A kind breeze brushed over Kae-lith'a's nude, content body. A loose swarm of brightly coloured insects illuminated the night sky above her, gentle, secure, safe. Not a want in the world. With a deep sigh, she allowed herself to lean back while she softly kneaded the water out of her hair, resting her head for just a moment as two hands, calloused, rough yet gentle as the swarm above her, drifted across her waist and~ Air escaped her lungs in a shunted breath, fearful. She threw her head forwards and~
Sunlight darted through cracks and crevices in the tattered tent above them, bolt upright, chest heaving gently beneath her armour, she looked around but a harsh pain swiftly helped her to remember that her crumpled shin-armour stubbornly held her injured leg in place, permitting it no opportunities to heal.
Slowly as she could, grimacing, she turned to face Tymon who, still tethered to the machine, slept with quiet breaths, temporarily yet blissfully unaware of the world around him while the machine simply displayed the words 'TREATMENT SUCCESSFUL', words that meant absolutely nothing to her.
She had other priorities however, namely the harsh now throbbing pain in her leg. Internally she cursed herself for not resolving the issue earlier, but then she remembered that on the same day, she and a delirious Tymon had to make the treacherous and fatiguing journey back to camp. Regardless, the only way it would be able to heal is if she removed the damaged armour, so with painful effort, she reached down to the shin-piece and triggered the manual release mechanisms one by one before meeting the final one.
She pushed her finger against it, struggling for numerous seconds, fearing for her leg as the button refused to budge, until one final attempt to push it finally clicked the whole piece off with enormous pain. She shouted out loud as the dented piece of metal fell off of her but that was just the beginning as Kae-lith'a's physiology took the given chance to reassert itself.
One by one, her muscle membranes began to rectify themselves, pushing against her skin, pushing against themselves as lines formed beneath her skin and stretched outwards with gentle popping sounds. She gritted her teeth involuntarily, screeching for a moment between them before panting hard and fast to keep herself quiet.
A dozen seconds and repaired muscle membranes later, her bone, thankfully not broken, was finally allowed back into its original position but now she felt the disadvantage of her Aeldari healing factor; the tremendous amount of energy this was consuming. Already feeling drowsy as a result, she had to consciously focus on keeping herself upright, finally however the pain began to subside, the worst of it was over. She looked at her leg, now largely back in the correct position and in three spots, she could see patches of skin that glistened; , Kae-lith'a fumbled about on her belt. Her pellet dispenser; right where she had left it, though her dexterity had been misplaced. She managed to grab it and swallow one of its precious supply and gradually, the dizzy, drowsy state she found herself in dissipated.
Soon enough, she had regained her bearings and allowed her thoughts to wander to the next problem; her severely diminished food supply. Checking her sole remaining pellet dispenser, she would count a total of three more until she was out completely which, if she rationed, would last her at most another two weeks, assuming of course no further revelation left her just as quiet as the planet at night, staring into nothing, paralysed by the necessity of finding a solution to something that seemed unsolvable. Then she looked over at the crate Tymon had almost lost his mind over, still compressed sideways into the ground; despite the damage the lid had suffered, it was ever so slightly ajar, not enough to reach in and grab whatever terrible food was inside, but wide enough perhaps to lever it open.
With a limp, she got to her feet and looked around the tent, then outside before finding exactly what she needed in one of the collapsed tents; one of the bars stuck through a hole in the tattered fabric and it was just the right size to fit between the gap in the lid. Three harsh tugs and a clanging sound later, she was bringing it over to the crate before wedging it far enough between the lid and rim for it to act as her lever.
Then, once it was secure, she pushed against it. Once. Then twice. Both times the lid bent ever so slightly outwards but nowhere near enough. Seeing this as progress however, she leaned all of her weight into the bar, pushing into it as much as her one functional foot allowed, only for it to dislodge and fly forwards, bringing the Aeldari to the ground with a grunt. Despite her efforts, the lid had barely budged; still being held firmly in place by the ground and its own deformation.
Quickly, Kae-lith'a came to understand Tymon's earlier reaction, looking squarely at the box that would have solved their food related problems and how it sat there, stubbornly inaccessible.
Kae-lith'a was part way through dreaming up a way to hoist the crate out of the ground when she heard Tymon stir.
Swiftly her attention shifted to the recovering human who was reaching to grab his water bottle to obey the analysis kit's instructions and quell the massive headache his dehydration left him with."Tymon!" There was relief in Kae-lith'a's voice as she stepped her way back inside and sat down; "You are…" After several gulps of water, Tymon said; "Awake… Yes…""You are… healed?" She managed, after briefly reminding herself of that particular part of her vocabulary.
"Yeah… So it seems… I've got a splitting headache though…""I do not know… 'headache'"Tymon clarified, his voice still weary; "Oh uh… my head hurts"
"You are still injured?" "No it's probably just dehydration""I don't know dehy~ uh…" She had heard the word once over some imperial broadcast, never again. Tymons explanation was succinct however; "Where you haven't had enough water" The rest added up quickly and it's easy solution left her relieved."Okay" Tymon took little notice after his explanation, instead he paid attention to his shoulder, noticing that beneath the tattered shoulder-section, the skin-seal was missing."Ahh frak…" He said, straining ever so slightly as he tried to look at the now paler patch of skin. Kae-lith'a took notice too; "You will heal this?"The injury was scabbing over and healing in most of the perforated areas, but some of the deeper cuts still started to bleed when he moved the shoulder."I reckon I'll need to staple it shut" The phrase 'I do not know the words' was becoming an almost instinctive reply for Kae-lith'a, one that began to annoy her.
Simple as your language may be, I still do not know half of what you say."Say again?" Tymon said after he heard the quiet foreign sentence, almost gingerly brandishing the skin-stapler stored beside the bio-analysis kit.
Kae-lith'a, of course, had no idea how she was going to convey what she said to him."No" She said, defeated.
"Okay then" It was an absent-minded reply yet it sounded tense; in his hand was the aptly named 'skin-stapler', complete with a cartridge of horseshoe shaped nails that, with a pair of jaws, would be pierced through the ensnared section of skin and compressed, effectively stapling the wound shut. It was a half-measure; one that would work in the short term but simply was not a substitute for a permanent fix and Tymon knew this. He did not however see any alternative and so, he began by focusing on the wounds he could see.
Kae-lith'a in the meantime inspected her own injury, though hers had healed far more than Tymon's; her musculature had reasserted itself and re-aligned her leg again, though it was clearly still doing work beneath the surface as any time she put weight on the leg, it stubbornly shot an arrow of intrusive pain right through the bone, sternly warning her to leave it alone.
She was pulled out of her thoughts however when Tymon's tool made a loud snapping sound. Turning to face him, she would be greeted with gritted teeth, squinting eyes and a pained exhale while Tymon slowly pulled the tool away from the front of his shoulder, then she saw the small metallic loop crudely holding the open wound together.
"It's not as bad as it looks" Tymon said, trying to reassure the bewildered, repulsed Eldar, though she would preemptively grimace with him when he put the stapler against his shoulder a second time, targeting the wound to the first one's left.
The tiniest twinge of emotion pulled at her heartstrings, the same feeling as when he first dealt with the injury, the one that should not have hurt her and for a moment, Kae-Lith'a stared ahead with a gently furrowing brow. It was far easier to wipe away however and she had a more immediate problem of her own to deal with; her damaged leg-piece. Without it, walking through the mud was going to be incredibly difficult and if she lost the shoe, it would only be a matter of time before another injury. Then Tymon, between gritted teeth, spat out an all too familiar word.
"Frack!"
He was no longer holding the skin-stapler, but he had adopted an awkward posture in an attempt to see what he had stapled, specifically a spot on the back of his shoulder still partially covered by tattered fabric. She leaned backwards slightly to get a better view of what he was doing.
Several of the wounds were already being held shut but he had just managed to pierce a section of undamaged skin instead of the gaping wound beside it. He was about to try again after crudely feeling where the opening was and once again, he was about to miss it.
"Further here" Kae-lith'a intervened, pointing to her right, but Tymon's attention was on the stapler.
"What?" He pressed the trigger and lo and behold, the second staple was again piercing healthy skin.
"The uhm~..." Tymon directed his attention at her and once again, she had no idea what the mon-keigh word was for 'archaic contraption the pierces and slices through skin'.
"Move it further here" She hoped he understood and it seems that he did;
"Oh right um.. yeah, it's difficult to reach there" He answered before reaching back towards the device. Almost instantaneously however, it clicked with her that she could use the stapler instead.
"I can help?" Tymon stopped what he was doing, almost freezing entirely.
"No I'll do it" He answered before continuing his literally misguided endeavours.
A familiar conflict brewed within him, yes she could help him out, with a little teaching she would be able to staple the wound shut, in fact this would be ideal. She is however a Xeno, an enemy of the empire, or so said the excuse the empire had prepared for him; yes they had helped each other in battle and yes she had ensured that he healed himself, but in his mind this excuse ran deeper than the imperial propaganda his internal monologue spouted. In fact in his mind, it was imperative that she not help him with this matter.
Kae-lith'a seemed to see things differently however; in less than a second she scooted up beside him, close enough to grab the stapler;
"I'll do it" Then she reached for it, but some little part of Tymon knew this was coming so his hand swatted hers away.
"No~ It's fine" He answered while Kae-lith'a launched her second attack but this one, despite Tymon's successful intervention, got closer.
"Tymon!" Her reply was annoyed, confused.
"Seriously~ I've got it" His reply was tense, withheld. It was imperative that she not help him.
*You're going to put more holes into yourself than the dogs you stupid mon keigh!*This gave him an out and swiftly, he took the opportunity and moved the stapler away from his shoulder; "Kae-lith'a I have no idea what you're saying so if you're going to talk~"
She interrupted him; "You are~ This is~" It was however, short lived; where the correct words should have been there were only her Aeldari counterparts, so she took advantage of his guard having dropped. The stapler, in his right hand, was now far closer to her so she reached for it a third time and finally got her fingers around the handle."I will do it!" She said, her voice agitated but below a shout.
"Hey!" This time his counter-attack missed. The stapler was now firmly in her grasp and fear coursed through him, but not for his life. Then Kae-lith'a turned his healthy shoulder away, exposing the wounds.
"Do not move!" She anticipated resistance so she quickly pushed the stapler against his shoulder, but without pushing the trigger and it finally got Tymon to acquiesce.
Utterly crude, poke more holes in the mon keigh to heal the mon keigh.
The sentence was quiet, once again foreign to Tymon's ears, but he heard the word 'mon keigh' and noted its eerie similarity to the Low-Gothic word 'Monkey'.
"What does that mean? Mon keigh!" Snark lined his voice, so too did fear, then a staple snapped shut around the open wound he had failed to reach. Kae-lith'a did not explain, she could not and frankly, she did not care to; "I will help you now."
Minutes turned to dozens and while Kae-lith'a's efforts were crude compared to a medic, occasionally having to remove misplaced staples, she managed to close the wounds and the debate that quickly took centre stage in her mind throughout the process;
I am healing him because that aids our chances of survival.
At times she would also brush her fingers over the stapled skin to make sure the wound was fully sealed, occasionally leaning in close enough for him to feel her breath roll over his skin.
"Its complete" Again, a word she had picked up over imperial broadcasts, depicting the completion of structures or repairs.
"Thanks… Kae-lith'a…" He was about to refer to her as 'knife ear' again, but he caught the nickname before it fell out of his mouth. Kae-lith'a said nothing but made a quiet 'Hm' in reply, then she turned away, eventually locking eyes squarely at the crushed ration crate. Tymon however noticed that she had missed a small wound. He chose not to alert her, but saw her looking at the ration crate and joined her; "Yep…" So close, yet so far away. "If only we could get into it." Kae-lith'a turned to face him;
"To open?"
"Yep…"
She wanted to explain to him how she tried to lever the crate open, how they could perhaps build a makeshift crane to lift the crate out of the ground, but even with the imperial broadcasts she had eavesdropped on in combat, her vocabulary remained several thousand words short. So instead, they both stared at the crate which remained crushed and unmoving.
Eventually Tymon broke the silence; "We should check the bag we found." He reached over and dragged it beside them;
Kae-lith'a shuffled around to see and out of the now half-empty bag, he pulled forth three sealed ration bricks. A short chuckle escaped his lips as the mild irony tickled his funny bone;
"That'll hold us over for a while" He grinned before reaching in a second time and finding the new battery they almost got killed over;
"There we go!" He almost cheered, a smile spread across Kae-lith'a's face too, alongside a small triumphant exclamation.
"Let's check it in a moment" His hand dove back into the rapidly emptying bag and met a gentle rustling sound. He knew on instinct what this was and upon pulling it out, was unsurprised at the reflective sight; a thermal blanket pair, one for the ground to keep body-heat from escaping, one for the top to reflect their body heat back inwards. His mind stopped dead and he thought about the heater, about its rate of power consumption.
Even with a full charge, the new battery will only last four days.
"What is this?" Kae-lith'a interrupted his train of thought, but its destination was already well within his sights. His answer was stammered, yet abrupt;
"Thermal blankets, to… to stay warm" As swiftly as he answered, he tossed the pair to the side, staring at nothing for a moment while his mind ran rampant with a scenario he, in thousands of hours of service, never even believed was possible, nay the thought had not even had the potential to be a thought in his mind and yet…
Kae-lith'a's eyes trailed the thermal blanket briefly, thankfully there were two of them so the pair would not need to share, but one looked slightly different; thicker than the other. Regardless, the concern resolved itself in her mind and yet Tymon still looked preoccupied. Eventually, whatever thoughts in his head seemed to be resolved and so, he reached back into the bag and this time pulled out a sheet that was much akin to the tattered materials hanging over the destroyed tents. Presumably materials for a makeshift shelter.
"This'll be good against any rain" She understood enough save for one word;
"Rain?"
"You know… Rain?" He gestured and looked at the sky which by now was starting to darken.
Is it already this late? How long did we rest?
Tymon caught her attention a second time "Like bad weather?"
Weather
That was a word she did know, she also remembered the planet's weather patterns during her briefing on Alaitoc prior to her war-hosts departure and there was only one comforting thing about it; the fact that the planets seasonal and harsher weather patterns seemed to dissuade the canoptek from emerging, especially at night. A concern for another time however.
"Ah, I know the word!" Instead she allowed the slight blade of triumph to cut through the gentle yet foreboding dread of the planet's future and with it, an equally slight grin, one he wore too while his fumbling hand failed to find anything else.
"Okay, that's all there is" The bag, now seemingly emptied, looked almost flat and with that, neither of them had anything to say; Tymon somewhat awkwardly stared forwards, pursing his lips together while Kae-lith'a looked in the general direction of the pile of unpacked items.
"We should check the battery" Again, stitched together out of imperial broadcast eavesdrops.
"Right, yeah" His action was swift as his reply, reaching over to grab the heater and drag it back. Turning it around, he saw a solitary flashing light; the last remaining one on the line. He tried to switch the heater on and it did not react. Kae-lith'a handed him the new battery and he deftly replaced the drained one, but this time the lights would not react at all, not even the flash for the depleted battery. He tried to turn the heater on and… nothing…
Slowly, with blood draining from his blank face, he put the lump of metal and heating elements down
"That was short lived…" Kae-lith'a looked at the heater, mouth slightly agape before looking over at Tymon as a tight fear crept into her chest.
"It will be cold" He knew she was not wrong, but there was, of course, an alternative that enabled their survival; the thermal blanket pair. The singular thermal blanket pair.
He glanced over to them, noticing the remaining heat wisping away.
I must have slept for fething aeons…
There was barely enough space for two within them.
"Frack" The word was quiet.
"So we use the, uhm…" Kae-lith'a gestured over to the blanket pair.
"Yeah but…" Confusion joined Kae-lith'a's fear.
"What?"
"Well…" By now the confusion had completely replaced the fear, they had two blankets, they would be fine.
Tymon reached past them to get the blankets.
"I can guarantee you I won't like this idea any more than you." The blankets only worked in a pair, one for the ground, one to cover them. They were designed so that if someone moved in their sleep, they would not accidentally roll away from within them.
"What is~" She was interrupted by the rustling of the thermal foil within the blankets as he put them down.
"You know how I said they keep you warm?" Kae-lith'a was captivated, but slowly a different fear began to creep into her chest.There are two blankets, one for each of us, I'll even use the thinner one, I have more armour.
And yet, while she thought this, she was almost dreading the next sentence.
"How?" She answered, almost predicting her own mistaken understanding of the equipment's functionality. A sigh escaped Tymons lips, so he began to demonstrate; unfolding the thicker blanket first and laying it on the ground, reflective side up prior to laying the thinner blanket on top and anchoring it down on all edges apart from one, ultimately preventing even the most restless of sleepers from slipping away. Then he pulled it open, showing how the inside was coated with reflective fabric, unable to look her in the eye.
"You need both for it to work, one on the ground, one on top and… Ideally without armor…"
She had already caught on with the simple demonstration, recognizing quickly that this effectively meant sharing a bed with him, but then he mentioned the lack of armour and the shock of his earlier joke at the lake swiftly struck her again.
Her eyes widened, her brow furrowed; "There is no other battery?!" She said hastily.
"I really wish there was" An unfamiliar sentence.
"Tymon! I don't know the~"
"No! We don't have another battery!" He interrupted, raising his voice. She did not care, she downright refused to share a bed with him, there had to be more batteries somewhere, slowly however a fringe of her mind accepted the blanket situation as an incredibly undesirable inevitability that had just come to pass.
"Find one" Her reply made no sense and of course Tymon knew this.
"How? This is the one we found!" He finally made eye contact with her again, between the anger and embarrassed look, there was sympathy.
"Apart from the dead one." he eventually continued. Kae-lith'a's widened eyes shifted now, to nothing in particular.
"We will both be without our armour?"
"Yeah…" The reply was almost curt and immediately, Kae-lith'a interlocked her hands behind her head and continued to stare at the reflective sheeting.
"No…" She said, it may have been an answer to Tymon, it may not have been, she did not know.
"It's either this or we freeze to death." Tymon stared aimlessly at the dirt between them after sitting down on the sheets and for quite some time, the pair would communally stare at nothing while the air grew colder and colder. Soon enough every gentle exhalation became a small cloud in front of their mouths and finally Kae-lith'a's eyes shifted towards his.
He meets her eyes too, trying desperately to convey his sympathies and just how little he really wanted to do this.
"Look, I don't wanna do this anymore than you… So I'm obviously not gonna touch you." He stammered. "But the blankets reflect our body heat back and that's what keeps us warm."
More foreign vocabulary, more lost messages, he was clearly trying to reassure her but the only thing she understood was 'warm' and 'heat'. A gentle scoff escaped her lips with a slight but desperate grin cracking for just a moment.
"You had no idea what I was on about, did you." She shook her head, a gesture she picked up.
"No" The word was ever so slightly stammered, but Tymon knew what to convey visually; he got up again, straightened the blanket out and drew a line down the middle with his finger.
"Look…" She had nowhere else to look. "I will be here." He gestures to one half of the blanket "and you will be here" then he gestured to the other half. "Separate" With that word and palms facing outwards, he moved his hands away from each other. Kae-lith'a was quick to understand this, but conveying that understanding…
"Separate… So… We split up?" More eavesdropped words, she pointed to both imaginary halves.
"Yes, no touching, completely separate, split up." She nodded gently as he emphasised both the new word and her makeshift synonym.
"Yes…" Slowly, her fears dispelled and were replaced with nothing but awkwardness. "Okay…"
The tension defused and the awkwardness was setting in. He could think of nothing further to say to her; never in his life had he expected to see a fething xeno in what may as well amount to nightwear. Possibly even less. On some occasions he had seen guardswomen without their uniform, though it was somewhat rare for women to enlist in the imperial guard, let alone in a legion like the farsighters. He scoffed internally at what would likely end up happening with a barracks room full of guardsmen who probably have not seen a single woman for the months (sometimes years) of their deployments, save for the scantily clad pinups they had on the ceilings of their bunkbeds. At least one would make a poorly coordinated attempt at flirting.
For the briefest moment however, he considered what Kae-lith'a would look like without her armour; lithe, toned, perhaps even firm. His heart began to race and he immediately stopped the thought in his tracks.
Come on Ty.
"I~I'm gonna check the bag" He stammered and quickly reached towards the empty bergen. It distracted Tymon enough but did little to draw Kae-lith'a's attention; in fact she had thought back to the day she had made Tymon bathe, how badly he smelt, how it had turned to an armed stalemate, how he made the, presumably jestful, claim that she wanted to see him naked.
Now however, her mind made her contemplate the unsightly image; to that end her eyes darted straight back to Tymon aimlessly rummaging around the bag she had sworn was empty. His short, dark and scruffy hair gradually faded to nothing around his rough-skinned neck, his arms looked equally rough… But they had hair too… The observation filled in a few blanks in her mind; Were Mon keigh hairy all over? She did not relish that thought.
"Oh gak!" Tymons short, quiet exclamation drew her attention once more. He was holding a dataslate which came from the now presumably empty bag. Pressing one of the buttons on the slate to boot it up, he allowed himself to sit down while Kae-lith'a budged up beside him again.
The familiar logo and slogan of the astra militarum appeared and then the menu was allowed to show itself, but this one was full of different tabs and folders of information;
"Woah" The pre-saved map area was much bigger than that of Tymon's dataslate, but the sidebar, usually reserved for objectives, displayed a dizzying array of drop-down menus, each with titles featuring words that even Tymon had never heard used before, save for one;'Wildlife and Fauna Analysis'
"What?" Kae-lith'a asked quietly, looking with a furrowed brow at the foreign words in front of her. Tymon didn't answer, instead he was occupied with dozens of different animal designations, each of which was accompanied with a simple wire-frame model of whatever creature or plant it was representing.
"This is good…"
Seeing the wireframe models, Kae-lith'a quickly caught up and eventually, she noticed a model that was familiar; stocky, hunched over with two huge hanging arms.
"Here" She gestured at the creature and Tymon recognised it instantly, letting a short exhale out of his nose.
"Yep" He opened the menu for the creature and attached were dozens of orbital photos, some of strange nests with carcasses littering what appeared to be their entrance while the familiar creature milled around somewhere within, some photos however were taken on the planet's surface, showing the creature some distance away.
"I think it's got all the planets' information on here… Wildlife, climate, the whole lot"
Once again, the imperial broadcasts came in handy with the words she had not heard Tymon say before, so she decided to push her luck;
"Perhaps other…" She gestured over at the bag they had found "More of this?"
More batteries? More power sources?
His eyes snapped to the bag and back, quickly catching on.
"Probably" he flicked through the menus until the map displayed other imperial assets; outposts, last known positions, all of which appeared to be in neat little clusters around their respective prospector sites. "Yep… here, here and here…" he gestured to all four, making a mental note of the vast distance they'd have to cover to reach them. "They're quite far though…"
The idea of a multi-day journey to each site brewed in Kae-lith'a's mind, in fact they were well equipped for it save for their dwindling or permanently canned food supplies;
"We can take these" she gestured at the tarp, the thermal blankets, the bio analysis kit.
"Yeah, but we'd be hiking for days" Another word she did not know.
"Hiking?" She repeated.
"like walking, but for a long time." Simple enough. She nodded.
The pair continued to browse the new data-slate for a while, looking at the various different fauna while even Tymon struggled to understand even half of the terminology the survey specialists were using."You don't know the words" Kae-lith'a poorly hid a grin as Tymon tried to pronounce the word 'Anthocyanin' and he broke out into a slightly shivered laugh;"I don't know half of this gak" briefly he looked over at Kae-lith'a who permitted her own slight laughter, a happy sound, one he had not heard before. He turned to face her and this time, she made no attempt to hide her smile, one that infected him to the point that his cheeks almost began to ache. Every exhale, despite the night however, had become clear as day and with it, numbness crept its way up through his fingers, so Tymon put the dataslate to the side.
"Right… Lets uhm…" his voice was brighter, but the sentence stayed stuck in his mouth.I'm suggesting, to a xeno, that we both get fracking naked.
And the welcome contagion was gone, but he figured out how to finish the sentence while evading certain words.
"Get~""Sleep? Oh~" She apologised as soon as she realised she interrupted him.
"No its fine, yeah uh… We need to get ready though" Kae-lith'a knew what he meant.
"Ah…" her heart started to race, were she human, the colour would have risen past her cheeks.
They remained, unmoving, allowing little clouds to form in front of their mouths, allowing silence to brew;
"Oh for fracks sake" he said, colour having risen in his cheeks. "I'm gonna~.. Get ready now" and so, deftly, he unclipped his flak-vest and his survival kit before turning around and sitting down to focus on his boots, wading through awkwardness so thick that Gamma Eridanus' mud would be a swimming pool by comparison. Kae-lith'a said nothing, but slowly reached towards her remaining shin-piece and removed it, exposing her other, undamaged leg. Her thigh pieces came off in the same way exposing almost skin-tight underwear that left much to the imagination reaching halfway down her boots however were far more clunky to remove; first the buckles, then the laces, then he awkwardly slid his feet out of the scraped and battered synth-leather boots before moving on to his trousers and, almost in unison with Kae-lith'a manually releasing the seals on her crotch-guard, did he drag his trousers over his hairy legs and immediately regret not doing so underneath the sheets.
"Frack its cold~" He muttered before moving quickly to remove the damaged top half of his uniform. Kae-lith'a moved equally quickly, though her body's response to the cold was not a human shiver, instead her skin tightened and hardened, trying to keep what heat it could within the body, all the exposed skin did this now, so too did her top half;
By Aeldari standards, she was in peak physical condition; efficient strands of muscular fibres curved their way inwards from beneath the fabric of her bra, giving her a smooth core and a thinner waist that widened to meet her hips; equally smooth save for the gentle ripple of her alien pelvic bone. To Tymon, she was lithe, he could also argue well toned, but certain features; abdominal muscles that contracted and hip-bones were simply absent, not that it made her form unattractive. The cold would not let him stare any longer however and Kae-lith'a would not get a view of him at all for he had the same idea as her; get between the sheets as soon as possible. Quickly he slid his hairy legs inside, only wearing boxer shorts himself, but in doing so, he accidentally kicked her legs to the side. She let out a curt, pained exclamation at the whims of her injured leg; "Tymon!""Sorry~ sorry" He pulled his legs away, awkwardly sliding past her but not without clashing a second time while she was trying to get in and for just a moment he froze when he felt her thin, cold fingers brush against his abs which instinctively contracted.
"Just~"
"No!" She shouted, hands up by her head, tensed while she herself was halfway beneath the sheets. "You, now" She gestured at the blanket and he made himself comfortable, enveloped by the rapidly warming foil.
"Okay" Then she did the same, carefully keeping to her side while Tymon had sidled into his. Quietly, both survivors laid there, looking up at the tattered ceiling… Saying nothing while the blanket did its job well, reflecting their body heat inwards, keeping them warm enough.
"We need more batteries" Tymon said after a few moments.
AUTHORS NOTE: A complete shift in pace, a complete shift in tone, but not jarringly so I hope. I think the story is at the point where things can move a little quicker in terms of pacing (3 chapters for a day to 1 chapter for half a day ish?)
I have to be honest though, this chapter has both the story's best bits as well as its worst bits I think lol
Best bits? Character development for Tymon, we get little sneak peaks about him as a person. Similar for Kae-lith'a. And of course, the obvious. Bet you guys didn't think they'd be sleeping together so soon! ;)
At the same time though, I kind of handwaved the passage of time a little bit. I think I may have almost plot-holed, but I more or less patched those up.
Either way! Have fun!
