Page 66 of Guarded By the Kraken

I lay there, trying to breathe the air I was in and come back to my body.

All I wanted to do was—all of that—again.

I would crawl over glass to get it.

I would face down death again for it.

I wanted to be his, and he was always mine.

I pulled the carving out and put it aside, sitting up, panting.

“My beautiful Elle,” Cepharius said, the colors on his surface now drifting in soothing patterns of light.

I reached out to touch the glass. “My pretty kraken,” I whispered to him, with a soft smile.

chapter 38

CEPHARIUS

Our ’qa was nearly perfect now. Neither of us had anything to hide—and so I knew that she was tired, at the same time I also knew she wouldn’t want to go to bed just yet, because she wanted to be with me.

So I asked her questions about all of her fictions and TV. It was so strange to me that most humans could not use magic, and yet they had so many shows about it—and it was in their imaginary futures, too.

“It’s all kind of the same, if you think about it,” she explained, curling up on her side, and smiling out the window at me. “There’s this famous quote that any sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic, and I think that it’s true.”

I considered this along with her. “In any case, it makes for good stories.”

I had no idea two-leggeds were so imaginative, but I supposed that, without always having a sense for the thoughts of others of their nearby kind, they needed something to fill their minds with.

And then she explained all the other kinds of ’qa replacements humans had—like books and the internet.

“And what do you use that for?” I asked her.

Elle pondered this for a moment. “Mostly cat pictures and pornography.”

I waited before responding to her. “I cannot tell if you are joking,” I said, and she laughed, which was the opposite of how she felt. “So you are not joking?” I asked, attempting to clarify.

This time, her laugh was pure. “I mean, I am, but in one of those terribly injured trauma ways.”

We talked for far longer than I should’ve kept her up, but I couldn’t help myself—and before I left, I sang her to sleep with a different lullaby, then I swam back to where the spaceship was.

There were no lights, there was no doorway—but all the writing on the side was the same.

And the next symbol had already been added—this time the circles were together again.

I went back to hover in front of where the doorway had been.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” I thought out at it. “But you are not allowed to take her away from me.”

Nothing seemed to change though—so I went back to be near Elle and rest.

That morning her mood was complicated—she still had to interact with the other humans, who had clearly lied to her—but she was elated every time she thought about me, and I remained so close to her on our ’qa that I could feel it, her eager thoughts returning to me and last night again and again, like so many fish nibbling on algae.

But we both waited until we were past the line where the others might hear her before thinking plainly—and the first thing she did was take my hand.

“What is this?” I asked her, after she did it—and then I answered my question in her mind. “Ah! It is because you do not have lower-arms!”

“Yes, silly,” she said with a grin. “Also I just wanted to touch you.”

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