Dimitri was woken up by a splitting headache the next morning. Recounting the happenings of the previous night, he groaned. Dimitri hadn’t known what had come over him when he flirted with Ilya. Whenever the beautiful girl looked at him with her curious, intelligent eyes, Dimitri found himself drawn deeper into them each time.

The intoxicating drink must have had a greater effect on him than he had expected. What had he done? He had given his benefactor an unrealistic expectation that he would be willing to stay in the village when he had no such intention, that’s what.

Dimitri didn’t belong here. He wasn’t going to stay. But it wouldn’t be right for him to stay there just because he had no other place to go.

This girl had shown him that there could be a different way to live. She gave him a reason to live. She had a strange power over him and she didn’t even know it. He wondered what it would be like to love such a girl and be loved by such a girl. He wondered if he would ever be worthy. Dimitri allowed himself to entertain the thought for barely a minute before he pushed them out of his mind.

Old habits die hard. Driven by his aspirations, Dimitri hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of indulging in romances. Anyway, who was he trying to kid? What could a man offer to a woman when he had nothing? Ilya would have said that was another silly thing his people liked to play with. She would say it was another example of a clearly illogical notion that they had chosen to place unfounded importance on.

Dimitri hadn’t allowed himself to be with a woman while he had been on the island, the one whose rulers had cursed upon him the cruel hand which turned him green. At first, it was because he had been too fixated on his project, then, when he realised the pointlessness of it all, he focused all his attention on hatching a plan to escape the island and had no time to entertain the whims of the heart.

Now that Dimitri was in the peaceful town, surrounded by people who were pure and good and who lived with no worries, he found there was little for him to fret about apart from the green skin which the people were teaching him to embrace. He hadn’t been in such a serene mental state for such a long time that the sensations felt new to him. Being around the carefree people had an effect on him. Dimitri couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when he fell for her. It seemed as though he had one day found himself becoming just a bit more attracted to her than the day before and realised that he had fallen for her.

This girl was beautiful. It was easy for anyone to see that. Her hair was one of her most striking features. It framed her face so she always looked majestic in a way, almost like a lion’s lush mane. But she didn’t seem aware of her beauty. Ilya never made any effort with her hair but it was almost always perfectly in place. Even when it was in a relatively messy state, she still looked beautiful that way. Of course, looks weren’t all Dimitri saw in a woman. Right from the start, he had seen that her heart was kind. When she asked him if he wanted to follow her to her village, he realised that she hadn’t been lost at all. The girl had chosen to follow him out of concern—a concern that never left her eyes.

A man had no right to love, not while he had nothing to his name. But there was no helping love. You don’t choose when it strikes. Dimitri was reminded of a song with a catchy tune whose meaning he never understood (though it was probably also due to his lack of love and romantic relationships for the majority of his life.)

Don’t try to fight it

Victims of love

You can’t decide it

Victims of love

Good ol’ Good Charlotte.

Dimitri shook his head, smiling. Being thirty-two, he felt a little too old to be romanticising like a lovesick teenager. All the insecurities that had clogged his mind just moments ago seemed to dissipate. It was the result of having spent too much time with Ilya. She had been teaching him to forgo the illogical ways of mainstream society, to see things as they truly were, because that was precisely how things were meant to be seen.

“Don’t overthink,” she had said. “Nothing’s ever as complicated as you think it is.”

He found himself wanting to believe her. Dimitri felt as bold as he had been when he was still an ignorant child, way back when one only had few fears. Perhaps he would give love a chance after all… Now the question he had to ask himself was: was he ready to give up his goals, his grudges and the safety of the world all just for that one girl?

“Why do you work all the time?” Dimitri asked, using hand to shield his eyes as he walked into the bright light. It was well past midnight. He had woken up from another nightmare and saw that the light in Ilya’s workshop was on. The table was littered with gadgets and gizmos, a whole range of technological toys of varying degrees. Some were futuristic, and some were so strangely sophisticated though Dimitri identified their styles as the most arcane. He picked up a small mechanical plane designed in a pattern that screamed Victorian which had fallen into a water tank. Then he wound it up. The thing sputtered to life like a dog shaking off after a bath. It struggled out of Dimitri’s grasp and dove into the tank again, terrorizing the fish.

Dimitri flinched, backed away from the tank and turned his attention to Ilya again.

Ilya was looking at him strangely, as if the answer to his question should have been obvious before she remembered that he grew up in a different place.

“I like my work. There are people depending on me.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure they’d understand if you took some time off to relax.”

Ilya narrowed her eyes.

“You spend every waking hour working. I don’t know anyone who’s as dedicated as you. There probably isn’t anyone more devoted to their work, and I’m saying this as a former workaholic,” said Dimitri.

“I just thoroughly enjoy it. I often don’t realise until I stop working that I’m tired.”

“But everybody needs to take a break once in a while. We need to. We’re only human. You’re not a robot.” He gave her a sidelong glance, then faced her squarely, squinting, scrutinising. “Are you?”

She put a finger to his forehead and pushed him away. “Very funny,” she said.

“How would I be able to check?”

“Hopefully you wouldn’t have to?”

“What do you mean?”

“I hope that if a day ever comes when I make a robot like me, you wouldn’t need a check-procedure to know which one is the real me.”

Dimitri shuddered. “Don’t ever put me through that test.”

“Why? You don’t have confidence that you’ll be able to pass?”

“With your skills, who would?”

Ilya broke into a smile, satisfied by his compliment. “Now you’re really making me want to build a robot in my likeness just to see your reaction.” She laughed at his horrified expression. “Don’t worry, I won’t torture you.”

“That’s right. Because you’re kind.”

“Robots can be kind too, if you program them with the appropriate rules,” Ilya said thoughtfully, teasing him.

“I’d much rather take a chance on you,” said Dimitri. “I want to create a wonderful future for the both of us.”

“Me too.”

“Can’t we run away?”

“Are you still worried about the Council?”

“Just because they haven’t come after me, it doesn’t mean they won’t be able to find me. I’m afraid they’ll find you, too.”

“Don’t you think I could take them on?”

Dimitri’s expression said it all. He bit his lip, then said, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“I thought you said you thought I could do anything?” Ilya raised an eyebrow at him.

Dimitri looked towards the ceiling with an uncomfortable expression on his face.

“Don’t worry. I’m just messing with you,” Ilya said with a gentle touch on his shoulder. “Look, if they’re as powerful as you say, then it doesn’t matter where we go. They’ll find us anyway. And if on the off-chance they aren’t, well, then we’ll continue living our happy, lucky lives here, won’t we?”

“You’re right. I was too selfish to think of running away and stealing you from everyone else who needs you.”

“Hey,” she said softly, taking his face in his hands. “You deserve to be selfish sometimes.” Warmth spread in Dimitri’s chest.

Then Ilya pulled away to yawn, covering her mouth. “Sorry,”she said. Another yawn struck again. This time, it turned into a cough, followed by another. Her coughs were a little too loud, and there were slightly too many. They were too violent to ignore. They planted a seed of worry into Dimitri. He patted her back gently a few times before he said something.

“Looks like it’s really time for you to rest.”

“Ït’s fine,” said Ilya, reaching for a bottle of pills, wearing a pained expression. She pursed her lips into a line, but all it did was show Dimitri that whatever sickness Ilya had was eating her up from inside. She popped one tablet into her mouth.

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“What’s that?” asked Dimitri.

“Just an energy booster.”

“Can I have one?”

Ilya pulled it out of his reach a little too quickly. Panic flashed across her face. “No.”

“Well, why not?” Dimitri asked, puzzled.

“Because … because it’s late and you have to rest.”

He folded his arms and raised a brow. “Right … and you don’t? Come on, I make good company.”

“It’s fine, I’m used to staying up on my own. Besides, it’s going to be difficult to concentrate if I have to talk to you.”

“Ouch,” said Dimitri. He flinched exaggeratedly, inciting a laugh from Ilya.

“I’ll go to sleep soon,” said Ilya.

“Make sure you do,” Dimitri said before turning to leave.

“I will.” They both knew it wasn’t true.

Dimitri went over to her and gently wrapped his arms around her waist. He didn’t know what he could do for her, but he thought he would at least let her know that he would be there for her if she needed him.

Ilya stopped, startled that she had suddenly been hugged from the back. But then she remembered it was Dimitri and let him sink his chin into the curve of her neck.

Of all the people in the village, Dimitri proved time and again that he was best able to match her level of intellect to at least a satisfactory degree. Ilya already knew very many things, but there were some discoveries which could be reached through a journey of debate and discussion. They had many wonderful stimulating conversations together. It was in this way that she inched closer to his heart while simultaneously pulling him away from the miasma of destitution. Ilya provided him a distraction—enough to keep him sane, for her optimism was as enchanting as her wisdom was charming.

“What’s gotten into you? Are you alright?” Ilya turned around to look at Dimitri, her eyes full of concern.

Then he kissed her. A little more forcefully than he intended. Ilya blinked at him, confused.

“You lied,” Dimitri accused. “When I got here, you told me that nothing was going to happen.”

“I’m sorry. What did I do?”

“You made me fall in love with you,” he said with an inscrutable expression.

“Is that bad?” Ilya whispered. She lowered her head, as if afraid to hear the answer.

“It’s the worst.” Dimitri groaned exaggeratedly.

“Can I ask why?”

“Because now I have someone I can’t live without,” said Dimitri, tapping her nose gently with a finger. “I love you.” A few moments passed between them. “Ilya, I said I love you,” he implored when Ilya didn’t say it back.

When still she didn’t say it back Dimitri pulled away gently, just enough so he could see her face. He searched her face for an answer. Ilya looked away.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I …” She trailed off. Then she stepped away from him, lifted her long skirt enough so she could unzip her boots.

“What are you doing?”

She set her boots to the side and stood bare-footed in front of him.

Dimitri could help staring at the smooth shiny metal of immaculate design. A gleaming grey infused with silver and rose gold. All the parts were integrated seamlessly and in perfect alignment when she stood still. The last time she had shown him her mechanical prosthesis was the first time they met. He already thought she was beautiful then.

Ilya kept her gaze on the floor. She had her long skirt clenched in both fists. She wouldn’t stop shivering. Dimitri found that even more endearing.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, gently holding her shoulders.

“How can you say that you love me when I’m like this?”

Dimitri’s heart sank. “Oh, Ilya … how could you think that?”

“How can you say you love me when you don’t even love yourself?” she cried.

“What?” Dimitri was taken aback. “That has got nothing to do with the fact that I love you.”

“You’re wrong. It has everything to do with that. You have this fixation on your definition of natural, whole, human beauty, so much that you hate yourself. Why? The fact is: I don’t believe you when you say you love me, because you aren’t even capable of loving you.”

She looked at him then, catching him off guard with her bright tear-filled eyes.

“You were going on about what it means to be a human, all that obsession with natural-ness,” she continued. “But I don’t fit that description. I’m so far from that definition. I don’t have a complete human form, and I’ll never be able to attain one.” A tear escaped her eye and Dimitri was quick to catch it. He brushed it away gently with his thumb and rested his palm against her cheek. Embarrassed, Ilya looked away.

Dimitri took her hand and rested it against his chest.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise how insensitive I have been. But it doesn’t matter to me, Ilya. I’ve known that you had prosthetics since the first time I met you. I think they make you even more incredible.”

“It’s not your fault. I purposely kept it from you. But it doesn’t change the fact that you were speaking from your heart.”

Dimitri bit his lip, then said, “Do you not love me because of my skin?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

“Then please trust me when I say I love you.”

“You don’t mind it?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t matter if you have mechanical legs or toes or fingers. It doesn’t change the fact that I love you.”

Ilya’s eyes regained some light.

“I didn’t mean it that way, you know, all those things I said about humans and the natural form. Not in the way you probably thought, anyway,” Dimitri said. “Will you give me a chance to explain myself?”

She nodded.

“I think you’re beautiful. Even incomplete. Perhaps even more beautiful because of it. You know that I’m a man greatly fascinated by mechanics. I wouldn’t have found myself on that island if I wasn’t. Just think about it from my point of view. You’re a wildly beautiful girl with or without robotic legs—the ideal cyborg of a mechanical man’s dreams stepped into reality. But I still hope that humanity can preserve the full human form.”

“You’re being contradictory,” said Ilya.

“No, I know what you’re thinking, but it's not that …” Dimitri ran a hand through his hair in mild frustration. “What I want to say is … you’re fitted with mechanical prosthetics which you can remove. They’re not a part of your human body, they’re just tools that you use. But it’s different with my skin. It’s not a secondary layer, not a second skin. It’s my skin that has been changed, and I can’t change it back. It’s been modified from the inside.” Dimitri winced as he said it, as if it pained him to say the words aloud. “It’s altering my genetics. This condition is changing me from the inside,” he repeated. “There’s no way to separate the plant and the human. There’s no choice.”

Ilya pushed him away. “You say one thing but you mean another. If you really didn’t mind it, why would you say that?”

“No … yes … it’s different from my skin,” Dimitri struggled to explain himself. “The prosthetics are external enhancement equipment that help you achieve the human form. They can be removed anytime.. You say it’s helping me, that we live together in symbiosis, but I can’t think of it as anything other than a parasite feeding on my humanity.” He took a deep breath. “My fear is that it might someday seep into the human consciousness. Then humans will degrade and our minds will recede and the future humans will become nothing but lethargic zombies.”

“Is that going to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

Ilya pondered upon the problem for a few moments. Then she shook her head. “From what I’ve seen, your condition is … epidermal, or perhaps dermal … it is unlikely to affect your nervous system.”

“But it’s possible. Unlikely is not the same as impossible,” said Dimitri.

“It’s not impossible,” Ilya said without denial. It would be wrong to mislead him when she had no supporting information to fall back on.

Dimitri let out an involuntary sigh.

“I understand your reasoning, but I just don’t see what the big deal is,” Ilya continued. “Everything is impermanent. In constant flux, changing all the time to reach new equilibriums. There’s no use holding on to anything. I think it’s foolish to go against nature. Everything that happens, happens naturally, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Even if the Council injected the chemicals in you to change your skin, it’s meant to be that way, since it has already happened. Now, I’m not saying your efforts will be useless, I just think that if you end up not being able to find the cure, perhaps it’s because it was meant to be that way; think of it as natural selection where fate has a hand in the game. But I suppose you were conditioned to believe the opposite, just as I have been conditioned to think this way.”

“It is a big deal. The robot parts are an enhancement; I already said the plant parts are practically parasites. It’s fundamentally different. Even with the prosthetics, the human parts of you are still wholly human.”

“How can I be wholly human if I’m not even whole?” asked Ilya.

“I don’t see how we can come to an agreement on this, but I don’t think we have to,” said Dimitri.

“Yeah, we don’t.”

A few moments of silence passed between them.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me before?” asked Dimitri. “I had no clue you felt this way.”

“I didn’t want to remind myself that you don’t think I’m beautiful,” Ilya replied. “You possess this obsession about all the ‘naturalness’. I know it’s something your people value, but it’s something I’ll never be able to understand. You have this idea of what a human should be like, and if you don’t even think you fit the bill, then how could I? I know you’ve been trying to get rid of your green skin. You’ve never stopped trying to, despite all that I’ve said about it. I guess I was just afraid you wouldn’t love me anymore if you knew.”

“How could you think that?” Dimitri asked. His voice cracked.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“No, I should be apologising. I’m sorry I haven’t made you feel loved enough." He pulled Ilya close into a gentle embrace and stroked her hair. He squeezed her a little tighter, hoping she could feel how much he loved her. "That’s my fault. I’ll make it right.”

***

Ilya was about to step into her tent. But she heard that sound again. She took a few steps back and ran away. She hated how familiar it had become to her ears—the scuffle of a knife against skin or stem.

Dimitri had picked up body carving of late. Before that, it had been tattooing. And even before that, it had been acid. Each time, Ilya got used to the sound he produced and excused herself from the sight upon being forewarned by her ears.

Despite his attempts, he never succeeded in tearing the green from his skin, only in breaking Ilya’s heart (though that couldn’t have been further from his intention). It seemed as though he carved out a little bit of Ilya’s heart with each chunk of flesh or plant material he nicked from himself.

Of course the pain had to be excruciating. There was no doubt about that. How odious does he find it that he would rather live with scars rather than plant-like skin?

Whenever Ilya discovered him trying to carve or tattoo over the patches of green, her face would twist into a sorrowful scowl. Those eyes would grow bigger than they already were and fill up with tears, though she never let them fall. She would retreat back into the shadows and leave him alone to his endeavour.

Ilya kept it a secret from Dimitri that she had seen him do it before. Only once. Once was enough. She had forgotten to bring an umbrella with her while she was making deliveries one day, and saw from outside the window how Dimitri had used a scalpel to—

She stopped herself there. The memory of it was too much to bear … But it was no use, the scene had imprinted itself into her mind. He had a tool in one hand and bit down on the back of the other to muffle his screams. It was a primitive solution to a simple problem, Ilya thought it incredulous how someone as brilliant as him had settled for such an inadequate fix.

There was so much blood. But Dimitri had cleaned up well after that. Never in a million years would she have guessed what went on while she was out. He had been careful and thorough but there was a tiny gap between the curtains and she happened to catch a glimpse of something moving, something interesting and lingered there for more than a moment. One chance was all it took.

It was one of the most difficult things Ilya had ever had to do—keeping from him the fact that she knew.