Page 13 of Crush
Her heart pounded under the hand, and she twisted restlessly.
“Mom? Mommy.”
The urgent little voice jolted her out of sleep, banishing the nightmare.
Or was it a fantasy?
Gone now, for sure. “Ollie? What’s wrong?” She pushed up onto her elbow, starting to rise from the nest-like cushions that was apparently an orc mattress, but he was already at her side, having let himself into her room from his own separate bedroom across the hallway of their apartment-style quarters.
“I had a dream.”
“Oh, owlet. C’mere.” She twitched back the covers, and he hopped in beside her. “Was it a bad dream?”
Snuggling into her shoulder, he nodded. But then he paused. “Or no. Maybe? I don’t know. I heard something. But I don’t know what it was, so maybe it wasn’t bad.”
She kissed the top of his head. “Too many dewdrops maybe?”
“Youate the last one,” he reminded her. “With Teq.”
“That’s true,” she murmured.
Maybe that explained the big alien hand inherdream.
Refusing to continue down that path, she mused, “Should we get a nightlight?”
“Just like home?”
“Just like.”
Once upon a time when our people would meet their life-mate, the i’lva would ignite within them, like a light that would always guide them home through the darkness.
How much of fear was simply not knowing?
Ollie fell asleep again almost immediately, his quick breaths gusting right in her face and his little body supernova hot despite the alleged climate control. After he rabbit-kicked her a few times, she decided no way was she getting back to sleep.
Carefully, she disentangled herself from his sprawled limbs—how had one little boy managed to take over the orc-sized cushions?—and eased out of the bed. At the door, she glanced back again, feeling the thread of her love stretching between them. Even when she silently closed the door (Ollie had been a little disappointed that it was only a sliding accordion door operated by hand, not something “cooler” considering they were on a spaceship) that thread remained, anchored in her heart. She guessed it would stretch across the universe if it had to.
The main open space of their new home was basically a living room and kitchen combo, both much smaller than she’d lived with before and also much bigger than she would’ve expected on what was essentially a submarine in space. But honestly, it was bigger than she’d been able to afford on her own after leaving Robert; one of the points his family had used to try to shame her into letting them take Oliver.
As if.
Instead of being squared off, the corners in the rooms were rounded, and the walls lightly textured. The finishes were more comfortable for the orcs’ echolocation, Teq had told them. And Ollie had asked if he could get the extra sense when his eyes and ears stopped growing and he was able to also get the minor surgery to correct his nearsightedness. She wondered if tusks would ease or exacerbate her TMJ issues.
She checked the “clock” by the front door. Almost “morning” of her first “day” in her new home, so certainly that justified breaking into her emergency coffee stash, one of the few items she’d brought from Earth for herself. Since day and night didn’t mean much when there was no fixed star, Teq had explained the orcs kept a three-period circadian cycle of work, rest, and something he called uroondu which the communication implant in her head refused to translate but sounded like a combination of siesta, recess, and tea time.
“Surviving in outer space isn’t always easy,” he’d said. “So Amma revived the ancient orc ritual of uroondu to relax and revive the crews between jobs.”
“Do you play games?” Ollie had asked.
The big crusher hesitated. “Some do. What games do you play?”
“I like ghost in the graveyard. I’ll teach you, if you teach me an orc game.”
Teq had glanced at her so quickly she almost missed it. “We have much to teach each other.”
Which wasn’t an answer, she’d noted. The IDA had specifically noted that the orcs welcomed single mothers, and that they “hoped for more offspring” eventually. But at the thought of Oliver playing ghost in the graveyard by himself—no one to search for, no one to find him—worry had spread in her again like an aching bruise. As an only child herself, she knew how hard it could be to always be alone. Had she been wrong to escape with Oliver when this might be worse?
Andwhyhad she told Teq about her sad past? She’d come here for a fresh start and a better future, and the reasons why didn’t matter.
