At least, he thought, no decent response. She spoke no more, did not so much as twitch as she reclined onto her haunches and stared. He cleared his throat, making a point of looking down at the deck, hoping she would lose interest in him and find something else to do.
He had been hoping that for the year he had known her.
Kataria, however, had never found anything else to do besides follow him. She had never met anyone else in all their travels worth sparing a second glance for. She had never stopped staring.
He cleared his throat again, more loudly. It was all he could do; if he chased her away, she would stare from afar. If he asked what she found so interesting, she would not answer. If he struck her when his temper got the better of his patience, she would strike back, harder. Then keep staring.
She would always stare. He would always feel her eyes.
‘Something’s on your mind.’
Kataria’s voice sounded off. Distant, but painfully close, hissed directly into his ear through a wall of glass. He gritted his teeth, shook his head, before turning to regard her. She was still staring, eyes flashing with an expression he couldn’t understand at that moment.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
You, he wanted to say, I’m thinking of you. I’m thinking of your stink and how bad you smell and how I can’t stop smelling you. I’m thinking of how you keep staring at me and how I never say anything about it and I don’t know why. I’m thinking of you staring at me and why someone’s screaming at me inside my head and how someone’s screaming inside my head and why it seems odd that I’m not worried about that.
He wanted to say that.
‘Today,’ was all he said instead.
She nodded, rising up from her knees. She extended a hand and he took it, hauled himself to his feet with her help.
‘It’s something to worry about, isn’t it?’
Really? Worried? Why would we be worried? A man drowns on dry land at the hands of something that shouldn’t exist and we should be worried? You’re a reeking genius.
‘Uh-huh,’ he nodded.
‘You almost died.’
It occurred to him that he should be more offended by the casual observation of her tone.
‘It happens.’ It occurred to him that this was not a normal answer for anyone else.
She continued to stare at him. This time, he did not look away, absorbed instead by the reflection in her eyes. Behind him, the sun was setting over the bobbing husk of the Linkmaster, painting the sky a muted purple, the colour of a bruise. Above him, the stars were beginning to peer, content to emerge after gulls had been chased away. Before him, the world existed only in her eyes, all the silver, purples and reds drowned in the endless emerald of her stare.
‘You’re staring,’ she noted, the faintest of smiles tugging at the corners of her lips.
‘I am.’ He straightened up, painfully aware that he was barely any taller than she was. He cleared his throat, puffing his chest out. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘I don’t need to do anything about it,’ she replied smugly. ‘Stare as much as you want. I know I’m something of a marvel to behold to beady little human eyes.’
‘My eyes aren’t beady.’ He resisted the urge to narrow said orbs in irritation.
‘They are beady. Your hair is stringy, and you’re short and wiry.’
‘Well, you smell.’
‘Is that so?’ She reached out and gave him a playful shove. ‘And what do I smell like?’
‘Like Gar—’ He hesitated, a better insult coming to mind. He returned the shove with a smug smirk of his own. ‘Like Denaos.’
Her own stare grew a little beadier at that. Snarling, she shoved him once more.
‘Recant.’
‘No.’ He shoved her back. ‘You recant.’
‘Who’s going to make me? Some runt with the hair of an old man?’
‘Make you? I couldn’t make you bathe, much less recant.’ He leaned forwards, making certain he could see the edge of his sneer in her eyes. ‘Besides, what do the words of a savage matter to anyone?’
‘They apparently mean enough to force a walking disease to put up some pitiful display of false bravado.’ Her sneer matched his to a precise, hideous crinkling of the lip. ‘If they don’t matter to you, why don’t you back away?’
‘I don’t show my back to savages.’
‘Shicts don’t squirm at stoop-spined swallows struggling to strut.’