Page 201 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

“Come on,” Sam says, tugging on my arm, and I realise I have rooted to the spot, the crowd of grey people moving round me like water round an island. “Don’t want to be late for work!”

She leads me through several paths, following after those of her people who have bald heads.

They stop before a huge wall with strange markings on the side of it - like the symbols of the Wandering tribes, but not in any shape I recognise.

The people form into lines, staring ahead of themselves with eyes that do not truly see.

I look to Sam, afraid that she will also be blank, unblinking.

But she is looking at me, the life not gone from her eyes. She looks a little sad, and also concerned. Concerned about me?

“I know this is a lot to take in,” she says.

“Just as your world was a lot for me. I’d never seen trees before.

Never seen an ocean. And you’ve never seen factories and high rises.

I couldn’t have imagined your world - the beauty of it, the way it smells after it rains, the strange creatures that live in the forests.

I don’t think you could have imagined any of this, either. Right?”

Before I have the chance to speak, a loud snarling noise sounds behind me.

I whirl round, pushing Sam behind me once more, a spear appearing in my grip as I prepare to face whatever monstrous creature could make such a sound.

But there is nothing, no beast with sharp teeth or claws.

I think I would have preferred it if there were, even if it would have been terrifying.

Because instead, there is only a large wall rising up off the floor, revealing a cavernous space behind it.

A hut? A cave? I do not know, just as I do not know how walls are made to move.

Inside the space, there is more smoothness - a series of tables or cupboards made out of something shiny that I have never seen the like of before.

Not a single thing is made of wood or vines or pelts or even stones.

The people in our group start marching forwards, heading into the giant room.

“Ready?” Sam says.

Her little hand is still wrapped around mine. I grip it as though it were some lifeline. A tether back to a place I know the shape of.

“Time to get to work,” she says.

She leads me over to one of the shiny tables, where some knives are set out in a line - also made of the shiny material, not bone or flint. In a bowl at the centre, at last some colour. Green plants. Food, I suspect. She is a cook, preparing meals for her tribe.

But there are so many of them. How do so many get fed?

I look round, and it is my answer. Alongside Sam, there are countless others, each approaching their own shiny table, their own set of knives.

Some have vegetables like my Sam, others have roots or meat or things I do not recognise.

But all of them have a job, and as the big, noisy door starts to lower down ahead of us, they begin their tasks with a mindless sort of motion, reaching for their food item and starting to chop.

“This is where I used to work.,” Sam says, and when I look to her, she has not taken any of the plants out of her bowl.

I am glad. I think I might have taken her bowl and thrown it away from her if she was chopping with the same vacant expression as everyone else.

“My job was to prepare food for the upper tiers. The people with executive jobs who didn’t have time to make food for themselves.

It’s a lot of doing the same thing over and over, but they rotated us through the stations to stop us getting repetitive strain injury quite so bad, so I did learn lots of different food prep skills. ”

She beams up at me as though this were something good, but overwhelmed as I am, I cannot fathom enough of her meaning to find the good parts in it.

“You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, do you?” she says, guessing my struggles.

“I am sorry, Sam. All of this is… it is overmuch for my headspace.”

“I know,” she says, and she draws me to sit on the high chair that is next to her table.

I collapse onto it, disliking the way the shiny material it is made from makes me slide about.

But then Sam hops up onto the table so she is perched on the edge of it, and like this our heads are the same height, our eyes in alignment.

She reaches for my face, catching it in her hands and stroking her thumbs over my cheeks, and I am much comforted by the touch.

“I know it’s a lot, and I’m sorry to make you see all this. But you understand now, right? You can see that all this hasn’t come from your headspace. It’s come from mine. It’s my memories I’m showing to you. I’m real.” She grins. “I’m real, and I’m yours.”

“Mine?” Hope and fear swirl inside of me, my stomach sick with both.

A female to call my own, a mate, a linasha.

It is more than I could ever have dreamed for myself.

But I am not who she sees. I am not Dazzik, leader of his tribe, low on his luck and supplies.

I am Dazzik, outcast, living alone in a cave and always fighting for his survival.

Sam nods, and her eyes water a little, even as she beams at me like she could never be made happier.

“I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you,” she says, and I recall her saying something similar the first night we met. “Ever since I learned about your dreamspace, your mates, that’s what I wanted. To find myself in a dreamspace, to have a mate to love, who would love me.”

“And I have called you not real. A nightmare.” I am aghast, but she only laughs, blinking loose a few tears.

“It’s okay. I understand.”

I hesitate before speaking my next words, trying to make them soft so they do not hurt her.

“I did not lie about my situation. I cannot…” I swallow the bitterness down. “I cannot care for a mate.”

She nods, petting at my face as if to reassure me.

“I know. And I know you think this is some terrible wrong against me. But it’s okay. I understand. You and your tribe need time after the rains to get back on your feet. I can wait. I promise. As long as I know you are coming for me, I can wait.”

Each hopeful thing she says cuts me a little deeper. She does not understand, and it is my fault, for I have not corrected her assumptions. I have not corrected them, for I thought it did not matter. I thought she did not matter. And I am proved very, very wrong about that.

“Linasha,” I say, my voice cracking on the word.

My Sam’s face is transformed with delight to hear me call her mate, and it breaks me even more, my spirit almost sundered.

“Linasha, I cannot…” I begin.

But before I can finish, the dreamspace cracks apart, the strange grey world of Mercenia shattering into a hundred tiny pieces.

And then I am back in my bed, it is late in the night.

And I am alone.