The sound seemed to echo in my own head with an exaggerated slowness, like my thoughts were wading through honey. My eyelids fluttered, heavy and uncooperative. When I finally managed to open them, all I saw was darkness broken by silver light filtering through leaves overhead and moonlight dancing across branches.
Trees. Forest. Badlands.
Memory came rushing back all at once, sharp enough to make my stomach lurch. The voice that wasn’t Atlas, the powder exploding green across my face, hands lifting me. The panic asI watched the snap of something terrifying and lethal moving through the woods. But my mind was also whirling, finding it difficult to hold on to the details, the clear edges… like things were fuzzy. Jesus, was I drunk?!
I gasped and shifted my body, which responded sluggishly as semi-awareness snapped into place, and that was when arms tightened around me.
“You’re awake,” a deep voice said. Wow, just how deep was that voice… I didn’t know, but I would happily drown in it, that was for sure.
I groaned instead of answering, the sound dragging itself out of me as I stretched and my fingers curled into warm fabric beneath my hand. There was a scent there too, not gun oil, metal, and sweat like most men who lived on the base, but something more natural. Like rain on stone, like crushed herbs, like the air just before lightning cracked the world open. Something woodsy… not Woody, that was that cowboy from Toy Story… I wonder what happened with him and little Bo Peep… She most likely ran off with Buzz. Nowtherewas a toy… Jesus, focus, Alex!
“Who’s Buzz?” he asked, making me gasp in horror when I realized I had said all that aloud.
“Mmm, no one special… oh darn, now I feel bad… he was special to Andy.” It took immense effort for my eyes to shift up to see his face. One wearing a frown so deep it could have cracked his face… now that would be a shame.
“Would it?” he asked, making me realize I had just done it again, damn it.
“Well, you are pretty,” I replied, instead of trying to take the last five minutes of madness back. His eyes widened at this as if shocked before repeating the word.
“Pretty?”
“Yes, like flowers,” I replied, my voice coming out too high-pitched for the quiet around us.
“Like flowers?” he asked in disbelief.
“Don’t you like flowers?” I asked, but before he could answer, I asked, “Mmm, Did… did we move the floor?”
The arms around me went very still.
I blinked and looked up at him again, my vision swimming slightly, and all my eyes seemed to focus on was Theron’s jaw, strong and sharp in the moonlight. I forced them to move higher, and his face was angled downward as he looked at me with open disbelief. As though I had just spoken a language he did not believe mortals possessed.
“You should not be conscious, let alone speaking in riddles,” he said.
I frowned, the expression taking far more effort than it should have, like my face was a puzzle piece I had to fit into place.
“Well,” I replied thoughtfully, lifting my head an inch before letting it fall back against his chest, “I am… So… Surprise, yey me!”
For a heartbeat, he just stared at me. Then his brow creased, concern cutting through the remnants of fury I could still sense coiled tightly beneath his skin, fury held in check by something within him. He slowed to a stop, the forest quieting around us as if it, too, was listening for what I would say next. Or waiting to see what the King of the Badlands would do with the strange mortal in his arms.
“What did they give you?” he asked, his voice held a hint of concern. “What did you take?”
“Take? I don’t steal, I will have you know of good auth… oritity… that I am an honest person. You had fire surround me to tell you that, and by the way, F… U… Y, or is it I…? Anyway, that was mean and very, very scary. I don’t like fire until itis crackling nicely in a fireplace with stockings at Christmas. Hey, do you celebrate Christmas? I’m sorry, can you repeat the question?” I don’t know which part of all I said made him look at me like I had two heads, but he only responded to the last part.
“Did you take anything?”
I considered this question very seriously. There had been something green. Something glowy. Something…rude.I mean, who goes puff in a stranger’s face? Very rude.
“It was pretty,” I said slowly, lifting one hand and gesturing vaguely in the air between us, my fingers wobbling slightly as though I were conducting an orchestra only I could hear. “But not a mushroom I’d eat.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
I nodded solemnly.
“Green. Glowy. Like a fungus. But way meaner than any mushroom I ever saw, and I grew up playing Mario games.”
Something flashed across his face then, and he swore under his breath in a language I didn’t recognize. A string of words that sounded like stone striking stone.
