The man’s form got heavier as the strength left his body. The woman Rumsey began to sweat, and her goggles got pushed down her face. Hers and the offworlder’s breaths were fog in the air on every exhale. T’sala’s was not. She felt slightly perturbed that the suit stole even that kind of small pleasure, but she was unable to feel any of this strange new world. They reached the vehicle the woman called “thunder,” and T’sala realized the harder part was ahead. The door was not on the side like the one they called Quip, easy to step into. This one had a ladder as tall as T’sala herself with a steel door above. Rumsey scrambled up it like a small animal. T’sala could almost imagine a small bushy tail on her while she climbed with ease. The woman unlocked a door after entering a code and then climbed back down to where T’sala waited, holding the man. He was heavy even with her newfound strength; how the red-haired woman with such a small stature kept up was beyond T’sala. She was made of tougher things wrapped in a small form.

  T’sala climbed up the ladder and pulled, while the other woman pushed. Not only was she tough enough to actually provide help, but she was still talking away in the funny accent T’sala barely understood.

  “And that’s when I realized… Hrmph, that I needed to be the one … Hrnph…” The woman pushed up hard on Alec’s unconscious form. “So I decided to Hrnph, lend a hand.

  They had reached the top of the door, and T’sala had pulled Alec in. T’sala had barely taken in what the woman had to say, she smiled politely at the woman and tried to think of how the offowrlder would say it. T’sala tried her best. “I do not need you anymore. Give me time to revive him, then I will let you in.”

  “But it’s my..” The woman, Rumsey began, but T’sala closed the door. She thought she heard something the size of the woman fall about the length of the ladder, but the snow there was mostly soft. She turned her attention to the offworlder and their bound arms. Without his help, she was forced to use her teeth and free hand, but it was preferable to letting that stranger in on their secrets. It took her a while longer, but she managed to free the bound arms. Luckily, it was her needle that had dislodged; his sat firmly in his veins, held firmly in place between two metal bone-like structures near his elbow. She grabbed the end and pinched it again like the angry beetle and felt its sting. She breathed deeply and lay her head on his chest. T’sala hummed the lullaby and tapped a steady rhythm with her free hand near the needle in his arm.

  At first, she thought it was all for naught, and the man had not made it past this moment. Then suddenly his rhythm changed, and his breathing became more normal. The blue of the frost touching metal and skin faded once again to healthy flesh, and the man awoke. He looked around with scanning eyes and tense muscles. When he settled on T’salas face, he relaxed. He lay his head back down and sighed with one hand. “Where?”

  “We are in the woman Rumsey’s Thunder.” She remembered her embarrassment at addressing the truck as if it were alive, like Quip. Now that the offworlder was ok she felt a little frustrated in her embarrassment. “Why did you not stop me from making a fool of myself?”

  ‘Walk a different path, us. This sign was broken in his recovery. She knew what he meant; he had advised a different way to go about it, but she had forged ahead. Although she had been right that the woman had different motives, it seemed her heart was still good. T’sala was trying to remember what she had told her while lifting Alec into her truck. Something about tired or sick people? Carrying bodies that was part of it.

  “Where woman?” Alecs hand flashed in front of her like a child seeking a mother's attention. It broke T’sala’s thoughts of aggression towards herself. Sometimes, as a child, when she felt this foolish, she would seek a calm spot in the river, one where she could see her face. She would stare and take in the details, then repeat her father's harsh words and toss stones until the reflection was warped. The thought rippled to these moments now, moments T’sala thought she would never see but had, thanks to the man beside her.

  “She’s outside,” T’sala said softly, trying to hide any hint of guilt and using a tone that implied it was the woman Rumsey’s decision.

  “Much thanks for life. Balanced scales.” Alec signed. She looked up at him after reading his hand and could see the sincerity in his expression. He was pointing to the suit and smiling with the last statement, but finished it off by pointing from his heart to hers.

  “No scales offworlder, just us.”

  “Just us,” He agreed. Then signed again. “Master.” This time, he was smiling. She remembered calling him ‘her’ offworlder, and the colour rushed to her cheeks.

  “We should bind ourselves together and let the woman Rumsey in.” T’sala hoped the new distraction would take the focus from her blush. They busied themselves with tying their arms, this time taking care to secure T’sala and his needles with extra care and the bindings with firmness that bordered on pain. There was a comfort in being bound that tightly together, and they had been learning quickly how to move as one. They stood, and for the first time, T’sala took in the place where they were.

  It was a large square space, in the centre of the two windows sat a large chair that had a step stool up to it. Below it were three pedals with large boxes attached to reach close to the seat. In front was a large wheel and stick that was numbered with a long series of numbers in different patterns. Behind them was a clear floor space with a table, a small sink and a chair and on the opposite side, a bed that had been cut in half to fit the height of the Rumsey woman. That reminded T’sala, and she reached down and opened the door, pushing it wide to the cold air.

  The woman Rumsey was red despite it being so cold. Her nose was the reddest of all, and her eyes almost gave off steam. “Normally, I don’t give strangers one, no-sir-ee,” She sniffed and looked as if she wanted to strike T’sala from her small place below. “But given these strange circumstances and your obvious need for er… privacy…” Rumsey looked away at this. “Well, whatever you did, it worked, and he appears to be up and running as good as thunder here.” She climbed the ladder, eyeing where T’sala and Alec were bound together. T’sala tried to hide it in the coat. “Go on, grab a seat, lovebirds, if you can’t stop holdin’ hands, then take the bed to sit on, should be a bench for the two of you.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The woman, Rumsey, hopped up the step stool to the large captain chair and moved some small levers that turned the chair about and adjusted the night. She had pulled her goggles down, and they made her eyes bulge like an odd half-human-sized insect. She slid her rifle into a leather slot by her chair and finally looked comfortable. T’sala stifled a laugh, and the offworlder nudged her with his knee and motioned for calm.

  “Now back to what I was sayin’, I need some help, and Doc said you’d be the best one to be doing it. If it were just me, I’d handle it myself. But there are other lives at stake. The folks like her.” Alec looked up sharply and caught T’sala’s attention. Something the woman had said was important. This time, she looked to Alec to catch her up to the accent as he could.

  “The People, here”. His last broken sentence took a while to sink in for her until she realized the motion for people was an attempt at the familiar, not general. Her people were here. T’sala looked up at the woman who was continuing on.

  T’sala did not care that the Rumsey, she had decided on calling her that, for she was more half animal in the same way Alec was part machine. At least in T’sala’s mind, for how alien this new place was. The Rumsey stopped when T’sala interrupted, “Take us to my people.”

  The Rumsey stopped talking for a moment, and Alec was holding his breath and looking at her again, frustrated. T’sala felt so foolish, but his were customs she had never seen before; the baron was no master of manners. The Rumsey smiled, “Straight to the point, I like that. You, ma’am, are slowly growing’ on ol’ Rumsey here, I must admit. I can see why that man here holds on to you so tightly, wild stallions. You got that where you’re from? See, it’s this animal that used to.”

  “Take us to my people,” it came out of T’sala like a panic, and she caught it and softened, “please, The Rumsey. If my people also fell here like us, we must gather them to take them home.”

  “Fell here?” The Rumsey looked confused. “Ain’t nobody fell here, darlin’, they been here for generations, brought to make the great tunnel expansions. You’ll see one before we hit Hannencourt. The problem is they lost a lot of em’. Err. I mean, your people, darlin’, a lot died when they used that purple shit to blow the mountain passes sky high. It was the fine rock particles that started the smothering. The kids and the old went first.” T’sala felt the man, Alec, jump at the mention of the purple stuff, but he did not sign anything. “The sick Teretha, though, they've been quarantined out in ol’ Hannencourt in the dredges ever since.” T’sala felt Alec tilt his head to the side, inquiring about the last word.

  “What is this, dredges?” T’sala asked, taking confidence from the fact that the offworlder also did not know something.

  “They walled off the old town with the warehouses and old rift-station. The baron here succumbed to the illness too, and without the strength of body your people have,” she indicated to T’sala, “we waste fast. General Lieft commands this place now; it is the end of it all. Built the new station all secure on this side and keeps the oil from the ice planes up north flowin’.”

  “Where us?” Alec signed to T’sala.

  “How do we help?” T’sala offered in place. Alec seemed to accept this as a matter of fact. She would not deny her people on any homeworld, bound as they were, and she did not think of their literal arms. T’sala knew the offworlder would be at her side.

  “Here’s the thing,” The Rumsey continued, catching T’sala’s attention with her bulbous goggles. “I’ve been taking them medicines that keep the sickness at bay. It’s not been easy, but it needs doin’. They need more. Food, water, a place to thrive, and so slowly I’ve been takin’ repair parts for one of them rift-stations, and we figure we got it near workin’. Thing is won’t know until we have power, won’t have power till we steal it and won’t know if we can make it till it’s damn near too late. Once we steal that power, the general will come swooping in.”

  T’sala felt stunned. To hear her people shared in tragedy with hers made her heart want to break. She denied the tears for fear of them falling freely inside the confined space. The man, Alec, waved to her and pointed at the slot in his arm. ‘Substance?’ He wanted to know if there was any more of the blasting powder the miners had used.

  “We can help.” T’sala began seeing relief wash over the small woman. “But we need help first. We are not supposed to be like this.” T’sala pointed to their tied arms seriously.

  “You’re kiddin'!?” The rumsey exclaimed, T’sala felt too loudly. “And here I was thinkin’ you’re the universe's oddest conjoined twins.”

  The woman’s words made no sense to T’sala, but she did not want to offend. “You are wise to have guessed that, but our situation is not common.” The woman’s smirk in response and Alecs's snort through his nose made T’sala glow in frustration. She pushed forward. “He needs this purple explosion to live. But it is in my blood.” The woman stopped smiling and looked back and forth between T’sala and Alec. It seemed numbers were moving in her head, and Alec was squirming uncomfortably as he did every time he looked at her suit and not her. T’sala could feel the difference. She had exposed them, but she did not care. She had lived slowly for too long, and if that was uncomfortable for the man, Alec, he would need to tell her. She almost laughed out loud at that thought. Yes, she decided, she would stop acting her way when he could explain his better.

  “Well, ain’t that a conundrum,” the Rumsey broke her happy thought, “See I do be knowin’ where we can find some of that purple, but it’s gonna make things a slight bit harder. The general figured that in small dilutions, it saves him and his followers from the Smothering. It makes them mad as nutters all, but it’s all up in the fort near the mountaintop in Hannencourt. Speakin’ of which,” The Rumsey fiddled with more levers, turning her chair to face the outside world. Her feet arched down to the boxes attached to the metal petals below and began to press them adeptly. “You can keep comfortable back there, I’d offer you Cafe’ but I’m out. When we get closer to the city, I’ll stash you away, and we can go from there. For now, sit back and enjoy the roll of Thunder.” She laughed at her last pun and punched a lever forward in time with pressing a pedal. The vehicles pulled slowly forward, gaining momentum in the snow until they were rolling down the side of the valley to where T’sala had seen so many of these from the cave before. She wondered if she had watched the Rumsey at any time.

  T’sala looked over to Alec; his eyes were focused on their driver. Was he trying to do as she was and calculate the level of trust they could grant this host? He turned back to her as if sensing her gaze and lifted the corners of his mouth in assurance. It wasn’t quite a smile; nevertheless, she smiled back. Whatever happened, she knew there was one she could trust. She squeezed his hand with the fingers of their bound arms. It helped that he couldn’t get more than a step away from her for now. That made her smile more, and she leaned into his arm. She caught the glance of the Rumseys’ eyes looking through a mirror at them. There was a look of tender longing in her eyes, like someone who had held love and watched it die. T’sala wondered if that look had haunted her after seeing her brother’s broken body, if it had, time and the No her, offworlder had helped it fade.