Chương 49: Chapter 48: Workarounds

I felt warmth against my left side. Strange. I opened my eyes. Ella was already awake. She was lying on her side, head on the pillow next to mine, her face close enough that I could see the colour of her eyes in the early light. Her hair was loose across the pillow. The sheet had slipped to her waist. Below it she was naked. Above it she was naked. She hadn't bothered with a shirt or the blanket, or anything. Her fingers were in my hair. Not moving. Just there.

A knuckle against my temple, a strand of it looped loose around her index finger, the way you'd hold a piece of string you picked up without thinking. She'd been doing it a while. The strand was warm where she'd touched it. She was looking at me. Not the measuring look. Not the eagle-Glare she gave me sometimes, or the flat even stare she used when she was sad. This was a different look. Open. Unobstructed.

The face of a woman who was playing with someone's hair and watching them sleep, and had not yet decided to stop because she was having fun doing it. I blinked. She blinked. The blush came up her neck in a single slow wave, the colour of the light-spheres in the corridor outside, and she turned her head away so fast her hair fanned across my shoulder. She was looking at the wall. The wardrobe. The ceiling. Anything that wasn't me. Her hand was still in my hair.

She took it back slowly, as if she'd been caught reaching for something that wasn't hers, and the strand fell against my temple, warm where she'd held it. I lay there. The light was gold. The window faced east, the room was warm, and Ella was in my bed.

"Good morning." I said.

"Don't." One word. Not sharp. Not angry. Quiet, the way she said things when she meant them completely and didn't want to say anything else. Her ears were pink. I got up. Downstairs, the coffee was already going. I could smell it from the top of the stairs. The smell of coffee was so ordinary and so specific that for two breaths I forgot where I was and what had happened. Bill was in the kitchen.

He was wearing the same wrinkled button-down he'd slept in, sleeves rolled, hair in a state that suggested he'd lost a fight with the couch cushion. Susanoo was at his feet, snoring.

"Coffee," Bill said, without looking up. He poured two cups. Set one on the counter near me.

"I don't know how she takes hers. I figured I'd wait."

"Black."

"You know that how."

"I don't, but that's how you're supposed to drink coffee. Anything else is an heresy." Bill looked at me for the first time. He looked at me the way every lawyers look at a witness they haven't decided to trust yet. Then he poured a third cup and set it beside the other two.

"She's up?"

"Yes."

"What are we eating for breakfast?"

"Fish." Bill's face did a thing. Not a flinch. The micro-expression of a man whose idea of breakfast and the reality of breakfast had just been introduced and were not getting along.

"Fish," he said. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Frozen. From the freezer. I've got some left."

"Speaking of heresy..." Ella came down ten minutes later. She was wearing my shirt and a pair of running shorts she'd taken from the duffel — Bill's ex-girlfriend's clothes. She'd pinned her hair back with the chopstick set she had stolen from the kitchen, one piece of knowledge she had picked up from anime I had no regrets about. Her face was composed. Her ears were still pink. She took the coffee from the counter without a word.

Sipped it standing up — fast, efficient, as if the act of drinking was a task to complete. Her eyes closed. For three full seconds she stood in my kitchen holding a mug of Sumatra drip and did not move. Bill, who had been watching her exhaled.

"Okay," he said softly, to nobody.

"Okay." Ella opened her eyes. Drank. The mug was half-empty in four sips. She poured more from the pot without asking, she was herself at all times after all — taking what she needs, no permission, no apology. I took the fish from the freezer. Four of them, frozen solid, grey-skinned, the same species as always. I set them in the basin to thaw and turned the water temperature up until it steamed. I pulled them out one at a time, scaled them with the workshop knife, gutted them. The scales went into the drain.

And the fish into the pan and both Ella, Yato and today also Susanoo were soon eating happily. Bill on the other hand sat at the table with his cup and his fish and he ate very carefully. He wasn't convinced by the morning fish at first.

"It's good," he said. And then, again, quieter: "It's good." Bill finished his fish. He put his fork down. He looked at me the way he looked at me when we were kids and I'd done something he needed to understand before he could decide how to feel about it.

"Okay," he said.

"Since you're eating fish for breakfast." He paused.

"What's the food situation like, walk me through it."

"It's not that complicated."

"You're right. It's extremely complicated. Start from the top." I started from the top. The fish had been our main food source for a while now. I'd built a trap out of a plastic container and duct tape — a funnel entrance, bait inside, a cord tied to a stone in the river. Fish became the staple — along with the beast meat from the first kill, and the monster kills from training. The beast meat was still holding. The freezer was full. The cold room in the village had shelves of it.

"But the trap was the fresh source," I said.

"And it's gone."

"What do you mean gone."

"I checked it two days ago. When we got back from the gate facility after I messaged you. I walked past the river on the way in. The spot where I'd tied it — there's nothing there. The bridge upstream collapsed a long time ago. The stones from it drifted downstream. One of them landed near the village and created a little eddy — calm water behind the stone. That's where I set the trap. Tied it to a branch wedged against the stone."

"Okay."

"But now, the bridge is back to it's original shape. It's a long story but it fixed itself and now all the stones went back to where they came from. The stone in the river — it went too. The branch shifted. The cord snapped or the trap went with the stone. Either way it's gone." Bill stared at me.

"The bridge fixed itself."

"Yes."

"And it took your fish trap with it."

"By accident, yes." Bill put both hands flat on the table. Looked at the ceiling. Looked back at me.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay. So you've got — how much food?"

"Nine fish in the freezer. And the beast meat — a lot. The cold room in the village has shelves of it."

"So you won't starve."

"Not tomorrow. Not next week. It's the direction. Meat only. Forever. No vegetables, no grain, no fruit, no dairy. I was already losing my mind before pizza arrived and I'd only been doing it for three months."

"The green by the water — when we drove in yesterday. Those were plants?"

"Yes, Ella planted a couple tomatoes, peppers, courgettes. Three weeks ago. Four or five more weeks are needed until they're ready for any potential harvest." Bill was quiet. He picked up his mug. Put it down without drinking.

"So what's the plan? You said you need supplies from Earth, how does that work with the gate?"

"There's the problem. Someone needs to hold the gate open from this side. Physically. Ella stood at the panel for fifteen hours the first time I crossed. I only stayed on earth side for fifteen minutes...."

"The stone panel thing. With the hand."

"Yes."

"For fifteen hours."

"She's not a machine, Bill."

"Clearly not. What about the panel itself?"

"What about it?"

"You said it was unfinished."

"They left in a hurry."

"Finish it." I looked at him.

"I'm not a mage, Bill."

"No, but she is." He didn't look at Ella. He didn't need to. He picked up his mug. Set it down.

"Fix the door. Then the food runs become a trip instead of an event." He was right. I knew he was right because Ella had said something close to it herself — the panel was unfinished, the socket was rough, whoever built it stopped. Bill was looking at the workaround from the outside, and from the outside it looked just as it was. a workaround. Bill stood up and put his mug in the dishwasher.

"You also forget a few more emergencies," he said, his back to me.

"On my side." I waited.

"There are all the things we spoke about yesterday, the fenced off lot, the reopened case from your mom's disappearance and of course the damages that the utulity companies are seeking. Something like three hundred K in infrastructure costs." He paused.

"Ah and your bank account is probably frozen you know. The police should have already frozen it as part of the investigation."

"Yeah..."

"Your account, your cards, everything. You're a missing person, Arcene. They're not going to unfreeze it because you send a nice email." I sat with that. A bank account. It really just was a number on a screen. The thing I'd been working every night for five years to earn. Gone. Not stolen — frozen. And the funny thing was — it didn't matter that much. Money didn't work here. There was no one I could trade it with anyway.

"So," Bill said, turning back toward me.

"How much gold did you say you have in the royal palace?" I looked at him.

"A lot."

"That's good. Because I think we're going to need a bigger budget."