Page 58 of Elanie & the Empath
“To bring us here,” I said as Elanie slid her fingers through mine.
His hand landed on my knee now, squeezing so hard I nearly squealed. Then he grinned, wide and toothy. “This isheavy talk for the morning. You both have much to learn, but we have time.” He stood, nearly flipping our bed onto its side. “Come. Get dressed if you must. We have food and drink. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Spirits. Everything you could ever want or need is waiting for you.” He bowed his head and with a dramatic, resonant boom, said, “Welcome to Thura.”
21.ELANIE
Our clothes were nice,made of linen, dyed green and blue and pink. They were simple and flowy and completely unlike anything I’d ever worn before. I liked them. And Sem couldn’t stop staring at my breasts under my strappy and nearly see-through top. I liked that too.
“You told them we were engaged?” he asked while pulling a soft pink shirt over his head.
“There areonlybionics here,” I explained. “I didn’t know what they might do to non-bionics, so I panicked and told Gol you were my fiancé.”
“Smart thinking.” He grinned at me, but it wasn’t his normal grin. This one was tight. Nervous.
I scanned his face, his exposed arms, still pale and mottled. “Your skin looks bruised again.”
“Well, your skin looks beautiful,” he said, sidestepping my concern. A surprisingly easy thing to do when he reached for my hand the way he did, pulling me in tightly against him.
Heat bloomed inside my chest as he surrounded me in his arms. He was alive. We were both alive. And he wastouching me, holding me, kissing my head. His breathing slow and steady as he hummed. “Hmm, so sweet.”
In cosmically bad timing, my stomach growled.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” I said, only I didn’t think I was talking about food.
“We can’t have that.” He cupped my face between his hands as his expression shifted from raw longing to mild disappointment before settling on something wry and irresistible when he said, “Come on,mate. Let’s eat.”
Sem’s mouth hinged open,his expression mirroring mine when I’d first seen Thura. “This is amazing.” He pointed to the pink-tinged but mostly transparent terradome arching overhead, then to the boundaries of the bioshield, where snowdrifts from the frozen tundra had banked into tall piles. “I guess that explains why it’s so warm here.” He raised his nose into the air. “Saints, what is that smell?”
“Food,” I answered, taking his hand in mine and leading him down the steps. I liked not having to think too much about holding his hand. Because engaged couples did that. They held hands, all day sometimes.
My mouth watered as we reached the buffet table. While a warm breeze brushed my hair off my shoulders, I piled food on top of my plate. Sliced pineapple, gwarf salad, honeyed ham, some rice dish with shredded carrots and fried eggs.
“We’ve died,” Sem said, holding a ring of pineapple in the air before biting into it. He moaned at the taste. “That’s the only explanation. We’ve died, and this is the afterlife.”
“Not quite.” Gol arrived beside us, his shouldersblocking out the afternoon sun. “But it’s as close as I could make it.”
“How long has Thura been here?” Sem asked as we carried our loaded plates past tables of other bionics. Purple Argosians, gelatinous blurvans, four-armed Gorbies, mundane New Earthers, all sat together, smiling and laughing.
Gol guided us to a table under a palm tree that swayed in the weather-generated breeze. He sat, then motioned for us to do the same. “I started this commune over thirty-five Standard years ago,” he said. “It was only a handful of us at first. Now we are over three hundred strong.”
I’d wanted to ask him about this last night. I hadn’t felt brave enough then. But now, with Sem by my side, I did. “Why did you bring me here?”
When Gol laughed, it was even warmer than the breeze. “I love an inquisitive bionic. You will do well here, Elanie EL-42xdZ.” He leaned forward, placing his cleft chin into the bowl of his palm. “Or soon to be Elanie Semson, I suppose.”
Elanie Semson.A shiver raced across my shoulders. In part because I liked the name, the way it sounded, how right it felt. But also because of the way Gol had said it. Suspicious yet amused, like he knew we were lying and found it as adorable as the bionic children currently fighting in the sandbox.
“That’s right.” Sem’s spine snapped straight. But even puffed up, he was so small compared to Gol, whose grin was enormous as he swept his hand out wide, a tattoo of one of the trees near our hut growing up his forearm, willowy branches swaying as their strange red fruit dangled toward his wrist.
“Well,” Gol said, “what do you think of our home?”
“It’s amazing,” I replied. Because it was.
Thura was remarkable. With soft, white sand blanketing the ground, tall trees reaching up toward the terradome, and animals everywhere. Wolf-like dogs stretched out long in the shady spots beneath the trees. Birds that looked like chubby miniature trestals perched on limbs above them. Long-tailed cats prowled under the tables, searching for food that had dropped from plates. And the bionics here seemed so happy, relaxed. Not a care in the world.
A first-generation bionic approached our table. He was almost as tall as Gol and held a tray of dirty dishes in one titanium hand while refilling my empty water glass with the other.
I’d never seen a gen-1 before, not outside of history experientials. I studied the smooth titanium shell covering his head and trunk, the exposed articulating joints that studded his long limbs, his bright yellow eyes staring down at us as he asked, “Can I get our new arrivals anything else?”
