The Uninvited Guest [Unknown | Antarctica]

[Thalia]

“I thought I imagined that,” she said. Surprise touched the words, followed by immense relief. The unknown creature itself did not seem to perturb her. Less than it probably ought to anyway. Her panic receded like a distant tide as she glanced across to the shadowed door, more curious than cautious, though not so much as to pull her back in its direction. Mostly she watched Tristan as he fiddled with pulling the blanket around her. It was nice to know she wasn’t mad. Or maybe that they both were, but strangely that was just as comforting.

“I reached out to touch it,” she admitted lightly. “That was before it moved, though.” She didn’t muse on what it was or if it meant them any harm. There didn’t seem to be a lot of point in the speculation, and she only confessed out of honesty – in case she’d inadvertently provoked it. Though it hadn’t seemed annoyed to her, just creepy and curious, and perhaps it felt exactly the same way about their own peering faces in its home. “Promise I still have all my fingers,” she added, assuming by the way he looked at her sometimes that he might wonder, but since they were currently wrapped around the pencil and tucked up to her chest she did not elect to prove it.

She gave up trying to suppress the shivering by now. While her arms were squished up tight, trying to keep hold of the heat in her body, it felt like she was curled around a block of ice. The cold was inside. It made everything tremble, and the lack of control might have been fascinating if Thalia wasn't also aware it wasn't a particularly positive sign. She knew it wasn’t practical, but she moved to lean against him. His chest was the perfect height to rest her head. Maybe it was something in his troll blood that made him able to withstand what she apparently couldn’t, and it sparked frustration that she couldn’t keep up. She didn’t want to be dead weight, especially since she landed them in the mess. Or, she’d been the one to insist on exploring the cave under the lake anyway.

A fire could provide temporary heat, and now that she had the pencil, warm was all she could think about. Unlike the cave, there was stuff in here that could fuel it, though without a hearth Thalia had no idea how to do that without risking setting the place ablaze. Though if there were dormitories there had to be a mess hall or kitchen somewhere.

“I have a studio in Moscow. It used to be a fallout shelter – stuff like that all became much less popular after the ASU took root, and by the time I moved to the city they were being sold off. A fashionable way for rich people to show their loyalty, you know? That nuclear war was a threat of the past now we were all apparently at peace.” She paused for a moment, tripping over the memories of the sketches which told her otherwise, but that was another conversation entirely. “It runs on mains these days, but it also has a generator. Kicks in every time I accidentally trip the electrics. Those things last decades. And what I mean is all this equipment must have run somehow, but it doesn’t exactly look like there’s any civilisation nearby. If we can find something like that, maybe between us we can get it working.”

She shifted enough to prop her chin on him and peer up. Though unless he also looked down at her, all it afforded was a magnificent view of his beard. It was a big if, she knew that.