The man, Alec, tried to do three things in the same moment. She saw him pinch his eyes as if willing the spirits to send him strength. He made a quick motion to stand, and his lips moved with no sound. The subsequent actions that followed made T’sala feel fear, hope and laughter, like him, all at once. His eyes unfocused as he stood, and she saw him swoon, then pitch to the side onto the moss she had laid beside his makeshift bed. On his way down while his lips moved in silence, she saw a small arc of electricity repeat a shorted spark below the lump in his throat. She moved forward quickly to ease his fall and managed to cradle his head downward.

  T’sala heard a large groaning noise and turned her attention to the door. It was not the monster animal returned but the echo of a slugger engine on the ice. She turned her attention back to the slumped form of Alec. She cradled his head in her lap, and his eyes finally found focus in hers. She saw him mouth a word she recognized, “T’sala,” but no sound or other words followed. He looked confused and grabbed his throat. As if on cue, the sparks played their rhythmic arcing out under his palm. His expression said it all. Something in the partially metal man’s voice was broken. He rolled shakily to his side and, with an equally shaking hand, began to draw in the snow.

  T’sala did not understand the symbols of the baronhood people; they were not like the Teretha’s. She did understand one word, “Q.U.I.P.” She had read that on the side of the great war beast that the offworlder piloted. She signed to the man in Teretha handspeak, superceding the need for a voice.

  “He is not with us; there was a storm, and the circle called purple lighting and used it to join us to another world.”

  The man looked at her, confused for a moment, then his eyes broadcast small digital signals, and he nodded in acknowledgement. He raised his hand, which was still shaky, to sign back to her, but it fell flat to her lap. He began to shudder as if the energy he had used in that simple task had pushed him near death again. She used her Aamaranth strength and lifted him easily back to the bed she had made. The metal parts of him had gained frost, and the skin where it connected had begun to grow dark. She wrapped his jacket around him, and the soft fur seemed to comfort him. He looked at it in gratitude, and the shuddering subsided. She grabbed the fur from the horned animal she had made a blanket, and turned back to the man.

  She saw now his loss of shuddering was not positive but submission to a body, too tired and too cold to survive. She took the blanket in her hand and pulled his jacket wider to accommodate her smaller form in the crook of his arm. She pulled the jacket tight and covered them both. She hoped her heat could revive the man. T’sala placed her head on his chest, felt and heard a heart that sounded much like hers. Just deeper and slower. This man had proven his heart was true; to hear it beat now as she did, T’sala learned this man was much more man than machine. She felt his arm move and gather her closer, gentle, embracing her in peaceful gratitude. Outside, a wailing sound had joined the sound of another Slugger running the ice-road. This sound did not alarm T’sala; she had heard it just last week. The winds on this planet swayed the snow as they did the sand on her planet. It did not hurt her in the suit the man, Alec, had given her, but she could not see when it happened. It was best to rest in the cave and let the storm take its course; she was sure the large beast would not come out in this fierce a storm either. T’sala felt an uneasy rest take her mind. The offworlder had woken up; now they could figure it out together. With that thought, T’sala’s mind finally fell into darkness in a much-needed rest.

  She dreamed only in the final moments before waking. Like most dreams, those moments were hours of suffering and second-guessing the nightmares T’sala had just lived. Her eyes woke with a start, expecting to find it had all been a dream, and she yet floated for the baron’s amusement. The coldness told her it had all been true. As she stirred, she felt Alec’s head move to look down at her; his hands were not shaking as much as the day before, and his eyes seemed focused. She lifted her head from his chest and stood. As the cold rushed into the space she had occupied, she saw the offworlder shudder.

  “It is good to see you moving offworlder, I mean, Alec.” Her words were strong and clear. It felt good to speak with another human after days on end in this silent cave.

  He moved his hands to a still, often sparking throat and then signed with Teretha Handspeak, “Where are we? How Long?” He appeared to be reserving all of his energy and taking the time to speak, even with his hands, which was taxing the man physically.

  “It’s been three full moons in days, and I do not know where we are.” She looked around the cave. “I made this shelter for us. You have been asleep for a long time.”

  He indicated the slot in his arm where she had seen a vial so many times before. “Have you seen any?” He signed to her again; his eyes did not hold any hope. Surely he knew if she had found some of the purple rocks from her homeworld, she would have given it in a heartbeat.

  “None, but I have seen the vehicles with the baron’s symbol on them. They haunt the valley below us with rumbles.” She looked to the cave, but a storm still raged outside, and nothing could be heard but the wind. At this statement, his eyes lit with hope. The sight almost offended T’sala, and she frowned in distaste. This man was still connected by a very strong thread to the people who oppressed her's; could he be trusted?

  He sat up in place and looked at the furs sewn into his coat, and looked back at her. “Thank you,” he signed. “With it, I can heal,” he indicated his arm again. T’sala looked dismayed, and she could see that he had taken it in. “Where there are barons, there is Aamaranth. We can find some when the storm clears. Until then, tell me what has happened.” His hands began to shake and falter, and he made a point to lie back down but adjusted to his side so he could see her where she stood. She sat down beside him and began to relay what she could of the final battle. He prodded her twice for more detail, especially on the end when the circle had reached out with its purple electric arms and whisked them off to the wilderness here. His eyes had taken on a sense of wonder at her explanation, like he had just seen a legend come to life.

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  “I’m sorry.” She said as she finished her retelling. “I’m sorry, Alec, for taking after the man who had killed my family. I focused on a candle in the daylight.” The look on his face said he had not heard the statement before. “If I had focused on the greater battle, perhaps my people would be free. I focused on a single person that meant nothing, like holding a candle expecting it to light the day.” His expression took on a sombre look, but not one of condemnation, one of knowing.

  “It is a story I am familiar with. Blood can pull us; it has power.” He stopped motioning mid-sentence, and his eyes took on a light. “The rifle, do you have it?” His hands signed so fast and steadily in his excitement, T’sala felt he may have recovered slightly. She nodded in affirmation and smiled with his excitement. She could see the hope in his eyes and took it on in her own heart. As she retrieved it from the side of the blanket she had been on, she marvelled at how this man had such a sway on her heart. She felt as if their pain and joy were shared mutually. She knew it when she handed him the rifle, and he took it to examine closely. She also took out his revolver, with a purple lightning scar across it, and passed it to him. It caught his attention for a moment, but he placed it aside, looking closely at the rifle’s trigger point.

  T’sala knew that spot well; that’s where the two fangs of the rifle drew her blood for ammunition. She did feel it when she fired, but was quickly replenished in her energy, still she found the two painful needles a deterrent to drawing the weapon. Something she thought of with every target she took. She supposed there was an irony in that. Still, even over this short time, she had felt a camaraderie growing with the weapon.

  The snap that rang out in the cave nearly broke her heart as well. She looked in horror with her final thought of endearment to the weapon, only in time to see the man, Alec, flex his metal hybrid arms to snap the stock away from the firing mechanism. He looked up to T’sala like a child caught with their hand in the ration bin, taking extra.

  “I will fix it later, we. I need this.” The man had used only one hand to sign this, but had to set the rifle aside to change the Teretha word for ‘we’ as a group to the subjective ‘I’. It was intentional, and it was honest. It drew her heart even more to his in this moment of vulnerable honesty, and she gestured to him to continue what he was doing with a look of hope and approval on her face. He could see the sacrifice it was for her, on this strange planet, losing something familiar. Still, he went back to his purpose with fervour.

  From his wrist, he pulled a section of small tools. From the arm with the Aamaranth slot, he pulled a metal tube, which was flexible yet strong, and as he took it, his one hand began to twitch, then fell dead from the elbow down. “We fix it.” It’s all he could sign with one hand, and the ‘we’ was emphasized with the working hand's thumb pointing at himself. He would fix it. T’sala fixed him with a flat stare; she felt it was stupid of him to emphasize that. She had no training in mechanics or science; she had been furniture for most of her experiential years. At that thought, her expression and mood clouded, and a small glow emanated from her purple skin.

  This caused the offworlder to look up from his tasks to her. His expression questioned her as he fiddled with the metal tube, connecting the needles he had retrieved from the rifle.

  “It is not you, offworlder,” she answered his expression without needing the question. “I am considering the dangers on this planet and you taking apart half of our weapons for a purpose not yet known to me. That is not the source of my concern, though. I am concerned because, despite this craziness, I trust that you know what you are doing. Trust is foreign to me and leaves my face angry when my heart is not.”

  Alec did not sign anything but nodded in affirmation and then returned to his task. He packaged up the remaining bits of the rifle into a neat pack and reached behind his hip. From there, within a hidden compartment, he grabbed the fibrecoil he had attached. Rope of any kind often came in handy in the strangest places. Watching him gather such tools from amongst his metal form made T’sala marvel again at this man they had called immortal. He took another stretch of the fibre coil and wrapped it up in a bit of fur he had ripped from the blanket. He removed his gun belt and took the gun holster from it. This he wrapped up with the rifle pieces. He motioned to her to sit beside him, and as he did, he made a point to gesture at what he was doing.

  He held the end of the cable with the needle extender now connected to the flexible tubing. He squeezed it like a person trying to slowly crush a bug, and the needle extended in its slow, excruciating way. It pierced his skin in the spot where a being had fallen and turned black, near the Aamaranth port in his elbow. He squeezed the tube shut and handed her the other needle end connected to it, and gestured to her right arm. She may not have been well-versed in science, but she had been a part of the wicked madam Zelsim’s experiments. Needles and tubes such as these had replaced T’sala’s lifeblood with the purple power that now ran through her. She gulped in fear and looked at the man. He signed to her, “trust,” and his eyes were a question with confidence behind them.

  “Trust,” she said aloud and squeezed the needle as he did, watching the needle slowly descend into her elbow where a purple vein pulsed with Aamaranth. It pierced through the suit, slowly, and she stifled a gasp of anticipatory pain. He released his hold on the tube, and a purple line connected them, her blood flowing into him. She could see before her very eyes the frostbitten flesh heal and turn supple and full of life. Beside her, Alec breathed a sigh of a thousand years, like the relief and love sigh of a long-lost love. In that moment, he intertwined his fingers in hers, holding her hand and looking into her eyes.

  “Much, thank you, he signed with one hand. She got the broken grammar and squeezed his hand tightly.

  “Much thank you to you as well, offworlder. Much thank you, for I do not know what I would do without you now.”

  He looked at her, slightly incredulous, like she had said the most ridiculous thing. “Live. You would live. You are...” He could not sign with one hand what he wanted to, so he pointed to the frozen stones around him and then to his heart.

  “Cold-hearted?” She said, smiling with a little mirth as the man scrambled emotionally, struggling with one hand to sign with one hand what she already knew he meant. “I do have a strong heart and a stubborn will. I know I would do just fine without you. I just don’t want to.” She smiled, and he returned it. She could see the shaking had subsided, and the man was no longer a frozen part of this cave. The offworlder now had a fire in his eyes that said he could move. Looking down at the purple line that connected them, she began to wonder how that would look. Until they could find more of his vials, they would be connected like this. Did she really mind that? It could be fun if life were a dance, every moment of every day. The thought calmed the purple glow of her mood, and this time he settled his head on her shoulder. He drew in another sigh of relief as they both looked out into the wailing blizzard outside the cave. Connected like this, neither was cold.