“So you can practice saying dirty things to him in sa-khui?” Josie teases, but her words are accompanied by a wince and a press of her fingers to her temples.
The idea isn’t a bad one, but with the way my brain feels, I’d settle for having someone rub my head and hand me a drink of water. “Nah. Just feels like they’ve been gone for a while now. I hope everything’s okay.”
I really hope Taushen isn’t being a dick to him and trying to start something. I know he’s not supposed to be here, but I can’t help but be glad that he bent the rules and showed up anyhow.
“That’s because they have been gone for a while,” Josie says, and tugs the blankets closer around her body. She flops down on the pillow and yawns. “I’m going to try and sleep off some of this migraine. Wake me if a chocolate bar shows up and wants to cuddle.”
I stifle my laugh — mostly because it hurts to laugh — and peel myself out of the chair. It’s chilly away from the fire, and I rub my arms as I wander over to the doorway. The suns are setting, the endless snow outside taking on a purple tinge. They should be back soon.
A furious breeze whips at my thick hair, and I’m shocked at the strength of it. Good lord, where did that come from? I take a few more steps toward the door and lean against the entryway, peering outside. There’s no snow falling, but the temperature is definitely getting colder and the wind is picking up. Gonna be a cold night. I’m glad we’re inside.
I watch the snow for a bit but when it’s clear no one’s on the horizon, I wander away again. It’s too cold to stay near the door for too long. Instead, I move toward the computer panel at the far end of the room. There are very few buttons and the ones that are there have extremely strange writing on them and are shaped oddly. I know the button that turns things on, though, and I push it.
“System activated. How can I assist?”
“Can I get a weather reading?” I ask. “What’s the temperature outside?” I’m not sure if the computer knows standard units of measurement, so I add, “Set the freezing point at zero degrees.”
“The temperature outside is pleasant and slightly above normal for this time of year. Going by your guidelines, it is one degree below freezing.”
Pleasant? One degree below freezing? Barf. How I wish I’d gotten stranded on Planet Florida instead of Planet Iceland. As soon as the thought crosses my mind, though, I dismiss it. Salukh wouldn’t be there if I were anywhere else…and I’d miss him. I feel warm thinking about him and I can feel myself smiling. “What about the weather tomorrow?”
“The temperature will be dropping due to a cold weather system incoming. Would you like to see an overview of the terrain?”
“A map? That’d be great.”
I wait impatiently as the computer pulls up a visual on the screen. At first it’s all white, but then the picture starts to fill in slowly. I touch the screen and it zooms in, but I’m not sure what I’m looking at. “Can you point out where I’m at on the map?”
A moment later, a red dot appears. “You are located here.”
Glad I asked. It looks like a whole lot of nothing to my eyes. I lean closer, peering at the picture. I have no idea where the main cave and the south cave are in relation to where I’m at. I’m not sure the computer would know the caves either. I drag my finger over the map, making it zoom in and out, looking for landmarks of any kind. “Can you show me where the crashed ship is?”
“Query: I do not understand what ‘crashedhip’ is.”
Well, this was as bad as talking to Siri on her old iPhone. “It’s how the humans landed here. We were in a large metal ship. Can you locate that?”
The computer blips and then a blue dot shows up on the map, in the mountains to the east. “There is a deposit of metal here, according to my scanners.”
“That must be it,” I murmur to no one in particular. It’s northeast of here, which means that the main tribal cave should be nearby somewhere. It’s a half a day’s journey from the main cave to the Elders’ Cave – the old, broken down ship I’m standing in – and it’s a half a day’s trek from the main cave to the South cave. Different directions, though. “Can you zoom out? I want to see the entire area.”
“Query: I do not understand what ‘zoom’ is.”
Oy. “Make the picture bigger so I can see the entire region. I want to see all of it.”
The screen changes again, and this time I can see a very large chunk of land, along with the mountains to the east and what looks like the sea – or even an ocean – over to the west.