Terah cursed his lack of agility as he struggled to get out. His body felt as wedged as his heart was in his throat. Panic and anger combined as he pushed and finally found himself stumbling in the rain. “Lindsey!” He had no idea where she’d been. Another bolt and immediate explosion fell. Ducking instinctively, he glanced all around, eyes dazzled by the brightness. He had to find her.
Momentary lightning within the cloud bank revealed the whiteness of a newly split tree. Hunched over, he scrambled in that direction. He found one of her shoes and scooped it up. She’d been here. Another flickering flash behind him revealed a body before the bang. Unsure if she was alive or not, he gathered her up and ran toward the rock pile. He couldn’t simply feed her in through the crevice—she might fall into the fire. He’d have to get in first and pull her down. His wet clothes snagged at him as more lightning struck. Frantically wriggling, he finally managed to scrape through. He felt outside for her hand. Landing on it, he pulled as gently as he could, until he could find her second hand.
Weighing urgency against necessity, he pulled until her head and shoulders were in, birthed by a rock mother. Shifting his grip to her armpits, he lifted and tugged. Like a newborn, her body followed his urging, falling on top of him. Terah moved her close to the fire and felt her wrist for a pulse. His cold fingers felt nothing. He put his ear to her chest. She was breathing. She began to moan.
Terah had no training in this. He wasn’t sure what to do. Her wet clothes couldn’t be helping, but he knew better than to remove them. He rummaged for he emergency blanket and wrapped it around her. He found his as well, adding another layer. Anxiously he sat, wondering what to do. Water? They both carried water bottles they filled whenever they could. Where in her pack did she keep it? He ransacked it. The crinkling of the blanket behind him informed him she was moving. A good sign. At last his fingers felt the bottle and he jerked it out. Whipping around he found her sitting, staring into the fire.
“What happened?” Her eyes were glazed, half shut. Half open, if he was an optimist.
He brought her the water. “I think you were struck by lightning. How do you feel?”
“Again?” she asked, taking the water. “Turn around. I gotta get these wet clothes off.”
Terah retreated, kept his back to her. He heard her stripping off her soaked layers. The crinkling of the blanket. “Where’s my other shoe?”
“Is it okay to turn around?”
“Of course. Did you find it?”
“Actually, yes. It’s over there in the corner.” He crept next to the fire, damp himself.
“I only used one blanket,” she said.
“Your turn not to look, then.” Terah stripped down, leaving his underwear on. He wrapped in the blanket. “You can open now.”
She blinked. “This is just too weird.”
“You mean both of us undressed like this? I’m not going back out in this storm.”
“No, not that. Being struck again like this.”
“You mean it’s not your first time?”
She took her time answering, eyes drooping. “It was when I first met Calum. Something bad had happened, and I’d just escaped. I found Bangor accidentally, but I was out in Calum’s field when it happened. He knew just what to do.”
“I wish I did. Do you need to see a doctor?”
“What could a doctor do? Take the lightning back out?” She stood up and shrugged off the blanket. “Do you see any burn marks?” She slowly turned around. All Terah could do was shake his head. “Then I’ll recover.” She pulled the foil blanket up.
Terah wished he had better control of his urges. Some responses are hardwired, and he was experiencing one of them now. He didn’t make the connections. “I wish I could give you something to eat.”
“What I need is sleep. Maybe you could try to find a way to hang our clothes up to dry.” She pulled her pack under her head and was out instantly.
Terah left his own blanket where it was, fearful of the sound awaking her. His underwear was tented in an embarrassing way, but she was asleep. He had string in his pack. The tumble of rocks offered a places to wind the line and stretch it across. The clothes had to be draped over without clothespins, and their weight pulled down on the string. When he came to her underwear he paused. She’d asked him to do this. He draped them over the line. He had to engineer some further webs to fit all the wet articles, leaving the cave looking like an alley between tenements. When he finished he picked up his own blanket. His desire hadn’t dissipated; but he knew there was nothing he could do about it, beyond praying for a wet dream.
The sudden terror of losing Lindsey had jolted other fears from his mind. Now as he lay sleeplessly by the fire, mere feet away from where she was naked under her blanket, he tried to calm his thoughts down. Would she be okay in the morning? What if he did have to get her to a doctor? Would it be worth revealing who he was, and potentially being arrested? Yes. It would be worth it to make sure she was okay. Life, he reflected, was like a treasure hunt. Every once in a great while you find something worth more than everything else you’ve found, all put together. For him that thing lay sleeping across the fire from him. Only, although he found her she wasn’t his.
He lay listening to the rain, smelling the damp earth aroma of the half-buried hovel. Watching the orange of the fire slowly turn to red embers. In his mind, her lithe, naked body stood, slowly turning around. He could be strangely happy this way. Then he saw Wednesday.
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