Page 57 of Enslak

But when I tried to speak, what came out was fractured at best and silence at worst. The words got tangled somewhere between my mind and my mouth, stuck behind something I couldn't yet break through, and the frustration of it was a specific kind of anger that tasted like grief.

She never reacted with impatience. Never looked disappointed when I tried and failed. She just kept talking, kept asking me yes-or-no questions I could answer with a nod or a sound, kept treating my silence like something temporary rather than permanent.

I had begun to believe her.

"Enslak?" Her voice pulled me back. She'd stopped working and was watching me with that particular crease between her brows that meant she was worried. "You okay?"

I nodded and made a sound in my throat that she'd learned to read as yes.

Her expression softened into a smile. "Good. I was starting to think you were plotting something elaborate over there."

I wasn't. I was watching the tree line and watching her and trying to hold onto the feeling of the morning, the particular quality of light on the forest, the way she said my name.

I grunted in a way she'd learned to interpret as agreement to most things, and she laughed again and went back to her work.

I returned my attention to the forest, though part of me stayed fixed on her. It had been that way since the first day here. Some part of my attention always tracking her, aware of where she was, whether the sound of her movement had changed, whether she was close enough that I could reach her quickly if I needed to.

Taking care of her had become the center of my days. The thing that gave the hours shape.

Every morning I hunted. The forest was generous with prey once you understood its rhythms, and my body remembered things my mind had lost. Where to find the grazers in the early light. How to move through the undergrowth without announcing myself. The exact amount of patience required before the moment arrived.

I brought back meat each morning, cleaned and prepared, and presented it with what I could only call pride, though the word felt too small. When she ate and made sounds of pleasure, when she looked at me with genuine appreciation and said things like Enslak, this is incredible, something in my chest expanded painfully.

I had also worked to make the cave comfortable in ways that went beyond the functional. Soft grasses gathered for better bedding. Flat stones arranged to create surfaces for sitting and working. Firewood stacked in careful order. And, one afternoon, I had found flowering plants growing near the river, their blooms a pale violet that seemed to catch and hold the light, and I'd brought them back and placed them near the entrance where she would see them first when she woke.

She'd stopped completely when she saw them. Just stood there for a long moment, her hand going to her mouth.

"Enslak," she'd said, and her voice was strange. "You brought me flowers."

I wasn't sure if that was a question.

She'd crossed the cave and touched the petals gently, the way she touched things she wanted to be careful with. Then she'd looked at me with those dark eyes very bright, and she said thank you in a voice that made me feel the words differently than I usually felt them.

The days had a rhythm now. We ate together in the mornings, she talked while I listened, and in the afternoons she went to the river to wash while I stayed within earshot and occupied myself with the work of maintaining our camp. She'd been very clear, early on, about needing privacy during those times, and the first day I'd followed anyway, unable to stop myself, had taught me something important about the difference between protection and intrusion.

"Enslak." Her voice had gone flat and careful in a way I'd learned meant she was choosing her words. "I need you to stay back. Not because you aren't safe. Because I need to be alone sometimes. Do you understand?"

I'd understood more than she knew. She was trusting me with something when she said that. She was telling me that her need for space wasn't a rejection, that it didn't mean danger, that she could handle herself at the river for twenty minutes without me hovering at the tree line.

We'd found a compromise. I stayed near enough to hear her if she called. Far enough that she had what she needed.

It wasn't comfortable for me. But her comfort mattered more than mine.

At night, she let me stay close.

That first evening, the temperature had dropped sharply once the sun went down, and the thermal blankets we'd brought from the ship weren't quite enough. She'd emerged from behind the privacy screen in the oversized sleep clothes she'd fashioned from the ship's supplies, gray fabric that hung past her knees, and she was shivering.

I moved toward her slowly. Stopped at a distance she could close if she chose, or hold if she preferred.

"You're warm," she said, which seemed to be her deciding something.

She crossed the remaining space and sat beside me, and after a moment she leaned back against my side. A small sound escaped her, something between a sigh and relief.

I brought my arm around her carefully, keeping my claws turned away, aware of every inch of the size difference between us. The weight of her against my chest was something I didn't have language for. Small and warm and trusting, her head tucked against me, her breathing slowing by degrees.

"Much better," she said.

I pressed my face into her hair and breathed her in. Something that was uniquely her, beneath the soap and the river water. She smelled like safety, which was an absurd thought, but there it was.