Page 61 of Invasive Species
“I don't know. Get out of the rain.” Apart from rusting in the rain, he sparks whenever the skies cloud over and rumble with thunder.
Which they’re doing now, and Arra-bellah isn’t safe and warm and dry in the house. She has a mammalian template, she loses her body heat as easily as Olorians can change the color of their scales, and there's a storm approaching.
Arture reports, “She didn’t finish seeing to the animals’ needs. The chickens are still free, although they’ve gone under cover.”
They began roosting in their little house as soon as the weak sun fell below the misty horizon and the gray darkened to pitch black. Arra-bellah should have returned at the same time.
My chest tightens as if I were strapped to a gurney for the annual physical, but wherever she is, she isn't my concern.
Except I don't want harm to come to her. She's not the most careful of individuals.
“Could she be swimming?” Arture asks dubiously.
I seize his arm. She wouldn’t, would she?
Not unless she needed to process what we had done this afternoon and how I had cut her off, and decided to go for a swim. The idea of her, soaking wet and cold, shivering and alone, rips at my hearts so hard it’s a physical pain.
Wait. There really is a physical pain in the center of my being, as if unfeeling metal slides underneath my scales and through my musculature. Every beat of my hearts is painful.
“No, she's… not at the lake,” I murmur. I press my hand over my hearts. How is it I know where she is? I rub the spot over my breastbone. It transcends reason or logic, but… I know she's out there.
Could this be… a mating bond? My hands twist in the empty air as if I can just as easily grasp this supposed connection between us. Even if it were real, why did it form after only one carnal interaction?
I know the answer. Because I genuinely wanted her. I wanted her to be honestly and completely in love with me, as much as I was with her.
Instead, she was using me. If bonds are real, they're cruel and stupid, forming a connection between me and someone who would misuse me.
But I still don't want her hurt. “We need to look for her. Arture, stay under as much cover as you can, so search the farmyard. I’ll go…there.” I wave my hand over the dark fields, toward the swimming lake.
“Where?” He turns his head in the vague direction I pointed. “Why there? What intel do you have?”
“No intel.”
His eyes narrow. “Then what do you know?”
Know? Nothing. Feel? Everything.
I race out, rain pounding on my head and shoulders. Arture calls after me but I can’t spare the breath to tell him what’s going on. Not that I know myself.
“This is highly illogical. This is disorganized, disorientating, and disturbing.” Just like my attraction to Arra-bellah, I suppose.
The pain increases, edging to unbearable. I spit my defiance to the howling wind and run faster past the lake, drawn by an unshakeable conviction that she’s ahead. Her pain radiates like the burning rays of the sun, just as her happiness usually does.
A boom of thunder splits the air like an explosion. My vision tunnels, a ringing in my head getting louder as I focus on it. I smell everything, from the wet earthy soil to the sharp grass and the ozone in the skies. I'm ready to operate through any conditions, but I can't find my patient.
The battering rain comes down in sheets. I force my scales to glow, lighting up my forearm to a dull green, better than nothing as I scan the ground. Sheer gray stones made sleek by the deluge loom up in front as I run; I skid in the mud and slam into them.
“Drok na,” I mutter, shoving back from the obstacle. Why did my hearts lead me here?
“G…Gara?” A chatter of teeth accompanies Arra-bellah’s small voice, and even miserable it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
I round the rocks to find her in the lee of the stones, in a barely there shelter. The rain doesn’t pelt her completely, and that’s the best I can say about her meager protection.
She’s soaked through, clothes clinging to her, hair flat against her head. She holds her left ankle, face pale with the cold and drawn tight with pain.
“Where does it hurt?” I bark.
“My leg. I twisted it when I fell.” She gingerly brings her palm to her face. “I also headbutted a rock, I’m lucky I didn’t knock myself out.”
