Page 49 of Challenged

“Yes.” She grimaces. “And if Dawes frozen like Brooks… Maybe not have answers. Even if she want to speak.”

It pleases me to know my Angie does this for the tribe. The answers she seeks will be a weight off all of our shoulders. Buther absence leaves me with little to do but ponder my own questions, my headspace growing ever more tangled as I try to understand what my brothers and I have found in the trees.

I know understanding it matters less than dealing with it. Many of my brothers would argue that once we have done the burn, we can forget about it. Burns have always worked before. We have no reason to expect it will not work now. But there is a feeling in my spirit that continues to poke at me - the same unease I first felt as we approached the Mercenia hut, but grown sharp and pointy. I do not think it will go away until I understand why the blight has spread so thoroughly and so far. Until I know how likely it is to happen again.

As conversation about the fire starts to die down, the new arrivals heading to their tents, I make my way to the Mercenia hut and my uncomfortable bed. It is too short for me to stretch out, my feet sticking out of the end of it, but too narrow to curl up without my knees doing the same. Not conducive for sleeping, though with my thoughts still racing so, I am not sure the most comfortable bed in the forest could coax me to sleep.

I try to push the blight out of my headspace, think instead on returning to the village. Bringing my Angie to her new home. I wonder what she will make of it. If she will admire the charms the village has, or if what she has lost will overshadow them. I think of her strange white home and wonder what I could find for her that might bring a small piece of that place here. Certain shells of the river creatures are almost white on the outside, and inside they have a substance that shimmers with all the colours when you hold it up to the sunlight. The smooth stones you can find on the riverbed are also sometimes white. I will have to ask Sam to help me find some.

I am so caught up in these imaginings, I do not at first notice that I have fallen asleep, that my environment has shifted as the dreamspace formed around me. My Angie does not noticeeither, her head bent low over themachine, eyes fixed on it. For a long moment I just watch her, admiring the way the light of themachinedances in her eyes. Learning the shape her features make as she concentrates. I linger on her mouth, memorising it with my eyes, while wishing I could memorise it with my tongue.

Then my linasha sighs, pushing a hand through her hair.

“God, I could murder a coffee right now,” she mutters.

“Again with this tendency for violence, linasha,” I say, grinning. “Are you always so full of wrath, or is it just the circumstances you find yourself in that have inflamed your ire?”

She jumps at my voice, scowling at me.

“It’s a figure of speech. It means ‘I really wish I had a coffee right now’. Coffee is a drink. It…” She trails off, her brows furrowing. “Wait, we can understand each other. I’m asleep?”

The fact that she did not immediately notice suggests to me that we are once again in the last room she remembers being in. She has fallen asleep here, sitting in the chair, probably slumped against the table.

“You are indeed.”

“Huh.” For a moment, her expression is just curious, then she closes her eyes, concentrating. When she opens them again, a cup of something steaming has appeared on the table in front of her. She picks it up, breathing the steam deep into her lungs.

“That smell,” she says, something almost like a moan in her voice. The sound makes my heartspace thunder, my cock stirring in my leathers.

She brings the cup to her lips, takes a sip, but frowns.

“It’s like I’m drinking it, but I’m not at the same time.”

“That is the way of the dreamspace. We can experience pleasures, but they are temporary. They do not linger the way they would in the waking world.” I step closer to her. “Tastes do not linger on the tongue. Heat does not linger in the belly.”

Her eyes grow wide, her cheeks darkening, and I think she has realised I do not speak only of this coffee drink that she has summoned.

“The advantage,” I say, taking her cup and raising it to my face, drawing the scent into my lungs. It has a rich, pleasant smell. I can see why she enjoys it. “Is that once the pleasure has passed, you can experience it all over again. Without impact to your… stamina.”

I take a sip of the drink, which rather ruins my attempt at flirtation. It is almost as bitter as djenti berry tonic. My expression twists, a disgusted sound escaping me.

My Angie laughs, then claps her hands over her mouth as if to contain her mirth.

“This is the drink you were prepared to commit violence for?”

“It’s an acquired taste,” she says. “You start drinking it for the pick me up effect, but then you start to enjoy the flavour.”

“It has healing properties, then?”

“Caffeine. Gives you energy. Helps you not end up asleep with your face in a keyboard.”

She rubs at her neck and shoulders, grimacing in anticipation of the aches that will be building in them as she sleeps slumped over this table.

“Brooks mentioned something about medicines for aches and pains,” she says, glancing at me. “I’m going to need some tomorrow.”

I raise the cup in my hand before passing it back to her. “If that is your drink of choice, I think you will find our djenti berry tonic quite tolerable. It is what we drink to speed the body’s healing. It will take care of your aches. Though perhaps it would be better not to develop them in the first place.”

“Yeah, sure, great advice. Not a lot I can do about it now, though, is there?”

---