I can hardly go exploring in the dark. The floor of the unexplored cave hasn’t been artificially smoothed, and I can easily imagine myself face-planting straight into a stalagmite before I’ve taken three steps beyond the circle of light.
Fuck.I’ve come too far to return to Killan’s house to search for a torch. Besides, it’s surely daytime, which means he’ll have found my note and know that I’ve run away. It would beextremely anticlimactic to get caught, and I don’t think I could run away a second time. That seems a little too selfish, even for me.
I squeeze my way back into the farm cave, hunting around for a possible solution. This cave is illuminated by a series of sconces mounted intermitted along the walls. There aren’t any wires as far as I can see; maybe they’re battery powered.
Retrieving my bag, I use it as an inefficient stepstool and pull one of the lights off the wall. It comes away easily enough, having been sitting in a metal bracket. Hopefully, the batteries are long-lasting because I can’t see an on/off switch to conserve power.
With a light, I’m able to explore the natural cave in all its fascinating details. I’ve got no idea if caves back on Earth are this cool; there aren’t exactly any caves in Sydney for me to have explored. So I take full advantage, counting stalagmites. Watching waterdrops clinging to the points of the stalactites. Playing with the dancing shadows cast by my light over the walls.
I wish it was enough to drive Killan from my mind, but the harder I try to suppress thoughts of him, the more they surface. I’m fighting against myself, and I’m losing spectacularly.
When I see a particularly interestingly shaped column, I find myself wondering what Killan would think of it. And when I study the layers of the rock, I accidentally start wanting to ask Killan about how they formed. If anyone’s going to be an expert on Ril II geology, it'll be him.
He’s as proud of this planet as I am of my bread.
That’s when I notice a narrow streak of pale crystal running through the ceiling, looking almost as if someone used a fine paintbrush and white paint to fill in one of the narrowest cracks in the stone.
I follow it into another natural cave, where it splits into two veins running parallel to each other. And then each of those lines split into even more lines until the back of the second cave looks like a topographical map. The stalactites are the mountains, and the veins of crystals are the rivers.
The pool of water is even smaller in this cave, as if the farther I move from the farm, the less water there is. The stalagmites and stalactites are smaller too, and the few columns are hardly thicker than my arm. It’s still a stunning cave, though, and I walk around as if in a trance, tripping on the uneven ground as I stare up at the ceiling, following the twisting, swirling rivers of crystal.
I wish I could touch it, but I’m not tall enough, not even when I stand on my duffle bag again, squashing all my food.
If this was Earth, I’d guess they were quartz veins. But this isn’t Earth, and the crystal could be absolutely anything. The possibilities are endless.
Which is kind of amazing when I think about it. How many Humans can claim to have visited an alien planet? Or explored alien caves and admired alien crystals?
Kissed an alien?
Automatically, I glance over my shoulder, for what feels like the hundredth time. But of course, Killan isn’t behind me. Even if he saw my note and decided to follow, he couldn’t have fit through the narrow tunnel I took from the farm cave to the natural caves. I’m all alone, exactly as I wished…
Killan
It takes me hardly any time to find where Lydia has gone. There are only a few places in the farm from which it is possible toreach the other caves, and she has found the first of these.
I do not need the datapad—currently tucked into the pocket of my boot—to keep track of my location. I have lived here since I was a youngling of seven Common years, and I know my way through the complex cave system as well as I know the pattern of my scales. Our nursery lakes were not chosen at random. My family conscientiously mapped the caves and meticulously surveyed which natural tunnels could be widened safely and which must be left alone. Sorin, Roan, and I played for hundreds of hours down here, watching our parents work and helping with what small tasks we could.
I strike the wall, the rock cutting into my palm. The last time I took this particular passage from the farm into the natural cave, I was considerably younger and significantly smaller. Now, I cannot fit.
So I take another, much longer route, intending to double back around.
Lydia cannot escape me.
Lydia
I’d naively thought it’d be a simple thing to remember my route through the caves. But with a realistic idea of how untamed the natural caves are comes an understanding that relying on memory alone will be too risky. If I get lost, I could die down here.
I’m stuck on that problem for a long time, and eventually I find the least lumpy section of floor and make a bed, using my duffle bag as a pillow. I can’t be sure it’s evening, but I’m hungryand tired like I would be at the end of the day, so I decide to trust my internal clock.
Of course, I dream of Killan again. He’s kissing me, and I’m writhing against him, desperate for so much more than his lips. He never talks in my dreams. Neither do I this time. Which is a shame. It would be so much easier to demand he fuck me if I could use my words.
I wake, my panties soaked and my body unsatisfied. I slip a hand between my legs, and when I close my eyes, I can almost recreate Dream Killan.Almost.But the ground is painfully lumpy, and a drop of water hits my cheek, making me jerk upright.
What the fuck am I doing? Even in my dreams, he’s the focus of my attention. Despite my reservations, despite my best efforts, and despite the force of my unbendingly stubborn personality, I’m obsessed with him.
I clamber shakily to my feet, my back and neck stiff after sleeping so uncomfortably. Then I change my clothes, desperate for a fresh pair of panties that won’t remind me of my wet dream every time I take a step.
And that’s when I realize I can create a trail of breadcrumbs with my clothes to keep from getting lost. I tie a T-shirt to a stalagmite, marking the exit from the second cave back into the first cave, and when I start my exploration of the third cave, I hook my soaked panties onto a stalactite, marking the exit back into the second cave.
