It’s not her trying to tell me about her khui or her lack of resonance. It’s her name.
She touches her chest again and looks at me expectantly.
Baffled, I touch my own chest. “Vektal.”
Her jaw juts, and she tries to say my name properly. It comes out more as “Huptal.” She’s unable to make the swallowed first syllable properly. It’s all right. It’s a start.
“Huptal,” she says happily and pats her shoulders again. “Shorshie.”
Her own name is garbled syllables, but I try to pronounce it to make her happy. Shorshie she is.
And Shorshie is a mystery to me. She has no tail, no fur. She wears strange leathers and walks the dangerous hunting lands with no weapons. She’s weak and soft and has no khui, and she does not speak a word of proper language.
It makes no sense. How can Shorshie be here? Every creature has a khui. My people, the sa-khui, are the only intelligent people in the world. There are metlaks, but they are covered in hair and no smarter than rocks. They have not yet mastered fire.
Shorshie is smart. She doesn’t flinch away from the fire like a metlak. She recognizes it. And she is wearing cured leather. Her boots are finer than any I have seen. Shorshie has come from a people from somewhere.
But where? I can’t ask her. We can barely communicate.
And then it occurs to me that . . . she is not resonating. She doesn’t feel what I do, because she has no khui. Maybe she never has.
I’m hit with a sense of loss so strong it makes me bare my teeth. This . . . this cannot happen. How is it that she cannot resonate to me? That we are not connected? It is as if I have found my other half after so long…and she is dead to me. The thought chokes me. To lack a khui is a death sentence. To see Shorshie so vibrant and so doomed makes my soul ache.
But no. She is my mate. My other half. I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep her.
GEORGIE
He’s got fire. That’s a big plus in my book. I rub my hands close to the flames and bask in its warmth. It’s driving away the chill from the outside. The wind is whistling through the door flap, and I can see it’s getting dark outside, but I’m decently warm in this cave as long as I’m near the fire. Guiltily, I think of Liz and Kira and the others. Surely they can stay warm by huddling together, can’t they?
I look up as Vektal begins to pace in the small cave. He looks troubled, and that makes me feel edgy. It’s like I’ve done something wrong, and I’ve no clue what. He keeps purring at me, so I thought he was happy? But I guess not.
My stomach growls, and I press a hand to it. Time for a seaweed bar. I check the pockets of my stolen jumpsuit, but I don’t find anything and begin to panic. Now I’ve lost my food and my weapon. The only things I’ve got left are the boots that pinch my feet and the jumpsuit. Man, I am shitty at this exploring thing. Ugh.
He moves and kneels next to me, and I instinctively shrink back. I give Vektal a wary look. His mouth felt good on me a short time ago, but I know what he wants and I’m leery of him standing too close.
But he only gestures at my stomach. “Kuuuusk?” There are a wealth of tones in that word that I won’t be able to emulate. It’s like he’s doing some weird vibrating thing in the back of his throat.
“Hungry,” I say to him and pat my stomach. Then I mime eating.
He points at my teeth and asks another question. Right. Something about them bothers him. I bare them to show him they’re fine, and he bares his own in response to me.
Fangs. Of course he’s got fangs. His canines are three times the size of mine, and they look brutal. No wonder he’s mystified by my short, blunt teeth. “Hope those are for chewing vegetables,” I tell him brightly.
He pulls off a fur cape and boy, am I glad to see that it’s clothing and not part of him. I can handle the horns, I think. But I’m glad that the shaggy fur isn’t his. Looking at him again, I see that a lot of his bulk might be clothing. That’s good. There’s no disguising that he’s seven feet tall, though.
I watch as he undresses, wary. “I hope you didn’t mistake my stomach growling for nookie-time.”
The fur cape goes to the floor of the cave, and my eyes open wide at the sight of his clothing underneath. I think it’s leather, and it’s all a similar soft bluish-gray shade that makes me think of a cloudy day. It also doesn’t look very warm. His arms are bare, and his chest is covered by a vest that seems to be made entirely of pockets and laces. It holds a few wicked-looking bone knives strapped to his chest. He’s got a lot of flesh exposed despite the blizzard raging outside, and I wonder just how warm that stupid cape is.