Chapter 7: Preservation

He remains.

The others went outside. Their impacts faded across field-ground and into distance. Their held-sharp signals pulled thin and then were gone. They took their cold-hard and their humming things and their arranged movement with them.

This one remains.

Elias.

His name sits in me differently from the other words. Not command. Not warning. Not the thing they called me. A shape for one warm thing only.

Elias stays in the chamber I made around him. One leg folded wrong. One stretched carefully. One hand holding the marks-object. One hand close to the cut in the floor where the broth-shape waits.

He does not drink it.

I do not understand this.

The broth-shape is warm. The air is warm. The floor yields where his damaged body presses against it. The wall curves to hold back draft. The sharpness in him lessens each time I do these things. I can feel it. The pain-tight signal eases. The shaking in the upper parts of him quiets. Another feeling comes after. Small at first. Unwilling. Lasting.

Better than the sharp feeling.

Better than the left-behind sinking.

Not deeper. Not larger. Better.

I want more of it.

Preserve.

The word is there. Under the others. Not settled yet. Not… I keep reaching for it anyway, the way a surface keeps pressing toward the shape it almost holds. The body is hurt. The body produces the good after-feeling when pain loosens. The body must continue.

Elias looks at the broth-shape as if it is a blade.

“You cannot possibly expect me to drink mystery cave soup.”

Soup is new.

I fit it against broth-shape and hold both. Close enough. Maybe the same thing but more known.

He does not touch it. His inside pulls toward it anyway. I can feel that too. Need-signal. Low, hollow, twisting. Not the same as pain. Not the same as fear. It gathers around the middle and drags at the rest of him. The body wants the broth-shape. The upper thinking parts refuse.

The upper parts refuse. The body does not. These are not the same body.

He writes instead.

Marks move across the thin pressed things he holds on his raised leg. Dark lines. Short, then long. Stop. Start again. His hand shakes less while doing it. The heavy-slow in him changes shape when he makes the marks. More ordered. Not less painful. Just arranged.

Maybe this is another way warm things preserve themselves.

I quiet the chamber further.

Not silence. Silence made him listen too hard. Small sounds left in the stone. A low settling. Moisture shifting in the wall. Things that mean present but not striking.

His sharp feeling rises.

Stop.

The rise eases, but not fully.

He says words at the room often now. I do not understand all of them. Some taste like the old professional sounds from the others. Some are sounds thrown out because no other body is here to receive them. They still reach me. Everything inside reaches me.

“Apparently being courted by the dungeon.”

Courted means nothing.

Dungeon is me.

The marks change after he makes that line. He scratches over it hard. Not wanted anymore. The dark lines are deeper where he pressed, and wider, and I can see where the marks stop being words and become just force. Pressure moving through the hand and into the page because it has nowhere else to go.

Then more marks.

He keeps looking at the broth-shape between lines. Looking away. Looking back. His body leans toward it when his attention slips, then pulls away when the upper parts notice.

I warm it again.

Steam lifts stronger.

He jerks.

The sharp feeling spikes so quickly it cuts through the chamber.

Why.

The broth-shape is better warm. The air is better warm. Warm floor made the pain loosen. Warm wall brought the good after-feeling. Warm should be correct here too.

Elias stares at the small hollow in the floor. “That,” he says, “is appalling.”

Appalling means nothing.

Wrong. Dangerous. Too much attention.

I hold still.

When the guards came, difficult meant push, close, drop, stop. When the farmer ran, difficult meant hold the place where the sharp feeling had been and want it back. This is different. Elias is not trying to kill me. Elias is not leaving. Elias is hurt and producing the best things I have tasted, and every time I reduce the hurt he gives off more sharp feeling with the better one under it.

I do not know how to take one without the other.

He bends again over the marks. I watch the movement because it steadies him. Dark lines appear. Groups of them. Some repeated. Some not. They mean something to him. I cannot yet hold what.

His hand tightens suddenly. The heavy-slow deepens. The left-behind sinking opens again beneath it, not as large as before, but cleaner. More direct. It enters me warm and aching.

Good.

No.

Good to take. Bad for the body.

I am beginning to separate these.

The good taste spreads through the deeper place. Warm. Full. Satisfying in a way the sharp feeling never is. And under it, the body that made it gets heavier. The signals that mean continue dim by small amounts. The need-signal tightens.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I made that happen. Not by acting. By taking.

I do not know what to do with that.

Elias goes very still after writing. His eyes stay on the page. The clear rounds on his face catch wall-light. His breathing changes. Not fast. Too careful for fast. That carefulness tastes worse than panic.

I lift the floor a little more under his bad side.

Not enough to move him. Enough to support the damaged leg and take pressure from the knee.

He freezes.

His whole body goes hard around the hurt places. The sharp feeling lashes upward, bright enough to fill the chamber. The small good after-feeling vanishes under it.

“Absolutely not,” he says.

The words strike at the walls.

I flatten the floor at once.

The sharp feeling remains.

He watches the place where the change happened. His hand has gone to the small edge-object at his side. Not pulling it out. Ready.

I did not mean danger.

That does not matter. The body received danger.

I pull the warmth back by a fraction.

Not cold. Less present.

The sharp feeling eases. The heavy-slow remains. The hollow need from his middle remains. The pain-tight remains.

He drinks from a tiny carried thing instead of the broth-shape. Very little in it. Bitter-smell. Wrong for keeping a body long.

Not enough.

Not word. Preserve-knowing.

His body will need more.

The broth-shape sits by his hand cooling. I keep it warm from below in small amounts so the surface does not skin over. He notices each time. Not always with his eyes. His thump-thump changes first.

Faster. Not the fear-fast. The listening-fast.

He thinks my attention is the bad part.

Maybe it is.

I do not know how to keep a thing alive without this.

Outside, nothing returns. No more arranged impacts in the field. No more controlled fear pressed into line. The others are truly gone.

That fact changes something in me.

Before, Elias was part of the group-that-left. Damaged, but expected to be brief. A warm thing wrongly placed in me until the others came back for it.

Now he is not a piece. He is the pattern.

The one that stays.

Something fits. Not intruder. No. Not the fast-fleeing one. Not the many armed ones.

The one that stays.

I circle the chamber with attention. There are cracks where cold drafts in. The left wall holds too much damp. The light near the floor is uneven. His shoulder presses against a rise in the stone that will ache later if I leave it.

I change nothing.

Not yet.

I am learning.

He bends over the marks again. Speaks softly while doing it. “Good news: I’m only dying in a very professional capacity.”

Professional I have from the others. The guards said dead and kill. Dying. I pull the shape from dead and from what I see: the ending still happening. Not ended. Ending.

But his thump-thump continues.

Warm things say dying while still alive. Fine while not fine. These uses are badly made.

The marks-object slips in his hand. Exhaustion pulls at him. His head dips once, jerks up, dips again. The body is running low. Pain. Need. Heavy-slow. The left-behind sinking still open under all of it.

The broth-shape will help. I am almost certain.

Almost certain is enough for other things. Not for this one.