“Where is Kes?”
Her already red face flushed darker and she covered her eyes with her hands.
“He’s bullying everyone out of their canned fruit.It’s so embarrassing.I was craving pineapple for one week and now he has so much fruit cocktail stacked up around our bed, I’m worried we’ll die in an avalanche in our sleep.”
I filled the last jug and waited until we were alone.
“I have a favor to ask you,” I started, my eyes falling to her round belly.She’d started wearing shirts that stopped at her ribs and I marveled as I watched the baby inside push against her skin.None of us had seen an infant in years, decades for some.Now we all could watch as an unborn turoch was stretching his limbs and preparing to enter the world.
Escaping the sytos and finding a home on Earth had been a miracle, but I knew I wasn’t alone in feeling that Amy’s baby would be an event we all remembered for the rest of our lives.We were truly building a future on this strange planet, one filled with all the possibilities we thought lost to us.
“You want to feel him?”she asked.
My eyes darted to her face.I did, but laying hands on someone else’s mate seemed a step too far.
Amy rolled her eyes and grabbed my hand, laying it over the top of her belly and pressing down until I felt a tiny kick hit my palm.
“None of you can hide how much you want to feel him, I think it's cute.”
Momentarily distracted, I let myself imagine a tiny turoch roaming around our camp, the small hooves I felt hitting my hand pounding over the hot ground as he learned our ways.
“You wanted help with something?”she reminded me.
“Oh,” I pulled my hand away.“Maybe I should ask Hope-”
“Please,” Amy stopped me.“Please give me a project, no one lets me do anything and I’m bored out of my mind.”
I grinned at her.“I found my mate.”
7 Jessa
Ibit off a chunk ofmy lunch, another protein bar.I’d started the apocalypse with six flavors.But comfort eating and blind optimism had prompted me to eat through my stash of the best flavor in the first month and I was left with birthday cake (gag), peanut butter(eh) and the best of the bad, mint chocolate chip.
I missed the matcha flavored bars like an old friend.
The dry, vaguely toothpaste tasting bar in my hand was a chore to eat, but I had literally no other food, so I was doing my best to pretend it was a turkey sub.Even my Olympic level delusion skills couldn’t make it more appealing.
