Blaze

30. Conversations With Strangers

I don't find Austin when I return. The tent is an empty shell, the sleeping bag ruffled from recent use. Especially odd considering it's nighttime, and the moon burns white above the trees, a perfect cutout made into the clothlike sky. Raiders are recovering from their celebration with a marathon of sleep. You can't hear the snoring exactly, or the deep breaths, but it's like there's a thick film (or something more than silence) over everything.

This makes me frown. He's hurt, perhaps badly, and underfed, perhaps beginning to be dehydrated. He should be keeping his movements at a minimum. And he should not be interacting with anyone here.

Before these thoughts go through my mind, they seep through a cold filter that keeps the worry at bay. Searching for him doesn't seem like a rational thing to do. If he's in trouble somehow, and if that trouble involves another Raider, there's absolutely nothing I can do. If he left for any other reason, he'll come back eventually and that's that.

I enter the tent. Sprawl on the ground. Lick the ice gathering in the corner of my head (it doesn't melt). My hands are filled with buzzing blood.

You liked it! a voice says in me, and I nod back at it. The cold supports my neck during its motion. Like an icy anchor.

First: flying.

Second: spotting.

Third: landing.

Fourth: shooting.

Fifth: gathering.

My vision blurs and I blink, clearing it. The numbness is so overpowering, I put my hands to my chest to make sure there's a heart beating there. It takes me a long while to pinpoint my pulse. And even then it feels shallow. Not weak, or sickly, or irregular—but shallow.

Do you want to be happy? the Captain asks me.

I don't care, I think back.

(He smiles.)

---

In the next instant Alaina is there. Dark-eyed. Blank-faced.

No beneath-surface emotions today—there's a funeral going on inside her head.

"I'll bring you to him," she says.

---

I spot the Captain's figure set against a tree. His eyes are brightest in the dark, like they reflect it.

(I wonder if I will ever be able to navigate the forest on my own. To find the Captain on my own.)

Alaina sees me off and vanishes.

There's the same absurd selection of flesh-food. Only desserts. Cakes and cookies and pastries and sweet candy. Things Mother told me about. Things I saw in cubes or books or simply imagined. Now they're real. My eyes lick the tablecloth clean.

They've been arranged artfully (beautifully), by colour, this time. The table is a rainbow of food, the richest and darkest at the left, and fluffy looking cream-things at the right.

Not too long ago all you had was rough, coarse bread, a voice reminds me, subtly sneering.

"What would you like today?" The Captain's eyes are as cold as his voice.