The White Angel's Prayer

15. Raw Like Honey

The small fire crackled behind Lucy, warming her back until her clothes felt like they were burning. And yet still, she lay there, using what little light the fire gave to read the small words on the book she held in her left hand.

The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space had persevered through all the toil it'd been forced to endure. Though it'd gotten a little wet, and some words had smudged down the page, most of it was still readable, despite the barrier of the darkness.

Lucy curled up beneath a dusty blanket that Bhu'ja had found. The male had promptly stroked her hair and left without saying what he was going to do. But Lucy assumed that, perhaps, he was scouring the perimeter for any stray Vultures, or even keeping an eye out for G'kuhto. The comforting thing about it is that the Elder was an array of bright reds. They would see him first.

Or at least she hoped.

It felt oddly consoling to read something like this — to imagine how different life could've been had the outbreak never occurred. Where would she be now? Lucy liked to imagine that she would be studying up in the stars. She always believed that she would've been a zoologist had she grown up normally, so she wondered if there was a career that studied aliens instead of earth animals.

The idea felt a little absurd to consider. But maybe, just maybe, if Lucy did manage to leave this horrid place with Bhu'ja, and he took her back to his clan, they would have some kind of job like that for her. It was wishful thinking, though, at the end of the day.

Lucy tsked as she struggled to turn the page with one hand. She'd almost dropped the book a few times, almost lost her page a few more. And as she started to read the next one, the door behind her suddenly opened. She looked over her shoulder, but her heart settled when Bhu'ja walked inside.

The large male walked through the middle floor of the boathouse that they'd found. Lucy had told him to just walk towards the giant QZ wall that towered over them. It bordered the Oklahoma River, so once Lucy felt fresh enough to make progress, all they had to do was follow the curve of the wall until they found the South Gate.

After that, well... they'd figure out how to get past it.

Bhu'ja purred lowly in his throat when he noticed Lucy. He strolled over to her, through the assortment of old sleeping bags and the tarps that sectioned off the floor into different 'rooms.' The building was clearly an old safe house of some kind, potentially a hideout from the Vultures and the Hunters when their uprising against FEDRA first started. Whoever it was had assembled an assortment of tools and necessities that hardly necessitated leaving the area.

Naturally, Lucy and Bhu'ja had taken over their abandoned resources. It felt icky to know that they were potentially walking through a graveyard of long-dead souls, but they needed the rest. Lucy did. Because she wasn't sure how much longer she could stick it out before she needed to just sit.

And anywhere was better than outside, where they wore targets on their backs.

Bhu'ja knelt beside her, and he ran his palm over her head again, brushing the hair from her face. Lucy dog-eared the page she was on and placed the book to the side as Bhu'ja pulled the blanket up to shuffle underneath.

"We are safe for now," he said quietly, his voice a low rumble as he settled onto the dusty pillow that they'd sourced from a stretcher bed. His arm snaked around Lucy's middle to hold her close, and he briefly rubbed his mandibles against the top of her head.

"Did you cover our tracks?" Lucy asked, slightly rolling over to lean into his warmth. The journey to the boathouse had allowed some time for the pain of her injuries to ease. They were but mere throbs now, a gentle reminder of the agony she'd had to endure to survive the Vultures. But she'd fucking did it.