Definitely not how I imagined my first time holding hands. Although, to be honest, when I did imagine being alone with Kest, I never really thought about holding hands at all. My brain just kind of skipped over those preliminary steps straight to the sexy stuff. This was nice, though. Kind of weirdly intense all by itself.
“You dropped your internal alchemy.” Kest pointed at my fingernails. The skin underneath was going bluish.
My lips were numb when I said, “I thought it was getting colder out here.”
I concentrated on getting the little bit of Miasma that kept everything balanced back up and running again.
“Here,” she said, “I can help.”
She pulled her stump away from me, then picked up both my hands with her real one and held them against her stomach. Her skin glowed faintly red-orange from the inside. Pretty soon, the iron in my blood started to heat up from the Hot Metal Spirit in the air. The cold, heavy feeling of dead tissue dissipated, and I started to breathe easier.
“Thanks. That’s a lot better.”
For a while, we just sat there listening to the rain.
“Now you’re really not making any progress,” she said. “If anything, hanging out with me is distracting you from the stuff you should already have down. Rali would’ve been a better choice.”
“No offense to your brother,” I said, “but I’m a lot less interested in holding his hand than I am yours.”
Kest snorted. “That’s what I’m talking about. There’s a reason the really dedicated cultivators don’t get married based on attraction.”
I pretended like I didn’t notice that she was basically saying she was into me, even though I filed it away to replay a million times later.
“What do they get married based on, then?”
“Resonant cultivation,” she said. “It only happens between specific Spirit types, but it basically does double the heavy lifting in your kishotenketsu if you’re with someone whose Spirit resonates with yours. You advance through the levels and make breakthroughs a lot faster.”
“Oh yeah, that sounds way better than being around somebody you like,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Remind me never to get that serious about my kishotenketsu.”
She grinned. “When your internal alchemy actually does what it’s supposed to all the time, then I’ll worry about your dedication getting out of control.”
Dreams and Errands
I ENDED UP FIGHTING half a dozen more ferals over the next couple hours, coming back each time to hold Kest’s hand. Honestly, I was having such a good time hanging out with her that I kind of forgot to care about Spirit cloaking.
The exhaustion might’ve had something to do with that, too. With the trip across Bogland and getting used to the scythe weighing me down and burning off the bog ferals’ soul corruption with Corpse Fire, it’d been a long couple of days. When I started to nod off against the brick wall, Kest suggested we call it a night.
I walked her down to her room door, then headed back upstairs. It wasn’t until I was already back in my little closet up on the third level, unrolling my bedroll, that I realized I probably could’ve kissed her.
“Dang it.”
“Dang it!” Sushi giggled and swam out of the paper bag full of my old dirty clothes, reminding me I needed to do laundry sometime.
“You’re really loud. Probably woke Warcry up through the wall.” I petted her purple-flecked forehead, smoothing my thumb over her flowy dorsal fin. “Do you need to go hunt down some bugs to eat?”
“Eat?” The little fish swam over to the corner and nudged a pile of pointy bug legs that looked like they’d come off a huge centipede. “Ate.”
I grimaced, imagining those crawling up my neck while I was sleeping. “Thanks for killing whatever that was.”
She spun around in the air all happy, then backed her flowing tail into the top of my bedroll and lay down.
“That’s definitely my spot,” I said, shucking off my clothes and laying them out to dry.
“My spot!”
I scooped the fish out of the bed before I climbed in so she wouldn’t get squished, but she swam back under the covers as soon as I was lying down and closed her brown and blue eyes.
“Fine. Whatever.”
That night I started out having a pretty awesome dream about Kest and me in the metal shop at my high school, but then everything shifted. Suddenly, I was watching my dad climb out of the back of a cop car. He was in a suit, but he still had cuffs on his hands and ankles. An officer escorted him across wet grass to a little tarp tent set up in the middle of a graveyard.
Gramps was already there, on a metal folding chair. When he heard the handcuff chains jingling, he stood up and met Dad in front of the casket.
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe for Gramps to yell at Dad for killing Mom. It was definitely his fault she’d had the drugs, probably his fault she’d ever even tried them in the first place. I would’ve yelled at him. Probably even hit him.
Dad stiffened up like he expected a punch.
But Gramps hugged him. For a second, Dad just stood there dazed like he had been hit. Then he kind of collapsed onto Gramps’s shoulder, giving him an awkward half-hug, because his arms wouldn’t go any farther with his hands still in the cuffs.
Then Gramps was apologizing to Dad, which made me want to scream and kill somebody. Gramps had never done anything wrong. He’d taken care of me every time Dad screwed up. He didn’t have anything to apologize for, especially not to his deadbeat criminal of a son.
Dad shook his head, telling Gramps it wasn’t his fault, but you could tell Gramps didn’t believe him.
Then other people started showing up, crowding under the funeral tent out of the rain. Kids from my high school. Hannah, Isobel, even Blaise and his friends, all dressed in their good church clothes. That was all wrong. Not
