The White Angel's Prayer

16. When Sorrow Turns Red

Bhu'ja's posted position by the windows made Lucy constantly antsy. It wasn't like he could see much, but the male had decided to tear off pieces of the cardboard so he could peer outside. There really was nothing except for the morning light and a continuous sheen of white that extended far beyond into the QZ.

"Anything?" Lucy asked for what felt like the hundredth time as she packed everything back into her bag. She sat on a stretcher bed, her knee bouncing a little.

"No," Bhu'ja rumbled. He was particularly cautious because they were about to leave. They'd posted up to this boathouse for roughly two days before Lucy decided she could walk without much pain in her leg.

Yautja medicine worked fast, evidently, but what the male had wouldn't work to quickly restore the function in her hand. Lucy could slightly move her fingers, but then the pain would flare up again, a million fires dancing under her repairing skin.

"Not even any Vultures?" Lucy asked. She zipped up her bag, rattling the arrows, before she stood up and threw it over her shoulders with awkward difficulty.

Bhu'ja sighed. "No."

"Don't you find that suspicious?" Lucy walked over to him and grabbed her bow off the table.

"Yes. But we shouldn't take it for granted."

Lucy shot him a sarcastic look. "Okay, Ol' Wise One. Got any more pieces of advice that I could even scrape off the brain of a rat?" She asked, staring pointedly as Bhu'ja slowly turned his head to look at her.

There was a stretch of silence. "No," he rumbled.

The brunette turned to hide a smile. Bhu'ja gradually twisted his head to look back outside, his claw gently tugging back the sheet that had been nailed above the window. He scoured the land around them one last time to double-check that nothing had risen from the snow. But, yet again, no ugly infected, Vulture, or Bad Blood reared their heads. His twin hearts hammered in his chest, almost expectantly, as if his body anticipated for something bad to happen, but his mind just didn't know what yet.

While Lucy tidied the last of their mess, Bhu'ja held the sheet back, his gaze falling from outside to the ground. His gut seemed to twist and rumble, and he had to continuously remind himself that they were currently safe. It made him antsy to picture that G'kuhto could be anywhere, but he hadn't appeared since their run-in with the Vultures, which made him secretly hope that they'd managed to pick him off, as unlikely as it seemed.

"We should go," Lucy said, ripping Bhu'ja from the trainwreck that his thoughts were catapulting towards. He blinked a few times before slowly turning his head towards her again. "I wanna make some distance while we can."

"Sei'i," Bhu'ja agreed quietly. Lucy looked over at him, her eyebrows briefly twitching downward, but the movement was so minute, that it was barely perceptible upon the suspicious plain of her face.

"What's up?" Lucy suddenly asked. Bhu'ja briefly looked up at the ceiling before his gaze snapped back to Lucy as she hobbled closer. "You've been quiet."

Bhu'ja flicked a hand at her as if to brush off her concerns. "It is nothing," he rumbled. His lower mandibles twitched slightly, a tic that Lucy had come to learn that indicated he was lying.

She was quiet for a few seconds. The urge to call him out on his dishonesty weighed heavily on her tongue, but she swallowed it. "Alright," Lucy said because, at the core of it, she kind of understood his hesitancy. They'd been so safe, cooped up in this random building, for a couple of days, and now they were forcefully thrusting themselves back into the open plains of living nightmares, where something was always bound to go wrong.