Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Her frustrated groan was confirmation. “Finding answers is more important than ever now though, Sam, because this program, it’s obviously capable of great evil.” She gazed upward. “Yet I have no internet out here, no way to look into…anything. Even if I knew what that anything might be.” She brought her gaze to him. “What are we going to do?”
We. No one had ever used that word with Sam before, and it brought him a measure of joy, but it also brought fear. We weren’t going to do anything. He had to ensure she wasn’t permanently caught up in his mess. “I’m going to get better,” he said. “And then I’ll go.”
She stared at him. “Where will you go?”
Sam shrugged. He wondered if the old man would take him back. If he took his truck to him and made up a story about… What, Sam? Will you tell him you got abducted by aliens who finally returned you to Earth? There was no place in the world for him. Once he left here, he’d have to follow through with the final mission. He really had no other choice.
Sam watched her as she set her supplies down, his gaze following the line of her profile…her body, attempting to commit her physical self to memory, the way he’d catalogued her thoughts and her dreams. Her body was as beautiful as her mind and as mesmerizing.
Finally, she turned, releasing a sigh. “Do you have any questions for me?”
He studied her. He had a million questions for her. He wanted to talk about all the things she’d written, the questions she had. He wanted to know if all the dreams she’d dreamt had come true. But he couldn’t do that. And he didn’t know how to anyway. But he did have a request.
“Is there paper here?”
“Paper? Um, yes.” She headed to the kitchen area where she removed a pad of white paper from a drawer. She took it over to him and set it next to the bed, along with a pen.
“Thank you.”
“What do you need it for?”
“I owe someone something,” he said. “It’s going to take a while, but…how do you eat an elephant?”
One brow went up and one brow went down, and she gave a soft laugh. “What?”
“One bite at a time.”
She kept looking at him like he was partially crazy.
“You wrote that in your journal,” he reminded her.
She stepped back to the bed and sat down again, and without her medical supplies in her hand, her closeness felt more intimate. His body tensed, and he didn’t know if he liked it or not. She cast her eyes away for a moment. “Yes,” she said as if just remembering. “How do you eat an elephant.”
He’d looked up the confusing phrase many years before, one of the few times he’d opened the internet for purely personal use. “It’s a parable,” he told her, though she probably knew that. There was a princess in it and a king. He’d laughed when he read it, something he thought had no answer, suddenly making sense through the use of a story.
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
Her teeth were so pretty. And there was a very small dimple at the corner of her mouth that was pretty too. Her top lip looked like a bow. He wished he could stop time and stare at her for as long as he wanted to. Which might be forever, and he couldn’t think of a better way to spend it.
Her eyes lit up as if with memory. “A parable that means even seemingly impossible tasks become doable if you break them down into small bites.”
He laughed softly, and her smile expanded, gaze moving over his face. Something came into her eyes, and for a moment, they simply stared at each other, both of their mouths curved into smiles. She glanced away first, her hand fluttering to her throat where her finger ran along the delicate silver necklace she wore.
“I couldn’t find the answers to the other questions though,” he said.
She looked back at him, her hand dropping. “Other questions?”
“How do you build a temple that takes a hundred years to build? How do you conquer time? How do you overcome death?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she breathed, and her shoulders dropped slightly. “Well. Those are deeper questions that I still haven’t found the answers to.”
She glanced at him through her lashes, and he got the odd sense that she felt shy. He didn’t think anyone had ever felt shy around him before. Scared, yes. Horrified, probably. But shy? This is new. It made him feel strange. But not bad strange.
“Thank you for reminding me that I once asked those meaningful yet perhaps unanswerable questions,” she said with a smile. “I’m going to ponder them again and see what I can come up with.” She patted his knee and then looked alarmed, her face blanching. “Sorry. Did that hurt?”