They both start to smile.
"Wow. Next time we build a robot, we'll let you know." Eli brushes the ash from his hair, and it falls around like dust. "You can help."
Orion makes a sound that's a series of clicks, and Mellow jumps from the blanket of coats. She lies down on the grass looking grey with ash. I start to stroke it from her fur.
When Orion gives the coat to Eli, Eli wraps it around his head. Like the towel-tie that I sometimes use to keep my hair up while it dries from a shower, but he doesn't know how to do it correctly. It slumps, and looks like it's sighing with disappointment as it slowly falls down Eli's head.
He puts it on as it's intended, sticking his arms through the sleeves. The fabric stops at the elbow crease on Orion, but it stops halfway up his forearm on Eli.
"My God, you've gotten fat." I say jokingly, and Eli sneers at me.
"I'm taller than Orion, actually." He looks towards him. "Isn't that right, shorty?"
Orion stops in wiping the ash from underneath his caramel coloured brace on his arm. "You know I'm healing your head, right, dear? I could easily just give you dyslexia in the process. Remember that time I made you keep replacing the word 'no' involuntary with 'walrus vagina'."
I make a face.
Eli makes one like yes, that actually did happen and no, he doesn't want me to ask for an elaboration.
"Do walruses even have vagina's?" I ask anyway, ignoring Eli.
"Well, they got penises so unless the ocean is entirely gay then there has to be another part. Or they're just asexual, like me, and don't want anything to do with anything." Orion smacks Eli when he starts to pull at the threads at the cut-off sleeves, and starts to talk the incantation that heals in Arabic.
I know that the incantation works when Orion speaks it whether it's sung or spoken in English or Arabic, and it makes me a little bit sad that Orion and Eli don't sing together anymore.
The bright flash is just as strong as the one for Mellow, and when it fades, I have to blink away the sun spots. My eyes adjust, and I look towards Eli.
He blinks a few times rapidly, and goes to stare at Orion's face. "Nope. You're still ugly." He says. They both laugh, but then Orion gets sick of it and demands his coat back.
I don't ask what sort of trauma caused the affect on Eli's head, and I don't ever plan to. If he wants to speak, he should know that he can. Whenever he wants. It seems that I'm good at the whole non-spiteful thing when it comes to my friends.
Eli rubs his eyes, and in the darkness, I wonder how much sleep he's had. "Who was that guy yelling for you?" He asks me. He vaguely gestures in the direction from where we were running.
I didn't even know that the voice was male. It didn't register. It might have been Salt. Or one of the FInnish fighters. But just as I'm about to give my answer, I realize that Eli doesn't actually know who they are.
I give him the low down quickly, saying that Finn and Fellis's granddad knew Barron's and they've been searching for him for ages. I also mention that we should find Barron, at some point, before we go any further in the life that we now lead.
"Ya'll been busy." Eli says, and he takes a knife from the pack on his thigh. He checks the sharpness of the blade. "Making new friends."
"The term losely, dear." Orion looks towards me. He's about to ask a question by his tone of eyebrow, but a twig snaps behind my head. And he looks up with an expression of stone.
Him and Eli rise, and I don't have an indication that that isn't a gun to my head, so I stay sitting. Mellow tries to calm me by purring as I keep stroking her. Or maybe she just doesn't care if I get shot.
Orion has his bow drawn when I next look up, arrow in the knock. Eli looks like he's ready to throw one knives and remove another in a split second.
"Ah, crap. Bella." Eli blinks in realization, and turns to Orion like he's waiting for him to make the same link to a face.
"Bella? Crap." Orion says back to him, and they both re-adjust their hands on their weapons.
I've heard that name before. It jars the cogs in my mind. Oh, God, where have I heard it? Not a robot. No, no, no. Before that. Was it the one with Salt on Brownsea? No. It dawns on my mind suddenly, and I remember the Bella.
Bella; Eli and Orion's homeless friend. The dangerous one that looks like she's not afraid to kill anybody.
That thought makes me stand, lifting Mellow with me, and walk calmly to stand next to Eli and Orion. Nobody's going to hurt them. Especially when I have a gun, too.
But I drop Mellow in shock. She goes to hang around Orion's ankles, but I'm not paying attention. "Sammy?" I ask the one standing beside Bella.
I have to force myself to stay still. The last time I saw Sammy in a wood I was hallucinating. Not running for him takes almost everything.
"That's your name?" Bella turns to the Turkish dark-red hair guy beside her, and she makes a face. "You said you were Greek."
"I'm Turkish. I know some Greek." Sammy corrects her, and there's a hint of the kindness that comes with doctoring still in his voice. "And we were born and raised in England, Bella." He doesn't apreciate her comment, and barely glances at her.
I notice that they're both armed.
Bella has two pistols in each hand, and she puts her weight on one leg, putting her hands on her hips. Sammy is holding a spear. I never thought I'd see him armed unless in life-or-death. It jumps into my mind that maybe his life has been threatened, and I actually run for him this time.
He almost doesn't lower the spear in time, but luckily, when I hug him, I don't get stabbed.
"You got shot." I say when I pull away. "You got shot! You and dad! Jarvis got away, but you were shot!"
Sammy frowns in a way that makes me uncomfortable. "Aaran, Jarvis did get away. He hid. But it wasn't enough and after you went and jumped off the damn city with those four boys, he heard me and dad fall. He was stupid. He drew them away from me as much as he could, and since the bullet was only a flesh wound, I could stumble into an alley. I watched it all."
I don't have to ask what he watched.
"They're dead." I say. "Jarvis and dad." I'm confirming it to myself.
Terra has died. I've handled death before. But mostly with robots. Machines. I didn't even know Terra that well. But this is a whole new kind of death.
My dad and my brother are dead. Not being tortured or missing or living a life in factories without me. Just dead. Like that. No more. Just dead. I remember the thought that nobody was ever 'just' anything. And I change myself. Dead. They've died.
They were executed in front my brother's eyes for being just in the vicinity of an open part in the city walls.
Sammy throws the spear into the ground. It sticks.
"I don't know what you expected." He says. "I thought you were dead. For months. Week after week, I was stuck on the streets, entire family gone!"
Orion makes a scoffing sound behind me. I know what he's thinking. Wow. Wonder what that must feel like.
"I thought you were being tortured." I tell Sammy. "But this isn't about what we all thought. The world is bigger than any one person and shit happens and people go and not everything turns out as we want it to. We're the only family we have right now, you and me, and from my experience, family and friends mean the exact same thing. So unless we can stop being siblings and be friends again regardless of how much shit there is right now, I think that's a good place to start."
Sammy glances down at the gun over my shoulder.
"You've grown from kicking around like a damn baby, Aaran." He doesn't look too happy about it. "I'm not even going to mention the two-boys-at-once thing."
Eli and Orion both roll their eyes heavily, making disgusted sounds.
I ignore them. "That explosion at the castle." I shake my head to disperse some of the ash laden on it. "That was you two, wasn't it?"
Bella gestures to herself with the barrels of her guns. "Basically; I rule."
"No." I say, and her face to not getting people to go the way she wants is priceless. "No, what the hell was that? You just blew up the most dangerous things on Earth."
"Hey, we saved your ass." Bella says, and she gestures with one of her guns to Eli and Orion, too. "A thank-you would suffice. And the robots aren't the most dangerous things on Earth, Aaran Sozos. Not anymore."
"You didn't." I say, and I look to Sammy. He looks almost ashamed.
"Humans." Every single one of says at once.
"How many?" I ask, and I put a hand up when Sammy tries to answer. I look at Bella, because if I'm going to hear bad news, it needs to be from somebody I don't like.
Bella seems to count them in her mind. "A few from the factories where Sam worked. We needed an airship and people that could build one. So. We got an airship."
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