Prompt: Sometimes you can’t hide the pain, Part 3

…Continued from Part 2

Garduth felt his heart skip a beat, and his fingers tightened around hers. If he’d been home, he would have snapped his fingers and tapped them on his chest in memory of the Honoured Ones. His eyes widened, and he blurted, “But that means—”

She looked directly at him with a steady gaze for the first time. Her eyes were dark brown with flecks of gold. Her lashes were tinged with blue, echoed around her delicate, arched lips. He’d never studied her face so clearly before.

“My parents both petrified before I was born. I was pulled from my mother’s body before she died and spent three months in a glass uterus. But even the Tandemkopf could not purify my blood. I have the Binahl Virus. My body is turning to stone.”

She pulled up her dress, and he looked down at her legs, wrapped in elaborate braces. But under the metal wire and gears, he could see her skin, mottled blue like granite. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her knee with his finger, tracing her patella, hard and smooth beneath his touch. He suddenly realized how inappropriately intimate this might be and snatched his hand away.

He smoothed her dress down over her legs, never releasing her hand from his fingers. Turning to face her again, he brushed away a tear from her cheek.

“But how have you lived? You said both your parents died.”

“I’m not just a researcher here, Garduth. I’m one of Tandemkopf’s greatest experiments. They’ve slowed the pace of the virus, but they still cannot eradicate it entirely. And I fear even if they do, it will be too late for me. “

By all the ghods. She was turning to stone. Garduth shuddered, but when she tried to pull her fingers free, he would not let go.

“Sheria, why did you say you were sorry?”

She looked away again. “I’m sorry I was too weak to hide my pain from you any longer.”

“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known, Sheria. One of the hardest working people here. No one knows what you’re going through. But now I do. You don’t have to go through it alone.”

TBC?

Note: Oh, I would really like them to find a way to save Sheria!

Dogs in House	Houdini
Music	Earl Klugh, Hand Picked
Time writing	~80 minutes
May word count	11,094