by Dave Riley
***
She lies on the bedroll, counting her blinks and rolling her tongue against the fuzzy feel of the alcohol, while Malak sits beside her, digging stones from the ground and flicking them at the wall of the tent.
“I heard a rumor,” Rowena says. “They’re planning a tremendous push, bringing in tanks against us.”
A stutter seizes Malak’s muscles.
“Good, then you won’t have to change,” she says. Her tone flexes with surety, plastering over the hesitation of her body. “They won’t risk you on tanks.”
“Tanks have infantry,” Rowena says. “And that falls to me.”
“Or Carak, or Gaster, or that foul-faced, fat-mouthed Reta, any of them. Why does it have to be you? You’re hardly the only wolf—” When Rowena flinches at the word, Malak melds a sharp inhale with an muttered swear. “Didn’t mean it, Wren—”
“—I know—”
“—Slip of the tongue—”
“—Absolutely—”
Brown eyes dart away. “Hate me?”
“Never.”
A hesitant nip of a smile washes over Malak’s lips, crooked. Her fingers sweep the ground. “Forgive me, then?”
Rowena’s gaze follows those fingers, watches as they worry at a pebble moored in the dirt. She rests her hand atop them, before they can pluck it free.
“Always,” she says. “After all, it’s only a word.”
Words won’t fill bellies. It may’ve taken several instructions with the belt, but Rowena eventually did take that lesson to heart. What still puzzles her is its corollary: if words lack the shape to fill stomachs, how do they possess the substance to stab them so deeply?
“Anyway,” Malak says, “I’m more worried about fleshers.”
“There won’t be fleshers.”
“There might be.”
“This far from center? They wouldn’t waste them on us.”
“Won’t waste fleshers, but they’ll bring tanks, eh Wren?”
Rowena hears gears and smells grease. Her skin tightens. Her heart swells. A heavy chain sneaks its way around her neck like the probing tentacle of some dark ocean spawn. A breath holds in her chest.
Malak takes her by the chin, lifts her face.
“I won’t let them make you,” she says. Her eyes are limpid and cool by the lamplight. “You won’t need to change this time, I promise.”
Rowena breathes and smiles in the same motion. “You always say that.”
She dips in, shoulders hunched, face close enough to smell breath, for noses to touch. “I mean it.”
“I know.”
Malak’s fingers squeeze around the base of her neck to reel her close, but why? She wouldn’t run away, not now, and never from her.
Rowena’s lips part. She accepts Malak’s quiet kiss, and returns it. She sinks herself into this dance they’ve done a half-dozen times, in situations just like this, when the press of bodies is only thing left to do in the face of all that fear, all that dread, and all that life.
They could run; together, that’s a different matter. She could leave this place, find one where being a beast did not require her to be bestial. She could take Malak with her and, perhaps, they could have a farm and raise sheep with spots like cows. And wouldn’t that be a fine life?
It’d be a life, and that’s more than nothing.
Breaking the kiss, Malak seems lost for a time, eyes drowned in some deep sensation, as she silently beholds this woman (this beast) that is Rowena. Rowena’s shoulders shift. She twists her body, only a touch—just enough to hide her brand from sight.
Could they run? Pleasant thought to have, while Malak lies herself down with you, spoons her body behind yours. Say you ran, bore that risk, became a fugitive and made her one too. How long would it take before you ruined it? These kisses, these embraces, these moments of unquestioned, unspoken need: divorced from the terror of impending battle, what would they become? Would they be tender? Would they be romantic? Would they be kind? Would you know these things if they came? Would you deserve them if you did?
Tink-tink-tink.
How long before Malak’s eternal, gregarious, and giving laughter only served to remind of what you are and ever will be, of the twisted purpose fate wrenched into your body? The army found you quickly, Rowena, and so you never had chance to know whether they forced this violence upon you or if they merely blossomed a trait inherent inside you. Lacking the human prey that combat provides, would you feel the need to seek it yourself?
Ignorant of these thoughts, Malak molds her shape against Rowena’s back and lists an arm over her stomach, keeping her close as close can. Rowena’s hand wraps over it in kind. Pressing down her palm, she explores the lazy progression of Malak’s pulse beneath her skin. This close, she almost believes she can know a person’s—that is to say: a living person’s—thoughts. Then again, Malak’s thoughts have always been easy to know, at least to Rowena, who has sussed out, catalogued, and classified them across the entirety of their young lives.
Then why do things always feel so uncertain?
***