Page 52 of Katya and the Young God

“There you go, that might be more comfortable,” she says, because what the hell do you say to a child who apparently kills people with touch.

The little girl nods at her, eyes unblinking.

“Have you remembered a name?” Katya asks, pulling on years of experience on a job too close to a social worker for comfort.

“I doubt she’ll remember one.” Pieter unrolls his sleeping pad on the other side of where the girl sits, bracketing her in. It must be intentional.

To get to her, they’d have to go over Pieter or Katya, and the small part of Katya that wants to protect everyone is pleased by it.

“I don’t know anything,” The little girl whispers, soft. “There’s nothing.”

“That must be scary,” Katya says, and the girl nods again. “Do you want us to give you a name? So you can have one?” She’s never dealt with someone with this severe memory loss before, but it seems like a good starting place.

Pieter gives her a warning glance, but the girl nods. “I’d like that.”

Katya digs in her bag, pulling out an extra energy bar. “Here, we’ll think about it.”

The girl eyes the unwrapped bar, before turning to Pieter. “Is that okay for me?” She whispers, as if asking would offend Katya.

With a glance to Katya, Pieter takes the bar, takes a bite out of it, then hands it to the girl. “It doesn’t hurt me,” he says, and she takes it from him. “If you’re gonna have a reaction, let me know, but you should be able to digest it.”

That settles, the girl devours the bar with barely disguised hunger, and Katya immediately pulls out one of her MREs, with more calories and more variety, but Pieter stops her with a simple shake of his head.

“Let her try that, see if it sits well with her stomach,” he says, quiet. “There’s a chance it won’t, a chance she’ll need something else.”

Katya doesn’t exactly want to contemplate what that could be, but Pieter clearly seems to be operating with at least an idea of what she is, so she lets him.

“Tell me if you feel sick?” Pieter says, and his voice is unbearably tender to the small child, tender in a way Katya wouldn’t have thought possible. “We’ll figure something out.”

She nods with her mouth full, then, clearly imitating them, gives him a thumbs up.

After a long moment, Pieter looks to Katya, and there are lines of exhaustion in his face, lines that weren’t there that morning when Nathan died. “Do you understand what she is?” He whispers, voice barely carrying to Katya. “Do you understand what this place was meant to do?”

“Not a clue,” Katya says, stretching out her legs and digging her hand into her shoulder.

Pieter stares at her for a long moment, like she’s the most unbelievable thing he’s seen all day. “Really.”

And while she has a pretty good grasp on others and how they’re integrated into today's society, this is beyond her and her knowledge. “Yeah, really.”

The girl watches them, still eating, eyes wide and curious. With each bite, she looks more like a normal kid, one who wants to know what the grown-ups are talking about, and it hurts Katya’s heart a little bit.

Abruptly, Pieter looks down, away. “You stood in front of a bullet, so I assumed you did.”

“I stood in front of a bullet because she’s a kid.” Katya nudges her with her elbow, in what she hopes is an encouraging bit of affection, and the girl nudges her back, a smile flickering briefly across her face in return. “I figured whatever else would come later.”

The girl elbows Pieter in the same way, and after a second, he does the same. “I’ll tell you later,” he promises, with a significant glance down at the little girl, who keeps on looking between them with wide eyes. “You’re from this area, right? Long ago?” He asks the girl.

The little girl’s lips part, like she has the answer at the tip of her tongue, but finds it missing.

“If you’ve been here the entire time—” he holds out his bare hand for her to touch, and she tugs off her glove immediately to grip his hand—“then you’re probably from this area, because the area didn’t get settlers from outside until around seventeen something.”

Katya sits back, watching the two of them interact, wishing that she could be a bit more clinical and take notes.

The little girl’s lips part again, and she just looks lost.

“We can pick something random, something that can fit in upstairs,” he says, nodding towards the ceiling, to the top of the mountain, to the place outside of this cave that seems so far away. “And if you remember your name later, we can change it.”

“It’s easy to change names,” Katya says. “I’ve changed mine before, and it was just a bit of paperwork.”

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