Evolution - The Oasis Project Book 3

Thirty-Nine - Ira

I wiped sweat off my sticky brow, putting more weight on the fence I leaned against as I rolled my head in a lopsided circle around my neck. For every drop of water lost, it had to be replenished quickly, so I picked my wooden flask off the ground and gave the warm water a couple of chugs. Lucky for me, I'd gotten a sustainable bottle made of wood on my trip to New Zealand, while everybody else's were plastic or stainless steel, either melting toxins into the water or boiling it.

Nudging a pale green sprout with my boot, I yawned. The Australian sun had a way of making me lethargic, even though Yulian was the one walking around the paddock with Celestia running ahead, and not me. I just had had the phone with a running timer, and while I tidied a few things around the farm, my current best friend and my former best friend pushed themselves to beat their personal bests.

I raised a hand to my forehead to shade my already-shaded eyes, squinting into the distance to watch the two moving objects that were people. Celestia had jogged ahead, her long brown ponytail swinging as she tried to maintain pace. Yulian was striding like the wind, occasionally breaking into a small run before seeming to remember that he shouldn't with his arm still in a sling. He was a good patient and listened to the doctor's orders, going easy on the acrobatics and agility training, but after target practice with Celestia which scared the crap out of all the farm animals, he was much too eager to take over the cardio training as well.

"Chickens move more than me," he had said. "I'm getting fat from cookies." I let him have his weight loss plan as long as he stuck to walking.

"Yulian!" I called out, but he'd gone back to being a good man with a broken arm again. I laughed and waved instead. He waved back, his large palm red from all the blood pumping. Celestia didn't seem to notice our exchange and ran right past our black horse, whose name I kept forgetting. I smiled – I'd never seen so much strength and determination coming from Celestia. She was really dedicated to her word this time.

By the time Celestia finished her laps, she looked like she'd just emerged from an ocean. Her khaki t-shirt was soaked, and her exposed dark skin was glistening like she'd wrapped herself in a plastic sheet. Out of breath, she took the phone from me and checked the time, and passed it back to me with a nod that made me doubt she looked at the numbers at all. I thrust the phone back into my pocket and picked up a towel from the fence, throwing it to her. She wiped her face and wrapped the towel around the back of her neck, before picking up the less-than-half-full camping bottle of water that was almost bigger than her head. With trembling hands, she unscrewed the lid and raised the bottle to her lips.

"Good work," I told Celestia while she drank. She made a real mess of it, letting water splash up her nose and down her jaw. I cringed when the water ran down the dry skin of her neck and over her closed gills, but I knew she was desperate.

I could only assume that the doctors had never tried to fix her dehydration problem because most of her work would be done in an aquatic environment. Changing her DNA might have made her lose all of her underwater abilities. But still, even under the Southern Hemisphere sun, Celestia was pushing her endurance day after day. She didn't talk much, didn't whine, just committed wholeheartedly to the cause of getting Linkin out safely. We'd often find her passed out on the couch before dinner, and when she was woken up she always looked like she was ready for another long day of physical and mental training.

Celestia finished her water before Yulian bounced to our meeting spot. "Don't even show me the time." He waved me off with heavily accented English. "That was terrible. Celestia did good!"

Beside him, Celestia finally cracked a smile. I realized how much that must have meant to her. In her eyes, she'd never had anyone's genuine support. She was useless, weak, a punching bag and dumping ground for other people's problems.

I passed Yulian a towel, grinning at his reddened face, neck, and... everything. "Dude, did you even put on sunscreen? You're glowing."

"Oh..." Yulian looked down at himself. "Damn it. Stewie will be angry."

"Not angry." I recalled the times when Stuart looked concerned about my accidental sunburns. "He'd probably personally bring you the aloe and tell you to not come crawling for help when it starts really hurting." I caught Celestia frowning out of the corner of my eye. "As a joke."

She seemed content with that explanation and continued to dry herself off to the best of her ability.

"Anyway, shade time and lunch time." I raised my face to the blazing sun directly above me. "After that, you're fighting me. Maybe we'll bring in some weapons; see how we feel."

Yulian was already walking back towards the farmhouse, whistling a jolly tune. He seemed to like the duty of training Celestia as much as I did. It brought me relief. For a few hours at a time, I could forget the fact that Linkin was being tortured by the people who nearly took our lives before we could grow up. The idea of watching me wrestle Celestia after lunch also seemed to amuse Yulian greatly.