Elemental: Chapter Four, Part 2

The nights blended together in a comforting monotony. Drei seemed shocked I had adjusted so quickly to his sleep pattern. It allowed us to move along more quickly if we were awake at the same times, I had reasoned aloud. The truth was I had nothing to change; I hadn’t been sleeping at night unassisted for a long while.

When we came to cities, we generally used a taxi to cross, giving our bodies a rest from the endless hikes through hilly countryside. We never stayed in town; we just passed through. It might have seemed odd to the cab driver, but Drei knew each one we used. They knew his peculiarities and didn’t ask questions. A few did babble on about families and work when Drei casually prompted. The sound of their voices was pleasant after wordless nights between the two of us. I had a feeling Drei knew their nonsense comforted me. He smiled encouragingly at them in the rear view, commenting just enough to keep that chatter going.

Each morning when we stopped, Drei would disappear for half an hour or so—sometimes longer, sometimes shorter—and reappear with a few bags of camping gear. Sleeping bags, tents, a small camp stove, even non-perishable food and bottled water. It was further evidence he traveled this route often, and it was reassurance I was not his first tag-along. After we'd break camp in the evenings, he would leave for a short while again to return the goods to wherever they had been acquired.

Drei and I rarely spoke to each other. It seemed he always had questions and no way to ask them. I just couldn’t find words to express anything. When you’re numb, what is there to express?

“Why?” he asked at the close of one night as we settled camp.

I gazed at him over my shoulder, surprised at the seemingly random question. “What?”

He winced at my weak, cracked voice. Even I winced. Two weeks of disuse had left my voice scratchy and heinous. I grabbed a bottle of water and tried to clear my throat.

“Why did you change? You do not talk, rarely laugh, and seem more like a corpse than a person.” His pale eyes stared at me expectantly.

“I don’t know what you mean;” I turned away from him, searching for something I could do on the far side of our camp.

Drei walked up behind me, and I felt a hesitancy in his movements; he wanted to impulsively do something but fought against the cons of his actions. Though I prepared myself for an embrace or attack of sorts, none came. I turned to face his stoic form and hurt eyes. A haze of confusion swarmed around him, and now me; I wanted to swat it away or run, but I did neither.

“You do know,” he whispered. “Something changed; you are fragile and sad, silent, and—” His voice cracked, depriving me of the last word.

“And what?” I prompted quietly, feeling depression and ache seep past the wall of numbness. Wrapping my arms around me, I couldn’t stop myself thinking this wasn’t supposed to happen. I induced numbness to avoid feeling anything. I didn’t want to feel this melancholy, this emptiness caused by the loss of things I had come to resent. I may not have wanted them anymore, but they had been mine...

“Broken.” Drei breathed the word heavily, as if close to tears and the thought itself was unbearable for him.

I should have known I couldn’t hide it from him, but I wanted to forget it all, not relive it. Tears pressed at my eyes and breathing was considerably more difficult; my chest felt almost too tight. Drei caught me as I fell into him, an explosion of hyperventilated sobs postponing the conversation.

“Everything will be better,” he murmured into my hair, pulling me closer. His voice lulled from me all the horrors of the days before my departure and left me with a fulfilling sense of closure; my parents and the school were as far away in my mind as they physically were. The comfort I found in his arms and the luscious scent of flowers filling my nose made me feel safe. Combined, they seemed to promise nothing like that would ever happen again. Though I didn’t completely believe it, it helped.

Drei cupped a pale hand beneath my chin and lifted my shining face to his. Something in his amethyst eyes sparkled at me in a way I had never seen before. It frightened and thrilled me instantaneously.

“All better?”

My head shook. On the surface, I felt better about everything that had bothered me; deep down, I knew I was a long ways from a full recovery.

His fingers smoothed back some stray hairs from my ponytail as he smiled that comforting glow of his that made everything else seem petty. “It is a start,” he whispered, grasping some nuance in my weak smile I failed to realize I was relaying. “It is a start.”