Endosymbiosis

19. Scars

"But that would be the most fun part..."

The dangerous smile he opened made me regret having said that, if I wasn't so curious as to what he would do with it.

"Do you think you could?" He purred, taking a step closer.

"Are you underestimating me or overestimating yourself?"

"The reason that bothers you least."

"What if both of them bother me?"

"So you have to learn to lose."

"With the best, apparently."

He started to grab a handful of that sand from the ground and I immediately raised my hands:

"All right! I surrender!"

"So quickly?" He laughed. "If it's that easy, we won't get even near to the galaxy's..."

And then I kicked a cloud of sand that covered him from head to toe with. I ran before the cloud lowered, over the sound of my laughter and his curses yards ago, and, when my breath failed me, I stopped. I looked back to where the dust had settled, but Kadi was no longer there. Where had he gone? I bit my lip. I could feel him stalking me from the shadows of sand hills, hunting me, waiting for just the right moment to attack... And devour.

When he kicked a cloud over me, I was covered in glow. We had become two specks of stardust, emerged from star ovens and pressurized until we were pure diamonds. I lunged toward him and pushed him over a soft mound, but before I could laugh, Kadi wrapped his arms around my ankle and yanked it, knocking me over as well. The sand floated around us and I could barely see him as he flew at me. I tried to grab a handful of sand to throw in his face, but he grabbed my hands and pinned my body to the ground, overpowering me as if I hadn't even resisted as he buried me in the sand until only my head was above the surface.

"I surrender!" I yelled, laughing. "And this time for real!"

He chuckled and, satisfied with the work he had done on me, he fell down beside me with a breathless smile. I let myself hear his breathing, so weird to hear one other than mine... And I couldn't shake the thought that I wanted to leave him panting like this more often.

"There's nothing that would get me out of here..." He closed his eyes, very comfortably.

"Are you sure?" I urged, reaching out with my arms to dig myself up. He opened one eye and sent me a smile as bright as the dust that soaked into every corner of our bodies. I got up and slapped the sand off my body, throwing it in his face. "What if I said I'm going to open a hole in Korrok's account?"

Kadi jumped to her feet.

"I'd say I'll open a bigger one."

• • • ֍ • • •

We destroyed the houses until the sun began to set, competing to see who screwed up Korrok the most. When I looked at Kadi's bare back, glowing like a starry sky, I thought the sand was so much a part of us that it was already inside our cells. At some point, when he couldn't take the heat any longer, Kadi took off his shirt, only to have the specks of sheen cling to the sweat and glistening in my eyes with every movement of his muscles. But now that the night was beginning to fall, he had his shirt back on.

We sat on the roof of a vehicle when the first star became visible in the pink sky. In fact, that was the Oasis, so far behind a pore that it was no more than a grain of sand lost in the immensity of the universe. Looking at the stars, I wondered what past humans thought of the mysteries of the sky... If they knew that some of their questions would one day have answers. And that having them wouldn't ease any weight.