Page 50 of Ruby
Ree, who looks different when I last saw her, not just in body, but also in her expression as she looms in front of me. I think back to the tonality of her song and realize something in her has changed since we last met.
A quick glance around and I see Thivoll is with her, though turned away. He’s sniffing the breeze, pulling in whistling breaths.
“Glad you live,” Ree sings, pulling my attention back to her.
She is holding a silver tube of some sort.
“This have many other songs in it. Hurt throat. Want?”
I’m not sure I want to speak like they do. I’ve already given up my wings. But then I remember how much Ani hates how long it takes to sing.
“Human song?” I ask.
“Yes,” Ree responds, moving her chin up and down in a gesture I have seen Ani make.
“I take,” I sing back before I can think better of it.
My body tenses, ready for the pain that came before, but this time there is only the sting of the tube piercing into my skin.
After a long silence, she speaks again. “Can you understand me now?” Ree asks.
I blink, mind trying to catch up with the speed of her words. I open my mouth to respond and there is a stabbing pain in my throat.
I’m using one of my hands to massage it as I reply. “Yes. Understand.”
Ree shows me her white teeth. “Good. This is Thivoll’s language. We mostly use it as our default, but only because no one can agree. Your language is incredibly beautiful, but… slow.”
“Yes,” I agree. “Slow.”
“You don’t need to speak in such short sentences now,” she tells me.
“All I know,” I admit.
I look over at my shoulder and see that the wound there yesterday has started to heal. Trying to move it is not as difficult as it should be and I wonder how long I have been knocked out. It can’t be more than a day or some animal in this forest would have started taking chunks out of me for their meal.
Raising my head, I look up to see that it is early afternoon. After getting shot by the hunter, my body shut down for an entire day so that it could repair itself. If I want to fully get better, I will have to rest some more.
But not right now; the longer I am away from her, the more danger her life is in.
“Ani taken,” I tell Ree, urgency in my voice making it even rougher and flat. There are no harmonics to communicate greater levels of meaning. It’s disorienting.
“Who is Ani?”
“Red plume,” I tell her.
“Right. I called her Ruby. Thivoll said he smelled a Genali and a human. We can track them.”
“We go,” I reply as I push myself to my feet. I expect to feel dizzy and for my feet to hurt but they don’t.
I groan, the pain from my new wound added to that in my wing stubs and feet making me dizzy again.
“I can’t believe they gave everyone else we’ve met healingnanites, Thivoll, but not him. Why not him? An oversight?”
The orange beast snorts out a harsh breath. “No. They wanted him to suffer.”
“Nanites?” I ask, confused by the exchange and still working through the speed of their words.
“That’s the medicine I gave you,” Ree explains. “It’s littlerobots. I mean… Nevermind. I don’t think it will translate. I put something in you that will heal you, but it will take it a while to get you back to normal. And… well, I don’t think it’s likely to fix your wings. We need to get moving. The hunter has a large lead on us.”
