Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(10) Taiki

I was not expecting to wake up again.

I lie on my back in the soft silt, staring uncomprehendingly at the sky painted across the surface far above me. It's an ashen blue edged with coral colours: dawn. My last available memories are from full daytime, and while I sense there are later ones than that, I am content with leaving those unavailable. My fingers spasm, digging into the clay-like mud under the silt. I'm deathly sore all over, but I am, against all odds, alive.

I'm not sure I should be sitting up yet, which makes it lucky that I've never been one to listen to things I "should" do. The bigger obstacle is that my arms are as weak as freshly plucked seaweed, and an empty, whistling feeling fills my head every time I move. I fish around for a memory of the last time I felt this washed up, and come up with a ten-day sickness I went through when I was somewhere around ten. This might beat that, though the length of that illness makes it a worthy contender. I kind of want to puke, so I move one floppy hand to my mouth to try and trick my body into thinking I can hold it in. I can't. I roll over as my stomach convulses, and it empties yesterday's dinner and snacks beside me. It mostly sinks into the silt, so I cover it. A sickly pall hangs in the water.

I'm going to be sick again if I have to look at that, so I gather my strength and roll onto my other side. That gives me an elbow to prop myself up on, which I avail myself of. The coloured blob about an arm-span away swims into focus.

I blink. Taiki?

He's asleep in the silt, both hands curled limply in front of him. He looks exhausted. Not the up-too-late, up-too-early kind of tired I'm intimately familiar with: actually, bone-deep, dead-on-his-feet spent. I debate waking him just to get some answers, but get distracted as my hand bumps something beside me. My belt is still on, its sponge sheath chafing my hip. My bone dagger, which I distinctly remember dropping at some point yesterday, is safe and snug at my side.

I turn my eyes back to the Luasa. He's smaller than he looked in the flashing lights of the deep. He'd be up to my nose if we were both human, and I'm average height. I've never seen a human so pale, though. His skin is the fawn colour of beach sand, and his hair is black, dusted with a sandy-red shade that defies my colour vocabulary. His tail is a pale version of the same, russet on top, reddish-cream below. It and his entire body are covered in freckles. He's cute in an innocent kind of way, even if not the kind I would go after if I were into boys and he didn't look approximately fourteen. I wonder if his parents know he's here.

It takes me a few heartbeats of wondering why his hands look odd to realize that his pale, clear fingernails have my blood under them.

I drop my gaze to my abdomen. There is a tidy semicircle of scars across my side, tender to the touch, but not at all painful. I balance shakily on one arm and feel my back. The same. I didn't dream that shark bite yesterday. And I have a horrific, sinking feeling that the person I felt against my back as we swam down is the same one who healed me, who is sleeping here now, and who I threatened at dagger-point yesterday. Taiki must have followed me after I fled, then rescued me when I got attacked. He even warned me that Telu was dangerous to return to.

Why?

He doesn't even know me. I would certainly wake him to start an interrogation on this, but my arms are threatening to turn to jelly. I let them fail me, and lie on my back, watching the sun rise. Either I've been asleep for a moon, or Taiki used some kind of Luasa magic on me yesterday. This triggers a memory, and I lift my left arm. My rock-bitten elbow barely even registers a scar.

I have never liked the feeling of guilt. It's probably one of my least favorite experiences in the human repertoire, right up alongside incompetence, shame, and loneliness. All three of those have taken up residence in my gut at the moment, and they're making soup together. I drop my hands across my face, and promptly regret it as the silt they were lying in accompanies them and makes for my orifices. I swat it away.