6
SHILOH
When I woke in total darkness, I had no idea where I was. I lay, my head heavy and my mouth tasting of metal, my brain too sluggish from sleep and the migraine to recall precisely what was happening.
I was curled on my side in the fetal position, blankets gone fuzzy and soft with wear and washing pulled all the way up to my nose. There was a slightly soapy, herbal scent clinging to them. It was mild and fresh and, thankfully, not overpowering. It didn’t seem to trigger any new waves of pain or nausea.
The bedding is clean.
Rivven.
The cowboy planet.
The second that I remembered where I was and what had led me to waking up in this unfamiliar, clean bed, was also the same moment I became aware of someone else in the room. A floorboard creaked at the side of the bed. And then there was another quiet sound, like something solid being carefully placed on the bedside table that, lying on my side as I was, was basically behind me.
“Hello?” I croaked into the darkness.
The darkness lit up. Like someone was shining a flashlight right in my face.Twoflashlights.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, yanking blankets over my face. “So bright!”
“Sorry!” came a rushed voice. A voice I recognized. “I did not mean to wake you! You have been quiet for so long, and the warden and his wife have been sleeping for a while now. I worried you’d be hungry, and…”
Carefully, I lowered the blanket. The room had gone back to the relief of utter blackness.
“There is water here from earlier. And I’ve just put a little plate with bread and some preserved fruit. Ta…” He hesitated. “The warden’s wife said that might be a meal you could tolerate.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. I didn’t feel too terrible at the moment. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I knew if I sat up too quickly, or carried on this conversation for too long, the migraine would come roaring back. But it was important that I thanked this disembodied voice for its thoughtfulness. “Rivven?”
“Yes?”
So this was Rivven, then.
“Thank you,” I said again, just above a whisper.
“Of course.” He’d said that before, too. Like it was inconceivable to him that he’d behave any differently towards me. That he’d offer anything besides generosity.
“I’ll leave you now,” he murmured. “Let you rest.”
I figured that would have been the last I heard from him for the time being. But a second later, there was the unmistakeable, wooden thud of him running into something. A wall, or maybe a piece of furniture. Then, the quiet hiss of, “Blast!”
“Are you alright?” I asked. Very slowly, I turned over, flipping my entire body in one stiff roll so I didn’t move myhead and neck too much on their own. “Did you bump into something? It’s hard to see in the dark!”
I wondered what happened to the lights he’d had a second ago.
“Oh, I can see in the dark just fine,” he replied. “But my eyes are closed.”
Uh…
“I mean, if you can see well in the dark…” Was the migraine making me stupid? I could not figure out what the heck he was talking about. “Why don’t you just open your eyes?”
“I am afraid I do not have a particularly good rein on them at the moment,” he said cryptically.
“Sorry,” I said with a tired sigh. “I’m not sure I know what that means.”
My own eyes were open now. I blinked and squinted, but it was pointless. I could see absolutely nothing in the room. Night must have fallen outside, because there wasn’t even the faintest glow of daylight coming in from behind whatever Rivven had covered the window with.
“I…I fear my eyes have gone rather rogue,” he said with a strained note in his voice, like he wasn’t too happy about this admission. Unbidden, the image of two alien eyeballs bouncing around the room, evading Rivven’s grasp, appeared in my mind. I held back a laugh for both our sakes. Laughter would make my head feel like it was going to pop right off my body right about now.
