Citrine (Deliverance #3)

39. Eli

39

Eli

"You survived. You are not as weak as you used to be," he calls back as I see his tentacles disappear.

Is that really supposed to be some sort of consolation? I really want to strangle this alien, but he just fought through an entire horde to save my life.

And it was freaking hot as hell. Dammit.

The least I can do is just let him say what he wants. I'm tired, too tired to say anything to him, even if I could.

For now, all I really want to do is just… breathe.

The cave looks much more inviting than it did before. It isn't as dark, and this time I get to take a closer look at the blue-glowing snails, just as curious as always about their differences. It seems shell patterns might be universal. Interesting.

They are eating the green and red algae coating the walls of the cave, which is just big enough for me to move around a bit, even with Wroahk's massive body set up at the entrance.

Probably there to block me getting out as much as to block anything getting in. I lift a lip and snarl at him. He doesn't look impressed, then he moves away from the cave opening.

My stomach grumbles, but I'm not even sure what to feed it anymore.

The world has gone mad. No, I have gone mad. Every single day I wake up, I find that I have been stripped of everything that made me the woman I used to be.

I really thought that since Wroahk is an intelligent creature, it would mean that I can still eat whatever I want and not indiscriminately kill like he does. Clearly, the change was physiological, even down to what I can freaking eat.

I can no longer maintain a vegetarian diet. Everything I thought I knew about myself, gone in the span of a few days. This transition is not just stealing my body, it is stealing my life.

It doesn't matter how much food I shove into my mouth. It won't stay down, no matter how hard-headed I want to be.

He's watching me again, even though I thought he left. He can probably see forever in the water, the bastard. I feel his eyes on me, never changing, never moving.

It's infuriating. I can't understand why it has to be him. He's the monster that threatened to eat me the first time he saw me. Now, I don't even understand what he wants.

Except I know that what I want is him.

Diablos .

This isn't helping.

Calm down, Eli. Breathe.

Breathe through what exactly? My nose? My lungs? My gills? I've been using all three of them completely normally, like it's how I was born.

It's too quick, too fast, too weird.

The tentacles in my hair, dammit. I don't actively see them, but I know they're there. It's like this thing where you are constantly looking at your nose, but your brain won't let you see it unless you focus on it. In this case, if I instruct them to move… they stretch out and touch along the cave rock behind me.

I shudder. It's like having eight more arms, except with different ways they interpret sensation.

I shiver, then feel a slight change in temperature. Are they temperature regulators? That's just a guess. I don't know much about this body and Wroahk doesn't seem to be curious about the mechanics of his.

I doubt his species has any interest in biology.

I'm not the judgmental type, but I have my limits. If I accept the tentacles and the gills and the fins, what else will I have to accept? Being oviparous and laying eggs like a cephalopod?

I retch.

He has tentacles, so that's the closest biological earth group I can place him in.

My stomach grumbles, reminding me that I'm still unfed. Wroahk has gone off somewhere and I'm still at the bottom of the lake. I'm not curious enough to venture out, not with Many Teeth out there.

No need to become fish food.

I look around, my eyes resting on the kelp-looking things at the bottom, wondering if I can eat them instead, but I stop myself.

My little fit up on the land was stupid, and I'll forgive myself a lot, considering how much stress this has been, but not that.

Stupid means dead here, and as much as I've tried to keep myself alive, I'm terrible at it. I would have been dead a dozen times over without him.

No sense in making his job harder. I won't survive without him.

Dammit, that sounds like something he would say. I refuse to be the weak thing he thinks I am, though I suppose I can't do much about my physical strength.

That doesn't mean I should keep ignoring my most important one, as I have a very unhelpful existential freaking crisis. This is my new reality, and I am way smarter than this. It's time to stop letting my emotions run wild.

Wroahk comes back as I steel my resolve. He studies my face for a bit and holds out something that resembles a cuttlefish. He seems to war with himself for a moment, but then pushes it toward me.

I push it back and shake my head.

"You have not eaten yet."

I haven't been feeling well these past few days, but my pride is all I have left. Eating the poor, defenseless animal he hunted for my survival is the one thing I'm not going to do. I refuse him staunchly.

"You have to eat it, or you will starve."

His tone has become more forceful, and he is more demanding. I turn my head away, but he isn't lenient.

He wraps his tentacles around me in an instant, drawing me closer to him. For some reason, he is very considerate about not covering my gills, even though he is holding me against my will.

I feel my anger rising, and then remind myself that not two minutes ago I decided to not be stupid. I need to eat the fish.

He lets out an echoing growl as I hold my arms up.

He stops, and I gesture for the fish. He holds it out and before I can overthink it, I cram it into my mouth, somehow swallowing it before it can sit on my tongue, the taste of the water already vile enough as it is.

Since when can I gulp down entire fish? I retch

He looks pleased with himself when I look back, and it makes my eye twitch. I push past him, out of the cave, and after spinning around to look for Many Teeth, I try to make my way to the surface without looking like prey.

I don't get very far before a tentacle wraps around my leg and yanks me back, then I'm wrapped securely with tentacles writhing around me.

"Not without me," he clicks out.

I glare at him and point at the surface of the water, shocked when he takes me there.

The moment we break above it, I give him a piece of my mind. "That was disgusting. I hate this."

"You seem to want death. Is being like me really so repulsive?"

I struggle to give him an answer because I'm supposed to be the nonjudgmental one. I've prided myself on it.

The reason I don't eat animals in the first place is because I want to be impartial to all living beings and I don't like discrimination against species. I didn't want to put myself on a pedestal with the little power I have.

I don't want to be like that monster, my stepfather. Asserting my control, just because I can.

I let out a breath through my nose, clearing it of water.

This isn't the same. I can't survive on plants anymore. I didn't terrorize that poor fish, I just did what I had to do to live. Just like it probably did when it ate something smaller than it.

I look at him and think of it from his point of view. His whole life is about survival, and now I am this burden he never wanted, but can't seem to give up.

He wants me to live, as crazy as that seems based on our first interactions.

He cocks his head, still staring at me. There's nothing in his eyes but his curiosity.

I've been pissed off, but it isn't logical that he's the cause of what is happening to me. He tells me exactly what he thinks, even if I hate it.

He genuinely doesn't know what is happening and is just trying to help me.

That said, the man needs to work on his empathy.

"Wroahk, what would happen if you were to suddenly lose your gills?"

"Why would that happen?"

"Just… imagine. I grew gills, so it is possible for you to lose them. What would happen then?"

"I would not be able to breathe inside the water, so I would need to leave it. Then I would likely dry up and die."

"Yes. You need to exist inside the water, or you will die. Now, what if you lost your fins and your tentacles?"

His expression changes and I see confusion intermingling with disgust. I watch him slowly reach a conclusion.

"I would become weak, useless, and die."

"Yes, you finally get it. I didn't die, but it feels like I am. If I took everything that made you, well, you, it would take away your identity and everything you have learned, everything you became, all the time you've lived, everything would disappear. Part of you would die."

"…are you dead?" he asks, his voice oddly quiet.

"I am dying, in a way, Wroahk. Everything that makes me who I am is going away and I'm going to become something I don't recognize. I don't want that. It's why I am resisting, even though I know I can't."

"You are still in front of me. Not dead. I cannot let you die, but I see now what you mean that a part of you already has."

He is becoming more emotional, and ironically, more human.

The detachedness he used to have is gone. I don't think even he realizes he has changed. I have changed as well. Not just physically, but I'm changing from within. I don't want to accept it. I don't want to be someone else.

I'm becoming more forceful. Violent even. Earth Eli would have had a panic attack just thinking about making him mad, but instead, I am fighting him any chance I can get.

It should terrify me, it has since I was a teen, but not anymore. It feels good. I feel more powerful than I ever have.

Which is crazy, since he's the most vicious person I have ever met. He could kill me with just the tip of one tentacle.

Except he won't. I know it. There is this surety with him I haven't felt since I was safe with my padre . That I could do or say anything, and he will just stay here with me.

Even if he doesn't understand why he stays, he will never leave.

It's funny because after my padre died, I used to think about death and reincarnation a lot. I spent a lot of time staring into people's eyes, wishing I could see a glimmer of the pure soul that filled everything.

I used to think he'd become a dog or a cat and would continue to watch over me like that. They were just rambling thoughts of a hurt child.

Except now I'm staring into the shark eyes in front of me, looking for that glimmer of soul.

Wroahk suddenly raises his hand and puts it to my face, pulling me to him gently, wrapping me with as many limbs as he can until only my face and gills are uncovered.

"You are still warm. You are still alive. I will not let you die."

That is the last piece of gentleness I am spared before he grabs me and shoves another cuttlefish looking thing toward my face. I smack him hard, and he changes tact, shoving it into my hand.

He backs off, then makes another move toward me, like he really wants to cram it in my mouth, cover it, and make me swallow it like someone trying to get a pill down a dog's throat.

He doesn't, and leaves me the choice to eat it, which I do after a hunger pang hits my stomach again, but I'm still pissed.

"You don't need to shove things at me, Wroahk! You hold it out and I choose to grab it or not."

"Your life belonged to me from the moment I decided not to eat you. I will not let you harm or kill yourself. I can hear your hunger."

"Is that supposed to sound romantic? It's really fucking not, you asshole. I curse the day I met you."

Dammit. I can already feel my strength returning from the fish and my stomach is finally settled down after days of griping. I don't want to admit it.

" Consent applies to what I eat, too, Wroahk."

His face falls as he makes the connection. "I will not forget. Do you want more?"

This time, all he does is hold one out to me.

How sad is it that it feels like progress that he isn't whipping his tentacles waving food in my face?

He learns, at least. I'll give him that.

Even if he's just as stubborn to admit it as I am. Just as willing to say words that don't match his actions.

"I thought you said you wouldn't hunt for me."

"As long as you are alive, I will do what I must."

I'm still pissed off, but part of me has to admit that, for him, that's saying a lot.

It doesn't sway me, though. Okay, maybe a little, but it shouldn't. He's an alien and I'm slowly becoming one myself. I need to distract my mind.

"What's it like? Being you, I mean?" I ask, wondering if he'll prefer to answer me this time instead of being perpetually silent.

He's not forthcoming with answers. Rather, he's looking around, searching for something. I hope he doesn't notice that I'm still hungry. I have to find a way to slip away from him. His hold is tight but if I can distract him again…

My stomach growls at that exact moment. My eyes widen as his gaze meets mine and I can see the gears turning in his head.

"Don't you dare," I warn him.

He doesn't, though I can see his limbs twitching with his desire to feed me.

It's going to take some patience as I let myself adapt. Nothing good ever comes out of rushing or trying to deny reality. There's been plenty of loss before this. I just have to focus on my goals, just like always.

I don't have to panic or try to overthink everything… just calm down and breathe and simply accept that I have another way of doing that now.

In and out. Gently, slowly. Better still, I don't have to imagine that I'm floating because I truly am threading along gently in the water, being pulled by a tentacled man who is intent on keeping me alive.

It could be worse, really, even if we are going to have to come to terms with how freaking bossy he is.

After I calm down, I turn to swim toward the cave, his tentacles in the water all around me, barely leaving room for my body to move.

I can see the outline of the cave now. There's some kind of smeared marking on the edge. I focus on it, and then understand why it's there. It's a marking from him. That's why none of those crocodile-looking things ever approach the cave.

There are more things I can learn if I just lean in, observe, and ask.

I don't know if I should hold hope that I can somehow become human again. Being human on this planet seems dangerous. I'll have to survive and learn to be like him, whatever species he is.

He's being smothering now, but like the time I was climbing down the tree, he won't always help me. I have to learn to survive on my own.

With quick movements, he pulls us into the cave.

He's wrapped around me now, keeping me down, probably assuming I'll bolt at the first sign of freedom, and he's probably right.

How do I copy how he speaks under the water? Reflect the sounds through the water? Or perhaps its refraction. I can't really tell.

I open my mouth and think of what I want to say. There's plenty of thoughts running rampant through my head, but I can't say them all at once. I just have to send a specific thought through the water.

"Hello."

It doesn't work. I can't hear my own voice outside my own head and all that comes out is air bubbles. I have to try again.

"Hello."

An echo. A whisper sent through the water, like a forgotten voice. It's a strange feeling, like I'm speaking through a microphone and a speaker at the same time. My vocal cords feel like they're expanding. Still, I don't know if I've succeeded because he isn't responding.

"Can you hear me, Wroahk?"

He still doesn't respond. I can't tell if he's ignoring me, or I really can't reach him. My voice might as well be an echo scattered through the water, reaching everything else but him.

I try several more times, but eventually grow too tired. My eyelids slowly grow heavy, and I slip into slumber.