Ada has fallen into the bad habit of holding Alexai’s hand whenever they’re walking alone together. She knows it’s frowned upon - and he knows she knows it because she always pulls her fingers away from his as they approach the camp. He’s thankful for that, because otherwise he would have to be the one to pull away, and he’s not sure he could bring himself to do so. Every time he glances down at her, she looks up with wide eyes just a bit too knowing and steps as close to him as custom will allow. He doesn’t stop her, can’t stop her, because as much as he would like to deny it (as much as he would deny it, if ever confronted), he finds himself comforted by her presence, as small as she is. And even though it worries him - seeing how soft she’s becoming, seeing how that delicate emotionalism is wrapping its doughy arms around her - he doesn’t know if the sternness would be any better.

When he had wandered into his brother’s tent soon after Ada was born and saw her makeshift crib all the way on the other side of the small space, out of reach from the bed, he had asked his brother why the baby was not sleeping with them. The look on their faces stuck with him for years to come. Babies do not sleep with their parents. They’re put far away, allowed to cry themselves to sleep if they’re not in need of food or changing. It’s the way of their people, to toughen them up. To prepare them for the life to come. Alexai isn’t sure why it had bothered him so much. He didn’t have any children. Didn’t have a wife.  He had no one he cared for. No one he had any love for, even the small amount their people overlooked. But the thought of being left all alone in a world so new, so foreign, and being left to cry through the pain with no one to help you was horrifying to him. He did not show it, of course. He had nodded and never mentioned it again.

Now, though, he sometimes hears Ada sniffling to herself in the corner of her room, and when she crawls onto the foot of his bed, curled up at the bottom as if he won’t notice her there, he pretends he’s asleep and says nothing. Even when he wakes up to the dull gray light of the morning with her face pressed into his ankle, he says nothing. Merely scoops her up and sets her back into her sleeping space.

He’s a little upset at her for it, irrationally. It’s his fault, really. For letting her get away with so much. For letting himself get away with so much.

When he had accidentally slipped up and shown worry over Ada stepping closer to that girl, to the enemy, he feels cold rising fury at himself. At Ada. At that little insignificant thing that managed to rattle him simply by staring so boldly at him from across the water. It was a slipup of little consequence, besides being a bit of a blow to his confidence, but he can’t stop thinking about it.    

The thing that stings the most is the reason behind the slip. If he had not been preoccupied, he would not have been caught off guard as he was. But he had been preoccupied. Preoccupied thinking about what his enemy was seeing. Trying to catch a glimpse of whatever illusions were overbrimming from her eyes. Trying to catch a hold of her reality.

Trying to see if she recognized him.

 It’s unbelievably infuriating to stand face to face to one of them and feel so in the dark. He never has the time to contemplate it during battle, but during the stillness and the silence of that encounter, it was all he could think about. About how her face held no clue to whatever mirage she had cooked up to keep from having to lay eyes on this planet.

On this. He lets his eyes sweep over the landscape. He’s perched up on one of the mountain cliffs overlooking the camp. From this vantage point, he can see the forest and the line of the river passing through the territory. He can’t see the caves, but he can imagine them there just over the hills. He balls his hands into fists and sighs. His breath comes out in a cold wisp of mist curling into the brisk air. No, that little insignificant thing never had to face the reality of this. Everything gray and anemic. He can’t even put into words what he’s missing. Can’t draw up any picture or image of what he yearns for. It’s unendurably frustrating to want something you can’t name or articulate.  

With a scowl, he stands and paces across the ledge once more, his feet barely disturbing the hard-packed dirt.  

He sometimes wonders if in three, four hundred years, when Ada and the other children are grown, will they still be fighting? Do they even care? Does she feel the same strange pull of something missing deep inside? The pull of home?  Ademar had made mention to him once of some earth fish that always returned to that waters their parents came from, somehow instinctively. Like a part of them was connected - a string that pulled and pulled until they ended up back at the beginning. He wonders if that’s what’s happening to them. Wonders if that burning, aggravating sting of want isn’t simply their souls being called back home. But how many generations would have to pass before the connection grew weak, snapped? Before ‘home’ became Hera 6?

Even now, he sometimes stands out on the edge of the forest and watches the dull red horizon and feels an unsettling sense of contentment. But those moments are rare and more than a little maddening. He will not just give up. Will not resign himself to this reality.

Then they would win.

Standing there with that girl, that other, had made it even worse. Any sense of settlement he may have felt creeping up on him disappeared as soon as she was near. He had felt her presence before he’d seen her. Had felt some weird displacement that he had never felt before. Like his feet were no longer planted on the ground, like the air around him had gotten thicker, heavier. Like he was standing right in the middle of some terrible thing that was cascading out from that point but it was too large, too expansive, for him to see from his limited vantage point. Like something was all around him, something about to happen, that he couldn’t even catch out of the corner of his eye.

And she had just stood there and stared like she was the most important thing ever. Like she had no idea of anything he felt, of anything larger, more powerful than her. Trying so hard to be imperious. Such hubris for one of them. If they just took a good, long looked at themselves, they would not be pleased with what they’d see. What his people already see in them. They’re complacent and delusional and naïve.

They - the other, the enemy - started the fight. Moved in against his people for no reason. Moved and move and keep moving and keep poking and keep rubbing it in - their one tiny advantage - and for that they need to be reminded of their own faults, of their own pathetic, futile delusions, and of how sad it is that for all their affected, bluffing superiority they still fall down dead if someone just sneezes on them.

And she had had enough nerve to ask him is that normal? like she had been secretly glad about what she was seeing. Secretly glad that his little girl was sick.

He had wanted to rip her tongue right out of her mouth.

He’s tiring of this. Tiring of everything. He’s not old, but he’s getting older, and he tries not to even contemplate the possibility that his life could pass away without any progress, without any change, in this constant war. Of course, it’s not really constant. There had been a time, a long time ago, with no death and no battle and no hate. He had not been alive for that. He had been born hundreds of years after the war had started. It had been raging for all of his 367 years, though, and he could not even imagine a time without it.

He only now realizes how odd it was that this is the first time he had ever run into one of them outside of battle. She was entirely too far out from her territory, and unarmed at that. It was as if she had been looking for trouble. Maybe he should have put her out of her misery. Maybe something horrible had pushed her out there. He could have asked. Thought about it now. About asking. About shifting through her, past those clever eyes, to something he could pull out and exploit.

He’s still debating whether or not he should tell Ademar what happened. He’s a bit worried that if he tries to recount the event to a third person, he may betray something. Some feeling, some fear. Some of that unbecoming bitterness that wells up just a little more inside him each day. He’s not supposed to feel bitterness – indignation, scorn, those things were allowed - but bitterness reeks too much of defeat, of weakness. So he focuses of the permissible emotions, grasps hold of them like a small but beckoning light in the darkness.

This life of theirs is cursed. For certain, he would live on after their present generations for hundreds of years to come. But each new day’s the same - the same ugliness, the same barren, stoic life. Everything weighed and balanced out with an accountant‘s care. Children meted out like prizes for the fortunate. And here he had lived with no one. No friends. Now no family except the comfort of Ada, and even that they would begrudge him if they ever suspected the depth of his attachment to her. No wife. Not even the memory of a woman’s warm mouth against his to hold on to.

He has only himself and the girl. He wonders how long he will be allowed to keep her. Soon they will be pressing him to put her in her own space. Somewhere far away from him, out of reach. On her own. Fending for herself. Soon they will be pressing him to teach her the ways of their people, to never touch, never shrink close to anyone’s side for protection, for consolation. For warmth. To never look at a man with any intention she hasn’t been granted express permission to entertain. To survive on her own or be killed. After all, each new death brought about the possibility of a new life…

If he could keep Ada out of battle, her life would unfurl out in front of her for what would seem like an eternity. He could look at her today and not worry about losing her tomorrow. Not worry about what would happen if she died without knowing how much he really did care about her. He had felt a taste of that standing there on the river bank. Had felt a moment of worry that this was it. That he was going to be separated from her forever and he had yet to even say…what? He doesn’t even know what he’s meant to say. But something’s there, lurking in places that feel not his own but still accessible only to him. Lurking deep down like an imprint from ages ago.  

He stops and stands near the edge, a solitary figure in the lightening dusk. The sky is slicked over with the pale dew of morning, scented with the warm bite of a coming rain. He stares down at the black sludged river. Contemplates the ground beneath his feet, the land of flames on the other side of the planet burning fiercely. Wonders what’s feeding that fire. What has been feeding that fire for centuries upon centuries. All the way into the unfathomable past. Entertains the notion that maybe it’s all their hopes, all their prospects. All their souls. Maybe the planet rips them all away. Feeds on them like an insatiable beast. And they stay and keep staying. Because they - all of them - are stupid and complacent.

Allowing themselves to be bled dry.

Next Chapter: Chapter 7