Page 54 of Romancing Rem'eb

Last night, he figured out that Veronica was a healer. He knew something was up with how often people visited her tent, but it wasn’t until Raashel accidentally whipped her line and snagged a fishhook in Rem’eb’s finger that he realized why everyone goes to Veronica.

Veronica did her thing, healing his small wound within moments, and Rem’eb was utterly stunned. He spent a lot of the evening with Noj’me, making her translate about healers.

How did Veronica become a healer?

Does it work on everyone?

Do we have more healers? Can she heal sickness? What about broken bones? Does it work on all peoples?

Does it work even if she, say, did not wish to heal?

Can she give the gift to someone else?

How often can she heal? What about healing an entire village?

The questioning goes on for so long that Veronica gets rattled and uneasy, and Ashtar gets possessive. I’ve never seen the drakoni in any mood but a good one, but he starts eyeing Rem’eb like he’d like to tear him to pieces, and after that, I dragged Rem’eb back to our hut and tried to distract him away from healers with more loom-finagling.

It makes me wonder if he was up all night, wondering if he needed to kidnap Veronica…and if so, how. It stings, that Veronica is more valuable to him than a resonance mate. It’s not surprising to me, though. It’s just the same old shit when it comes to poor Tia. I take my resentment and bury it deep inside, and climb out of bed.

Rem’eb stirs, reaching for me. “Tia?”

“Go back to sleep,” I tell him. “Gonna pee.”

He kisses my fingertips and lets me go, because he knows the words for “gonna pee” after a week of living with me and my small bladder. Once he’s asleep again, I finish wrapping myself in furs and put boots on, heading out not to pee, but to talk with Gail.

Gail and Vaza are the oldest here on the beach, and act like a mom and dad to all of us. Right now I could use some advice from someone older than me instead of a peer. A peer would tell me that I don’t need Rem’eb and that I can just fuck him, get pregnant and go on with my life as a single mom. Hell, Raven said that to me last night at dinner. But that’s not what I want to hear.

So off I go, seeking advice. Or a dose of reality. Something.

I just know I can’t keep on going as we are or I’m going to break.

Gail isn’t by the fire, and a blonde stranger is cooking, along with the only human man that’s been dropped on the planet. I don’t know either of their names, but they both seem a pretty easy-going sort, with the guy tasting the warming pouch of shrimp tea and making an approving face. “Has a bit of a dashi taste to it, don’t you think?”

“What the heck is dashi?” asks the blonde.

“That stuff,” he says, taking another sip. “Kinda weird to have it instead of coffee, though.” He notices my arrival and picks up one of the bone cups. “You want some?”

I hold up a hand, declining, because I don’t mind a lot of things we eat on Not-Hoth but shrimp before breakfast is not one of them. “I’m actually looking for Gail. Have you seen her?”

“Someone ripped their pants and we’re making breakfast on our own,” the blonde says, and uses a ladle to point at Gail’s hut. “I’m just not sure what we’re supposed to be making.”

“Do we want to go savory or sweet?” the human guy asks. “And do we even have sweet?”

“What was dinner last night?” I ask, moving forward. I want to abandon them and find Gail because I need to cry my troubles out to someone, but leaving newbies in charge of food supplies feels like a recipe for disaster. “That fish stew stuff. Is there any left?”

“Yeah, in that big bowl over there. The covered one.” The blonde says, pointing. “I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do with it.”

Nodding, I gesture at the bowl. “Take the leftovers, heat them up, and add some chopped up roots to fill it out again. If you’re making shrimp tea, too, you can de-shell the shrimp, use the shells in the tea and the shrimp themselves in the soup. That can be breakfast.”

“It can?” The blonde asks, aghast. “Really?”

“It’s fine,” the guy reassures her. “Lots of cultures back on Earth have fish for breakfast. It’s big in Japan.”

“Okay, sure.” The blonde sounds faint but she gives us a thumbs up. “Fish soup it is.”

“Now, when you say you want us to chop roots,” the man continues, giving us a serious look. “Do you want a brunoise? A julienne? Diced? Do we need to make a roux of some kind to add flavor?”

I stare. So does the blonde.

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