The Silence of Alium [On Hiatus]

Chapter 12 - Laid Bare (Part 2)

Jiya dropped her towel, pulling on her pants and squeezing back into the sweat-crusted shirt. Her shower would have to wait.

"Rachel, come back."

"What's the point?"

Jiya pressed her palms into her eyes and dragged them down her cheeks in exasperation, leaving a trail of grease and dirt streaking down her face in their wake. This was the last thing that she needed right now. The afternoon was fading into evening and the call to commence the search and rescue could come any minute now.

She heard Rachel dropping onto the bed, and followed after her.

"Rachel, do we have to do this now?"

Rachel, sprawled across the tiny cot that LaCroix station passed off as a bed and peered up at her, her eyes red and slick, on the verge of tears.

"No. No, of course not."

"Great," Jiya said, missing the sarcasm. She rummaged through her closet looking for her day pack. "I know it's hard on you," she continued, then stopped as Rachel interrupted her.

"No," Rachel interjected, "we can just talk at your funeral. Of course, that is if anyone even finds your damn body."

Jiya dropped the daypack to the floor and turned to Rachel. Apparently packing wasn't an option right now, either.

"Obviously you've heard about the search party."

"Obviously."

"I would've told you."

"When? When you got back? If you got back?"

Rachel was up now, perched on the edge of the bed, and fully invested in an argument that Jiya had been hoping to avoid altogether.

"Don't you think you might be exaggerating a little?"

"No."

Jiya gave up. She didn't have time for this. She could feel every free moment ebbing away, fully aware that soon she'd be trekking into the Savannah and if she didn't start now, not only would she be leaving without shower or rest, but she wouldn't even be provisioned for the trip.

Jiya reached into her closet sorting for appropriate attire for two days in the field. It felt like an optimistic estimate, yet at the same time, she knew she needed to travel light. Anymore than the absolute basics would mean wasted energy that she might not have to spare.

Despite Jiya's frustration with her, Jiya glanced back at Rachel as she resumed packing. She still set there, a behemoth towering over the small cot, covered from head to toe in dirt and sweat, even more than Jiya herself. Obviously Rachel had spent the day working the crops in the field. That dirt made the tears now slowly trickling down her cheeks all the more evident, leaving clean trails through the grime that caked her face.

"Are you really just going to lay there pouting?" Jiya asked. "You could at least help me pack."

"I'm not pouting," Rachel said. As she said it, she steeled up and Jiya could sense her partner's tears burning away as anger flooded in to fill that void. Jiya knew that she should leave it alone, and had Rachel been anyone else she would have done just that if not swooping in to console her; yet Rachel had the misfortune of knowing Jiya better than anyone else at LaCroix, which also meant that she didn't benefit from the social niceties of distant, but polite society. She suffered from the reality that came from emotional proximity.

"No, you kind of are," Jiya said, instantly regretting it.

"Jesus, Jiya," Rachel snapped. "You act like the station saint, all prim and proper, miss demure, but when you show the real you, you're bloody heartless."

Perhaps Rachel had a point. Jiya had known for a long time the extent of Rachel's feelings, and yet she had continued the relationship despite the inequity between them. Even if that were so, however, this was not the time. Jiya shoved her clothes in her bag and opened up the floor storage rifling through for survival gear.

"There are people out there," she began, as she continued her search for supplies, "people stranded and possibly hurt. Pinwheels are flocking in the largest groupings that I have ever seen, flocks large enough to easily be lethal. Every moment we spend here arguing is a moment I'm not spending preparing to go out there and bring those people in." She set aside a flashlight and continued searching. "And as I initiated this search, I have a responsibility to go out there and carry this through."

"You did what?" Rachel stood.

"What?"

"You started this whole thing?" Rachel was studying her now, her head tilted at that annoying slant at which she always held it when she was thinking through her next steps.

"Someone had to." Jiya returned her attention to her search for supplies pulling out a first aid kit and a water bladder. "Administrator Meng wasn't going to lift a finger for those people out there," she continued. "You should have been there. Anyway, I thought you'd heard?"

"I saw the volunteer roster posted in the commons."

That was news.

"It's up already?" Jiya said. "Crap." Immediately she abandoned her search, stripping down, running back to the bathroom as she did, and flipping on the shower.

"What happened to your sham modesty?"

Without hesitation Jiya jumped beneath the twin jets ignoring Rachel. The cold water shocked her system as it blasted onto her, a frozen jolt to an overheated system. Given time it would warm up, but Jiya didn't have any time. She scrubbed clean as quickly as possible, then flicked off the water before it ever heated up and grabbed her towel.

"You could at least pretend like you care about me," Rachel said. 

"You realize there are lives at stake, right?" Jiya asked, wringing out her long dark hair as she hurried back to the main room.  "I'm going. No debate."

As Jiya slipped into a clean wardrobe, Rachel grabbed her by the shoulders with a gentle hand bordering on a caress.

"Look, I know I'm being a horse's ass right now. I just wish you'd discussed it with me, that we factored into your emotional calculus even a little."

"And I do care," Jiya said, stopping for the briefest of moments and looking up into Rachel's eyes. "I care. And I wish that I felt the same as you did, but even if that were the case, this isn't emotional. It's what has to be done. Don't you see that? If I don't go, I don't think any survivors will be coming back. Not one."

"That's an awfully high opinion of yourself." Rachel laughed as she said it, a half-hearted chuckle attempting to lighten a mood that had long since left salvageable behind.

"It's not that," Jiya continued. "I want to get them back. I do. And someone in this rescue party has to feel that way."

"What do you mean by that?"

Jiya shook her head. She considered telling Rachel everything that Situ Tau had told her, but then she thought better of it. "It's nothing, dear. I just need to be there, okay?"

Rachel pulled her into a tight embrace, and this time Jiya let her, smothering as her much taller partner crushed her head into her chest and rested her chin on her head. "You get that I don't want to lose you out there, Jiya?"

"I do."