Humanity

by J. D. Knutson

  He inhaled deeply, his breath on my scalp. Was he smelling my hair?

  I didn’t really want to draw attention to that right then, though, because I was so warm and cozy beside him. My entire body began to relax, and I slowly drifted off.

  ~ * ~

  The sun beat into my eyelids, and birds twittered in the trees. Part of me thought breakfast, and the other part of me tried to remember what the warm bulk was that I was lying beside.

  Gideon.

  “Oh!” I shot up, glancing down at him; he’d turned over in his sleep so that I’d been lying against his back just now. I hurriedly scooted away from him, to where I’d left my backpack the night before, still wearily watching him for movement.

  He shivered in my absence, and immediately blinked awake. He looked around at me with blurry eyes, his hair standing up at angles.

  “Restroom break,” I informed him, shouldering the backpack and walking away from him, into the denser trees, before he could say a word.

  Sleeping next to him last night meant nothing, I told myself as I went through my morning cleanup routine by the creek, nothing at all. Don’t think about Dad’s face. He’d understand that you were cold. DON’T THINK ABOUT IT!

  I massaged my temples as I returned to the burnt out campfire. Gideon nodded in greeting, meeting my eyes only briefly before returning them to his gun, which he was currently loading with ammunition.

  “Did you hear the birds?” I asked, looking at the gun in his hands.

  “Yes. They’re that way,” he nodded northeast. “Just a few trees away, though pretty high up.” He stood, gun loaded. “Wait here; I’ll just be a minute.”

  I didn’t argue, mostly because I didn’t want to scare the birds; he walked off, careful of his footsteps, and then I heard several gun fires. A few moments later, Gideon returned, dead birds in hand. We rebuilt our fire and cooked the four birds he caught before starting south again. He didn’t say a word about sleeping beside each other the night before, and I didn’t bring it up. However, my father’s face kept replaying in my head.

  That night, Gideon and I laid down a few feet apart, the fire built as large as we dared with the proximity of the trees. I shivered some more, and I felt like my thoughts were very loud as I considered the option I’d taken last night.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he murmured. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  I sighed, then scooted closer; his arm immediately wrapped around me.

  “We need warmer clothes,” I told him, snuggling in.

  “I have another mall in mind; we’re heading towards it now. If we get back on the main road it’ll take us less time. . .”

  “How much less time?”

  “Maybe a day.”

  “Naw, not worth it.”

  His arm tightened around me. “Fine by me. Who needs clothes, right?”

  I suppressed a giggle; this was way too much proximity for me to be taking interest in his personality. I tried to relax my thoughts, but it was difficult with his heart beating right under my cheek. How had I gone to sleep so easily the night before? I definitely felt less exhausted tonight. Though I hadn’t spent as much time shivering before giving in to the option Gideon offered.

  “Not tired?” he asked.

  “I’ll get there.”

  “You could tell me why you touch that bracelet so much.”

  I bit my lip before speaking. “My mom. She gave it to me before . . .”

  “Before I killed her.”

  “Uh, yes. She said she’d always wanted to give her daughter something beautiful. I thought it was ridiculous because she’d traded something valuable for something worthless.”

  “What had she traded?”

  “The prenatal vitamins.” I could sense him pulling out the memory of the bottle he’d found while rifling through my bag; it felt like forever ago.

  “Why do you still have them, then?”

  I squirmed. “The couple who’d traded for them were part of our hunting party; they died, and I’d felt like the trade should have never happened, so I took them back. I couldn’t help it, especially since my mom was dead, too.”

  “You took them off the pregnant woman’s dead body.”

  “It just . . . it felt like the vitamins were a part of my mother – her final act was to trade them. For this,” I reached into my sleeve and pulled out the bracelet, letting it catch the firelight. I watched Gideon’s eyes go to the bracelet, though I was pretty sure he’d looked at it up close before. “I know it was selfish, but I wanted both. I guess it goes with your previous accusation. That I’m selfish.”

  “I didn’t mean that you were selfish. I was counteracting your accusation of me being selfish. Remember?”

  “I guess so.” I hid the bracelet back in my sleeve.

  “So you made a point of grabbing the pills, but didn’t think to grab more ammunition? Or to even check that you had enough before going after me?”

  “I was obviously not thinking clearly.” I squirmed some more. “But . . . I’m kind of glad I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want you dead.”

  I craned my neck to peek up at him, my eyes first meeting his stubbled jaw before seeing the expression on his face; his eyebrows were furrowed as he stared up at the trees.

  “Candace, that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m sure that’s not the biggest compliment you could get, me not wanting you dead.”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, your first words to me were ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I think we’re on the road to vast improvement.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” I settled back against his chest.

  “I think I could get used to this,” he murmured.

  I might have thought up a reply, but I was already losing myself to sleep.

  ~ * ~

  “Here we go, how about this?” Gideon asked, holding up another frilly pink shirt. Why he thought I liked pink, I have no idea. Maybe I did like pink; I’d never had the luxury of deciding.

  “We still have the same problem,” I noted, touching one of the spaghetti straps. “It’s not going to keep me warm.” I turned away from it, continuing to rifle through the large pile of remaining merchandise that we’d found at the Medford mall. Unfortunately, none of it was made for cold weather, which was precisely the reason any of it remained.

  Gideon dropped the shirt back onto the pile and walked away, leaving me to my fruitless search. He went over to the cashier table and began opening and closing drawers. After a few minutes of this, there was silence, and I looked up to find him missing. I didn’t bother panicking, since he’d most likely just stepped into the stockroom to search there.

  “There’s. Nothing. Here,” I muttered in frustration, sifting through several girly shirts that no one in this decade would have created – not because fashions had changed, but because practicality and survival were the new black.

  “There’s this,” Gideon murmured, reappearing at my elbow and holding out what looked to be a small mending kit; it was complete with several needles and several colors of thread.

  “I don’t know how to sew,” I said, staring at it. “And I’m not sure how much use it would be if I did.”

  “I know how to sew. We can stitch together several shirts to make something warm for you.”

  “What about you?”

  “If there’s enough thread, I don’t think I look too shabby in purple. We’ll hope for better options elsewhere, but it’s getting a little too cold to wait. Now, I think the best option for starting is to add onto the shirt you’re currently wearing, since it already has one sleeve.”

  “I’m not taking my shirt off,” I told him, hugging my chest; the shirt underneath my top layer was way too thin and revealing for me to comfortably remove it in front of him.

  “
I would never ask you to; just step into the back and change into one of these so I can work.” He lifted up the pink frilly shirt again, even though it was a little out of his way.

  I took it by the strap, holding it up suspiciously. “You don’t happen to like pink, do you?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Just go change.”

  Chapter 13

  Watching Gideon work was fascinating; he bent over the fabric, very carefully pushing and pulling the small needle in and out. The needle looked very tiny between his calloused thumb and finger, and yet his stitches were so small.

  I crouched beside him, taking careful note of what he was doing to my shirt. When I had come back from changing, he’d already started in on sewing a sleeve out of one of the sleeveless shirts we’d found, and now he was attaching it to my original shirt, right where I had ripped away the previous sleeve.

  “It’s still not going to be very warm,” I noted.

  “We’re going to pad it; you don’t mind being bulky, do you?”

  “Not if it keeps me warm.”

  “Good. Then choose which shirts you want me to sew as the top layer. We’re going to use this,” he indicated my shirt, “as the bottom layer, and then we’ll stick more fabric in between the two.”

  “How many do I need for the top layer?”

  “Just two. One as the body, and then another for the sleeves.”

  I went back to the pile of shirts, sorting through them some more until I found a deep brown shirt, and then a forest green shirt. I brought them over to Gideon.

  He arched an eyebrow. “Like a tree?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I’ll blend in.”

  “Is that the only reason you chose those colors?”

  “I like them. They’re very earthy.”

  “Yes, I know,” he replied wryly. “Which do you want as the body?”

  “Green,” I decided.

  He nodded once and kept working.

  “Will there be much forest in the south?”

  “Gotten quite attached, haven’t you?”

  “Well, it does feel safer. And alive.”

  “Have you always felt that way, or just since my tree analogy?”

  “I’d never had an opportunity to think about it before. I went where my parents went.”

  “But you feel that way now, despite the fact that the forest is no safer than anywhere else.”

  “Well. . .” I thought about this. “I guess my feeling safer there relates to my association of it with you. You make me feel safe.”

  “Didn’t your parents make you feel safe?”

  “Yes, but I also felt trapped with them. Not that I wanted to leave them at all, but they were really my only option. Now, they’re gone, and I have two very clear options: go off on my own, or stay with you. Staying with you feels safe.”

  “Yes, I am definitely the safe option.” He chuckled.

  “What about you? Why are you choosing purple?”

  “I thought it was the least feminine option, until I saw your brown and green. Is there any black in there?”

  I went back to the pile and searched some more, coming up with a few cotton black tops. “These look good?” I asked, holding them up.

  “Perfect. Black is definitely my color.”

  “I guess I’ll have to wait and see.” The shirt he’d been wearing since we met was a deep beige.

  Just then, a woman around the age of thirty appeared in the doorway of the store we sat; I jumped to my feet, pointing my gun at her.She raised her hands above her head in surrender, though she had a gun held loosely in one of them.

  Gideon had his gun pointed at her from beside me, and she looked worriedly between the two of us.

  “I just need some clothes,” she murmured.

  “Candace,” Gideon said, his eyes not leaving her. “Can you grab what we need? She can have whatever she wants from what’s left.”

  “Why don’t you grab what we need? You’re the seamstress.”

  “I trust my coordination a little better than I trust yours. Can you just do what I say for now?”

  I lowered my gun, breaking eye contact with the woman to walk over to the pile. “What, exactly, do we need?”

  “I’d say eighteen more shirts.” I watched the woman raise her eyebrow at this number.

  “There’ll still be plenty here for you,” I assured her, hurriedly picking the specified number of shirts at random; they’d be inside cushion, so there was no reason for us to care what they looked like, and all the warmer fabrics had long since been claimed by others.

  “Can you grab the rest of our stuff?” Gideon asked me. “I think we might as well leave her to it.”

  I shot a glare at him before leaning over and scooping up our possessions, including the shirt of mine he was working on; I stalked out of the store, into the main area of the mall, passing the woman as I went. Gideon followed, all the while keeping his gun on the woman, turning and backing out. He kept his gun on her until she was out of our line of vision.

  He grabbed my arm, turning to face forward, though keeping his eyes focused over his shoulder. He hauled me onward, toward the mall entrance we had gone in through.

  “Gideon, let go,” I hissed, tugging.

  He did as I said, still on edge.

  “Quit acting like that. She’s not following us.”

  “I don’t trust humans – that’s one of the reasons I stay away from areas where they congregate.”

  “Except me.”

  “What?” he glanced at me.

  “You don’t trust humans, except me.”

  “Yes, except you, and that’s because I started our acquaintanceship with a well-defined knowledge about your wish for my death, and it was a very clear change when you no longer felt that way.”

  “So you trust me not to kill you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t you trust my ‘coordination,’ as you put it? What does that even mean?”

  “I meant your ability to keep an eye on her without getting distracted and your ability to shoot her if she became a threat.”

  “I could have shot her, easily,” I retorted.

  “I know. I just wanted to be in control of the situation.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s understandable, but I hope you don’t think you’re in control of our situation.”

  “What are you talking about?” We were through the doors and making a beeline for the trees a quarter of a mile away.

  “You’re not my leader – you’re not in charge. I don’t have to do anything you say.”

  “I never said you did.”

  “I want a fair partnership. There’s two of us, and we’re a partnership.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.” I peeked at him. Why was he smirking? “Let’s get our shirts finished; it is definitely not spaghetti strap weather.” I shivered in the wind.

  “Definitely. Whatever you say.”

  “Good.” Why was he smirking? It was infuriating!

  We hit the trees a few moments later, and Gideon immediately took a seat on a rock to finish my shirt. When he was done, I ducked behind a tree to change, and was immediately relieved by the warmth that enveloped me.

  “How is it?” Gideon asked as I came back out; he stood up from his rock just a couple feet away from where I appeared.

  I tried to hold in my happy warmth for only three seconds before giving up and letting it gush out. “Perfect,” I said, grinning as widely as I could remember grinning for a long time. In fact, I was so happy to finally be warm that I threw my arms around him.

  His arms immediately returned the hug, pressing me into his chest and causing me to feel even more warmth course through my body.

  “I’m glad,” he murmured, resting his chin on my head.

  We stood there for a moment before I slowly backed away. I cleared my throat. “Your turn?” I asked.

  “Oh. Yeah.” He reached for his beltline, then immediately pulled his shirt up and over
his head.

  I whipped my hand over my eyes. “Whoa!”

  “Well, I’m not wearing that frilly pink shirt while I wait,” he stated. I could hear him shuffling around, reclaiming his position on his rock and settling in to do more sewing.

  I kept my hand over my eyes, standing there awkwardly but refusing to remove it. It wasn’t so much because I felt like it was immodest for Gideon to be walking around without a shirt – plenty of males did it on warmer days. It was more because of what I’d seen before I’d covered my eyes, and I just couldn’t handle it.

  The skin under his shirt was pale in comparison to the skin I was used to being exposed to, as if he tried never to take his shirt off, even in warm weather. I thought I understood why, considering his past, but it might have been for another reason entirely.

  The problem was, the pale skin wasn’t a deterrent from the way he looked. He was perfectly sculpted, full in all the right areas, with the small scar from his bullet wound directly under his right breast. And I couldn’t handle what it made me feel.

  How could I feel so possessive toward my parents’ killer? How could I want him so much? And I didn’t even want him in the way I had set out to want him several weeks before – almost two months before.

  Before, I had felt possessive over his death. Now, I felt possessive over his being. How could that be right?

  I took a deep breath, then slowly lifted my hand away from my eyes just enough to see the ground at my feet. I carefully crept back to my tree, then removed my hand and settled down against its trunk with Gideon out of sight. I kept listening for him though – listening for the faint sound of thread traveling through fabric, and his deep, slow breaths.

  Finally, about an hour later, he called out to me. “You can come out now, Candace. I’m decent.”

  I stood and peeked around the tree trunk. There he stood, wearing his new, bulky black shirt.

  “What do you think? Is black my color?” He waggled his eyebrows at me.

  After seeing so much of his shape, of his definition, the bulky shirt was a relief. “Yes,” I replied, letting out a breath and relaxing my shoulders. “Black is definitely your color.”