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Her bail-out oxygen was breathing gas only, so I knew she would become hypothermic quickly. “Not as amazing as you,” I told her, stroking a hand against the outside of her helmet.
“But Snout and all the others are going to get back to space, right? We saved them?” she asked me, as I carried her away from all the activity.
“Absolutely,” I promised.
“I like the ’qa, Cepharius,” she went on. I got the feeling that she wanted to get all her words with me out now, while she still had breath to say them. “You were right. Being a kraken is superior.”
“I know, my pearl.” I bowed my head to hers, focusing on the ’qa just between the two of us. I stared at the beauty of her face, still trapped in the clamshell of her helmet. “My beautiful perfect pearl.”
“Cepharius of the Sea,” she whispered, trailing her hand against me, and then she gasped, her gaze flickering over my shoulder.
I turned to see what she saw—and found the ship finally rising, all aglow over a massive cloud of silt, illuminated by itself and the bodies of my brethren. “We did it, Elle,” I thought at her. “You and me.”
I felt her nod weakly inside her helmet. “You and me,” she whispered back—and then she started gasping.
“Oh, my pearl,” I said, falling to my knees, feeling her begin to suffocate.
It was like the bonding all over again, except this time it was real, and I was already in love with her.
I cried out on the ’qa, heard my cry echoed by my countrymen, and found myself surrounded by a hundred other mourners at once, carrying my pain, placing their arms and tentacles about me, holding me up, while I fell under the slight weight in my arms.
“My Elle, my Elle,” I called out, feeling her leave me, the sensation of her on the ’qa fading. I wanted the last thing she heard to be my voice. “My pearl,” I howled, sending her a wave of love and every good moment we had ever had together. When she accepted my courting—when she told me she loved me—when I got to touch her?—
And then she was taken away from me.
Not from the ’qa, but literally. Something was pulling her up, at the same time as I panicked, trying to pull her back down.
I hadn’t been paying attention, lost in my grief, but the lights of the ship had gotten nearer and brighter, and one of their beams that only I could see and she could not was running over her now.
“She was >. This is our > for you.”
And then the spaceship disappeared, leaving me and all of my brothers in the dark.
chapter 67
ELLE
“Cepharius?” I thought out weakly. I had died, I was sure of it. I was so cold now—but it didn’t bother me—so clearly, I was dead.
How many different cultures’ afterlives had I learned of in my studies?
I should’ve asked Ceph what krakens believed in.
It would’ve been better to die with some proper aim.
“My pearl?” I heard him ask back.
Which meant he was dead too.
A shame, really. I wondered what’d killed him? Did krakens have purgatory? Had I just been hanging out in a jug somewhere waiting for him to show up for me to go to kraken heaven?
Was I going to have to arm wrestle his first wife?
“My pearl?” I heard him asked with more force, and I felt myself shaking.
Being shook, rather.
Sort of the same thing.
