Page 41 of Elanie & the Empath
Pulling him close, I diverted the remainder of my energy stores into warming my skin and raising my core temperature, circumventing my programming’s prime directive to maintain homeostasis. I muted the excruciating throbbing in my feet and hammering in my toes. I muted the windburn scorching my cheeks. I muted everything except the sensation of Sem’s breaths shuddered in and out of his chest.
His muscles seized as he started to tremble, then shiver, then shake so violently my arms strained from trying to keep him close.
Eventually, he calmed, his body growing still, his skin warming against mine. And then there was only his heart beating, the water dripping, my eyes finally closing.
Fingers played in my hair,brushed over my cheek, trailed down my arm. I was on a beach, sitting in the sand under the warmest yellow sun. Waves washed over my toes, my feet, my calves as tiny red and blue sailboats bobbed along the horizon.
Elanie, someone whispered, a voice carrying on the breeze.Open your eyes.
“Sailboats,” I whispered back.
A laugh. “Yeah, well. It was laundry day. If I’d known you were going to take off my pants…”
My eyes fluttered open, then flew wide. “Sem.” I jolted upright. “You’re alive!”
Still on his back, he grinned up at me. “Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me, you almost died in the first place.”
“True,” he said.
My vision snagged on the firm plane of his belly where his fingers were splayed across his bare skin. Skin that was vibrant again, as blue as the ocean in my dream. “I had to take your clothes off,” I said.
“I see that.”
“For the heat.”
“Of course.”
“Because you were freezing.”
His smile spread, so wide that a little dimple I’d never noticed before sank into his cheek. Maybe I’d never noticed because I’d never seen this smile before. “You saved my life.”
My relief that he was still alive, that he was blue again, that I wasn’t alone, was so all-encompassing that I forgot I wasn’t wearing any clothes. I only noticed when his eyes dipped, sank, then bounced back up to mine.
There was some color in his cheeks when he sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. “My clothes are still wet. But I checked before I woke you up, and your pajamas are dry.”
He leaned over, patting the ground in the dim light in the cave. And while I watched him search for my pajamas, knowing that when he’d checked them, he’d set them on the ground beside him even though that wasn’t where I’d left them caused warmth to fill my chest. Or maybe it was just my core temperature finally normalizing.
“Here you go.” He handed me my pants, keeping his eyes down.
“Thank you,” I said as I slid my pants back on.
“My memory of last night is a bit of a blur.” He held my shirt in his hands. “But I think you gave me this at one point? As a hat?”
I didn’t laugh, but something inside me wanted to. “Your skin was turning gray,” I said, taking my top and slipping it over my head. “I had to do something.”
I wasn’t an empath. Even when I tried my hardest, I still couldn’t figure out how another being felt with any accuracy until they told me. But his expression when he took my hands in his, when his cool fingers wrapped around mine? There was a gravity to it. A solid weight pulling me toward him.
“Thank you, Elanie,” he said. “Thank you for helping me. For saving me.”
I didn’t know what to say.You’re welcomeseemed wrong. Too insignificant. Too small for everything he’d already sacrificed for me. Before I could decide how to respond, he released my hands and got to his feet.
Wobbling toward the narrow mouth of the cave, wearing his sailboat boxers and nothing else, he said, “Let’s see what we’re up against.” He peered outside, whistled a cloud into the air, then motioned for me. “Come here. You have to see this.”
I’d cataloged our surroundings during our walk from the pod to the cave last night. But I’d used night vision, everything around us cast in varying shades of black and white and gray. When I joined Sem at the cave mouth, all I saw was color.
A vast sea of snow and ice spread out before us, reflecting the dim orange and lavender of the morning sky. A chain of snowcapped mountains rose sharply to our left, while Delphi hovered like a blue and purple marble to ourright. Two small moons glowed overhead, surrounded by a smattering of fading stars as the sun began its slow rise above the horizon.
