Tundra

Chapter 4: Subsiding Winds

Mia awoke to a smoky, yet delectable, fragrance wafting its way past her nose. Her stomach growled at the thought of cooked food, and she opened her eyes. Felix had brought back more firewood, in addition to food that he cooked over their lukewarm fire. She had remained awake until Felix returned, as he had requested, and then promptly fallen asleep again. Now, though, she sat up gingerly, careful to avoid reopening her wound.

"Mia, you're awake!" said Felix brightly. "Here, have some of these eggs. They're delicious, I've never had anything like them."

He handed her scrambled eggs on a piece of charred bark. Mia, as hungry as she was, tried her best to inhale the hot meal as fast as possible, without looking foolish at the same time. She finished a few minutes later, scraping what little remained on the wooden slab toward her mouth.

"Ahh. Thank you," she said.

Felix replied with a nod and a slight smile. Mia's jaw nearly dropped.

"He smiled! At me!" she thought. "He never smiles at anybody…"

Her heart jumped for joy inside of her chest as she sat back, content for the moment.

In the more private recesses of his mind, Felix wondered if Mia could possibly feel the same unfulfillable sense of longing in her heart that he did. He wanted to reach out his arms and pull her close to him, and keep her safe from the impersonal cold all around them. His heart ached with every beat, knowing that he couldn't do it. No one person could be more important to him than the others, no matter how he felt about them.

In an effort to remove himself from her presence, he lay on the ground near the fire, on the opposite side of Mia, his back towards her and to the tongues of flame. He busied himself tyring to get warm and dry again, but with little success. It was all he could do to keep from freezing. He remained motionless for several minutes, trying to will the cold from his body.

On the bright side, the snow seemed to have abated somewhat, at least to the point that it was no longer falling though their chimney in chunks. However, he could do nothing about the wind, and he became steadily colder. Then, he felt another body slide up behind him, and press itself against his back.

"Felix," Mia whispered into his ear, "it's too cold."

Mia slid her arms up between her chest and his back, grasping a small piece of the fabric that clothed his back. Felix tensed his body for a moment. This wasn't right, and he knew it. Then, after several minutes, he realized that her breathing had leveled out. Too cold to care about the implications of his actions, Felix, too, relaxed and fell asleep.

Jenna sat in her quarters for hours, with the door locked. She had already spent her fury, and now her swollen eyes and nose projected a view to her primary passtime for the past two hours. She sniffed sullenly as she realized that she was probably at fault for what had just happened between her and Isaac. She was even more worried that Isaac hadn't even come to find her and talk to her, a fact which only brought more silent tears down her cheeks. She sniffed again, swinging her feet out from under her and off to the edge of the bed.

She stood up quickly, wiping her eyes. She couldn't take sitting alone with her thoughts, and departed in an attempt to find Isaac. She looked in his room, in the common room downstairs, and in all the hallways, though the only occupant on that floor was Ivan, asleep in his bed. She went to the engine room as well, but the only one there was Piers, who was working quietly on repairing the damaged components of the immense contraption.

To her immense surprise, the ship was fairly quiet. She had expected that everyone else was just leaving her alone, but now she wondered where everyone was. She pulled herself up the steps, and found her answers. Those answers were still asleep at the table, soup untouched.

Jenna tried to creep away quietly, but she had a clumsy moment, and tripped over one of the rugs that littered the floor of the room. Both Sheba and Isaac awoke immediately, and, to Jenna's dismay, unconsciously brought their hands to the place where their weapons would have hung on their respective belts. She reflected for a brief moment on how much they had all changed over the course of their quest.

"Oh, Jenna," said Sheba, relaxing her guard, "don't scare me like that."

Sheba looked to her left and saw Isaac, and immediately recognized an awkward situation.

"Umm, I need to, eh, get something out of my room. Be back later."

She hurried off.

Isaac drew a deep breath and stood up, intending to apologize to Jenna for his rashness.

"Jenna, I'm…"

She nearly knocked him off his feet with an embrace that could have killed any lesser human being. He heard his back crack, multiple times, as his airways constricted. He sighed as quietly as he could manage when she pulled away her arms. Jenna didn't seem to notice.

"So, um, thanks for saving us and everything," she said, looking down at the ground in shame.

"Don't mention it," said Isaac. "It was my fault… I shouldn't have done something that dangerous."

"Listen, I feel horrible about, uh, slapping you and stuff. I didn't mean it that way, I just didn't want… um…" she trailed off, and her heart rate quickened.

"Didn't want what?" asked Isaac.

"Didn't want you to get hurt," she recovered, her heart rate resettling – she had almost let it slip.

"Oh. Well, thanks for saying something," said Isaac with a smile.

The blond looked around for a moment, and his expression morphed to a quizzical one.

"Is something the matter, Isaac?" asked Jenna anxiously. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, this isn't what we were just talking about," he said, very slowly, "but something might be wrong. Who's piloting the ship?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Jenna, as realization dawned on her. "Nobody!"

With that, Isaac ran off to the helm of their battered, but proud, ship. Jenna exhaled once again – her feelings for Isaac weren't something she wanted him to know about. She thought that he would find it childish and immature, especially considering how strong their friendship was.

"Well, I think you handled that rather nicely," said a voice from inside the hallway.

Jenna looked toward the door in surprise.

"Sheba!" she shouted, "Did you listen that whole time?"

"Not the whole time, just most of it. I missed a few words right when I left."

She giggled mischievously.

"I agree," said Kraden, who had been asleep at the table, "that was a job well done. We're all glad you said something."

"Kraden!" she fumed, "Not you too!"

Jenna paused for a moment, and considered Kraden's words.

"What do you mean 'we all'?"

"Oh, just a poor word choice. Sheba and I, of course."

The redhead looked at Kraden dubiously, and then went into the kitchen. She was hungry, and had no desire for cold soup. A Firemaster never eats cold soup. She sat back down at the table with her friends and ate her meal quietly as Kraden and Sheba conversed. After she ate, she went back to bed, tired from a long day of stormy seas and equally stormy emotions.