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“We’ll have to make our own shelter,” he replied. He pointed and added, “We’ll head for that low spot over there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Dig.”
Louella glanced at his big hands and claws then at her much smaller hands with their short, flimsy nails.I’m not going to be much help at that.She skipped, hurrying so as not to be left behind as his ground-eating stride quickly covered the distance. Yas’kihn angled around a large dune to the lee side and decided upon a likely spot that Louella thought looked the same as any other. If he distinguished some criteria that made that particular spot better than any others nearby, he didn’t share them with her.
He handed her the heavy sack of their meager supplies. She held it while he got down on all fours and unsheathed his claws. Like a dog, he drove those claws into the sand and dug. Sand sprayed behind him as the hole quickly grew deeper and wider. Despite the tremendous expenditure of effort, he did not sweat. Louella ran a hand over her own arm and realized it was dry. Had she stopped sweating or was the hot air so dry that sweat evaporated almost immediately?
“How deep do you think the sand is?” Louella asked to distract her mind from the perils of anhidrosis.
“Doesn’t matter,” Yas’kihn replied from the deep hole he’d dug. Hot air rasped in and out of his lungs, and his entire bodyached. He held out his hand. “Hand me the sack.”
She did so and he set it at one end of the hole.
“Why didn’t you just sling me over your shoulder again?”
He gave her a close-mouthed smile, although it seemed weary. “I thought you would prefer to walk.”
Louella pursed her lips. “You tried to spare my pride.”
He glanced at the twilit sky and held out both hands. “Join me.”
As the temperature had dropped quickly when the sun set, Louella did not hesitate. She gave herself into his keeping. His arms trembled only slightly as he took the brunt of her weight and carefully lowered her to the floor of their coffin-sized hole. She hated that the size and shape of the hole reminded her of that.
“The emergency kit in the pod has a blanket we can use,” he said. “We’ll wrap it around our bodies tonight.”
She nodded, having no good argument against survival.
“Let’s eat first,” he said.
She nodded and glanced at the container of water with undisguised greed the general superior could not fail to notice.
“Just a sip,” he warned as he handed her the container.
Exercising a restraint Louella did not know she possessed, she took one mouthful of water. She let the precious liquid slosh over her tongue and savored it before swallowing. She noticed Yas’kihn did not even indulge in a drink.
“Aren’t you thirsty?” she asked as she took the small bar of compressed protein he handed her. She sniffed it; it smelled like cat food.
“I’m essentially a desert creature,” he said, running a hand over the scaled hide of his other arm, “evolved to subsist on little water.”
Louella tilted her head to one side as she pondered his response, then said, “That doesn’t answer my question.”
He favored her with one of those close-lipped smiles then said, “Yes, pretty spark, I am thirsty.”
“Then take a drink. After digging this hole, you need it.”
He shook his head. “No, I will survive without it. Tomorrow, I will drink.”
Louella decided it would do no good to argue, so she set the capped container aside and nibbled at the foul-tasting bar. When it was half gone, Jax took it from her and allowed her another sip of water. He popped the remainder of the bar into his mouth.
Louella looked into the night sky. Stars arranged in unfamiliar constellations twinkled overhead. Nervous, she began to babble.
“My little brother was an admirer of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He’ssosmart—my brother, I mean. Of course, Dr. Tyson’s a genius. He’s an astrophysicist. But my brother, Zerius, was really smart, too.” She sighed. “He managed to save up enough money to buy a used telescope and would climb on the roof to look at the stars, but there was too much light pollution for him to see much. The stars are so bright here. He would’ve loved this.”
Noticing her use of the past tense and her somber tone, Yas’kihn asked, “What happened to him?”
She sighed again. “He wanted money, and the fastest way for him to earn it without killing someone was to run drugs for the local gangs. He got caught. He’s in prison now, all those dreams of going to college on a scholarship are gone.”
