Page 87 of My Tiny Giant
Shock speared through me.
“Would you leave your world for me?”
He squeezed my thumbs harder, so hard it started to hurt.
“There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Emma. The strings you’re talking about have roped me in. There is no world, no life for me without you, now.”
But to take Agan to Earth with me? Was it possible?
Somehow, it didn’t even matter because there was no world for me without him, either.
“We’ll have to make it happen, Agan.” I trailed the tips of my fingers up his sides, along the hard ridges of his torso. “We’ll stay together.”
We’d just have to fight for it as we had fought for things before.
With a long breath, his features relaxed, as if my reply had solved everything already.
“As long as that’s what you want, I’ll do everything to make it happen. We’ll do what they want us to do tomorrow—”
An idea came to my head.
“Agan. Speaking of strings. You’ll need a rope that would connect you to me.”
“An actual rope?” He tilted his head, the familiar sunny spark of humor twinkling in his eyes. “You don’t think the invisible strings are enough to keep me at your side forever?”
“No, I meant for tomorrow.” I smiled. “There is a myth in my world, a story about a hero who went into a labyrinth to kill a murderous beast. The woman who loved the hero gave him a ball of thread, keeping the end of it at the entrance with her. He went in, found the beast, and killed it. The hero then followed the thread to find his way back to the exit, and to her.”
“You’re afraid I’d get lost inside the shell skeleton?”
Ravil sense of direction was much better than human. The way Agan had led me out of the jungle on Tragul that day had proven it to me. Yet a tangible, physical connection like a rope between us would make me feel better tomorrow, when he would go where I wouldn’t be able to follow him.
“You will have a limited time to get in and out. It may help.”
“Okay. We’ll get a rope.” He stroked my hand tenderly. “But no matter what, I’ll always find my way back to you, Eleven.”
Chapter 18