Page 34 of Crash Landing
“Are you homesick?”
“No,” I scoffed. “You have to have a home to be homesick.”
There was a stretch of silence. Silence made me uncomfortable. It made me feel like the person I was with was thinking about me and when people thought about me, they usually figured out how disappointing I was.
“So what’s all the stuff on the table down there?”
“Parts. Devices I think I can fix.”
“Like what?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
I followed Saleuk down into the lobby again where the table was. Whatever he’d found didn’t look like anything useful to me, but I wasn’t an engineer nor was I a valerian that understood valerian toys.
“I found cloth, some old first aid equipment, a water filtration device that I think I can get working pretty easily, and this.”
He tossed me a little cuff and I looked at it with a raised brow.
“Thanks?”
“It’s a navigator. It still works. It’s ancient, but those things were built to last. I thought you might like it.”
I clipped the metal cuff on my wrist and watched a little screen light up on the face. The image showed a 3D map of the terrain around us in a radius that I assumed was a roshim, which equaled about one and a half miles.
“This is really cool. Thank you. Although, I don’t know how much exploring I want to do after the critters I’ve seen.”
“The worst things come out at night. If we stay inside during the eclipse, we should be alright.”
I nodded, leaning forward on the table to look at all the gadgets spread out before me as if staring would make me understand it all.
“What’s that?” I pointed at a pair of small round coins.
“Those are comms devices. Old ones. I found the hub so I’m going to see if I can use the parts to fix my commlink. The kilor damaged it when it tossed me into the tree.”
“These are the kinds of things you do if you think we’ll be here for a while, Saleuk.”
“No, these are thingsIdo to stay distracted and busy.”
I glanced up at him with a smirk. “Why do you need to stay distracted? You scared?”
I expected him to shoot back at me with some kind of taunting rebuttal, but instead, there was a hint of struggle in the deep, galactic colors of his eyes.
“Yes,” he said softly.
The smirk fell from my face. That look he was giving me sank so deep it hurt. In my bones, I knew he wasn’t talking about being stranded, either. He was talking about something else and somehow it made my heart thrum.
“I think I’ll wash up. I really don’t think I can help with any of this stuff.”
Saleuk nodded and pulled up a metal chair, sitting himself down to focus on his little projects.
On my way out, I swiped one of the bundled cloths to use as a towel. My skin was so hot when I left the building that I felt feverish all over again. I had to be getting sick and the thought worried me. All I ever was was sick around Saleuk. It was infuriating.
At the river, I ducked behind some foliage and stripped out of my shoes, my flight suit, and the cotton leggings and shirt I was wearing underneath. I took my underwear and bra with me into the water, scrubbing days' worth of sweat and grime fromthe fibers. Then I used my shirt and leggings to scrub my body, giving them a moderate wash, too. My flight suit was designed to wick water and sweat so I hoped by just hanging it out to let the sun’s rays sanitize it, it would be fine.
Once I was done, the cool water had done a lot to soothe the ache I was feeling. It was a strange ache. One I was unfamiliar with, but it was strongest around Saleuk so I took my time wringing out my wet clothes and finger combing my hair. It would take ages for everything to dry in that humidity, but I had a towel at least. I wrapped the big cloth around me, thankful it covered all the important bits. In fact, it was thin enough and large enough that I could wrap the ends cris-crossed around my neck like a halter. I was actually pretty proud of myself for figuring that out as I waltzed back toward the building with all my newly washed clothes.
Right outside the door, I hung everything on a low piece of thin piping to let it dry. As much as it was able in that climate, anyway.
