Chapter 21

chapter 21

ELLE

When I woke up in the morning I was alone, but also well-rested in a way I hadn't felt like in months.

Maybe the dream orgasms had done me good.

Or . . . being sung to sleep like a kraken baby.

I groaned at myself, and wasn't entirely sure how I was going to look Ceph in the eyes today, just as I was struck with an entirely different kind of horror.

Why had he sung me a lullaby? What if Cepharius had a wife and a family? Oh God. How inappropriate was I being? He was just here to do a job, whereas I was using this trip as Elle's Avoiding-Real-Life-and-Doing-Research Extravaganza, with a dash of Fucking Horny.

Get it together, Elle. English tea sets!

I managed to tamp everything down, eat breakfast, and then get back to the dock—and Cepharius was waiting for me the moment I walked through to the water's other side.

"Good morning, Elle." I couldn't see him, but I didn't need to—I felt his mind near mine.

"Good morning, Cepharius," I said back cheerfully, following my helmet's map. I could still see some of my footprints from the day before—while the silt's rain here was never ending, it wasn't always fast.

"Did you sleep well?" he inquired.

I reached up to bashfully tuck my hair back—and wound up touching my helmet with my suit-gloved fingers. "Uh, yeah, thanks," I said, feeling sheepish. "So do you, uh, sing that song a lot?"

It seemed like he pondered before responding. "Once upon a time, yes."

"Oh," I said, as my stomach sank.

His children were grown.

Oh God, Elle.

You are a perverted idiot, dreaming about somebody's dad.

Small white dogs!

"So what's it like being a kraken?" I went on, rather than ask him what I really wanted to know. I felt him laugh in response.

"Just ask already, Elle of the Air. It will be easier, rather than your emotions taunting me."

"Taunting you? Like how?"

"Right now you're curious. And that makes me curious why you're curious, and we could go round and round, or you could just speak your thoughts plainly."

I closed my eyes inside my helmet, but I didn't stop walking. "Do you have a family?"

The space between us—what he called our 'qa—ran cold. My eyes snapped open and scanned the helmet's readouts quickly, trying to tell if my heating line was pinched, before I realized the chill was definitely coming from him.

"I . . . did," he told me slowly.

And I knew all about things that were intentionally past tense. It felt awkward to just leave it there, though.

"Did you want to talk about it?" I asked him.

There was another long pause. "I am not ready to. I am sorry."

"Don't be," I said, shaking my head quickly. I knew better than to pry. "I shouldn't have asked. "

We reached the place where the helmet told me to turn in silence—only the rock wasn't there.

I looked around for it. "What happened?" I wondered aloud.

"I moved it for you," Cepharius explained, from his spot beside and behind me.

"Diver?" Marcus asked, still listening in, because I hadn't crossed into no man's land yet.

"I'm fine," I said aloud, and then tried to feel for Cepharius in the deep. "How? Why?"

"It wasn't as solid as it seemed. And as for why—because it was in the way. You now have several more lengths of reach from your cable, and I don't have to worry about it rubbing against it anymore."

I knew krakens were obscenely strong, but?—

"What happened to that rock, diver?" Marcus asked, finally registering what my camera was still transmitting.

"It wrestled a kraken and lost. Ceph—" I began—but then he picked me up and started jetting us both forward at speed. I screamed without thinking, which had both Marcus and Donna in my ear—I managed to tell them I was okay, right before the system cut us off, and I heard the intercom go dark.

"What was that for?" I yelled at him, twisting into his broad chest, which was now a dark shade of green. The multiple rows of pinkie-thick tentacles that lined his chin were the same color, and they streamed just like hair would, except for the way that their tips were curiously grasping.

"I would rather you not tell anyone else much about me," he said, setting me down again at the base of the wall. "Not even my name."

"Why not?" I asked, looking back the way we'd come with confusion. "They're going to notice a piece of the terrain is missing, Ceph."

"Consider it a favor to me," he said, lowering himself so that we were even.

I couldn't read anything from his face, but his bearing said he was ready for action. "You think you're here...to guard me from them?" I looked around, as if there could be anyone else. "If they wanted me dead, all they would have to do is snip the end of this cable!"

"Don't remind me," he snapped, and his color flashed as black as the sea around him, before it warmed again. "Of course I know that—but the less they know about me, the stronger I am."

Which possibly explained why he didn't want to share anything about his life with me. "Oh. So that's how it works then," I said with sarcasm. "Got it."

I reassembled myself and started pacing the bottom of the wall, looking for the rock I'd measured my scanning distance with last time. I found it, turned my cameras on, then I felt his presence behind me like a weight, until he spoke up on our 'qa.

"My wife and child died. He was still unhatched—but I sung to him through his egg sac."

I heard his words and a moment later his raw pain at their loss hit me like a wave. I fell to my knees beneath it, putting a hand against the wall to stop me from falling all the way over—and after I did, the colors of the nearest symbols flashed, and kept flashing, for as far around as I could see.

"Elle!" Cepharius shouted, sounding panicked, picking me up again.

This time I didn't fight it, I let him cradle me.

"I didn't mean to overwhelm you—" he started to apologize.

"Don't," I said, shaking my head. "It's okay. I asked." Because we shared his 'qa, I could feel his feelings reverberate, and it was like I was experiencing them myself. I was wracked with agony on his behalf, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, sobbing helplessly inside my helmet, as he tried to soothe me through my suit.

"I am sorry, Elle of the Air—I thought I could tell you without emotion."

"It's okay," I said again, sniffling hard .

"It seems that part of me will be forever broken," he thought, and bowed his head to mine.

I nodded fiercely. "The best part. I know." I felt my throat squeeze again, but this time at the thought of Lena. "Can...I?" I asked him, on the verge of sharing everything about her anyways, unable to stop all the sorrow and despair that was burbling up.

"Of course," he said, so I let it all spill out. The good, the bad, how we pretended we were going to be each other's dates to prom so our folks wouldn't find out we were dating the Nicholas twins, how she was maid of honor at my wedding, how she brought me my first publication to sign like I was Stephen King—everything, up until she was in the ground.

"Oh, little pearl," Ceph breathed when I was finished. "I am so very sorry for you."

"I know," I whispered, because I could feel it, radiating off of him. I tucked my head against his chest, breathing roughly.

There was no way for me to wipe my nose inside my suit. I was just going to have to spend the next six to eight hours being disgusting.

At least he didn't show any signs of setting me down.

"I guess this is why krakens don't want to bond with humans, huh?" I said, after I'd regathered myself, giving him a sad smile through my helmet.

"I started things, if you recall," he said.

I was still clinging to him. I knew it was inappropriate, and foolish, but fuck it, it felt right.

"Now that your cable has more reach, let me show you more," he said, and I got the impression we were going up. "These are the symbols I told you about yesterday," he said, and moved me so that I was shining a light on them.

I was already thinking ten steps ahead, worried about how I was going to edit the parts where I'd been sobbing off of the suit's camera feed, but then the top of the structure came into view.

I looked around, as far as the lights on my helmet showed. The structure didn't have true corners, in fact, where the two planes of metal met were sloped and smooth.

And the ridges Ceph had destroyed had been dirt, not rock like I'd assumed...

"Oh fuck," I whispered sharply.

"Elle? What are you thinking?"

"We need to go down. Now," I said, already wriggling in his arms. It only made him hold me tighter, which in any other circumstance I might've enjoyed, but not now.

"Why?" he asked, already lowering us.

"Because—I need to pace."