Page 19 of Avelina

He nodded. “You are the first to visit.”

“No kidding,” I said, looking around the barren room.

Aaron stood to gather the wooden bowls, taking them over to the counter. I watched as he placed them into the basin there, rinsed them with water from a jug, then used a rag and the same soap from the bath to clean them.

Aaron had changed out of his bloody tunic while I wasn’t looking. He wore another one that looked almost the same but in a slightly darker brown. He must have changed while I was in the bath, though I never heard him. It made me wonder what else he could have been doing in silence while I bathed. The image of him changing on the other side of the screen invaded my thoughts. Once again, I had to tell myself not to get distracted.

He’s so big. I wonder if the kickstand matches the bike.

I heard an odd laughing in my mind, and I bit my lips together to keep from laughing out loud. Shut the hell up, I told Evilina. I had a goal, and I needed to stay focused in order to accomplish it. On the other hand, there was something about Aaron rescuing me from a painful death, cooking me dinner, and then doing dishes afterward that was especially endearing. The whole thing was like a bad blind date that had turned wildly around.

Aaron finished the chore and turned to regard me. His eyes reflected the lamplight like a cat. I stared at them for a second too long.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Your eyes are different from mine,” I said. “Can you see in the dark?”

He nodded. “Pretty well. You can’t?”

I shook my head. “No.” That would be so cool!

I wasn’t sure what to say next, so I continued looking around the room. The cot had a thin bedroll that didn’t look very comfortable. He saw me looking and said, “I have a second bedroll that I take out on longer journeys. I will sleep on that. You can take the cot. I will put the screen in front of it if you wish.”

“Okay, thank you.”

An awkward silence loomed, and I contemplated the best way to say good night without being rude. Normally, around this time, I would brush my teeth and fall asleep to whatever fantasy novel I had next on my TBR. I didn’t have a toothbrush, which would be a problem, but I did have my favorite book. The thought of curling up with that book and a flashlight sounded like a dream.

Aaron broke the silence. “Your face was burned, but it looks fine now,” he said.

I touched my face. He was right. “Must not have actually been burned,” I said.

“It was,” he insisted, “and now you’re healed.” He was trying to tell me something, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

“Aaron,” I said.

“Yes?”

His voice was soft and deep. I shivered, a fuzzy emotion running through me. I had been avoiding analyzing my situation for the sake of stability, but for the first time since I’d been there, I allowed myself to think about my parents and the rest of my friends. I wondered what they had done when I never came back from the woods. Had they assumed the worst? Had my friends formed another search party, this one a little less of an actual party?

They were probably still out there right now. My dad would have called his friends in the Forest Service. My mom would be out on Gem, searching the trails. Marti would be falling apart, and Milo would be consoling her. Spirit would know that I was fine.

Spirit, I thought. Thinking her name tugged at something in my brain. Spirit had known that Rogue was okay. She had known, and she had told me that right before we heard the ghost. And that ghost had been Psycho Snow White. I had a terrible realization. What if Spirit’s knowledge somehow made her a target? My heart skipped a beat as I followed that line of thought. What if Psycho Snow White went back to murder my entire family just for the fun of it? If Aaron’s mother was a psychic seer or whatever, wouldn’t she have predicted that?

“Can you tell me more about the Precognition fragment?” I asked.

“I don’t know that much about it since they don’t teach it in school. My mother just said that she could see cause and effect more clearly than others. She said it was like being very, very good at Daggers and Dragons. She could see a hundred moves ahead, but if someone changed their mind about something, then the future would change.

“Fortunately, she’s very good at predicting what people will do in certain situations or how the environment will affect the outcome. She’s quite gifted, but it also gives her terrible headaches. At least, it did when I saw her last. She could barely function. That’s why they went over there.”

I ignored the Daggers and Dragons comment, assuming the game must be something like chess. “They? Who’s they?” I asked.

“Both my parents and my younger sister.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen,” he said.

“The same year you discovered your reservoir,” I remarked. He didn’t respond but continued looking at the ground. I could see that the subject was painful for him, but I needed to know. “How would going to Earth help your mother?”

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