When you’re around I don’t know how to hide my feelings. I count in binary, in my head. zero one one zero one one and you count clouds. (while you count clouds)
Scoithín is staring off into the distance at an oddly-shaped mountain, with an uneven-shaped summit peeking through the clouds, and something about his expression gives Metis pause.
“You seem troubled,” she says quietly. It’s a statement which she would not have uttered perhaps a few months ago, bald and overly candid in this world that is not hers for the taking, but perhaps both of them have reached an accord of sorts. She thinks she’s getting better at reading him– the way his eyes flash viridian fire when he’s angry, and the way a dimple in his right cheek appears when he smiles– a real smile, not a smirk. The first time she’d seen that smile, when he’d swung the five-year-old daughter of a local Chieftain on his shoulders and danced with her after the harvest, she’d been baffled at the difference one slight and ordinary dent in skin made in a person’s face.
No algorithm in any of the programs that she had learnt or the laws of any branch of science could explain the odd flutter she feels in her chest whenever he smiles.
“That mountain in the distance over there is a volcano, called Vesuvius.” Scoithín’s gaze is still in the clouds over its peak. “A few centuries ago, long before I was appointed as Ard-Rigan, it erupted and devastated the surrounding areas. Two cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum, were buried in ash and fire. The Holy Patron of Growth at the time, Gaius Plinius, perished himself while launching a rescue of the locals– a rescue which proved in vain. The cinder from the burning mountain solidified around the dead, casting them in their last moments. Ever since, whenever I’m here, I look at the clouds for any signs of disturbance, of another coming storm. The villagers have learnt not to build their homes so close to the mountaintop, but still…”
Of course, it’s at the tip of her tongue to remind him that she could easily eradicate the threat– the code with which Jovian computers regulate that planet’s Great Red Spot was written by a Mercurian, after all– but she knows that he would never agree.
“We can make a machine which measures trembling from within the Earth,” she remarks, focusing on the business at hand. “On every planet I’ve visited that has volcanoes, on every moon, an increase in ground-quaking is an infallible harbinger of an imminent eruption. This is the case, even on Io, where there are more eruptions than anywhere else in the Solar system.” Her voice is brisk as she stares straight ahead at the ominous mountain looming over them. “This way, it will be of some help to your villagers, to keep them out of danger.”
Now his gaze is fixed upon her face, and this time it’s an expression she has never seen before. His eyes have darkened to emerald, and his head is cocked slightly to the side, face angled so that if he but leaned forward, his cheek would press just so against her own. Metis feels her own face grow hot at her sudden wayward thoughts, but forces herself to meet that startlingly new gaze.
“What, no suggestions to level the mountain and turn it into a heap of dirt?” The statement is the same that he might have made a few months ago, but he, too, has changed. There is no mockery in his tone, no cruel, hard gleam to his eyes or sneer on his face. His voice is low, teasing– the voice of a flirt, she suddenly thinks, and feels her face grow even hotter.
“You told me the story. About the butterfly’s wings which caused a storm.” Metis murmurs as her teeth catch on her lower lip. “I am learning, you know.”
“I know.” He’s still staring at her in that disconcerting way, and when he reaches out and brushes the rough pad of his thumb over the lip that she’s biting, every part of her face and neck feel hot, like an impending eruption. Then he gives her that smile. “You’re actually rather quick. For someone who never grew up knowing this, as we do here.”
No, no algorithm in the universe can explain what she feels from that gaze and that smile.
