She takes the food away when I can’t eat any more, chattering back and forth with Oljin too fast for me to pick up onanything, even though I’m desperate for more words. I strain to understand them, repeating back any scrap I can tease out.
I wonder what the relationship is between them. They clearly aren’t a couple, but they’re bickering like they’re close. Mother-son, maybe?
As fast as she left, Saana returns. Another exchange, and Oljin puts a hand on my arm, asks a question, then says, “Yes?”
I shake my head, and it sloshes into a swamp of dizziness. “I’m sorry. I can’t understand you.”
Saana sighs, clearly disappointed in my answer. Oljin says something sharp in my defense. They argue. My head throbs. I hate that they’re fighting over me. They’re both clearly trying really hard to help me, so I should trust them.
“Yes,” I blurt out. “Oljin yes.”
Oljin lets out a relieved breath, hesitates, then scoops me up in his arms. My stomach bottoms out in exhilaration like I’m on a rollercoaster, and I give a giddy squeal. Saana laughs and say something that I’mpositiveis “I told you so,” and Oljin’s shoulders shake as he laughs.
He carries me outside briefly, where the bright sun and green glow of the landscape around us makes me squint, then into another structure. Inside, the air is warm and steamy, letting me know it’s probably some kind of bathing area.
He sets me down on the edge of a rocky, heated pool, letting my feet slide into the warm water. It feels incredible. I haven’t had a bath in water since I left Earth. The aliens who kept me would occasionally put me inside a humming box, and I’d come out clean, but I neverfeltclean.
I reach down and swish my fingers through it, relishing the sensation of the water moving around my head, the gentlesteam kissing at my skin. There’s a soft noise behind me of fabric hitting the floor, and then a muted splash as Oljin enters the water.
He wades toward me, gesturing. He wants me to get into the pool with him. Then he turns his back.Oh.He wants me toget undressedand then get in the water.
I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before this exact second, but of course he has to bathe with me. I can’t support my own weight. I can’t get in and out of the water without someone lifting me. I doubt I have the energy to wash my own hair. And that means...he’sgoing to do it.
This must have been what he and Saana were arguing about, who was going to take a bath with me, and I pickedhim. I should ask him to get her instead. But...I don’t want to.
My fingers feel numb as I fumble my way out of my clothes. My cheeks heat up, thinking of what he’ll see when he turns around. Ribs you can count, deflated breasts, matted hair. Something not me at all. Normally, I have broad hips and a riot of curls on my head. Normally, I have a sunburn peeling on my nose and pale lines where the strings of my bikini bottoms cut across my hips.
I want him to like what he sees. I want him to likeme, not this bony shadow of me.
“Yes?” he asks.
I cover my breasts with my arm and sigh. There’s nothing I can do about it. “Yes.”
He turns around. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask questions or act weird. He just lifts me very tenderly from the edge of the pool and places me in the water against the side where some rocks in the bottom form a seat.
He can probably still see my body in the water, but at least it feels covered while it’s immersed in the bath, so my self-consciousness soon dissolves. My bones ache less now that my limbs are supported by the water. The soreness I’ve been feeling is probably the effect of gravity after so long in space. While there was some kind of gravity on the ship, I don’t think it was the same as this. It was more like the film footage of the men on the moon, bounding around in their padded suits.
I needed this. Needed someone to carry me for a minute.
“Thank you,” I say, and Oljin says it back. Someday I’ll figure out how to make him understand what it means. Gratitude postponed, I give in to enjoyment, tipping my head back and letting my lids fall shut since I can’t see much with them open, anyway.
Shemí lal,eyes closed.Shemí vasa, eyes open. It’s all the same. It works better to feel, to smell. To listen.
A scrape against the stone. A sweet, honeylike scent suffusing the steamy air. The sound of skin slicking against skin. He’s washing himself, and I have to push my thoughts away from what that must look like. I know how big his hands are. How huge and hard his shoulders are, how huge and hard his...
Never mind. I feel my way along the edge of the pool and locate the dish of sticky soap he used. I wash whatever I can, self-conscious about how close we are, only a couple of feet apart. He’s trustworthy, I remind myself. He’ll keep me safe. I hate that I’m trembling.
Like he knows I need something to distract me, Oljin taps the dish. “Naffa,” he says.Soap.
I repeat it, and then he makes an approving sound. With slow-moving hands, he tugs a lock of my hair that’s swirling in the water. “Til.”
I file that word away, too, just in time to understand when he asks, “Soap hair cleaning Oljin yes?” There are other words in there, too, but those are the ones I can catch with my limited vocabulary.
Oh.He wants to wash my hair.
It’s somehow more intimate than being naked in the bath together, but when he holds out his hand...I take it. Let him pull me into his lap where he cradles me in in one arm and uses the other to cup water over my hair.
It feels incredible. Not just the warm trickle over my scalp, but thekindness.
