[The Tempest trilogy: Book 2] After the incident in Ostrava's Neoclash arena, Zoya faces dangerous challenges. Nightingale's uprising threatens to destroy the whole Europe, the racist Yeomen movement steps up their campaing against Castaways and Rya...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I don't see Zoya until the next morning, but as she descends the stairs for breakfast, dressed in a clean crop top and baggy pants, I can tell she changed. She even manages to give me a small smile, even though her eyes are still filled with sorrow and confusion.
It will take time before she recovers completely, but she's halfway there now.
When she pours in the milk and cereal in her bowl and start to much on it, I finally see the old delight in her body language again. To me, the appetite and overall ability to enjoy food is one of my favorite measures of a person's mood. Despite her tiny frame, Zoya loves food and when she stops enjoying it or starts to eat less, it's a reason to be concerned.
"So? How are you feeling?" I ask her.
"I'm getting there," she replies with a sigh. "You can't expect it to get better overnight. But I'm glad that at least, it seems I finally entered the recovery phase. That has to be enough for now."
"It's more than I hoped for."
During the breakfast and I continue observing Zoya. She gives me a few displeased glances giving away it makes her uncomfortable, but I'm too engulfed in analyzing her body language and facial expressions. In fact, I've also done it in the past weeks, but she never noticed it. Another good sign, I guess.
After she finishes her food, Zoya jogs a few circles around the house. Returning to old habits. Even though she no longer fights in Neoclash, she still finds it important to keep herself in a good shape. It's no wonder. Now she doesn't only fight for some stupid trophies and money, but for her own life. And for my life, too.
Wait, did I really say money is stupid? Wow. I don't even recognize myself.
She ends her jog in the garden among the flowers she planted and raised herself. For a while, she just stares at the early summer sky with a dreamy expression. I almost wish that instead of the cure for Flicker, I invented some kind of mind-reading device, even if only just to see what's going on in her head.
And also because I wouldn't become a target of a Castaway crime syndicate if I invented the mind reader.
I step outside the house; the weather is already warm, but another benefit of this locality is that it almost never experiences unbearable heatwaves. The sunshine is radiating on the pale skin of her face, arms and midriff, but strangely enough, Zoya never seems to tan. It's probably coded in her strange Castaway genome... and it's good. She would look weird with tanned skin and shiny white hair.
As I come closer, she answers the unsaid question. "I'm wondering if she's somewhere out there. I like to think that death isn't final. That somewhere in the future, when my time comes or when someone decides it's my time to go, I will meet her again. And dad, too. I think it's a nonsense that the whole person and everything just disappeared after the body refuses to work, isn't it?"
