“Not so bad? Not so bad? I was abducted and brought here. They forced me to become this… this thing.”
She wrapped herself in her own arms.
She needed comfort and warmth but I couldn’t be the one to give it to her.
Not after I had let her down so badly.
“And you…” Agatha said. “What’ll happen to you if they catch you?”
“They’ll put me in solitary. If I’m lucky.”
Solitary was the very worst place to be.
A single cell with nothing to keep you engaged.
Even if you had the strongest mind, eventually solitary would strip you of it.
Being completely cut off from everyone else had a terrible effect on the mind.
I wouldn’t get to socialize with the other prisoners.
I wouldn’t get to fight in the pits.
And I would never get to see Agatha ever again, and that was the greatest pain of all.
What would I have to think about each night in solitary?
The idea that each time the moon rose, another fighter would be taking his turn with Agatha.
It was enough to drive a Vulcarian insane.
The best I could look forward to was hope I would lose my mind quickly.
Or else take matters into my own hands and cut short my sentence with a sharp blade, length of rope, or dash my brains against the hard tile floor.
I wouldn’t be the first to do that, I was sure.
And I wouldn’t be the last.
“It was supposed to be right here,” I said. “Right here. Beside this statue of a Desert Flower.”
Agatha was the first to see through her cloud of emotions and shifted position so she sat beside me.
She wrapped her arms around me and I rested my arm over her.
I didn’t deserve this kindness, this warmth from her.
But it sure felt good to have her so close.
We sat there with my back against the statue as the suns eased over the horizon and took their heat with them.
We fell asleep and awoke in grey twilight.
I checked Agatha was beside me and was relieved to find she was.
She lay with her legs out straight and turned at ninety degrees at her hips with her head on my chest and one arm draped over my stomach.
I leaned down and kissed her on top of the head.
In a desert of emptiness and death, she was all I had.
She was all I wanted.
And still, I managed a smile.
It was big considering the situation we found ourselves in.
I had zero reason to smile.
Except for her.
Her stomach growled and she mumbled in her sleep as she sat up and blinked awake.
She ran her hands over her face.
“Hungry?” I said.
“A little,” she said, which was another way of saying she was starving. “Do we have any jerky left?”
“We ate the last of it today. But there might be something I can rustle up…”
I got up and Agatha stretched her arms and legs and massaged her back.
I would have to get my fingers into her muscles later and work out the kinks.
I approached the Desert Flower statue.
“Are you going to perform more of your desert Kung Fu and find another fish in the desert?” she said.
“Maybe, if I have to. But I might not need to.”
I ran my hands over the Desert Flower statue’s rough contours until I came to one of the large petals.
Please tell me my crew aren’t complete assholes…
I slammed my palm into the petal and it sunk in an inch and then popped out again, falling to the ground.
I reached inside the hole.
Inside was a small cubby with a pile of food wrapped in rags.
I pulled it out and dumped it on the floor.
Then I placed the petal back in position and banged it into place with my fist.
I picked up a handful of sand to rub around the petal so no one could tell I’d opened it.
Agatha picked through the food.
“Wait. You’re capable of magic now?”
“No magic. I found it hidden here in the statue.”
Agatha rolled over the food and tossed it in the air, whooping and screaming with joy as if she’d found a secret trove of ancient gold.
I laughed and shook my head. She was one crazy cookie.
“It’s a feast!” she said.
“Compared to Desert Fish, yes. But don’t get your hopes up. There won’t be any human delicacies here.”
“I don’t care. I could eat anything right about now.”
“That’s fortunate because even the best-tasting food goes a little off after it’s been stored inside a desert rock for months.”
We gathered the packaged food and moved away from the statue and deeper into the desert.
Agatha focused her attention on the food and couldn’t stop picking through it until she decided what she was going to eat first.
We turned a corner and came to a stop at a crossroad of sand dune valleys. It would make seeing those who approached a lot easier.
“Here,” I said, handing over a large bottle of squirlatch juice. “We can use this to wash in. But save some for drinking later.”
It was unique in that it didn’t evaporate like most liquids and was a delicacy in my culture.
Agatha downed a huge gulp of it and sighed with satisfaction.
I checked the coast was clear before letting her wash beneath the stars.
I couldn’t help but glance at her naked body that glistened in the moonlight.
Once she was done, she handed the bottle over and I washed.
I thought I heard a footstep around the corner from where Agatha was waiting but each time I turned to look in her direction, she wasn’t there.
I must have imagined her gazing at my naked body the way I had hers.
We settled down and began munching away.
“It seems strange,” Agatha said, chomping on a ghax snack.
“What does?”
“Your crew didn’t leave a shuttlecraft here and yet they took the time to put food in the statue? And had the statue carved so you would recognize it? Why would they do that?”
“To irritate me? To show they
