Font Size:  

“Well, this is looking cozy.” Dana leans against the wall of the cave, having just swept it clear of spider webs.

Suddenly I have trouble meeting her eyes. It seems like a fool’s errand, trying to make a cave into something liveable. It’s certainly much less than she deserves.

“I just wanted to make it a little more comfortable,” I finally say.

Dana looks at me strangely for a moment. “Thanks.”

It’s not like her to be without words, and me to stammer on, but here we are. “Not that we’re going to be here much longer. I just thought…with the bugs…it might be better if we ate and slept off the ground.”

“Oh.”

Is she about to cry?

What the hell did I do wrong? “We don’t need to, if you don’t—”

“Sorry.” She doesn’t cry in the end, she just laughs as she shakes her head. “Sorry, I just…it’s very kind of you to worry about me like this. I never expected a cave to feel this nice. All we need to finish it off is a nice library. Maybe some pictures on the wall.”

In a fit of inspiration, I search through my pack and produce a small, thin book. “I hope you like mysteries.”

Dana makes grabby hands and I laugh. “I didn’t know you read Mary Rian! You know she was a famous author before you orcs took over.”

“Yes, Vhala droned on about her at length. You know she’s suspected of killing her third husband.”

“No.” Dana looks at the picture of the innocent-looking women wearing thick, round glasses on the back of the cover. “But I believe it. She was a little too good at planning the crimes out in these. Gods, it’s so strange, isn’t it, reading about Earth before all this happened?”

Her arm sweeps out to include me, and I shift uncomfortably on the balls of my feet.

“I used to read and just imagine what life used to be like, with airplanes and…and huge government infrastructure, and humans in charge.” She shoots me a look. “Not that we did a great job of things, but it’s still something so difficult to believe.”

“I like reading them too,” I admit. “Reading from a human’s point of view, it’s easy to see that we’re not so different as some orcs would like to believe.”

That earns me a smile.

“Well. I’m filthy, and I’d like to go bathe in the stream before it gets too dark. Are you coming?”

I nod.

I turn my back as she changes, watching the clothing we washed this morning drying along a makeshift clothesline I fashioned out of vines. I swallow hard as I hear her step out of her dirty clothes and into the stream.

“So, besides reading, what do you like to do?”

“Uh…”

“For fun,” she clarifies. “Like sparring in the arena, or hunting, or—”

“I like to paint.” The words fall out of my mouth before I can keep them to myself. Painting isn’t exactly a typical orc pastime. There’s a reason she led with hunting and sparring. “I mean, I like fighting. Or, I like winning, at least. But painting…”

I don’t have the words for it. Maybe that’s why I like painting so much. I don’t need the words when I can create the picture from my mind. Nothing gets lost in translation the way words can.

“Are you good at it?”

“Of course I’m good at it. Why would I bother with it if I was terrible?”

Unbothered by my slightly snappy tone, Dana just chirps back, “I don’t know. I’m awful at singing, and I sing all the time. You don’t have to be brilliant at something to enjoy it.”

“I haven’t heard you sing once since I met you.”

And that’s a mistake, because she sings terribly for the rest of her bath, and then into mine. She doesn’t stop her unholy yodeling until I step out of the stream, water dripping down my body, to pull clean clothes from the line.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com