Page 88 of Whispers of the Deep

Wincing, he reached for the aching spot, only to see her do the same thing at the side of her neck. What was plaguing them? He hadn’t hurt her; he was certain of that. He’d been so careful with his spines or any of the dangerous parts of his body. And she would have let him know if she was harmed. There hadn’t been the scent of blood in the water, so what...

He watched with horror as she pushed her hair away from her neck and he saw one of the tendrils from the mess of his hair impaled in the side of her neck.

“Don’t move,” he said, reaching out to her with a shaking hand. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize...”

“It’s all right.” She seemed strangely fine with the thought that something was sticking inside her. “I felt it when it happened, but I didn’t think it was actually in me. Just let me pull it out.”

“I don’t know if you should.” Arges moved a little closer, brushing her hand away so he could see what was happening.

It appeared that one of his tendrils had speared into her neck, right through the soft flesh. There was a strange goo around it, one he had never seen come out of a tendril. He didn’t know what his body was doing. This wasn’t natural in the slightest. He had mated before. His body had never reacted like this, and certainly never without his permission to do so.

Byte’s box opened in his peripheral, but Arges was far too nervous to look away from the wound and the strange sight of a tendril of his hair moving underneath her skin.

“Would you like me to scan you, Miss Mira?” the robot asked.

“Sure, Byte. Go ahead.”

“Perhaps you should get the medkit while I do so.”

He swore the robot said all this with judgment. There was a tone to its tinny voice that said it thought he had tried to kill her, and now they were all going to have to fix the issue.

Glaring at the box, Arges reached for the medkit and handed it to her. His arms were longer, and he didn’t want her yanking out the strange appendage with no way to heal her. What if this ripped her throat open? What if she bled out in front of him?

“Scanning now.”

He froze as that green ray of light moved over him as well. It was inevitable that it would need to do so. He’d seen the creature scan Mira before and had thought it looked painful. So he waited for the bite of the light to burn through his skin, to sear through his flesh as it tried to seek out what was wrong with him. But the light did... nothing. It was just a light. He couldn’t even feel where it was touching his body if he stopped looking at it, but still every gill flattened hard to his sides as if he could hide from the robot.

“Scan complete,” Byte finally said. “This is interesting.”

“Interesting?” Mira said with a laugh, but he could see the faint way her eyes crinkled when she said it. She was nervous, too. “What is in my neck, Byte?”

“It appears the undines have an unusual way of mating with your kind. I do believe that is what you were doing outside.”

He watched Mira’s cheeks turn a pretty shade of dark red. “It was.”

“It appears your undine’s body has made changes of its own to connect with you more. In a way, to keep you safe. That tube in your throat, I believe, would allow him to breathe for you. If you were to take your rebreather off, as long as you were connected, portions of the oxygen he is receiving through filtering the water in his gills would go to you. He would, of course, have to breathe a little faster to make up for the oxygen you breathe, but as long as you weren’t doing anything too strenuous, you could actually breathe underwater with him.”

Arges wasn’t quite following all that. What did the creature mean they could breathe underwater together? That he was breathing for her?

“No wonder I was a little lightheaded,” she muttered, tapping her fingers on her knees. “So what you’re saying is I shouldn’t need the rebreather as long as we’re connected?”

“I imagine it will be an uncomfortable experience to get used to. It’s very similar to having a machine breathing for you. You would not need to breathe at all, because air is being directly sent to your lungs through your neck. It is... fascinating. It shouldn’t work, but it very well might.”

Arges held up his hand for the two of them to stop talking, and also so he could just breathe for a second. His hearts were racing a little too fast, and he suddenly felt a bit like he needed to float for a little while and get his thoughts under control. “Wait. Both of you stop talking for a second. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

Mira grabbed his hand in the air and held it close to her chest. “We’re both saying that this tube in my throat might be a way for me to be in the water without the rebreather. The undine body apparently makes concessions for the person it’s mating with. If we can figure out how to do this whenever you want to do it, then I could breathe underwater with you indefinitely. No more grabbing the rebreather. Nothing on my face.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Apparently it is.”

He couldn’t... do that. No undine could take an achromo and put them in the water for good. Her people didn’t live underneath the waves like his did. They couldn’t breathe. They drowned. This was the way of things and he hadn’t just created a way for her to... to...

Ghosting his fingers over the place where the tendril connected to her neck, he touched his fingers to the goo that clearly was keeping the air inside of her. “What does this connect to?”

“We sometimes call it a windpipe,” she said with a slight laugh. “But I think it’s a similar tube that goes right to my lungs.”

“This is wrong,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t be able to do this to you. No one should be able to do this to achromos.”

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