storm will hit us overnight. If we receive the predicted amount of rainfall, we will be unable to traverse the quarry until it has a day or two to drain. Consider the next three days a surprise vacation.”
There’s some cheering. But I’ve gone numb, instantly crushed that I won’t be seeing Bash at all for three whole days. This sucks.
Behind him, the sky is growing ominously dark. Whereas it was fully daylight a moment ago, the weather is taking a fast turn.
Sort of like my mood.
With a crack of thunder, rain begins to pour out of the sky.
Someone calls Bash’s name, and he turns to holler a response. Humans duck and cringe under the skywater pelting down on us like bullets—until hobs stretch out their wings for us to take shelter under.
Rather than take cover with everyone else under the kind aliens, I need to take care of my balsa. Huddling over my box of wood, I take it into the blacksmith stall to keep it dry. When I set it down, I figure I can go back to polishing tools, but Bash appears and takes me carefully by the elbow with his clawtips.
“You need to return to the human preserve,” he says.
“What? Why?”
Bash points outside. “With the ferocity of this storm, half the quarry could flood. It should be fine here, we’re situated on the high end, but I won’t risk you. You’re leaving. Careful though; the rock is slick.”
The rain is pouring out there, sluicing down the quarry floor like the other end is one big bathtub drain.
“Okay,” I tell him sadly. “Guess this is goodbye for a while.”
His nod is brief.
Considering that my dismissal, I head out.
Bash catches me by my elbow once more, tugging me back under the overhang’s protection.
I search his face. “Yeah?”
He stares down at me for a beat before he looks outside and shouts, “Jonohkada, come this way!”
Jonoh looks nervous until he sees me at Bash’s side. His hair slicked flat to his skull, rain pounding off of his broad shoulders, the hob moves right for me and pops his wings open. “I’ll walk you back,” he offers.
“Thanks, Jonoh,” I mean to murmur but have to shout to be heard over the deluge.
“Isla,” Bash says from behind me.
I toss a glance back at him.
His tail crooks, and instantly I leave Jonoh’s side to cross to Bash as if he called me.
I think his tail actually did. His gaze searches mine. “What will you do tomorrow if you cannot be here?”
I shrug unhappily. “Guess I’ll sit around the compound twiddling my thumbs. Yay for vacation.”
Bash’s ears are low, his eyes are serious, and I’d swear he wants to touch me. His hand hovers at my face. He doesn’t make contact though. Instead, he orders, “Spend it with me.”
CHAPTER 20
BASH
(Crying Counter: Exemplary)
I wonder if I am lonely. I must be. Rakhii come from large families, and I’ve perfected the art form of avoiding mine. Thus something like this was bound to happen. Perhaps it’s what I deserve: I’m bonding to an alien.
But although I’m aware that I’m dangerously attached to this female, it doesn’t mean that I’ll be laying my hearts at her feet. Nay, I won’t be offering up all the yearning and loyalty in my organs for a second woman to stomp. Never again. Never again, Bubashuu, do you hear me?
I growl at myself.
From nowhere, Isla declares, “Okay, you keep doing that. Why?”
When I say nothing, she is not deterred. And she has more to say. Of course she does.
I spent half the trek to my abandoned canyon marveling that I invited her to stay with me. I wondered just what I expected us to do if the weather continued to flood us. (Oh, I had plenty of ideas. Plenty. But I told myself to stop thinking with my idiot-pipe and start using the grey matter between my horns.) My concern also lay in the safety of our rendezvous spot. Particularly in my cave, if the water level gets terribly high, it has to be evacuated.
But thankfully, the rains had stopped by the time Isla stepped out of the door at the humans’ compound this morning. And as we began walking, I couldn’t get the idea of her in my home out of my head. She will be in the place where everyone formerly worked, where we harvested rock until we hit soil belts on all sides, it shouldn’t feel strange to have an employee there—but now the whole of the place is