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“Wanna have a sip?“
The offer echoed in her mind hours after having left the rehab centre. In the sterile facilities of the foundation there was no room for outside smells, no moss, no herbs. The white walls had no texture, stainless steel cold and ungrowing.
Druvis missed the forest. She had prepared for it, had planted her seeds, but it was not yet time. In the intermediary state there was nothing here for her but a void of time in suspension, for her to wait out, to endure. At least that was how she felt.
Seeing Vertin in that bed, who-knows-what being poured into her mind with that strange device… how was she supposed to sit still now? How, when her friends were scattered and cut off from her – when the forest was so far away?
Druvis sighed. Madam Z had left her in a ‘guest room’, no better than a prison cell. She hadn’t been told this of course, just had been asked to take a break and freshen up, but she knew what a cage felt like. She had seen the guards masking as regular people outside, their patterns too practiced and too perfectly rhythmical to be unintentional. The door always in their sight. And of course said door had been locked from the outside the second she entered the room. Not that Druvis had protested. Her seeds were already taking root. No matter how hard it felt, right now was the time to wait.
And yet, the fresh scent of bison grass and thyme lingered at the back of her mind.
Taking a look around the ‘guest room’ she spotted sparse furniture, no wood of course, only metals and plastics. The lamp on the ceiling wouldn’t turn on and if there had been windows in this room they were sealed from the outside.
With a sigh she sat down on the bed. She already missed the suitcase. Light and air and warmth – a general sense of… homeliness… all things this prison cell didn’t have. Naturally, Druvis thought, of course they wouldn’t allow comfort in their coercion campaign. She hoped that the others were feeling a bit better, though she doubted it.
A knock startled her from her dark thoughts. She had no idea how much time had already passed; her perception of time was thwarted by the lack of light. The regular humdrum of the guards’ patterned footsteps outside had already faded to the back of her mind, had become ambient sound. It took her a moment to realise that there hadn’t been any new footsteps approaching. Neither had the knock come from the door, rather it was coming from on the opposite side of the wall. The side where she suspected the windows would have been.
Druvis got up from the bed and stepped over to the wall, careful as to not make too much sound and risk the guards noticing anything.
“Yes?”, she whispered. “Hello?”
Another knock, slightly left from where she was standing.
“Hello?”, she repeated, correcting her position.
There was another new noise now, an even, mechanical purr, as from a very well-maintained vehicle. It was quieter than any motor Druvis had known during her time in the human world and even though her experience with machinery had never been entirely positive, this one didn’t feel threatening to her.
“Oh good, I got the right room”, a brash voice declared from where the knock had come from. Someone began working on something, maybe a mechanism on the other side of the wall.
Druvis held her breath, almost expecting guards to barge in at any moment and stopping whatever was happening right now. Miraculousy nothing happened.
Instead, a thin strip of dim light entered the room – actual light, not whatever artificial lighting the foundation used inside their rooms. After everything that happened, she was thankful for any sign of the natural world still existing somewhere outside. By the colour of the light Druvis judged the time to be slightly after sundown, dusky blues beginning to flood the room. An external barrier was opened like a door and Druvis was allowed a glimpse of the outside. A courtyard, neatly kept and perfectly square. Even if she had a way to get down from her window, there was no route open for escape. Not that she would’ve wanted to flee, with her friends still inside. She wouldn’t have fit between the bars of the window anyway.
Against the darkening sky, astride a contraption unlike anything Druvis had ever seen before, sat the woman she had met earlier. Her long hair was waving with the wind, they were pretty high up after all, but her control of the vehicle seemed immaculate. It sat in the air perfectly still, purring obediently under her thighs.
“Hey”, said Lilya outside the window.
“Hello”, Druvis whispered back, not a question this time. She remained apprehensive. Was this another trap by the foundation?
“You look like shit”, the other woman told her, mustering her up and down.
“I know”, she answered, too exhausted for small talk or even niceties. She gestured to the steel bars separating the two of them, despite the outside seal having been removed. “No wonder.”
A grave nod. A stronger gust of wind blew, and Lilya seemed to almost unconsciously adjust her broom. It was as if she and the machine had become one, merged into one entity that was perfectly adapted to this form on movement. Druvis remembered a jockey race she had seen as a child. She had gone with her family, her mother dressed up and looking beautiful. The riders and horses had become inseparable beings of pure speed as soon as the starting signal came.
Lilya up in the air was like that, a bird of prey seemingly frozen in the air, stalking for those tiny movements so it could shoot down for the kill. But Druvis didn’t feel threatened at all, which should have alarmed her. Somehow though she knew that this was fine. As if Vertin was standing right next to them she felt assured that this was genuine.
The scent of buffalo grass entered Druvis’ mind again.
“Thought I’d come and offer you that sip again”, Lilya said. She held out her opened canteen for Druvis to take through the bars. “You could use it, full offense.”
Druvis took the offered flask through the bars. The brief moment her fingers brushed the warm dry skin of Lilya’s hand, a shiver of goosebumps ran down her spine. The canteen, still connected to Lilya by its strap, felt heavy in Druvis’ hand.
“I’ve not had alcohol before”, she said and took a sip. An acidic burn ran down her throat, rose up into her nose and filled her mouth with its bite. It had smelled fresh, of the spring, so she thought that it would’ve tasted similar as well. To her surprise the smell was almost completely neutral. It tasted neither bitter like human medicine nor of the herbs she had clearly noticed in the drink’s aroma. Druvis didn’t know how she felt about it.
Lilya’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh. With a warm tingle Druvis realised that she enjoyed seeing Lilya laugh.
“Don’t worry about it”, she took back the canteen for a sip herself. “For a first it may be too much.”
With a strange feeling building in her stomach, Druvis watched Lilya put the flask to her lips. Just where she had drunk from it, seconds ago.
“I want to try again”, she demanded, suddenly eager to prove herself, eager to hold the canteen to her lips again.
Druvis took a smaller sip this time but still felt a warmth begin to engulf her. She enjoyed the feeling of drinking this time, the mouth of the canteen against her lips, the liquid going down her throat and meeting in her stomach, forming a warming fire. She felt her face flush.
“Easy, soldier”, Lilya said and took back her canteen. “I can here to give you some distraction, not take you out of commission.” She grinned. “I suspect you’ll need to be up and running around soon.”
Druvis knew that Lilya was right. She had been feeling her seeds sprouting. There was little time left. She nodded slowly.
“Will I see you again?”, she asked. Closing the window and saying goodbye so soon pained her, but the thought of reuniting with her friends eased that pain quickly. In fact, the prospect of reunion was so invigorating that she was able to put the reason why she was feeling like this about meeting Lilya on a mental ‘for later’-pile.
“Sometime, sure!”, Lilya said. “Get outside first and maybe I’ll show you the ropes. Take you for a ride or two.” She began closing the windows from outside.
Druvis searched for the right words to say. It felt like there was something she should be saying in that moment, but it stayed just outside her grasp.
With the last glimmer of light disappearing behind the sealed-again window she raised her hand for a goodbye for the time being.
She had other things to worry about right now, and after that was done and over with, she could seek out the pilot again.
Outside she felt the sprouts growing stronger.