"Right. Sorry." I take a step toward the rack of costumes. "Can we take all of this with us?"
My fires, I will uproot this entire building and drag it to the top of our nest if it should please you.
I have no doubt he would. Beaming, I shake my head. "Just the clothes. I don't need anything else." My stomach growls again and I grimace, setting my box of finds down for a moment. "Should we look for something to eat?"
Mhal's posture changes, the languid, relaxed dragon-man changing to an alert one. I can shift and hunt—
"Nope," I say immediately, reaching for him. "If you do that again, I lose you. Stay with me for a while."
He is clearly not a fan of this plan. But if there is nothing for you to eat—
"Then we'll have to figure something out. For now, though, just…stay?" I hold my hand out to him. "Please?"
Mhal takes my hand in his, then lifts it to his mouth and presses a kiss to my skin. I can refuse you nothing.
"Good, because if we're leaving the fort behind, we're going to need a lot of stuff." I keep my tone bright and happy. I'll be sad to leave my friends behind, but living in a fort has always felt like a bad fit to me. For the first time—since the Rift opened and destroyed everything—I'm excited for the future.
The rest of the day is a scavenger's paradise. We pick through a dozen souvenir stores, all in varying states of decay. Some have been raided, but others are mostly intact and filled with all kinds of memorabilia that have no use in the After. I pass by racks of keychains and postcards, heading straight for plastic mugs and t-shirts with garish slogans on them. There's not a speck of food anywhere, but I try every bathroom's water fixtures, looking for something that works.
Nothing.
By the end of the day, I'm thirsty and faint with hunger, both of which make Mhal upset. He shifts to his dragon form with my agreement—he calls it “battle-form”—and the moment he does, he stares at me blankly.
I have to re-introduce myself and wait while he sniffs me all over, drinking in our mingled scents. When he's satisfied, his chaotic thoughts spin a little slower, gold creeping into his eyes. When I mention food and water, he immediately flies me a short distance away, to a nearby lake. I mean…it's water, but I'm not sure it's smart to drink it long-term. I fill one of my stolen cups up and sip it anyhow, because it's hard to be picky in the After. Mhal takes me back up to our “nest” atop the derrick and settles me there while he goes hunting. I think about all the things we'll need in order to make this a home, and it helps me not panic.
Of course I will come back, Mhal assures me, his tone indignant. You are my mate.
But he asks for my name several times, and I have to remind him not to close me out of his thoughts. His natural protective instinct is to push all other minds away when he's in his battle-form, and I suspect it has something to do with Azar. So I keep a mental stream of chatter going, talking about thread and sewing, and how I can make blankets. How we'll need some metal pots so he can boil water for me if I'm going to be drinking lake water, and how tomorrow we'll probably have to keep hunting for a working water system somewhere. How we need to grab the sofa we saw below, along with the clothing.
Mhal returns a short time later with a dead deer that he dumps in front of me, proud. Eat.
I do, though I try not to look at the deer's face, and I make him roast every strip I pull off the carcass. When I've gotten my fill, he devours the rest in a single gulp, curls up and pulls me between his forelegs so he can protect me while I sleep. There's so much that needs to be done that I protest at first, but he's warm and shielding me from the bitter wind, and I end up falling asleep before I know it.
The next few days feel like an emotional see-saw. If Mhal is in his “two-legged” form, as he calls it, we're all over each other. If he switches to battle-form, I have to re-introduce myself. And Mhal has to switch to battle-form quite a bit because we need things from down below to make our spot a home. The wind constantly tears at my face and hair, so Mhal rips off large sections of walls from some of the buildings below, and we make a makeshift shack that I reinforce with rope so it doesn't fall on my head. The couch from the picture place is moved in, and we hunt through an old hotel to find a decent bed and bring the mattresses back. While Mhal hunts, I boil water on an old cast-iron stove that I stole from a saloon at the park and work on making clothing for us. Mhal hasn't shown the slightest bit of interest in wearing anything, but I want clothes for myself, if nothing else.