Chapter Thirteen

ELLE

Ayrie and I flew up into the blue sky. The air was clear, filled only with a single white cloud sailing on the wind. The sun shone brightly. I should have been the happiest I had ever been.

Except I had made the decision to leave Ayrie, and it hurt. I didn’t want to go. I had moved from crush territory into full on love, but I didn’t want to let my thoughts linger. I knew it was necessary for me to leave him so he could have the chance to find what he desired. I had known long ago that I wasn’t what he needed.

I doubted I was what anyone needed, but I had secretly hoped things would be different with Ayrie. I had been silly. My heart was broken and scarred. I could change what I looked like on the surface, not what was underneath. Things couldn’t be different unless I was different. There wouldn’t be any fixing of me, no matter how much someone like Jayne might want to.

The breeze ruffled my hair, and I clung tightly to Ayrie. I felt nervous being high up in the air with nothing stopping me from plummeting to my doom. Once he started to glide in lazy arcs back and forth on the air currents, I began to relax. Even if I fell, I thought Ayrie would fly down to catch me.

The clouds blew past us, enveloping us in mist momentarily before we flew back out of them into the sunshine. I felt as light as air. Flying was incredible. Humanity had dreamed of flying since we were cavemen. I was glad Earth was helping to save these particular people, but I wouldn’t have a part in it anymore.

Flight came at a cost, but Ayrie said it was worth it. Now that I had experienced it, I believed him. What could be better than soaring in the blue sky away from all the problems on the planet below you?

He started getting too comfortable and began to take chances, swooping and diving through the air. I hung on but didn’t ask him to stop. It was the last time in my life I would ever fly. I wasn’t going to waste it being scared.

When Ayrie returned to gliding on the air currents and only occasionally using his wings, it became silent all around us. My instincts told me it was too quiet up here.

“Elle?”

I wasn’t listening to my gut. I was listening to Ayrie. He was speaking to me for the first time in hours. I couldn’t believe how long he had been flying without getting tired. He seemed built for endurance. I was going to miss him, but I couldn’t let myself get trapped in thoughts about leaving.

“Yeah?”

“What did you mean when you said you were wrong and could never be right? It was a weird thing to say.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer him. “I’m broken. You know, like used goods.” I felt him become tense beneath me, but if I stopped now, I wouldn’t be able to say everything on my mind. My throat was already closing up on me. “Think about it this way. I’m like a crate of fruit that’s gone rotten. Nothing can change that. You can’t turn spoiled fruit into perfectly fresh fruit again. Life doesn’t work that way. It’s okay, though. I’ve finally accepted it.”

“Well, I’m not going to.” Anger underscored his words. “I don’t agree with you at all.”

“I’m not sure you get an opinion about this.”

“Fresh fruit is overrated.” He sounded like he was talking to himself.

I shook my head. No one was going to choose me over someone else.

I heard a frustrated huff of air escape him. “Why are we talking about fruit, anyway? The analogy breaks down almost immediately. I don’t like it, and I don’t think you’re right. You might see yourself that way, but it might not be true.”

How could that be? If Ayrie was right, I was deceiving myself about who I really was. I thought back to the other day when I floated in the water by myself, feeling perfect, like I had never been hurt. At the time, all of the bad things that had happened to me seemed like someone else’s nightmare.

Could he be right? Was I wrong about being unfixable? I wanted to know the truth. “How do you see me?” I spoke in a normal voice, but I wondered if the wind would take my words and whip them away so he never heard them. I remembered Ayrie had asked me the same thing before. How would he answer me?

He was quiet for a long time, pumping his wings lazily. I wondered if he had forgotten the question or hadn’t heard it. Perhaps he was ignoring me.

When he finally spoke, he sounded completely sure of himself. “When I imagine you, I know part of you is shattered. I don’t talk about it all the time, but it’s lurking beneath the surface.”

He did think I was broken, after all. Why did that seem disappointing?

“But to me, that isn’t everything about you. Bad things happened to you and you were hurt. None of us can truly be called normal, but even those who look like nothing’s the matter with them on the outside are hiding things.” He stopped talking. I put my forehead down on his shoulder, listening with all my heart.

“The thing I remember when I think about you is your resilience despite everything you’ve been through. You’re still here, trying, and willing to risk it all. To me, that’s what stands out about you, not all the other stuff.”

I drew in a deep breath. Could Ayrie be telling the truth? He had never lied to me before. I didn’t think he was lying now; there was too much honesty in his voice.

“You’re strong, Elle, and you’re also beautiful. And there is nothing spoiled about you. Don’t ever describe yourself like that again.” I had heard his voice break before he stopped talking. I felt like I was going to cry, but I managed to get myself under control. I didn’t want to start weeping while I was on his back and in the air. I could let everything out when I was alone. It wasn’t the right time or place.

I wondered if I had what it took to leave him. I would let him find someone more suitable. It was the least I could do for the alien who had done so much for me.

I wouldn’t go back to Earth if I had other options. But I didn’t have to, did I? I could stay on Vandwa. Ashlyn was already here, so there was at least one other human. Maybe Jayne could ask her mother to pull a few strings for me and cut through the paperwork. I was sure she had a lot of experience doing that with TerraMates, the company arranging marriages between Earth women and aliens.

It wasn’t ideal, but it was good enough. Vandwa was beautiful. I could be free here. There was always work for starcraft mechanics. My life here wouldn’t be as glamorous as saving Auxem, and without Ayrie, everything might seem empty. On the other hand, I was sure I could make a quiet life for myself, and that was more than I had any right to ask.

I was about to ask Ayrie what he thought about my idea when the wind started to pick up. A gust pushed us sideways, and Ayrie struggled to keep us headed in the right direction.

“Did something change?” He had a worried expression on his face. I looked down at the ocean below us. There wasn’t a sign of land anywhere. If we ran into trouble, we were going to have to handle it in the air or at sea.

The grim sound of his voice terrified me. “A storm’s approaching. We have nowhere to land and no way to outrun it. We’re going to have to let it hit us.”

AYRIE

Elle’s terrible perception of herself had me fuming as I flew toward the land mass I could remember from the map. I thought it was south of our island, but I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. I didn’t know where I was going, which direction was correct, or how long I could actually keep flying.

The worst part was I didn’t have a choice. We had to leave the island to find help for Elle. When I began to tire, I started to second-guess myself. Vandwa was famous for storms rising out of nowhere, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. They could disappear as quickly as they appeared, just like the one we weathered on the island.

I started finding it harder to maintain our course in the face of the rough winds. I wondered if we should turn around and go back, but we had been flying for hours. I would have the benefit of a tailwind, but it might blow us completely off course.

I decided to keep moving in our original direction and hope we weren’t far from land. I had been flying all day. Maybe we were out of the dead zone by now.

As I glided, using my wings to keep us on the course and trying to move a little faster, I noticed a wall of dark gray clouds building along the horizon. I could smell the scent of ozone in the air. The towering clouds were huge even from a distance. I saw flashes of lightning and heard the distant booms of thunder. I also noticed several waterspouts stretching from the ocean to the nasty-looking clouds.

I had never been afraid to fly before, but I had always had the option of landing if a storm became overwhelming. I changed direction and started heading even higher, hoping to fly over it. It wasn’t long before both Elle and I began to gasp from thin air. I had forgotten that Vandwa had a different atmosphere than Auxem. There was no way we could go above the clouds if we wanted to keep breathing, so I dropped back down.

If we flew under the storm, all we would have to deal with was rain. It was hard to keep flying in wet conditions, but not impossible. It was certainly preferable than trying to fly through lightning and waterspouts.

“What are you doing?” Elle sounded frightened.

“I’m going to pass under the storm. I can’t get above it, and there’s nowhere for us to land. If we’re lucky, we’ll only have to deal with rain.”

She clutched me tighter. Unfortunately, it wasn’t our lucky day.