaction, I wanted to draw it out. “Oh no!” I exclaimed and threw my head into the sky.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“Ha!” Luis celebrated and leaned forward again, awaiting me to draw another card.
But, of course, I didn’t need to. I returned my eyes to lock with his and let a devious grin pull my lips up, then turned the card around next to my head.
His eyes flicked to the cardboard in my fingers, then pulled wide. His jaw dropped alongside the cards in his hands and I could no longer stifle laughter from deep within my chest. The man looked slightly upset, though my amusement seemed to transfer to him.
“Damn, the deck did me dirty there,” he said bitterly
“It just likes me more,” I said after finally pulling my laughter back in.
“And to think I packed these.” He collected the deck and put them back into the box. “You won something, what do you wanna ask?” He leaned against the railing and leaned his head at an angle.
I pulled my tail closer and tucked myself in. I knew this question shouldn’t be something entirely serious, nor did I truly want to continue pressing him just yet. Though there was one thing that came to mind rather quickly.
“When we shook hands...did you mean to…” I failed to recount the word for a few seconds, during which Luis held completely still and his face lit up again-though slightly less so. “Caress my hand?” I settled on a word I had buried deep within my mind.
“I…” His eyes drifted down. His shoulders slumped. I knew where this was going, or at least I thought.
“Luis, stay with me there,”
“No, no, I’m still here,” he shook his head, showing that there was no tension within his shoulders by shaking them too. He looked up. “I wanted to know what your scales felt like,” his eyes locked with mine and he didn’t blink once while saying it. The words almost flew past me, but the enhanced hearing, due to my hood, caught every syllable.
“There, I fucking said it, I like the way it felt! I enjoyed some human fucking contact,” he grew aggravated, though it was not directed at me rather, at himself.
I stayed silent, this wasn’t the first time he had reacted strongly before though those times I had prodded into a layer he wanted to hide; I hadn’t meant to do that here. I wanted to settle a stupid thing in my mind, nothing more, and I felt terrible for getting him to this point so quickly. It showed he was on edge, he was trying to be careful for the both of us and it messed with his mind, which was obvious even to me. And something I had not thought about before but now had confirmation on.
Luis did not have a lot of human support, he had been betrayed by, what I figured to be, an old friend, leading him onto near death. And now he was stuck with me because I wouldn’t let him go. And Luis had just given a big clue as to how he saw me; though it was not entirely true.
“Luis, I’m not a human,” I stated calmly.
He paused his heightened breathing and stared me down-and I mean stare down. The human, shorter than me by many magnitudes, smaller, weaker physically, stared me down. And I felt tiny in the boat that I covered in my coils, the view around me pulled into his. It felt scary, yes, a little, but mostly just...fascinating.
Humans were already such interesting beings, the species that I would have to live with for the rest of my life. And what helped was the fact that Luis, the first human to show me the respect of another conscious, living being, was nothing short of enchantingly intriguing.
Finally, he blinked and I managed to tear away from the pulling gaze he had emitted with only a look.
“ No, no you’re not. ” He slowly nodded to himself.
“But is there that much difference?” He asked rhetorically. “Hell, you have more human qualities than some humans I know,” Luis scoffed.
A warm feeling washed over me like warm water. It felt nice to be talked to like this, how he tried to make sense of me and reveal more of himself in the process. This back and forth of pushing the boundaries, as neither knew where they would end, it was exhilarating.
“Well, what do you consider human about me?” I asked.
He paused, chewed on his lip, another one of his mannerisms I came to find amusing.
“Your way of speaking is near flawless, you bring up actually interesting topics, and...I somehow feel alright talking to you about things I had sworn to never mention. I can’t explain it, you are in every way like a human, but also not. You are more, not less than a human,” Luis did his best to continue to look at me but his eyes drifted upward every now and then.
“What do mean more ?” I felt more than a little intrigued by the direction this conversation may be going.
“I…” His view wandered to the bottom of his vision.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to answer, I didn’t mean to put you into this situation,” I quickly apologized, hoping that he would just take the way out I was offering.
“I have an answer, but it is not clear yet. If you would let me just let me make it out in my head before I tell you, that would be appreciated.” He looked back up.
“Alright, Luis. Whenever you feel that you want to tell me, I will gladly listen,” I assured and offered a smile, which he reciprocated.
We ate the remaining fruit and berries, then washed our hands in the passing river afterward. I wanted to steer the boat for a while and Luis assisted me in avoiding the obstacles nature put in front of us. I could eventually drown out the stench of gasoline and drown out the noisy engine, instead focusing on the shifting sunlight.
Earth’s sun always managed to form the unique colors, that I knew, but no one had ever told me it could be pure gold. Rays of visible golden glow flowed through the sky in weaves, like weebs of spiders, that eventually befell reflectively glistening leaves of trees. The hundreds of dancing and swimming sparks of color, that all held their green colors behind the yellowish tint of sunlight, made my mind fantasize all sorts of shapes into their indistinguishable patterns.
Gently sifting in the wind and fluttering from the occasional breeze, the trees’ leaves floated along the invisible current. They were being manipulated by an invisible line, which tugged and pulled irregularly, though I still found incredible patterns within their movements.
Over the next hours, as the sun eventually disappeared to our side, I thought about what would happen when we made it to the waterfall. WHat would be beyond it, where would we camp, how long would we be out in the wild? Perhaps there was a place we could stay, somewhere far away from those who wished harm upon us. Maybe it was foolish, naive to believe we could ever not be on the run. But it kept me going, fueled my determination to survive, to live.
We soon reached an encroaching bit of landmass, which crept into the river and shortened the water flow into a tight passage. Luis took over and I watched the sides, ensuring that we didn’t scrape against the shore. I saw the deep lake further past this passage, the water there was calm and blue, reflecting the rising moonlight.
The man skillfully navigated the narrow passageway and we quickly arrived on the open water. Stars reflected off the smooth, shiny surface just before the boat made ripples in the water. I couldn’t see the bottom, only the darkened shades of blue and dark tints. The moon, a half-visible circle in the sky, only gave small amounts of light, though that impacted my vision very little.
Trees were only dark and shadowy outlines and the nocturnal predators and other night-active creatures began to make themselves known in the underbrush. I picked up many scents and spotted unfamiliar shapes and sounds.
Luis drove us further to the opposite edge, where I heard and smelled the rushing water of a cascading edge. Currents began to pull and he put the boat into reverse, then maneuvered to the land near the waterfall.
“We should spend the night here and travel early in the morning,” Luis suggested.
It made sense, he was still not in shape to go at a fast pace, nor was exhausting our resources and stamina a wise choice in the long run. We, or rather I, pulled the boat onto the shore and trekked away from the water, leaving the boat behind. We completed the short hike when we got to a series of older, though more wide than short, trees. Their branches were thick and displayed long, tendril-like dreads of leaves.
Glowing buds of blue light lay at the end of these long, green arms. They almost reached the ground and hung around in the thousands, like hair on a human. It was a sight, the bark was dark and looked almost as if it was made up of many dozens of smaller trees, all conjoining into one, then splitting into the thick branches. Though their light was almost the same shade as the cold moonlight, these radiated heated air.
“These are wisps-at least that’s what we named them. They’re overgrown as hell but make for great cover. The lights also emit warmth,” Luis explained.
The branches were low-hanging and their trunks were wide and thick. Luis set up the folded tent and attached its string to the branches, then secure it via spikes in the ground. It was cold, but the blankets would serve him better than me. My body retained heat rather well, only getting to a warm temperature took time. Luckily, I had collected enough of the sun’s warmth during the day to get through the night without worry.
The tent would have been too small for me to also be inside and I had already settled on that fact. I got ready to wrap myself tightly around one of these branches next to it but Luis seemed to have another idea.
“You can probably fit your upper body here, there’s enough room,” he lifted the entrance to the beige tent. Square in shape and a tapering interior.
“Are you sure?” I asked. Both of us knew that I would take up more space than a human would, leaving the man with less room to lay comfortably.
“Long as you don’t snore,” Luis joked.
I chuckled and he slipped inside the tent. I held the entrance open and placed most of my upper body, along with a little bit of my tail, inside. The rest, I wrapped around itself and tugged in tightly. His scent was all over the inside, lingered in the air, and clung onto my tongue every time I took an experimental breath.
“Goodnight,” he said.
“Goodnight, Luis.”
No dreams I can recall that night, nor did Luis shake or talk before I drifted off to sleep. It was restful. Or it would have been, if not for the scent of humans. Not Luis’ earthy and strangely pleasant smell, no, this was something that reeked of blood-alien blood.
I shot upward. My eyes pulled open and forced me to adjust to the dull lighting of the tent’s interior, which blocked the already pale and obscured moonlight. The stinging aroma, which I would compare to citrus, which alien blood emitted had sent my mind into immediate threat mode. But it was not only one kind, it was a vile concoction of mutons, sectoids, hybrid, and vipers. There was certainly something else, something which turned this from a horrifying experience to awake to a panic-inducing terror.
Plasma.
It stung my senses like a knife and a series of mental images flashed through my mind; images of death, of failure.
“Luis, wake up!” I hissed sharply, ignoring my otherwise cautious approach of touching him, and shook him roughly at the shoulder.
Immediately, he shivered and drew a sucking breath into his lungs and his eyes flicked to me even before he could have been ready to actually perceive. His entire body spun on the ground. In the matter of a second, he was already sitting up straight.
“Sssshhhh,” I hissed and put my finger over my mouth, a gesture I had learned in hostage communication. “Agents, the false Xcom, they’re here.”
“How close,” He asked quickly. Obviously also impacted by heavy adrenaline.
I flicked out my tongue again. The scent was strong, but that could have been simply their numbers and the freshness of these indicators. But the wind, it carried smells far on earth and even more so in the night.
“Not very, but it’s likely were aren’t spotted yet,” I nodded to myself.
“They found the boat, fuck! I knew I should ha—” Luis’ eyes began shifting widely from corner to corner.
“Luis, that does not matter. We need to get out of here or fight, what do we do?” I interrupted the man.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he nodded to himself and stared at the ground. “We have to get out of here first. The pathway is near the waterfall a few hundred clicks away, we could hold position there if they find us and run if they don’t come.”
“You are slow, do you think you can make it?” I looked down to his leg.
“I… if I stay behind, I could distract th—” He didn’t face me, his head turned away.
“Luis!” I flicked my tongue out to emphasize my point. “I will drag you behind me if I have to, so I’m asking nicely here if you can walk on your own,” I reprimanded.
He looked at me again. “I need your help to go at an even pace,” he finally said.
“Then let’s go,” I grabbed the backpack and handed him his strange SMG, then took up my own rifle and one of the pistols. I checked the magazine and disabled the safety. Luis did the same, as well as activating a red laser on the side of the barrel, and crouched down at the tent. I took the backpack to myself and pulled outside.
The moon had almost disappeared from the sky, its last dying moments obscured by heavy, dark clouds. The smell of incoming rain hung in the air and a distant thunderstrike was heard.
Luis rushed out behind me and aimed out over the dense trees. The wisp’s lights had lost a lot of their luminosity and wrath throughout the night, meaning it was dark beneath the dense canopy and clouded sky. Though the occasional flash of lightning lit up the forest in a bright blue.
Luis’ laser sight traveled through the distant, thick darkness. And, although my eyes were made to pick up even the slightest light, I could not see the water. But I heard and smelled the waterfall, its rushing, clear water.
“Which direction?” I asked quickly.
“This way, we need to keep cover, watch our backs,” Luis said and began limping.
I slithered up next to him and lowered myself beneath his armpit with one arm. Because I didn’t sway or bounce up and down like a human, it was easy to support the man and speed up our walk significantly. He was more focused on keeping us covered and I made sure neither of us hit a tree, tripped over a root, or entangled ourselves one the vines.
The sound of water increased, but so did that tear-inducing stench of plasma. I flicked my tongue out and the sudden shift in pheromones pulled my vision onto my right. At first, nothing. But a split of a second passed and I saw the tiny flash of a barrel.
“There!” I spun around to face the thick tree and opened fire.
Immediately, Luis followed my target and put a few well-aimed shots through the wood. The high rate of fire tore the bark apart and left holes in the intertwining root-like trunk. Another second passed and out from behind cover fell the bleeding and riddled body of a man. He was dressed in black cloth, that hung freely all over him. But the entire outlook was wrong.
No mask, no helmet, no tactical gear. This wasn’t an agent.
“What?” I asked into nothingness before a hailstorm of silver-traced bullets caught the edge of my vision. My reflexes allowed the world to slow, as the rattling of a high-caliber machine gun rang out, and I pulled Luis and me down to the ground, towards the nearest tree.
“Doesn’t matter, we need to go!” Luis forwent silence, we had already been spotted and they knew where we were.
“They’re over here!” A male voice, coming from the same direction of the gunfire, called out.
“Taren?” Luis turned his head, a bewildered expression on his face.
But only for a moment, as we made a sprint. I almost carried him at my side, with him skipping long steps during which I pulled upward. I was not quite dragging him behind me, though it wasn’t that far off.
I heard many footsteps, some heavy, others light. Shouts rang out, the voices of men and a woman. The woman called out for “Luis, stop!” Luis ejected one of his magazines and threw it as far away as he could, then inserted the next; we couldn’t risk running out of bullets while shooting. My own rifle was also nearly empty, but I didn’t want to leave it behind just yet, though I had my tail ready to reach for the handgun.
“Do you know them?” I asked while keeping my eyes forward.
“They’re people from the camp,” Luis explained, clearly already strained from the running.
Residents were already being sent out? That would explain the lack of bullet-proof vests and higher-tech equipment. But why send them to hunt us?
The forest finally opened up. A rocky cliff. From the vantage point, I saw the forest below, while the thunderous noise from the advancing thunderstorm flashed and boomed. The waterfall poured from the rocky edge of the lake and cascaded down at least a hundred meters. It roared and drowned out any of the chirping birds that may have just awoke-those that we didn’t already scare away with gunfire.
I spotted the pathway Luis had mentioned, a steep trail, which winded down the side of the cliff. It was the least vertical spot of the cliff, which reached for many kilometers to each side. I had a little more trouble moving over the big rocks and small pebbles, as I lost traction whenever they shifted.
I kept glancing over my shoulder, shifting between the ever-brightening trees. And I spotted something. Movement of a shadowy shape, moving toward us.
“There!” I called out again and brought the weapon up, letting Luis go and catching him with my tail. My fire wasn’t the most well-aimed, though at least one bullet hit my target somewhere on the lower abdomen. But before I could sway my bullets closer to him, my gun clicked. Empty.
The shape tripped and fell. Luis, however, had followed my tracers and pressed down on the trigger, tearing into the person, who flailed and yelled, then went limp. Luis fired his weapon in small bursts, having spotted more attackers. His injuries to his shoulder seemed to play no matter, all bullets within a burst hit extremely close to one another, seemingly without recoil.
He hit one man in the exposed knee, as he had crouched behind a fallen-over tree. The agent yelped and fell backward. Before he had even hit the ground, he became riddled with bullets. Another attempted to cross closer to us, I spotted him and called him out to Luis. Immediately, three shots, one in the chest, two in the head.
A spray came from somewhere on our right. I reacted again, just not correctly enough this time. I pulled away my own head and dodged into the direction I deemed most safe. But I hadn’t been the target. The bullet whizzed past me and Luis’ body was thrown to the ground with a heavy impact. My eyes went wide and immediately scanned to where the bullet had hit. It was directly in the chest, though on the right-hand side.
It hadn’t pierced his heart, he was still going to survive. Well, if we made it out. He was forced to drop his gun, it clattered to the side as he writhed on the ground. I yelled his name in panic and threw my weapon to the ground, it was empty anyway. I got down low to the ground next to him and pressed down on his bleeding. He coughed and bit down to avoid screaming.
“Run, go!” He pressed the words through his teeth. With little strength, he tried to push me away.
“Shut up!” I hissed back and looked over my shoulder.
I could see five, maybe seven of them in total, dodging from cover to cover. They were probably still afraid we could fight back and didn’t want to leave cover. But it gave me an opportunity. I reared my head back, contracted my throat tightly, and collected the mucus-like poison in my mouth. It felt uncomfortable, gathering the fuming liquid in my mouth, as it brushed against my orla.
The difference between spitting a cloud-like bit of poison and injecting neurotoxins through fangs was natural, subconscious. It came from my left venom gland, while the neurotoxin was stored behind my right eye. It pressed down and I felt a slight pinch inside my left eye, though it was quick and didn’t diverge my aim.
Finally, the pressure forced me to release my deadly concoction through the slit in my mouth. Like a concentrated beam of water, emerged the dark, purple stream of viscous poison. Upon contact with air, it began to chemically react and boil, infusing the air around it in a thick, violet vapor. I spat it across the ground where the agents were emerging, creating a smoke-screen that none of them could cross without inhaling and chemically burning themselves.
When I felt my gland empty out and the stream ended with a few stray drops, which I sucked back in to avoid burning Luis. It tasted horrible, of stinging, coppery bitterness; but I was immune to it and my insides, as well as outsides, were completely resistant to it, even neutralizing it quickly.
With created cover, I snatched Luis up with both hands, carrying him horizontally, and grabbed his submachine gun with my tail. The ground gave me trouble, as I attempted to make pace toward the pathway. The waterfall to my left roared and rushed, no care for anything, just continuing to flow.
I made it to the edge. I tried to turn to the pathway. A loud bang rang out, I recognized the sound of a magnetic sniper rifle. I saw the tiny gleam, a flash of white through the bushes. What if I wasn’t the target again, what if they were just going for him because they knew him to be more dangerous. I couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t die here.
So I turned to the side and turned my back to the incoming projectile and got as low as possible, tucking my head close to Luis. A reflex of needing to shield the human in my arms, but also the foolish notion that I still had my spine-cover on. If that bullet had hit me in the spine…
But it didn’t. I felt the immense force of the magnetically propelled bullet in my upper left shoulder. My armor was dense and did cover that part. But it couldn’t have done anything against the projectile, the velocity of it easily pierced through the alloy and bent it inwards into the newly created wound. It left the other side and traveled even further.
I failed to hold onto Luis and stumbled forward. The force and the fact that I had been going as fast as possible before I was hit, caused me to roll across the ground. I came to a skidding halt. Luis’ SMG clattered past me and was sent over the edge of the waterfall, along with disturbed pebbles.
“Luis!” I called out and brought myself onto a crawling height.
“Isra, I’m here. You got shot,” he laid a few meters away, on his back, exhausted sounding, and still clutching his chest.
“Don’t worry about me, what do we do?” I didn’t even try to hide the panic in my voice.
“I…” Luis started, taking deep, drawn-out breaths in.
“We are supposed to get it alive! Don’t shoot the fucking snake!” An angry, commanding, male voice called out to the agents.
The cloud slowly dissipated, the agents were reluctant to go through at first but did so with held breaths or went around. The sniper emerged from the bush, a woman with a cloth wrapped around he face, black hair tied behind her back. The heavy gunner was a large man with short sleeves and carrying the two-handed LMG at the hip. And at the front, a man with olive skin, a shorter but muscular frame, and a similarly intricate gun as Luis’ SMG hanging from a shoulder strap. None of them looked like the agents before, though their tech and methods were very similar.
Luis reached for the sidearm on his belt but all of the assailants raised their weapons at once. He paused, though his sights were still targeted at the apparent leader of the squad.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the brown-eyed man warned, seemingly unfazed by Luis’ threat.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Luis? Have you...stopped and thought about that, at all? What you are really doing with all this? You’re killing people, humans, your own fucking species! For what? For this-this murderer. It’s killed children, slaughtered us in cold blood, without remorse!” The man approached, aggravated, locked eyes with Luis, only broken the times he addressed me.
‘It’
“I’ve already told you, Emir. They had no choice. None of them wanted this, none of them could have stopped this. They’ve been under the control of Advent for decades. And they broke it, it is done now. They can’t leave, they have free will, they are conscious, emotional, intelligent beings. And she has more humanity than any of you remorseless fuckers.” Luis spat a mixture of blood and saliva onto the ground and stood, though he slouched heavily.
The man, who I figured was the man he had told me about previously, looked at him as if he witnessed an insane man speaking. His jaw was slightly agape, his hand frozen in the last wild gesture he had waved before Luis had talked.
“D-do you hear yourself?” He sounded exacerbated. “For fucking centuries, humans have used the apology of we were just following orders to avoid getting the rightful punishment they deserved. And now you’re trying to turn that around for this fucking thing! I’m asking again, do you hear yourself?” He took another step forward.
Even if Luis had pulled the trigger, we were both dead. Well, if they were going to kill me that was.
“But, regardless of any...transgressions this one has caused, our commander is willing to let it speak for itself. We didn’t want to deal with a shootout but you’ve forced our hand. Now just put down your gun and we can discuss this like civilized people. Well, the people amongst us,” he shot me a glare.
Luis turned to me. For a moment, he it all down. All the irony, all the walls he created out of fear and uncertainty. And he let me see within him. A deep, apologetic sadness. He didn’t need to word it, I felt him say ‘Sorry .’
But I couldn’t give up yet. The troop advanced, Luis dropped his arm. The only choice in his mind was trying to talk our way out of this situation. Perhaps he hoped for me to survive, as it was unlikely he would get the same treatment or even medical care.
But I could not accept that.
I looked over my shoulder and over the edge of the endless waterfall. The surface on the pooling below was constantly disturbed by white splashing foam; there was no way to tell how deep it was. An idea crossed my panicked mind.
“Luis,” I focused in on his eyes again, hoping the message came across. “ Hold your breath ,” I whispered and wrapped around his stomach, then pushed.
He flicked his hand up in the same moment and fired once before he was ripped backward-I didn’t see if it hit anything.
As soon as we were clear of the ground, sounds of magnetically propelled bullets whizzing towards us, were drowned out by rushing wind. Gravity took hold and the air fought against it. The ground became the ceiling. Wind tore by and the human’s clothes fluttered, but I held him tight and turned midair so that I would be the first to impact. In those fleeting moments, I closed my eyes, only the visual of Luis in my mind.
I do not know how long we fell, it felt like an eternity and only a split-second at the same time. I remember what I felt during it, but not what I was thinking. Maybe I was just trying whatever I could think of to survive, like the basic animal these people considered me. But I would like to think I just had realized what was truly important to me. Or rather, who. And that I would not give it up without a fight.
The impact was heavy, cold, wet, and hard as concrete. The air was almost forced from my lungs entirely, but I had breathed in deep and my lungs were still partly full. The water was more shallow than I had wanted it to be but deep enough to survive. Still, my back hit a stone and I was spun around myself in the rapidly pulling currents.
The entry had left me stunned and disorientated, the man, I had so desperately tried to hold on to, was ripped from my grasp. I had felt him slip and reached out, but the waters were white and filled with foam, alongside my blood, made it impossible to see. I could hold my breath for almost half an hour, even with my diminished air supply, I could easily stay underwater, throw off the humans above us, but Luis could not. I had to find him quickly, as the currents were difficult for even me to swim through.
My eyes could see in the cold water and I frantically scanned the underwater area. I saw shadowy shapes, rocks that obscured any long sightlines. Pain, panic, and simple fear clouded my mind. The stinging wound in my shoulder sapped my strength and my tail barely had the energy to move me forward, the impact had definitely bruised my muscles deeply. But that was barely a concern, most of my mind was occupied by Luis. I had turned to protect him, tried to absorb the impact for him. But now he was gone.
I breached the surface for a single moment and looked around for the second I was above water. And saw nothing, only dragging currents that split into five different channels. If Luis had been dragged down one of these, I would never find him. If he was injured and couldn’t swim, then he would drown before he reached the shore. If he made it to the shore but was too exhausted to move, they would spot him or he would die from the cold. What if he was unconscious because of blood loss, what if he had injured himself from the fall…
I forced myself to go back below the water, despite my incoherent thoughts.
And then I saw it, a tiny tint of red, intermixed with water. A faint trail of the life essence continued down one channel. Of course, it could have just been set adrift by the strong pull, something that would have thrown me off his trail. But it was the only thing I had to go on.
I swam hastily, my body’s natural movements taking over for my panicking mind. The red color was faint and diluted but, as I continued to dive toward it, increased in intensity. The longer I stayed underwater, the more distraught I grew, I didn’t know what state he was in, nor how long he could hold his breath. What if he was unconscious? I didn’t know how to properly resuscitate someone.
But that worry took a backseat as I spotted a shape. Limply floating, face down, back arched, drifting in the current. A continuous trail of blood seeped from his chest, various cuts across his arms and legs, as well as from the top of his forehead. If I could have gasped, I would. It looked like he was dead. Unmoving, just trailing in the rough waters, leaving behind proof of his demise.
I had killed him. I had thrown us off this cliff and killed him. He must have slipped from me and hit his head against a rock. I failed. I was so terrified of losing him and now I had killed him.
‘Enough self-pity, you can still do something,” I reprimanded myself. This panic, this exact way of thinking, blaming myself for every mistake until I had landed at the end of a deep, dark spiral. It had killed others before, I couldn’t let it kill Luis, too.
I pushed forward with every single one of my muscles, swaying my tail side to side and pulling forward with my arms. I had no trouble at all catching up to the inactive human and snatched him up in my arms.
Now came the difficult part, actually getting to the land. Yes, I was born to swim and in water even more dense than this, but it was a strong pull and I was getting weaker. I felt my strength leave my body into the cold water, along with my yellow blood, which dissipated after only a moment.
But I didn’t relent. I didn’t let go of the human in my arms, and I swam as fast as I could away from the current. Luis was limp in my grasp, his limbs only floating to the side. My eyes stayed glued to the encroaching shoreline, I didn’t want to look at him. I couldn’t face it, not yet when I still had a chance.
I pulled up onto the land and immediately scrambled into cover, the man in my hands. I frantically scanned the area, though I’m not sure I would have even noticed anything chasing us, then looked down. I laid him out onto the grass. His lips were blue, water dripped from his mouth.
He wasn’t breathing.
Another jolt of previously suppressed terror slammed against the mental wall I had tried to put up and threatened to shatter it.
Humans needed to breathe and have a pulse to live, just like any other. If he wasn’t breathing, maybe I could help him, but his heart? I leaned down and pressed my ear-hole against his chest, after tugging in my hood to make room. I waited with bated breath.
Nothing.
My eyes, if they weren’t stretched to their limit before, now shot open in absolute and true horror. I heard water inside him, moving as I shook his body. He was cold. So cold.
The sky broke above me. It split open into a thunderous cacophony of flashing lightning and ear-shattering thunder. Rain began pouring from the dark, ominous clouds above and drenched the ground beneath, turning it into mud.
“Luis? Luis, come on!” I pleaded with the unresponsive man and tried to shake him awake. His eyelids drifted open, but it was just a lack of control over them. His eyes were dull, staring into the sky vacantly.
I stared. I couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be true.
A memory, human anatomy classes, asset protection. Chest resuscitation, heart massage, clearing the airway. It came to me at that moment in which I needed it, though it wasn’t clear in my mind.
I needed to clear his lungs of water, otherwise, he couldn’t take in air. I placed my hands on his chest and pushed down. I had an uneven rhythm and irregular pressure, but this wasn’t to get his heart going, this was to pump the water out of him.
His body convulsed and a steady stream began pouring from his mouth, though I couldn’t waste too much time on this. The longer his body was without oxygen, the more damage would occur.
When I had done this a few times, I moved to the left side of his chest and settled on a rhythm of compressions.
I pumped up and down, careful to not break a rib. I didn’t know what I was doing. This was the equivalent of firing blindly at an enemy in full cover. But I had nothing else left to do. I couldn’t lose him.
I could not lose him.
I knew it at that moment. I didn’t need him as a safety ticket for other humans, not a guide, nor even someone to talk to; I needed him because I liked him. I had a friend, a person I enjoyed being around, someone I wanted to continue this.
“ Luis, please. Please don’t leave me. ” My voice broke and a hard lump went down my throat.
No more water came from him. I listened again-no heartbeat.
I did it again, up and down, my mind disappearing into a different place. The sun must’ve come up, but I didn’t notice. I don’t know how long I did this.
But I know that I leaned down and heart two consecutive, weak, and slow heartbeats. Hope replaced a small part of my overwhelmed mind.
I returned to the compressions, attempting to match the same pace as him.
He wasn’t breathing, still. More water gushed from his mouth and I saw a slight twitch in his fingers. He needed air, I had started his heart, but he needed air.
‘How do I do that?’ The panicked question rattled my growing confidence in its infancy.
If his airway was obstructed, no air could get in. But also none could go in. I needed to test if air could go both ways and possibly clear his airway.
Without a second thought, I pressed my mouth against his. My face was far bigger than his, I couldn’t have gone for the nose. I closed my jaw around his lips and began breathing my lung’s contents into him. Thanks to my comparatively huge lung volume, I blew past any obscuring water and filled his lungs. Water gushed from his mouth again and I pulled back.
“Come on! Wake up!” I leaned close, his heart was still beating but it was not getting faster. I started compressing again.
I repeated this cycle two or three times, though they began to blur together after a while. He just wasn’t breathing and the thumping of his heart only continued to slow.
“You can’t, you can’t!”
My arms were beginning to get weak, the wound drained me of my stamina, the cold air and water robbed me of my warmth, and my increasingly bleak mind tore at my will to continue.
I didn’t want to give up. But why go on. Alone and with the guilt of having killed him.
My arms trembled and I forced my eyes shut. Then I collapsed. I buried my face in the wet cloth. Blood continued to trail from the wound, but my senses were already too overwhelmed by everything else to care. I slowly wrapped my tail around his hand, feeling the cold set it.
“ I can’t do this without you. Please come back ,” I wept into his unmoving body.
I lifted my head up one more time and hovered over his head. Maybe it was a desperate last attempt, perhaps something else. But I pressed down onto his mouth again and let out any remaining air into him. I closed my eyes for a second.
I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to know what I would do next. I didn’t care anymore.
Then, a sucking, gurgling inhale, followed by a violent coughing fit.
I pulled back and stared in disbelief as the human doubled over onto his side and began expelling a lot more water from his throat. It was uncontainable and he desperately tried to take in a breath in between.
I didn’t move, though I still had my tail coiled around his wrist. He stood on all fours, leaned onto his knees. He spat out seemingly the entire river.
“Are you…” I trailed off, I lacked the ability to formulate all the things I needed to say.
“What, what happened?” He breathed heavily, close to panting, still leaned onto his hands, and looked at me sideways.
“I- I threw us off the cliff. I thought I could hold onto you but I let go. You hit your head and, and I thought you were dead ,” my voice broke.
“I’m fffffucking cold,” his teeth clattered together.
“You’re also still bleeding, we need to get into cover,” I replied and finally managed to look somewhere else than his face.
“Where is the backpack?” Luis seemed disorientated.
I spun around, but of course, I already should have felt the lack of weight on my back. But everything else had taken priority. I don’t know if I had lost it on the cliff, during the fall, or sometime after. But it was gone. Gone were the supplies, the medical equipment, everything.
“I lost it, I’m so sorry,” I scrambled to find speech.
“It’s…” A series of unfocused breaths stopped him. His eyes suddenly lost their stationary view and drifted to the top of his vision, then fluttered.
I rushed to him before he fell backward and caught him. His blood pressure must have gotten too low to maintain consciousness. We needed to get out of the open, I needed to find a way to stem the bleeding. For the time being, I kept him close to me and pulled my tail overtop his wound.
He was freezing to death, the cold wind would have seeped deep into his wet clothes. I needed to warm him and keep myself from succumbing to the same fate. If we still had the matches, I would have made a fire, though that might not have been a good idea regardless.
I dragged him away from the shore and deeper into the forest of tall trees and thick bushes. Eventually, I found a burrow beneath an old, partially hollow tree. It was big enough for most of my body to fit inside alongside Luis, though that wouldn’t solve the problem of us both losing heat.
The rain only increased and, despite the fact that it would turn morning soon, it was almost pitch black, only interrupted by the sudden electrical currents that ran through the sky.
I pushed beneath the foliage-covered hole in the ground and, partly to protect him partly to entrap warmth between ourselves, wrapped around Luis. I was careful not to constrict him painfully but put pressure onto his wounds and never truly let go of his hand. I listened to his heartbeat and felt his pulse. I watched his chest rising slowly. I didn’t want to sleep, I was afraid if I did, he would be dead in my arms or no longer there.
But slowly, my body took part in the consistent temperature of the human. The emotional exhaustion from before, the fear of having been so close to losing him, but also the comfort of still having him, eventually drifted me off to an uneasy sleep.