Bri lies next to me and inches her way closer until our bodies are touching shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, all the way down our legs.
“You give good hugs,” she says without looking at me.
“Not too bad for a first-timer?” I ask.
“That was your first hug?” Surprised, she jerks her head toward me.
“Yeah.” I don’t dare look over at her. There was never a person to hug. And now, I can’t imagine sharing a hug with anyone else.
FORTY-TWO
Bri
Last night was a harsh dose of reality. We aren’t out of the woods yet. I’m getting really tired of this place trying to kill me.
I awkwardly climb out of the half-buried tent and take in the aftermath of the storm. The sky is hazy yet calm. Fine particles float in the air looking for a place to settle. I can’t be sure, but the dunes seem steeper this morning. While we slept, the desert rearranged itself around us.
Daisy is gone. I hope she made it out of here before the storm got bad. It’s a miracle the tent didn’t blow away with us in it. The only thing that kept me from totally losing it was Tai. I stayed tucked into his side the entire night. Occasionally, he ran fingers up and down my arms to comfort me.
“So, what do you think?” I ask Tai, who’s sitting on the sand, facing the sunrise.
“You want the good news or the bad news?” he asks.
“You pick.”
“If we can’t find the Boraei, we are going to be here for a long, long, long, long time,” he says.
We are both tired and beaten down. Hopefully the good news will perk us up.
“And what’s the good news?” I say and tug on the tent, pulling it out of the sand.
“Thatwasthe good news.”
If that was the good news, I do not want to know the bad news.
Tai stands and helps me break down the tent while I process our dire situation. There has to be something we aren’t thinking of. Some obvious thing staring us in the face.
“Aren’t you one of those guys?” I ask.
“What guys?”
“Yeah, you know. A handy guy.”
“Handy?” his voice goes up in pitch, and he quirks his head at me.
“Not like that! Handy, as in survival skills. You go into the desert with a roll of tape and a multi-tool and you build a spaceship.”
“I don’t have any tape,” he says, totally missing the point.
“Never mind.” I kick at a rock poking out of the sand, and it moves. That’s no rock. It’s Daisy’s hoof! I jump back, giving her space as she pushes her way up. Daisy emerges grunting and shaking off the extra sand.
“Daisy! You made it! I was so worried, girl!” I wrap my arms around her thick neck and pepper her with kisses, getting a mouthful of sand and fur. I can’t believe she buried herself next to us and didn’t run off.
“You are the best h’axom in the whole universe!” I coo at her in full baby-talk mode.
She gives one last massive shake, flinging sand everywhere. It makes me realize her saddle is gone, along with my pack. It was strapped to her last night when we fell off. All we have left is Tai’s backpack and the dwindling supplies we took from the brethren.
Tai must know what I’m thinking because he comes up behindme and wraps his arms around my shoulders. “We’re going to be okay. We’re both too stubborn to quit.”
