I don’t know how bad his injuries were from the hailstorm, so I don’t know if he had more medicine or not, or if that’s even a thing, because it could be one size fits all with the powder medicine.
But I can hope he’s as out of it as Mika is.
A clammer draws in my gaze.
Mika fumbles with the boots, now off her feet again.
Oh.
She put her boots on the wrong feet.
Now, she’s swapping them over.
She sways with the motion, her face slack, eyelids heavy. But she speaks, and her voice is a stifled yawn sheathed in razors, “Nice gaol.”
I watch as she shoves her sock-clad foot into a boot, then sighs with a bout of relief.
She adds, “More nice than my gaol.”
She moves for the next boot.
It takes my sluggish brain a second.
Gaol, the old word for jail.
“This is nicer than the jails where you’re from?”
Her nod is lethargic.
She manages to get the next boot on, but her struggle isn’t over yet—because she still has her laces to tie up.
She doesn’t elaborate, and I’m left with images of dungeons and damp walls and mould and dripping water, and unrelenting darkness.
Mika slowly weaves and un-weaves her laces. She doesn’t look at me as she asks, “How? How human shoot Samick?”
“The man in the showers? He didn’t shoot Samick, he just shotatus.”
Blades swerve to me. Eyes as hollow as glass.
Her mind and body might be bogged down, but the blue of her eyes are sharper than ever.
“Samick hear,” she says, and the suspicion darkens her face. “Samick…feel.”
The laces drop as she lifts her hands and runs them over the silhouette of her hunched-over body.
I tug the blankets up to my chin. “I don’t know what you’re saying to me.”
Also, shut up.
I prefer when you’re unconscious.
“Samick feel the man,” she says, and there’s a faint sigh sheathing her tone, an edge of annoyance. “Man not shoot.”
Heartbeats pass.
Then…
I get it.
