I huff a misty breath before I march for the pew.
I make quick work of it, if such a thing can be done. To get the oil all over, I need to strip down to my underwear.
I rip at my laces, then kick my boots off first. Once they are tumbling over the grass, I whip off my rain jacket and let it fall to the earth—and I’m quick to follow it, drop down onto my bum, before I wrestle off the rest of my clothes against the growing chill.
Beside me, the cold one doesn’t look along his chain-link shoulder at me. He sorts the mess of his satchel, organising things, refolding leathers and packing them away, then taking out a flimsy canvas bag, the sort clothing stores used to sell to replace paper and plastic bags, a whole lifetime ago.
I watch him out the corner of my eye as I wipe myself over with the cloth first, then I swap it for the oil.
My hands run the oil up and down my legs, along the curve of my bum, and I keep my narrowed stare on him the whole time.
The oil settles into my skin like a moisturiser, a welcome feeling that I greedily glide all over my body, every part that I can reach.
But then comeshispart.
In the weeks that I’ve been tethered to him, the cold warrior has swiped the oil down my spine, the exact centre I can’t reachon my own. He hasn’t been kind about it, either. It’s always like a strike down my back that stumbles me.
So I stay sitting as I narrow my eyes on him.
“My back.” It’s all I say.
It’s all I need to say before he’s turning for me.
His pale fingers dip into the jar, then lure out a glistening glob of the oil, and it dangles like egg whites.
Crouched, he grabs the rain jacket I’m sat on—and tugs it. I’m dragged that bit closer, angled around to face the darkness.
His fingertips press into my spine, right between my shoulders.
I cringe against his touch, like every other time, and feel the glide run down my spine.
A tremble runs through me.
Then, behind me, an icy breath tickling down at the curve of my ear—
“Many freckles...” His murmur is soft, but distant as though he’s talking to himself, thinking aloud, and he adds, “for one not a kuri.”
My hands tighten on the slick skin of my knees.
The pressure of his fingertips ends at the dip of my spine, right at the waistband of my underwear. He pauses, adding a dent of pressure that I steel against.
The word is an echoing whisper in my mind.
Kuri.
It parrots over and over, even as the cold touch of his fingertips leave my spine, and I’m quick to scramble back into my clothes.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard it.
The guard ordered me to goin with the kuris.
And Mika—
I chide myself with a swift rattle of the head.
Glass.
Glass mentioned that word, too.
