Page 60 of Katya and the Young God
Instead of having any sort of reaction, Katya pulls her bag close, pulling out her food
“How much sleep do child gods need?” She asks, giving a critical eye to the sleeping form next to them, who looks like she hasn’t shifted in the night. “Is it like normal kids?”
Pieter only shrugs, unreadable.
Getting the distinct feeling he’s not talkative, Katya climbs to her feet, feeling for the sore knots in her body, for the places her muscles protest, for the bits that could almost be injuries but aren’t quite there.
Her shoulder’s a mess, obviously, and it’s going to take some serious chiropractic care to make it into something not horrific, but that can be easily scheduled. Her wrist and hand, where she landed against the stone the day before smart, but not in a way that prohibits movement. Her knees and thighs are sore, but that’s...that’s pretty understandable given the hard walking and climbing she’s had to do.
Her neck and back are surprisingly not wrecked by sleeping sitting up, slumped against Pieter, and it rankles some sense of propriety deep within her. Like she’s supposed to be afraid, she’s supposed to be shying away from him at every opportunity, not sleeping against his shoulder like a teen on a bus ride.
But still, she’ll take good luck where it happens, so she just digs her fist into her shoulder, trying to work out the mess of tension around her scar.
She feels his eyes on her, unknowable, but she just looks away, looks at the dead bodies slumped against the wall, at the others still asleep, at the rope they're all going to have to climb.
It takes a short while, but everyone stirs, gets the food they need, dresses for the day, before they gather at the knotted rope. Selene gnaws on one of the dry protein bars, her eyes wide and flickering around the room, but she says nothing.
Pieter gives her an unreadable glance, shifting his bag on his shoulders with a wince that only she can see. “Katya goes up first, then the child, then I will,” he says, and his voice is just too raspy to be authoritarian. “I don’t trust you to not harm us.”
Which neither does Katya, but she’s not going to say that blatantly, and she suddenly gets a little insight on why, out of the twins, Vanya did most of the talking.
With that statement tossed out, the group devolves into bickering, and Katya blows out a sigh, before she feels Selene’s small gloved hand in her own.
“I have an idea,” she whispers, as Katya kneels down next to her to hear better.
Katya nods her encouragement at her, but still she just leans in closer, so close that Katya’s pulse jumps at the proximity of someone who can kill her with a touch.
“I can think out here,” Selene whispers, and there’s a hint of a curved smile on her lips. “I can see outside.”
Katya glances up at Pieter in hopes of a translation, but he’s looking elsewhere, busy scowling up at the caver and the rope. “What does that mean?” She asks instead.
“I don’t think we have to climb here,” she says, tugging on Katya’s hand with hers. “I think we can walk right out, without anything else happening.” She bounces on the balls of her feet, her eyes alight with a childish glee. “We can go outside!”
Katya reaches up, tugs Pieter down to their level, despite the scowl. “Repeat what you just said to me,” Katya orders, as gently as she can.
Selene isn’t fazed. “I can open up the cave from here? Make it so we just walk out?”
That gets Pieter’s interest, and he kneels down next to her, busying himself by straightening her too-large clothes, by adjusting her small headlamp. “How would you do that?” He asks, almost as if he’s not focused on the information.
Selene scowls, thoughtful, looking over at the rock. “I think I can make that go away?”
“Where would it go?” Pieter asks, and it’s kinder that she expected, like he’s working out the problem with her, like how one would work out a tantrum with a smaller child. “If it goes away, where is away?”
“I dunno,” she says, soft.
“You have to think of those things, sometimes,” Pieter says, not unkindly. “Walking out of here would be great, but we need to make sure we’d be safe.”
She nods, biting her lip in concentration. “I don’t think I could do this before the door,” she says, soft, tilting her head towards the black stone of the seal. “But in this room I could.”
Pieter locks eyes with Katya at that. “So the lock had some other affect,” he says in an undertone. “Not just keeping us out.”
“Good to know,” she replies, not wanting to look directly at him, but finding herself unable to stop herself.
“Think you could do this without putting anyone in danger?” Pieter asks, his voice soft, gentle. “Make it so no one dies, no one gets hurt by rocks?”
“So no blood comes out?” Selene asks, a little bit too eager.
“Yeah, let’s keep everyone’s blood in their bodies, that’s a good idea.” Katya tries to smile at that sentence, but it’s so bizarre that she can’t quite manage it.