The Final Messenger

29. Raðljóst

Raðljóst — enough light to navigate

•••

When Niryn opens her eyes, she sees sunlight spilling out from every part of the girl sleeping beside her. When she reaches out to grasp Adria's hand with her own, she feels like the sun too, instead of being cold enough to make her flinch.

Or is it her own warmth leaking over why Adria's skin no longer feels blue to touch?

I could have this. I could have you, she realises with a shock. No Theridion, no one hounding her to take a life, nothing can weigh her down now. It almost leaves her gasping under the sudden lightness of it all, but all she does is curl up closer together, the covers shifting over her head.

No one ever tells you that when you're a hundred feet underwater, you can't swim up to the surface right away. Under extreme pressure, inert gases like nitrogen seek its way inside your tissue, causing bubbles in your blood that are dangerous if they are not absorbed by the lungs. The faster you reach the surface, clawing your way out of the great blue depths, the more risk these microbubbles will form within your body's tissues and cause a condition known as 'Decompression Sickness.'

When Niryn wakes up again, she feels nausea like she's never felt before. Like she can't breathe or speak. When a person has been stuck underwater for so long, how can they cope with suddenly being able to breathe air?

"It's too good," Niryn says, making the other girl wake up. "Everything is too good."

"What is too good, sæta?" Adria gives the most heartbroken expression she's ever seen.

"This — I don't know — everything! I'm sorry, this is our first morning together and I can't keep my shit together. I don't understand." Niryn throws herself under the covers again.

"I understand," Adria says, making Niryn's face peek out from the sheets. "My amma would tell me that once you've been one thing for so long, your body shuts down when there is change. You just need to take some time to yourself. Rest, recover, then your heart will be back as new."

Niryn purses her lips for a while, before finally speaking.

"... You call your grandma 'ah-ma' too?"

The other girl fumbles, then giggles at the unexpected reply. Niryn grins, despite knowing she didn't say anything funny. What she would do to keep that laugh. It's a strangely elvish, airy sort of laughter. It bursts like red-ripe grapes being plucked and crushed by hand.

"I see," Adria says. "We have another thing in common."

Her hands wade through strawberry-printed covers. Niryn doesn't want to think about it, but they need another place to stay. The old Emcharoen house did well, considering it's the most obvious place they would look for.

Come to think of it, if it's so obvious, wouldn't that make it the last place they'd search? Now they get to hide in plain sight.

Adria touches her hand, the coldness of her grasp seeping back. She lifts it to her lips and murmurs something softly. No matter how many times Adria touches her, it feels like a revelation.

She never knew that she could be touched so gently like that. All she's known were rough shoves and the tightening of their grip. She wonders if it's partially due to her appearing hard on the outside that was why they never handled her with care.

Niryn's brow furrows, creating the slightest crease in her forehead. She's just some teenage girl. She never asked for this. All she wanted was to live peacefully with her family in the quiet outskirts of the city and find a girl or guy to marry someday. How did her life get so messy?

But... she got to meet Adria. Yet is that really worth the price of two dead parents?

If she had a choice between picking Adria and her parents remaining alive, who would she choose? Secretly, she knows that Adria is just the chance result of all the fucked up, horrific shit that happened to her. Choosing her means choosing everything that comes along with it.

So why was she struggling with the answer? And why are her thoughts spiralling into something as senseless and wild as this? What good does wondering any of this do?

"Elskan mín?"

"Hmm?" Niryn looked up, trying to keep her face clean. "You've been calling me that a lot. What does it mean?"

"Oh." Adria's cheeks redden.

How does that work for vampires?

"It's a name Icelandic people call their love. Do you have any word like that in your home?"

Glad to have her mind diverted to another topic, Niryn says, "There's lots. We call our wives as 'tài tai' or 'lǎo pó.' In Thai... I guess you can use 'tee-rák,' which means 'my sweetheart.' I only ever hear my parents using that jokingly though. It's very lovey-dovey."

"Tee-ràk."

Niryn tries to keep her mouth shut. It's not bad for a first time speaker, it's just — she'd never heard a term of endearment sound like it's being bitten out, rather than said lovingly.

"Elskan mín," Niryn says back. Now it's Adria's turn to keep a straight face.

"Maybe we should stick to our own country's names."

That makes Niryn laugh hard. It's not even that funny, but she's never heard Adria quip like that before.

I could get used to this, she thinks.

If only things were always this easy.