24. Oarus

24

OARUS

“Yvonne!” I call out over the deafening rumbling of the ground.

I let her walk too far ahead of me. I got too comfortable. I should be right by her side to protect her.

I must fix this mistake. I must get to her. I must protect her!

“Oarus?” Her voice somehow reaches my ears through all the chaos.

I try to move to her. But the cavern tunnel is shaking too violently. My feet can’t find solid footing. If we were in the water, I’d have her to safety by now. Damn this dry land.

I stumble forward and pick myself back up, just to stumble forward again. I’m not getting anywhere.

The earthquake doesn’t let up. The cavern shakes more and more violently. I’ve never felt anything like this before.

I stumble forward again. This time, I come face to face with an ill omen. The ground beneath us is starting to crack, which means the whole tunnel is primed to come down completely.

My concern is quickly proven correct. Just in front of Yvonne, a chunk of rock from above crashes down. The force shakes the ground more below us and the crack grows. Yvonne falls to the ground.

“Oarus!” she calls out again. “Help!”

More rocks fall from above. It looks like her path forward is blocked. Too many larger boulders have fallen into place.

“Yvonne!” I yell over the chaos. “Get to me!”

She clambers to her feet, but if the tunnel was shaking too much for me to stand still, her tiny human form doesn’t stand a chance.

Rocks and bits of stalactites start to rain down on me, too. The whole tunnel could cave in at any moment. I need to get to Yvonne and get her out of here. Nothing else matters.

Nothing.

I dodge bits of falling debris as I stumble closer and closer to Yvonne. But I’m not moving fast enough. The ground below me cracks more and more. And the ceiling above Yvonne is barely holding together. All the while, the earthquake continues to shake everything violently. I can hardly see straight.

Then the worst happens.

The ceiling above Yvonne gives way. Rocks start to fall down towards her. The last thing I see is the look of horror on her face. A single scream from her cuts through all the noise before it, too, gets drowned out.

I get blasted by dust and debris from the impact of the collapse. I’m knocked back, luckily just out of the way of more ceiling collapsing. My ears ring from the violent sound of rock against rock, crashing and smashing.

Then, the earthquake stops.

An eerie silence enters the cavern. All the chaos from a moment ago ends in an instant. Not even the sound of a pebble still falling echoes off the wall.

The silence is enraging.

I let out a guttural roar. Louder than I’ve ever roared before. It all just pours out of me.

It’s fueled by my anger. Anger at the earthquake. Anger at Yvonne’s past abusers that hurt her so. And anger at myself for getting into this situation.

My roar is so powerful that the tunnel shakes almost as much as during the earthquake. It risks further cave-ins, but I don’t give a fuck. The sound echoes down the tunnel.

I let out another powerful roar. This one releases all the fear in my body. I haven’t felt true fear like this since… I don’t even know.

But I do know that I failed her. I failed Yvonne. She was counting on me to protect her. But I got soft. Lazy. I should’ve never let her be anywhere but right at my side.

Laying here on my back is doing nothing. It’s helping no one. Especially not Yvonne. She needs me now more than ever.

I sit up and wipe the dust from my eyes. When my eyes clear, the reality sets in.

In front of me, where I last saw Yvonne, is completely caved in. Where she once was is all now rock and dust, packed so tightly that I can’t see through to the other side.

Yvonne has been completely swallowed up. The cavern has taken her completely and has left nothing behind for me. Damn these caves. We should’ve spent all day in the lair.

“No,” I mutter to myself. “I have not failed yet. Not while there is still a chance to save her.”

I leap to my feet and rush over the heap of rocks blocking my path. Frantically, I dig into the pile, tossing handfuls of sand and dirt aside.

“Yvonne!” I roar.

I listen for a response, even a small murmur. A sign that she is alive somewhere. But one doesn’t come.

“Yvonne!”

Still no response.

I scoop aside more dirt and small rocks. I need to get them out of the way first. It’ll give me access to the larger rocks and might make it easier for Yvonne to hear me or to be heard herself.

“Are you hurt? Are you stuck?”

With each call to her that goes unanswered, my hands move fast, moving more and more rock out of the way. I need to get to her fast.

It isn’t long before the rocks won’t budge. Even the smaller ones are packed in too tightly by the collapse.

“Please answer me!”

If she can hear my command, she does not follow it. I hear nothing but my own voice echoing down the tunnel behind me.

I give a boulder in the collapse one last big push. It doesn’t even budge.

This has never happened to me before. What the fuck is going on? Never has there been a rock too big to move, a place too hard to get to, a person I couldn’t reach.

Things like this don’t happen to me. I don’t face struggles like this. They don’t even reach me.

But I have to accept that this is not the way I’ll be reunited with her. My path to Yvonne has been cut off by the collapse. If she wasn’t crushed in the –

“No!” I cut myself off. I won’t think like that. “Yvonne! If you can hear me, I’ll find another way to you!”

A new rush of energy strikes me to my very core. It’s like nothing that’s ever hit me before. My body starts to shake worse than during the earthquake.

Images start to flash in my mind. Yvonne crushed to death beneath the rocks. Her legs pinned, slowly bleeding out. Lost in the dark, unable to find her way out. Starving to death. Suffocating to death. Some creature from the depths unleashed by the earthquake coming to tear into her.

My body shakes worse.

My feet start moving. I don’t know where I need to go. But back to the lair seems like as good of a place to start as any.

I push the recurring images out of my head. I must focus now more than ever.

When I reach the lair, it hardly looks like there was hardly an earthquake at all. Only a few things are toppled over, but it is overall untouched, and it enrages me more.

I rack my brain. How can I get to Yvonne? I know these tunnels better than anyone. There must be a way to get around the collapse to Yvonne. Some long forgotten, hardly used path. I have to find it in my memory somewhere.

But the longer and harder I search, the less likely it seems that I’ll find anything. And as that reality starts to set in, the images of her fate return to me.

My body stops shaking, but it’s replaced by a chill going down my spine. Yvonne could truly be already dead. And not just that, she could be dead with no way for me to reach her. I’ll never get to see her again. Not even to bury her, as humans tend to do with their dead.

Without warning, I start to feel the moisture on my face.

Fuck. Is the ceiling leaking? I never even considered the tunnels might end up flooding from the earthquake. And if the lair floods, it doesn’t even matter if I’ll be able to get to Yvonne alive. There won’t be a home to take her back to.

But I look up, and there are no cracks or leaks. Yet the moisture on my face continues. Then it strikes me. The moisture is coming from my face.

In all the chaos, I hadn’t even noticed my vision getting blurrier. I wipe my face, and my hand comes back slick with tears. I’m… I’m crying?

I’ve never done this before. I didn’t even know my species could. I’m crying… And I’m crying for her.

Fuck.

There is no hiding it. There is no denying it. It’s as clear now as the tears on my face.

I’m in love with Yvonne.

Is this what humans feel and call love? How do they survive this? Caring this strongly for another? It must be torture.

Does Yvonne feel this way too?

Does she feel it about me?

This ‘love’ thing is so new, but I can tell I’ll be destroyed if she doesn’t. I’ll be wishing I was crushed under those rocks. To have someone feel the way I do about me… I want to know what that’s like.

“Then get to fucking work,” I roar at myself. “Yvonne is still out there. She has to be. Sitting here crying won’t save her.”

With that, I sprint back into the tunnels. I’m not sure exactly how to get to Yvonne. But I have to trust I’ll find it along the way.

Yvonne is still alive. She’s waiting for me. I have to save her.