Chapter 31

Terah watched Olanna and Auburn disappear under the water together. She felt like sitting here in the trees and watching them together was wrong, but still did it. It was so strange to see others like her but in a good way. She had been in the water with people of her own kind. She swatted the tear off her cheek, she’d never thought that would happen.

Before they found her, sometimes when the pains weren’t too bad, she would close her eyes and try to remember being in the pool with her mother and the old one, the pictures of that in her head were fading though and it was harder to see them now.

Lifting her head, she took a deep breath. She wasn’t alone now. Would never have to swim alone again. She grinned to herself, she liked swimming alone, going fast and exploring, but it didn’t compare with watching the others in the water with her though.

She had been on her way to the dock that Alviva had told her about when she spotted the couple walking toward the water holding hands. It felt wrong to join them. If she had a male that was hers, she wouldn’t want to share him with others in the water. So now she sat there trying to decide what to do next.

All night she had woken to feel different, and then her stomach started with this weird feeling, she thought a swim would settle what was wrong but taking time from Olanna with her man, wasn’t fair.

Getting up, she turned to look behind her, she could go for a walk and explore. It was dawn now and there was more light in the trees, so that was sticking within the rules that Konner had laid out for her before he left. Use the pool at night. Only go in the bush when there’s enough light to see and do not cook without one of the other women present. She smirked thinking of the last one. The look on his face when he’d said that one was so serious.

Twisting her hair back, she tucked it into the back of her jacket, so it wouldn’t get snagged on the branches. Her stomach was tensing again, and she wondered if she had overdone it as Konner feared she might in the last few days. It was true she had never been able to swim as she had since been found, but the rest of her felt strong from it. Biting her lip, she navigated around a large tree, maybe she should ask Shaelan about it when she saw her. She didn’t want to bother her too much though; she was staying close to Raelyn and the babies were far more important than aching muscles.

Konner had been gone for two days now and it was an unsettling feeling with him gone. She hadn’t been here long, of course, but seeing him several times a day was normal. Maybe her stomach was like this because he was missing? Was that possible? It had never been the same people every day of her life. She was moved around, and the people that were also held where she was changed from one day to the next. She was feeling anxious about him being gone, worried something could happen. Terah had witnessed firsthand how things were in his world and they weren’t safe at all.

A small creature, a squirrel she thought Lucus had told her, darted out of the trees and paused to look at her. Its tail twitched back and forth a few times and then it turned and abruptly ran back into them. She smiled as she watched it go up a tree so fast. How were they able to do that? Run on land so fast but climb things without pause. Touching the tree beside her, she tipped her head back and looked up to the top of it. There would be no climbing for her; she did not like being in the air at all.

She would have to tell Nolyn she let it go and didn’t catch it for being on the land. Now that she understood how nature worked, she felt bad about all the animals she had killed at Rayne’s campground and the otter in the lake. Nolyn explained to her how each creature was part of the ecosystem and all of them contributed to its healthy state of it. At the time Terah hadn’t completely understood, but the app thing on the tablet had explained it to her. She felt a small joy each time she said a word to the tablet, and it explained to her what it was. She didn’t yet understand how the tablet could talk, but she was glad it did.

All the machines were a marvel to her. Paxton and Lucus had shown her how to take a picture and videos, which made watching movies clearer to her. When she had first seen it, she couldn’t understand how the people were inside the screen. Her tablet was very smart, it knew everything. She didn’t spend as much time on it as she would like, Alviva told her too much staring at it would give her a headache, and while she didn’t know how it could do that, she listened and made certain to do other things.

Pausing, she undid the jacket; it was a lot warmer than she first thought. Little beads of water were covering her forehead now. When the cool air reached her, she nodded, much better. Looking down, she studied a plant beside the tree. It looked like it was sleeping. In fact, all of them did. The trees too had shed their leaves and now they lay on the ground in a blanket of color. She couldn’t wait to see the plants and trees after the winter. Terah loved being in the greenhouses with Olanna, the flowers and leaves were so pretty. She told her that in the spring when the forest was coming back to life it was amazing. Never having felt a lot of ‘amazing’ things in her life, she looked forward to feeling that.

The wind was cold today, but there was no snow yet. The jacket was doing its job, even undone it was keeping her warm. She didn’t care about the weather; she would have been out here. She’s had too many moments of looking out a window wishing she were outside and that there was no weather or temperature that was going to keep her indoors now. The boots on her feet felt heavy and made her steps harder to place, but she would go slow and carefully on her walk today. She wanted to take them off and feel the ground on her bare feet.

Would it be warm with the blanket of leaves or cold and wet? Curiosity had her crouching down so she could touch it. It was odd, they were wet and cool to the touch, but beneath them, there was a warmth. She looked up at the naked branches of the trees and realized Nolyn’s words were true. In the summer the leaves gave shelter from the sun, in the winter they protected the earth from the snow.

Getting up, she started walking again. Konner had told her the two rivers crossed on the land and she decided that was her target for this walk. To find them. she had seen them from his helicopter but had no idea which direction they were in. Maybe once she found them, she could swim there. The fast-moving water had been exciting.

Distracted by a scent, she tripped over a rock and stumbled, landing on her bottom. She huffed out a breath and looked at the rock. Stretching she put her hand on it and felt the cold of it. She didn’t understand about rocks, but she was going to ask her tablet when she got back. How did they grow in the middle of the forest?

Getting up, she looked down to see the leaves clinging to her pants. She brushed them off. “I do not need you like a blanket, you have to stay here and cover the ground.” At one of the houses, she had been kept at, the window of her room had let her look out over all the other houses, she recalled watching a man gather up the leaves and stuff them in a bag. She didn’t understand why he saved them. Why didn’t he just let them stay on the ground and keep the earth protected? The ecosystem in the areas where she had been kept was broken, that much she knew now. They didn’t like the earth and ground much at all, there were only small parts of it visible, the rest they covered in hard surfaces, that used to hurt her bare feet when they would put her in the van to take her to the tank.

Nolyn should think about going and explaining to them the importance of keeping the balance in their ecosystem. She paused and touched one of the trees, they should keep the trees too and let them be trees. Instead of letting them grow and stretch to the sky, they would use loud angry-sounding machines on them that chewed them up and stopped their growth. Patting the tree, she silently vowed to let it grow to reach the sky. Who was she to control nature?

Reeves needed to listen to one of Nolyn’s lessons too, she thought, he had told Konner that money didn’t grow on trees when he’d suggested Reeves take a break the other day. She was sure Konner knew that the trees grew leaves, but again she didn’t understand what the work was that Reeves had to do to grow money.

Stopping, she watched large birds fly over her, there were so many of them and they were talking to each other as they flew. How did they fly and stay in the shape of an arrow? She hoped they paid attention, if there were any helicopters up there, they would have to be sure to avoid them.

Leaning down, she touched a single flower that didn’t seem to know it was not supposed to be growing now. She smirked, maybe it didn’t like rules either. “Good for you, little one. You do what feels right for you.”

Inhaling, she tried to pick out the scent of water from all the others. There were so many smells in here. She was still trying to master that, smelling things out of the water. The taste on her tongue was dirt and leaves if she wasn’t mistaken. She looked down at her feet and decided she was not going to taste them to find out. She’d made that mistake with a log on her last walk. The taste took hours to get rid of.

Frowning, her mind went back to Reeves and his money. She had money, according to him, a lot of it. She hadn’t seen it yet but needed to decide what she wanted to do with it when she did. Konner, Reeves explained used a lot of money to help clans in the Alliance, so perhaps she should do that too.

Lucus had told her about the Alliance, that it was all the shifters—she smirked, she was a water shifter, she shook her head, trying to keep her focus on her thoughts. According to Lucus, there were many kinds of shifters, and the Alliance protected them all. Konner and his team were part of the Alliance as well and helped the clans and those that needed it. Terah had heard Calum and Konner talking about the teams and how they were going to free many more of their kind. She didn’t know if they had meant water shifters or Calum’s kind of shifter, because she had seen him in his other form, and he was not the same as her. Lillee told her that Shaelan and Calum were part of the jaguar clan. Terah had looked that up on her tablet and it was true, Calum had turned into the very pretty cats that it had shown her. What would it be like to be a cat? To run that fast on land. She didn’t know but had to assume it was as exciting as swimming fast.

Pausing, she listened to a sound that made her smile. She could hear the water from the river rushing fast. Wiping the moisture off her face, she started moving with bigger steps. She was so hot right now; the cool water was going to feel so good. Maybe after her swim, Konner would be back. Auburn and Calum had said he would be today.

She hoped he was— his house seemed large and empty without him there.