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Kate laughed. “If I was camping, I’d at least have hot coffee.”
“Well…” he paused as if seriously thinking about camping. “We have lanterns and portable toilets. That’s like camping.”
She snorted a laugh. “I can’t argue with that. But first I had my period—I mean that’s just nature, so it’s not normally gross, but I want a shower. And I want to shave my legs and armpits. If we were camping there’d be a shower.”
“We might not smell clean, but you’re still beautiful to me.”
“Ahhh… you always know just what to say.” She kissed him and ran her fingers through his beard.
“If you can handle this thick beard I’ve got going on, then the hair on your body is not going to bother me.”
As fun as teasing had been, Isaac thought their state of cleanliness was the least of their worries. Even with rationing their food, they had eaten the last of it yesterday. He’d read somewhere once that the human body could survive without food for about three weeks, sometimes a month. But that depended on the person.
Kate hadn’t been eating much before they lost their magic, and he worried she wouldn’t last even two weeks without food. The thought of losing her was more than he could bear to contemplate. The fear was a living, breathing entity that beat inside him, louder than his heartbeat.
He knew a body could only survive without water for a few days at most. Luckily, they still had water, but the thought of running out had worsened Isaac’s obsession with time and knowing the date. Checking the date had advanced from an obsession to a compulsion. Each time he woke, he looked at the clock to see if another day had passed.
December twenty-sixth. That was his new compulsion. December twenty-sixth. He’d taken to repeating the date again and again in his mind. That day would signal eleven days without food. If they were rescued before then he believed Kate would have a chance.
As he lay in the near-dark huddled next to Kate, he kept his arms around her and one hand on her chest. He needed to feel the rise and fall of her breaths for his own peace of mind. They only use one lantern at a time now. The battery in one had died, leaving them with only two. They kept the setting on low, which allowed it to emit only a dim light, but Isaac wanted to conserve the battery. The chargers were almost drained, but they had them just in case.
When Kate stirred sometime later, she rolled onto her back. “Hey, my handsome tattooed lumberjack.”
She’d started calling him a lumberjack a few days before. They had a small mirror Kate had conjured early on, but he didn’t bother to look at himself. He figured he looked more like a scruffy homeless person than a hulking lumberjack, but if teasing him distracted her, she could call him anything she liked.
Rolling back a bit to reach beside the bed, he grabbed a bottle of water and passed it to her. “Here, have some water.”
She took the bottle and pushed up to a sitting position, but she didn’t drink. “Are you sure we have enough?”
“We’re fine. Please drink.”
When she’d drunk almost the entire bottle, he finished off what was left and put the bottle back on the floor.
They snuggled back under the covers, using them and their body heat to get keep warm. The temperature in the room seemed to drop a little more each day. Going to the toilet now felt just like the camping adventure he tried to convince Kate to think of. That is, if they were camping in winter.
“Is it still the same day?” Kate asked in a whisper.
“Yes, still December sixteenth.”
Kate palmed his cheek as their gazes met. “I love you, Isaac.”
“I love you too, Turquoise.” She told him a dozen times a day that she loved him, and he always said it back. He did love her, more than he ever thought possible, but he understood why she was telling him so often now. They both feared that one time they would say it and it would be the last time they had a chance.
He kissed her softly on the lips and she kissed him back, her hand moving around his neck. When they’d first lost their magic, she worried that her breath wasn’t minty-fresh anymore. After he finally convinced her that it didn’t matter because nothing on them was minty-fresh, she relaxed into his kisses again.
“I want to make love to you, Kate, my beautiful Turquoise.”
She chuckled softly against his lips. “You’re getting cornier every day.”
Then she pulled back and her expression sobered. “We ran out of condoms… I could get pregnant.”
He had to swallow to make sure he could get the words out against the tightness threatening to constrict his throat. “I’d be honored to make a baby with you, Kate. I love you with everything that I am. And if we made a baby, I would love them equally as much.”
Kate’s eyes became glassy, and she only nodded before she pulled him to her. His lips glided over hers before he deepened the kiss, but neither of them rushed. They had the time to savor each other.
Talking about making a baby was emotional, but it was what they didn’t say that was overwhelming.
It was likely that if they did become pregnant, they would both die before the baby ever had a chance.
