In the Between Time by Krystyne Price

Author:Krystyne Price [Price, Krystyne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-16T18:30:00+00:00

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By the time Mateo informed them, “We are nearly there,” Sirena was bearing the brunt of most of Omaro’s weight. She was very nearly ready to collapse trying to keep him stumbling along, but from a place she hadn’t really known existed somewhere deep down inside of her, a well of strength kept her from being the one that sent them both into a painful rendezvous with the uneven tunnel floor.

A strange light shimmered around the next bend, which led off to the right of their current tunnel. For how long had they been walking, Sirena wondered, and what could that ethereal aquamarine glow be? Omaro tripped over his own feet, ripping her from her thoughts. His bulk sent him pitching forward, where Sirena only then realized Mateo had stopped at the bend. She cried out and Mateo whipped around, palms facing their direction. Against all reason an invisible force caught them both and slowly pushed them completely upright.

She stared at Mateo, whose pink eyes now glowed from within. It reminded her of what her mother had always told her about her own eyes, how they seemed to be lit from within. Indeed, each imo she had seen, those who would allow what they considered a baruaization of their imohood into their presence at all, had eyes such as these. Now she was seeing them on a five-year old child.

The pressure against her forehead and arms abated, but Omaro was so unsteady she still supported nearly his entire weight. “I must…put him down,” she grunted to Mateo. “He is…too heavy for me to support.”

Mateo nodded and led the way. Sirena was practically dragging the large man now, having long ago forgotten he was nude except for how her grip kept slipping in his blood and sweat. Shortly the glow intensified and one last sharp turn to the left stopped her in her tracks. Her jaw dropped as she took in the cavern that lay before her.

It went without saying that it was the largest cave she’d ever seen. The entirety of it was hued variations of greens and blues, and both large and small stalactites hung from the ceiling. She thought it was possible that half the entire population of merans might be able to fit inside the vast expanse shoulder-to-shoulder and noted in the far corner a hot spring the size of Mateo’s old cave’s first chamber burbling and steaming. The walls sloped as they went higher, forming a rotunda for a ceiling. Though the cave itself wasn’t round, it didn’t have any sharp angles or edges, telling her it’d been formed naturally by water, or possibly even lava, tens of thousands of years past.

But it was the large pool of calm turquoise water abutting the curving wall to the far right that captured her gaze. Omaro at last became too heavy for her to bear and so she pulled him forward a couple of feet and made to gently lower him to rest against the near wall.

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