Starfish

34.2

Nina shielded her eyes and nose with her hand while Ardus guided her through the blowing sand, nictitating membranes drawn over his eyes turning them grey and eerily blank. The lagoon had whipped into an angry green froth, fifteen-foot waves hammering the beach with enough force to throw spumes equally as high and twice as far inland. Thin ribbons of weak yellow sunlight tried to pierce the clouds but the sand and storm blotted out most of the light and broke the ribbons into smoky streaks. Nina held tight to his hand, letting him walk her blind back to the apartment complex while the wind sandblasted her legs and arms, leaving them stinging. The storm brought cold, wet air in from the northwest and by the time they reached the safety of the buildings Nina was shivering and damp and completely covered in sand. "It's even in my ears," she said, digging out the grit with a fingernail. 

Ardus dusted her off as best he could before sending her off to the shower while he pulled heavy steel panels out of pocket-doors on either side of the enormous seaward window. When Nina finished getting most of the sand out of her hair, ears, nose, mouth and eyes she came back into the main room to find Ardus stacking the balcony furniture against the wall, himself liberally sanded. "Better?" he asked.

"Mostly, though I feel like my skin's been rubbed off."

"Let me see." Ardus cupped her face in his hands and gently brushed her abraded cheeks. "I have some salve that will help." He left her to rub a clear, mucilaginous ointment on her chapped legs and arms while he cleaned himself up. A heavy rain began to fall by the time he was done.

"Looks like we'll be stuck inside for the rest of the day," Nina commented, digging her tablet and a few texts from her bag and shaking the sand off into the kitchen refuse bin.

"Very likely, though now that the rain has started there will be less sand blowing around. It will tire itself out in a few hours; by then we will be asleep."

Nina cocked her head to listen to the wet rattle of rain. "Reminds me of the storms back on Earth when I was a kid," she said. "Dad would nail the shutters and we'd pack towels around the doors to keep the water out. When I was older it was a little better, because the new apartment building had a seawall. Sometimes though, the power would go out and we'd be stuck in the dark for hours. But I imagine you've been weathering here long enough that it's not a problem anymore." She watched Ardus stare off into the middle distance, listening to the wind as it shuddered the steel window panels.

"Personally, I have weathered more storms than I care to count. At this point they are merely part of the pattern. As a creature of the water, they are as familiar as my own thoughts. How is your skin?"

"Better, thanks. What was in that gel?"

"Yellow brineweed extract, I believe."

It struck Nina quite suddenly that she'd first heard of yellow brineweed on her first day on Dreenai. Had it really been only four months since she'd arrived? Four months that felt like a lifetime. What will happen in a year? Two years? Could I spend the rest of my life here? Do I want to? She looked across the open-layout apartment towards the kitchen where Ardus prepared a kettle, measuring dried herbs and pausing to listen to the rain. The way he moved, the sound of his clawed feet clicking on the tiles, the gentle seashore-tide sound of his breathing, and now the glowing points on his arms and body, all of it made her smile. 

Humans don't know what they're missing, she mused. It still amazed her that she'd followed his work for years, reading his theses and emulating his ideology, never once wondering what he'd be like as a person. Before coming here, she'd only ever thought of the great Doctor Ardus as a brilliant mind and little else. Now she knew, and knew so much more besides. There's so much we can teach each other, not just me and him but humans and Dreen. We still have a long way to go before we can catch up with them, but it's not about that. The universe is finally opening up, there are probably hundreds more worlds out there to discover. Who knows what we'll find?