“Can I come with you?” Orchid said suddenly, and Kal jerked, shocked. Emotion washed through him, honor, perhaps, that she valued his friendship as well.
“Are you serious?” he asked, and she flushed. “You’d leave your garden?”
She beamed, the light under her going almost painfully bright from her dust. “For the winter?” she said, giggling. “Why not?” Her mood dulled. “For everything I’ve done to it, my garden won’t come alive.”
Kal’s smile faded as he glanced out the patio window, thinking the yard was beautiful. Beautiful, but empty.
Wings clattering, she flew a blue-dusted path to him, hovering between him and the view. “If we go out there slow, stop at rest stops and stuff, maybe I could find a husband.”
Kal nodded, a hint of melancholy brushing through him at her need to search for another of her own kind. “That’s a great idea,” he said, though if she found a pixy buck to settle down with, she’d likely abandon him rather than return to the garden she’d made.
“Don’t make such a face,” Orchid said, clearly able to read his moods. “I don’t think there are any bucks left to find.”
He forced himself to smile. “Nonsense,” he said as he turned back to his closet. “Human’s haven’t killed them all. They’re in hiding. Not every pixy buck likes the challenge of living among humans as close as you do.” He could leave most of his clothes, but shoes he liked were hard to find, and he put four pairs on the bed, then a fifth. “We’ll go through the wild places if you like. Set out honey and leave a notice at every rest stop. I bet by the time we get to the Pacific, you’ll have a bevy of bucks trailing you, wanting to make your acquaintance.”
She slipped a pale pink dust, her mood brightening. “You think?”
“Absolutely.” There wasn’t much more he wanted other than his toiletries and the rack of genetically modified orchids currently taking sun on the screened patio. He wasn’t going to scrap eight years of tissue grafts and DNA splices. Leaving his work to arrange permanent funding for it was one thing, abandoning his plants to die of drought another.
Suddenly it felt more like an adventure and less like an exile. “You finished stockpiling for winter, right? Bring it all, and you’ll have enough until you’re settled and growing more. Sacramento has a twelve-month growing season.”
Hovering before him, Orchid looked to the garden, her face glowing. Her land was her life, but she’d been here for two years creating a place to raise a family and had yet to find even one prospective mate. Perhaps Florida had none. He’d found her in the back of a truck full of heat-dead plants someone had left on the interstate. Even now she was too embarrassed to tell him how she’d gotten there.
“Unless you want to stay,” Kal said, wondering if she was having second thoughts. It was more than risky traveling with a pixy. It was damn stupid if they were seen. “I won’t sublet it out. It is yours.” But he knew she’d suffer if he left her. Pixies weren’t naturally loners. Neither were elves.
“I want to go,” she said again, her flash of worry vanishing behind a quick smile. “When do we leave?”
Anticipation filled him, unexpected and heady. He’d have to work at a human-run facility with a woman he could hardly stand, but with Orchid coming with him, he felt whole. He could do this with his head high, not down in shame for failure.
“Is morning too soon?” he asked, willing to give her all the time she needed. “I’d like to get some miles behind us right away. The sooner we leave, the slower we can go.”
She took to the air, her dust a bright, happy silver. “Morning is fine. It won’t take me but a few hours to move my winter stores. Can I stash them in one of your orchid pots? You’re taking them, right?”
He nodded, sure he had a cardboard box in the carport. “Of course. I can move your entire flowerpot if you like.”
She clapped her hands, spinning where she hovered to make her dress and hair fling out. “I’m going to find a husband!” she cried, then darted out and up the flue and into the garden.
Kal couldn’t help his smile of prideful happiness that he could do this for her. He had long since seen his own people’s faltering mirrored in hers, and knowing she was happy, even if she found a mate and left him, would be a calm spot in his fractured moods.