Page 54 of Whispers of the Deep

“It is safe,” Arges grunted in agreement before lifting her out of the water. She got significantly heavier without the ocean holding her weight, but he still tossed her up onto the rock like she weighed nothing. “I wish it were better. You deserve somewhere comfortable to sleep. But I will find a better place for you tomorrow night. My brother will not be able to find you here, at the very least.”

“I still don’t understand you,” she said with a bright bubble of laughter. Then she reached out for the box that he was still holding.

He released the robot, surprised that he’d forgotten he was holding it. Mira tapped on its top three times, and then the box opened. Only a slight peek allowed light to spill throughout the cave. He threw up an arm to cover his sensitive eyes. The damned creature was trying to kill him! He should throw it back into the ocean and see how long it took for the droid to drown.

“Sorry,” Mira muttered. “I need light to see by, and thankfully Byte’s lights aren’t broken like mine were on the way down here.”

“That seems like a long time ago,” he murmured, lowering his arm as his eyes got used to the light. “You were terrified of me. And now, you welcome my touch like we have been friends for a very long time.”

“Still can’t understand you,” she sang, her voice a long lilting song before she tapped the robot on the head. “Byte, how are we coming with the language chip?”

“Twenty-two percent,” it replied.

“Ah.” Mira’s brow furrowed in a frown before she tapped another side of the metal box. “Can you open this side? I want to see if your trauma pod is still intact.”

Amused, he understood the robot could get frustrated with humans. Its odd shaped head popped out of the box and with a rather indignant sounding voice, it replied, “All of my functions are in perfect working order.”

“Then do you have a trauma pod?”

He swore it looked at him before it opened up the side of the box. Mira reached in and pulled out something that looked eerily similar to her other trash that she still wore strapped to her hip. But this one, when she clicked the button near her forefinger, emitted some kind of strange pale liquid.

“There we go,” she muttered. “Still in working order, then.”

What in the seven seas was she holding?

Arges watched her suspiciously, his brows furrowed as she gestured for him to come closer. “I’m not coming anywhere near that,” he said. “You achromos and your strange devices. There is no need for any of them. The ocean gives you what she wants you to have.”

“It will heal you.” Again, she gestured for him to come closer to her. “If you give me just a few seconds, I can put this on your shoulder and it will feel better.”

He highly doubted that. In fact, he wanted nothing to do with it. Arges moved away from her, but then the air hit the wound on his shoulder. With a sharp hiss, he pressed his fingers to the ragged edges.

Perhaps it was worse than he thought. He didn’t regret getting his brother out of the line of fire. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been caught in the shoulder by the same weapon Daios had been so certain he could destroy. Apparently, the achromos had weapons that were as indestructible as they were painful.

Again, Mira gestured for him to come closer. “Come on, big guy. You want me to think you’re all brave and impossible to kill? Then show me how brave you are. This is nothing more than a salve that will seal over the wound and make sure it doesn’t get infected. Like a bubble. I have nothing else to heal you with out here.”

A bubble? He could deal with a bubble.

Coming a little closer, he grumbled the entire way. “I have no interest in being healed, female. The ocean will heal me just fine.”

“I’m sure you’re saying how big and strong you are and that healing has no purpose when you could just walk it off and rub some dirt in it.” Mira rolled her eyes. But when he got close enough, she cupped his jaw and gently ran her fingers across the gills on his neck. “Everyone needs to be taken care of sometimes, you know?”

He didn’t. But looking up into those strange eyes, even if they were surrounded by white, he wondered if it wouldn’t be too bad to be taken care of by her.

She brushed her thumb along his chin before turning her attention to the wound on his shoulder. “The twenty-two percent that Byte mentioned is how much of your language it has learned. It’s not a lot, but that’s a significant jump from listening to three of you talking at the same time.”

“It’s hard to imagine it’s only gathered that much of our language,” he muttered, turning his head to the side so she had better access to the wound on his shoulder. “I talk significantly more than the others of my kind.”

“You should tell me a story,” she said, ignoring everything that he’d said. And he wondered if she made up what he was telling her in her head. Like she was actually having a conversation with him. “There have to be some words that you haven’t said. At least Byte can translate those.”

He wasn’t so sure that there were stories he could tell her. Mitéra would likely want to murder him if he told her about their gods or any other secrets of their kind. Though he was coming to trust his achromo, he certainly wasn’t sure that the robot wasn’t collecting everything he said for later use.

Perhaps she recognized his hesitation, or maybe she mistook it for him being in so much pain that he couldn’t think. Either way, she slid more into the water, until her bottom was on a ledge in the water. “This might be an easier position. It’s going to take a while for this solution to set, anyway.”

She hadn’t even started doing anything, as far as he was aware. But he allowed her to draw him forward, even though there was nowhere for him to go. Without words, she guided him to lay his head on her lap.

She couldn’t know what this was doing to him. She had no way of knowing that by resting his head against her thighs, that she had pressed his gills between them as well. That her scent was nearly overpowering here, tantalizing his senses and filtering through his very breath. He could taste her on his tongue, sweet and musky and entirely unlike anything he’d ever tasted before.

Mira cleared her throat, her fingers playing over his exposed gills for a second before rasping, “Is this okay?”

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