Page 40 of The Alien Noble's Little Human

She disappears into the makeshift structure, and I can hear her rooting around. I continue to force the ice to bend to my will. The fact that I’ve asked her to get it for me is my concession to her desire to contribute.

I chip away at the ice around one of the broken planks, imagining how much a chordata would help with clearing the ice and hauling the planks and any rubble away. I'm grateful we didn't push through last night. It would have deprived us of the benefits of the sun.

Once I have a plank free, I start to hack away at the entrance. The purple glow from the phosphorescent mineral deposits is bright, although in the daytime it’s more of a translucent coating than the beacon we experienced last night.

Her brilliant smile lights up mauve in the purple shimmer from the roxolite as she emerges from the tent, carrying the precious satchel that nearly drove us to do battle with a blizzard head-on.

She positions herself to toss them, but reading my body language, she walks them over instead. I grab the bag, and immediately I realize these tools may be made for human hands, not Kiphians.

“Perfect,” I tell her.

“Don’t you want me to go over them with you?”

“Sure.”

She takes them out one by one. “These are all specialized for mining and extraction. This one is a special drill that also breaks up rocks as it goes in. This one…” She holds up a surgical-looking tool, one with an impossibly small tip. “This uses compressed light to pinpoint the exact spot, for when you don’t want the structural integrity damaged. This is the tool that was worth dying in a blizzard for.”

“You’re right. I doubt I could have found anything like that. Actually, how do you have something like that?”

“Wesqanti, the chief of Tlisan — that’s Sorsha’s dad — always had a great appreciation for the properties of Mountain Kingdom minerals and metals. I learned a lot from him, and he’d let me borrow his tools. I eventually got most of the basic ones, but this one…” She holds it up reverently, flipping it around to look. “There were almost none like it. He had one custom-made for me.”

“That’s amazing.” I silently thank the Divine Ones for bringing Wesqanti into Talan’s life.

“The tools aren’t much use for this job,” Zaya says disappointedly. “You can’t exactly excise this pile of snow.”

“I’d rather have you with me, making the job more pleasant, than a whole team of chordatas to haul it.” The sentiment started as a consolation, but once I say it, I realize it’s true. I’d rather have her here with me than one hundred fierce nomads with thousands of chordatas.

“Both would be nice.” She gives me a smile. “Tools? Last call before I put them into my pack and secure them on my person. No way I’m losing these again.”

I want to keep looking at the tools, just so I can be physically closer to her now that for what seems like the first time in our nearly two-week trek, it’s not storming furiously. Still, it’s freezing cold, and, like everything with this mission, you never know how long something will take or how quickly plans will get foiled.

“Jerky?” she offers.

“Name-calling seems unnecessary.” I give her a wink as she feeds me dried strips of meat, and her fingers linger on my lips for a few moments. She looks at me with the same hunger I feel.

My desire makes me want to get through the pile of ice and rubble so that we can get to the roxolite so that I can truly savor my time with her. I turn away from her invigorated, but I focus on the task at hand to prevent my nascent erection from going full-staff.

“Hey, Taurek. This is weird. You see those patches of rock that have absolutely no snow on them?” Zaya asks quizzically. “And look. There’s steam. And the geysers here are cold, not hot.”

“Hmm? Where?”

“Over there. Look.” I turn around, fully intending to fixate on where she’s pointing, but I’m too distracted by her statuesque silhouette, like a mountain goddess wrapped in furs and leather.

“Maybe it got blown away by the wind?” I turn back to shoveling. Otherwise, my mind will get lost in memories of our nighttime bacchanals.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “Besides, they’re in clusters, not sheets.” Zaya takes a closer look, and I walk over next to her as she crouches down, holding her arm to steady her.

“Careful with the steam there, Zaya. We need those fingers.”

She looks at me suggestively.

“For the extraction.” But I’m flooded with memories of what her fingers are capable of, and I long to suck them.Soon, Taurek.

Zaya reaches out and hovers her palm over the ground, then places a fingertip down. “Taurek! It’s warm! It has to be drathasite. It conducts heat. I wonder if it would be useful…”

“For making easy work of the ice blocking the entrance?”

“Exactly. And who knows what else it might be useful for.”

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