Page 8 of Fathom

I stood, and my feet felt odd, but nothing hurt. I stripped down and took the bucket with its towel and bottle of hopefully soap and put it next to the outside of the shower. I stepped into perfectly warm water and, for a long moment, let it run over me, carrying away the layers from the past hours. The heat streamed over me, and it relaxed the knot of fear, just enough that I couldbegin to feel it, begin to feel the terror as it started to bubble up inside of me.

I shook my head against the thoughts. I would deal with that later. Now I would get clean. I would feel good. I would take care of myself, then figure out what to do next. Once I understood where I was and what was going on, I could collapse.

A quick sniff of the bottle confirmed it was some kind of soap, herbal and sharp. I tested it first, dabbing a small amount on the inside of my wrist and waiting, just in case. No sting. No reaction. Only then did I lather the cloth and begin scrubbing the last of the goo from my skin, watching the grayish sludge spiral down the drain.

Eventually, the water began to turn cold, so I turned the knobs back. When the water stopped, I stood for a moment in the silence, letting the air cool on my clean skin. Then I dried off and examined the clothing. Had he given me a dress? No, a shirt. One large shirt. I pulled the shirt over my head, soft, worn cotton-feeling that smelled faintly of him. It fell past my knees, to my calves.

It was big, warm, and safe.

But that feeling was false.

I wasn't safe here.

I didn't even know where here was.

I used the other stall, squatting over it, hoping it was a toilet. When I turned the knob on the wall, water rushed out and flushed everything away, so I gathered all my stuff and walked back out into the hallway.

Jacket-friend was nowhere to be seen, so I headed down towards the door he had entered at the end of the hall. It was propped open, so I stuck my head inside. He looked up from where he sat at a desk, his tail lifting up as if it wanted to reach for mebefore he even spotted me. There was a screen in front of him, one of his strands of hair settled down on top of it as he leaned over it to plug in a dusty-looking keyboard covered in symbols I didn't recognize, but no mouse. It was a single-room studio, with a mattress on the floor tucked into the corner and windows looking out onto the city. There wasn’t a kitchenette or anything in the room.

It was just a room.

I entered the room and shut the door behind me.

He got out of the chair and patted it with one hand. I set the stuff I'd been holding down next to the dresser at the end of the floor bed, then went over to him.

I had to push down on it to climb up onto the chair; it was just a little too tall to sit down in easily.

Sound came out of the speakers.

He waited, looking at me.

“I don’t know what that is,” I said, feeling weary.

I still felt numb inside. It felt like all the panic and fear I should have been feeling had exhausted me in my determination to avoid feeling it, just so I could survive. I took a deep breath, and I realized my hands were shaking.

He looked at my hands, then took one, and pressed my finger down on one of the keys.

None of the keys on the keyboard looked familiar. They were too big for my hands, suited more for his, and other than arrows in a place where arrows weren’t normally, I didn’t recognize any of the symbols on them. The key he had pressed my finger onto was the down arrow.

A highlighted line on the screen shifted down one step in a grid, and a different voice spoke, again saying something I didn’t recognize. What I did recognize was that it sounded different than the previous voice. The words sounded more guttural and less fluid.

Itapped on the down arrow again.

A different set of voices, words streaming out in an overlapping cascade like several people singing in harmonies. Were these languages? I shook my head and tapped again. And again. I didn’t recognize any of them, but as I went through them, I realized they were. He was having me listen to different languages, to see if I recognized any of them. I tapped over and over again, finding nothing that sounded familiar, nothing that I recognized.

I hadn’t noticed he’d left until the door clicked open, and I looked up to find him returning with a wooden box, a handle looped over his fingers. He set it down and pulled out a large, deep bowl. When he handed it to me, the warmth sank into my palms. The scent hit me a heartbeat later, rich and savory, thick with herbs. Noodles drifted through golden broth alongside vegetables I couldn’t name.

I still didn’t know where I was. Or why. But my stomach clenched with hunger, sharp and sudden.

He offered me a pair of long-handled spoons, delicate tools, their ends tapered to fine points. I blinked at them, puzzled, until he gently took them back and demonstrated, holding them like chopsticks, the spoon heads angled skyward. Then he pulled a second bowl from the box and began to eat without a word.

I followed his lead, watching how he used the utensils. He used them like chopsticks, but with one spoon down and the other up, catching broth in the spoon and using the long, tapered ends to grab noodles and bits of vegetables. I lifted a spoonful of broth and sniffed it. It smelled edible. I brushed my lips against it, waiting for my body to tell me not to eat it, but there was no negative reaction in the sensitive skin of my lips, so I took a sip, holding the broth in my mouth for a long moment.Eventually, I swallowed, and my entire body warmed to the urgent need to eat.

My self-control lapsing, I began to eat, slowly at first, but as each bite tasted good, I sped up.

Soon, I was lifting the bowl to my lips, letting the broth slide down my throat, warm and full and real.

I set the empty bowl down in my lap with a sigh.