“Tell you what, why don’t we go to the seaside tomorrow morning? We could go on the train to Brighton and from there straight to one of the hospitals in London. You’ve never seen the sea and you should.”
I’d like that.
In bed that night, Kaden knew Joe was trying to soothe him, to make him feel good, but his mind was racing. When Joe made him feel as if he was being held, then finally, he slept.
10
Kaden picked up a copy of the Metro before they got on the train to Brighton. Joe felt Kaden’s anxiety rise when he read the article about the meteorite. The site had been identified and there was a picture of the Lixian building.
There’s nothing for them to find.
“That won’t stop people looking.”
Don’t worry.
“I suppose it will all die down.”
He hoped it did.Look out of the window.
Joe loved the train journey to Brighton in a way that felt almost overwhelming. It wasn’t just movement, it wasseeing. He made Kaden keep his gaze fixed to the window, silently narrating everything they passed. The blur of green fields. Animals grazing. Birds wheeling against the pale sky. Rows of crops stretching in careful lines across the land.
On his planet, travel had never been like this. Short distances meant flight, his own wings slicing through open air. Longer journeys happened inside sealed, windowless tubes, silent and efficient. You didn’t see landscapes. You didn’t see people. You simplyarrived. But this slow unfolding of the world felt miraculous.
If the train had been extraordinary, the sea was something else entirely. It blew his mind. He understood that expression now. He kept Kaden staring as the colours shifted endlessly, blue dissolving into green, then deepening into iron-grey. The wind lashed the surface of the water, whipping it into motion. Waves rose and curled, crashing against the shingle with a force that seemed almost violent, only to be dragged back again, hissing angrily, before surging forward once more.
The air tasted sharp. Alive. Gulls cried overhead, their voices slicing through the roar of the water.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
Wonderful.The word felt too small. He used it for so much.
Joe absorbed everything. He always did. Faces, voices, movements. He watched people, trying to understand the rhythm of being human. But most of all, he watched Kaden. He listened to him, felt him and adored him.
Kaden was the bravest individual he had ever known. Joe had given him no choice, that truth was painfully heavy, but Kaden hadadapted. He hadn’t broken. Sometimes he even laughed. Sometimes heenjoyedit.
Joe was in awe of him.
They walked along the promenade, back and forth, the sea always there beside them, vast and unknowable. On the other side, in an arcade, lights flashed and machines chimed. The contrast amused him.
“Want to go in?” Kaden asked.
Yes.
Joe couldn’t help himself. He sharpened Kaden’s reactions in a driving game, just a little, pushing him faster and faster until the machine erupted in bells.
“Did you help me?” Kaden sighed. “Don’t answer. I know you did.”
Kaden’s disappointment stung and Joe withdrew immediately, regret flooding through him. He hadn’t meant to take the experience away, only to share in it.
But Kaden didn’t stay upset. With the cascade of tokens he’d won, he bought sweets; sharp, sugary bursts that Joe found oddly addictive and a soft toy that folded in on itself, transforming from a blue ball into a penguin.
“I’ll call him Joe,” Kaden whispered.
Something inside Joe shifted and his hearts ached.
Fish and chips for lunch. Hot and salty, covered with vinegar and wrapped in paper translucent with grease. Kaden drank something fizzy from a can. The sensation exploded across Joe’s awareness and he gasped.
Kaden burped and they both laughed.
