Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Hell, I’m losing it right now.
After a while, even the knitting doesn’t soothe me, and I figure it’s time for more drastic action. I need to do something to tire myself out. So I pull up vines and examine the lines that feed water to the plants. They all seem to be heading in one direction—up. I climb to the top of the cave and check out the computing system, looking for anything that might be amiss. It all appears as it should, so I climb back down again, and then farther down, joining the others by the pool.
S’bren and A’tam are by the water’s edge, sniffing a few scattered leaves. They both glance up when I join them. “Find anything?” S’bren asks me. “I saw you crawling around.”
“Nothing.”
“Of course you did not find anything,” A’tam says confidently. “Your nose is not as good as ours.”
I give him an annoyed nudge. “I know that, ding-dong. But I have eyeballs. I went up and looked at the computer system. None of the components are out of place, and there are no flashing error messages on screen. Furthermore, the interface panels have dust on them, like they always do. No one’s touched them, so that rules out tampering.”
They both stare at me. A’tam blinks slowly.
“The ancestor things,” I say, dumbing it down. “No bad stuff there.”
“Aaah,” says A’tam.
I manage a small smile at his response. It’s not his fault he doesn’t know anything about computers or technology. But this is why I came with them. “How goes the leaf sniffing?”
“It is strange,” S’bren says, putting the leaves down in a row on the rocky surface near the pool.
“It is not strange. You are just imagining things,” A’tam tells him. He gets up and walks away. “I am going to go hunt for scents. Again.”
S’bren shakes his head. He picks up the first leaf, ignoring A’tam’s retreat, and holds it out to me. “I found three leaves that were damaged.”
I take it from him, eyeing the greenery. It looks…like a leaf. A leaf that’s been folded at some point, sure, but still a leaf. “And?”
“I smell nothing on it.”
Now I feel like the dumb one. “…and?”
He plucks the leaf from my hand. “That is just it, T’ia. I should smell something. When a leaf is brushed by someone, it will take on a lingering hint of their scent. If I leave this leaf behind, it will carry a faint memory of your scent for some time.”
Oh. It’s hard for me to realize that their noses are that sensitive. “So they’ve been disturbed, but you obviously can’t smell whoever was here?”
He nods. “I found more leaves that were broken, of course, but these are the only ones that smell like no one at all.” S’bren glances over at me and then leans in. “Do you smell mushrooms? I do, but they all say I am a fool.”
I pull back, considering, and then pick up another broken leaf. I give it a sniff, thinking. “No? But I don’t know what a mushroom smells like anyhow?”
“It smells like earth. Caves. Deep things.” His mouth pulls down in a frown. “No one smells it but me. Perhaps I am a fool.”
“Hey, then you’re in good company,” I joke. “I’m a fool for coming back to Icehome Beach.”
The look he gives me is full of pity. “It is not your fault, T’ia. It is just resonance.”
His sympathy breaks through my unbothered façade, and tears slide down my face again. I suck in a shuddery breath, and when he puts a friendly arm around my shoulders, I lean against him, weeping. Maybe S’bren gets it. Maybe S’bren, out of all people, understands.
He pats my arm, offering comfort. “You and R’jaal will happen soon. Wait and see.”
Ugh. I pull away, frustrated. “I don’t want to resonate to R’jaal!”
S’bren looks surprised at my reaction. “Then what is it you want?”
I get to my feet, because I don’t have an answer. I genuinely don’t know. A few weeks from now, a few months from now, I bet I'll probably be happy for I’rec and Flor. They’re both great people and I can see how they’d work together well. But right now, it’s all too fresh.
I’m still grieving for the future I thought I’d have. I’m grieving for the fact that with I’rec’s resonance to another, I’ve been turned into an outsider again, a problem no one knows how to solve. Maybe that’s what makes me the most miserable of all.
“Never mind,” I tell S’bren, and retreat away to my sleep roll.
Chapter
Two
TIA
Ican’t sleep, of course.
The others wander through the cave, full of theories, and more or less do their best to ignore me. I don’t think they mean any harm by it, but S’bren mentioned that I cried and that put the others on edge. Men never know what to do around a woman’s tears. So I lie on my pallet of traveling blankets and pretend to doze until the others go to bed.