Citrine (Deliverance #3)

36. Wroahk

36

Wroahk

She finally lowers herself into the water, her complexion changing as it soaks into her skin. Good, maybe she will cease her constant scratching.

She moves the water with her graspers, keeping her eyes on me until she approaches me. The midday sun is now high in the sky and the temperature has risen.

"I don't think I said it earlier but it's like a whole beautiful ridge down there. Surprisingly colorful and so unique. Untouched by technology , I was pissed off at you, but it was fun."

There is nothing in the water but creatures and predators, but she thinks it's fun. How careless can one person truly be?

Then I remember my own impulse to show it to her and wonder if her carelessness is infecting me.

"Don't you think it's fun, Wroahk?"

I consider it. There is nothing that can threaten me in these waters. It's not very amusing to hunt something that can't move very fast or just tastes plain disgusting. I don't think it's fun, but she seems to be set on her perspectives, so I decide not to answer.

"You don't think it's fun, do you?"

I don't think I'll ever understand this creature. So fickle, so annoying… yet, it feels so good and warm inside her. And I can't deny that she has made me think. Made me curious to know more things.

It makes my head ache, but I can't deny I like the challenge. It's like a hunt for a completely new type of prey.

Like how I have had to learn new ways to hunt her. Gentle, kind, careful , ways.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

I feel the urge to enter her again, but I fear her body might be injured. I noticed her flinch back near that rock, which means there's something wrong with her that she's not telling me.

I can't simply guess what's wrong with her other than the fact that her mouth is like a never-ending stream. I assume she will tell me, but for now I will keep my touch careful .

"Man, it feels lonely with just us two here. Maybe that's why we did it."

Did what, I wonder? She keeps talking and I don't ask.

"If there were other people here, I wouldn't feel so lonely. It's not quiet, but it is at the same time. The water stretches out so far and there's a cove with resources. We can start a little community with our own rules. Like a space exploration movie where they build colonies on a different planet. I don't have the technology for it, I guess, but there has to be some trace of what brought me here."

For me, there's more than enough living beings around us. For her, it doesn't seem to be enough. How many will she need to not hurt?

My skin twitches with an unpleasant sensation thinking of having more people around like her.

Never.

She wants to talk to someone, and she wants that person to talk back to her. I still don't agree with the advantage of having more people around us.

She thinks we have enough resources to feed someone else? When all her species eats is plants? Ridiculous.

"You don't seem to like the idea of someone else being here. I bet a predator like you doesn't like the idea of distribution of resources. You don't want it, but the fact is you're a social animal. You already proved it by sparing me. Plus, I drive you mad with my incessant talking. Imagine if you had someone else here that didn't talk as much as I did? You'll be getting social benefits as well as having someone else to gather resources ."

"No."

" Community is important, Wroahk. We need to go out there and find out if there are others. What about the rest of your kind? You say the water is disgusting, so I already know this isn't your domain. You have language and you have customs, even though you don't teach your young. You strive for survival and victory. This is my only proof that you are a social species. You need interaction or you'll die."

"I will not die."

She is wrong. I don't need others. I don't need her. I don't want to share with others. I don't want to share her with others. She's weak, and she needs others. I do not.

"You believe you won't. But I believe you will. One day, you'll get tired of me yapping off your ear . You'll want time away from me. Who will you be with then?"

No, I would not miss her incessant droning, but the idea of her not being with me is unacceptable. I need to stop her from saying such uncomfortable things.

I pull her closer and kiss her, hoping to silence her. She doesn't resist, kissing me back. It's silent now and my desire is rising. I pull back, remembering she was hurt.

Her face looks like she just ended a successful hunt. "You find me tedious, but you know I'm right."

She is tedious. I put her back on shore as my instincts to hunt and kill something arises before my frustrations overcome my control. She watches me as I plunge into the depths, leaving me with parting words.

"Don't get lost out there."

It isn't possible to get lost, so I don't understand the meaning behind her words. I know the water better than her, just as I know myself better than she does.

All these things she's saying, it sounds more like it applies to her than it does to me. She's the one who needs someone constantly by her, listening to her never-ending words. She's the one afraid of no one else being there.

Why? Why is she so afraid? Because she's weak? It might be. Before she gained the gills to swim underwater, protecting her was even harder. I had to switch from land to water, risking drying my skin out. My body constantly felt sluggish and my tentacles felt like rocks I was dragging around.

Is that how she feels? No wonder she needs others.

Now that I can bring her into the water, it's much easier.

Except she might be a creature who cannot be left alone and the idea of never finding solace to let my mind rest sounds… terrible.

There are many like that who roam the oceans, many who die without the attention of another one in their species. Sure, their overwhelming numbers ensure their survival and accelerated breeding ensures they won't die out but separate one from the group and it dies.

She must be one of those, though I never thought a species capable of speech and reasoning would be among their number. It makes sense that she would develop such an obsession with this idea of community , though.

Separated from her kind, she craves to fill a missing presence in her existence with my presence. She constantly talks to me, even though I can't understand most of what she's saying. She's doing everything with reckless abandon just because I'm the only one she sees.

She won't let go of me because I'm the only one. Her idea of community does not matter to me, but to her, it is essential for her survival. What that all comes down to, in the end, is that her survival is dependent on me, and not just to hunt for her.

How did I get myself into this position?

I swim up as the sun sinks down on the horizon, finding its way out of the sky. As the dark approaches, I find her still by the corner of the shore, her gaze directed up. I push my tentacle in her direction to signal that I am back, and she turns in my direction.

"Did you have a good swim?"

She always asks such completely useless questions.

"It was good," I answer, surprising myself.

It was, actually, despite the fact I couldn't stray far or she might be in danger of a Many Teeth moving past my constantly established territory. It was quiet, just like I needed, but eventually I felt that pull back to her.

"That's nice. My skin feels like it's on fire. I've been itching since you left. I don't like this feeling, Wroahk."

I swim closer to her and see that she's scratching at her limbs ferociously. I hold her grasper to stop her and notice something else on her arm. I look in her eyes and see another emotion in them. Despair.

"When did this happen?" I point to the fins on her arm.

"I don't know. I didn't even feel it. I just looked down at the water and saw it. My body's been itching so much."

Her voice is trembling again. I wrap my tentacle around her and bring her down into the water, holding her close to me.

She clings to me, silently resting on my torso. She's quiet, which is just strange. She's almost never quiet.

"Are you hurt?" I ask quietly.

"… yes."

She doesn't say anything more, unnerving me. I thought I wouldn't miss the chatter, but I do. Her silence is unnatural, signaling pain that she is not allowed to feel. I don't want to admit that she's right, though, so I say nothing.

"I don't want to stay in the water tonight, Wroahk."

"Does your skin still itch in the water?"

"… no."

"You must stay here so you won't dry out."

"Why would I dry out, Wroahk? I'm a terrestrial species. I don't belong in the water. Why… why is this happening to me? Of all the billions of humans on the planet , why me?"

She is constantly making me feel like I know nothing. And there is… fear. Yes, she makes me afraid.

I have not felt this since I was in my nursery group, and I should have never felt it again. Only anger. Rage.

I try to bring those up, but they don't come. I can't control what is making her afraid, and she is infecting me with her emotion. How is that possible? She makes me question my reality.

"I have to go," she says.

I want to crush her to me and pull her down, but this emotion is in me now. Will she leave me if I pull her down into the water again? No, I will never let her.

There are different types of leaving, though. I thought I would like when she stopped speaking, but it caused this fear in me just now. There is no storm to blame.

She slips out of the water and pushes herself up on the rocks, stumbling as she does, then turns back to look at me, her eyes like dark chasms, and runs toward her cove.

I sink back into the water, various thoughts now filling my head. I'm not one for thoughts or emotions. She made me like this. She changed me, yet she's changing too. My changes are on the inside and hers, on the outside. I revile my changes, and she does too.

We are not so different after all.

I lift myself up after absorbing enough water and follow her up to the cove. Normally I can hear her from any distance, but she quietly hid herself. In the trees, I see a familiar looking fluid, one that I often use to move around on land, using my tentacles. I follow these traces of her and find that she climbed up to some of those trees, finding shelter there.

Her breathing is almost imperceptible, but it's there. I can feel her. I focus my senses a bit more and see that she's trembling up in the trees, barely making noise, which is just so strange. As I turn my back to leave her be for a while, I feel something.

My instincts scream at me, telling me something is there. My water reserves are drying out so I don't have much time on land. I'm also not faster here so whatever is coming, if it's a threat, I'll need to deal with it as silently as possible so they don't hurt the female.

I move toward the water, spreading my senses out. I suppose I should be glad that it is not going after the female but wandering at the edges of my territory.

After a quick swim to the shore, the one that surrounds the yellow female's island, I make it to the rocky shore and spot something just by the edge. Keeping my eyes on it as I remain just under the surface of the water, the thing draws closer.

It's the first time I'm seeing a living being that looks like her. It has different color head weeds is on the back of a huge orange beast with a long tail.

I look back up to the purple haired one. There is no doubt about it. That thing is also female.

Seeing her, what my yellow female said comes to mind. She wanted to see other people and live with them. She wants to be with them, talk to them and stay with them.

I know she can't survive if she doesn't have this.

The despair in her eyes makes me… uncomfortable. So unsettled, in fact, that I'm about to do something inconceivable.

I move silently in the water, drawing closer to the creatures. They're scanning the area below as well, the beast sniffing out everything in the surrounding area. The beast's rider, that female, her eyes are alert and she doesn't have tentacles in her hair like my female.

Only their builds are the same.

They draw closer and closer to where I am, like they are searching for something or someone. Could it be my female? Why do they want her? Do they want to take her away from me?

No. Never.

The thought of not having her kind hands frightens me. The tentacle reaching out of the water to alert them withdraws immediately and I growl at them, even though they can't hear me.

How dare they try to take my female from me?

My anger rises and I dive into the water, heading straight for the nest of the many teeth I had passed so many times while hunting. Since I established dominance in the water, they instinctively flee when they hear me coming. They scatter the moment they sense me near their nest, but I manage to grab a big one, dragging it up to the surface with me.

I want to throw it at them, punish them for trying to take away my female. However, they're not there when I come up. As I release the Many Teeth, I stare at the cliffs, a new emotion rising inside me.

I don't know its name, but I want it to leave my body. I know what I just did is something she won't like and I feel… something. Like I should have made a different choice and now I can't admit it to her.

I hate it, whatever this ache is called.