Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 22: Bug Spit

The heat woke him up before the wind did.

Wind came in gusts, but it was more like a hair dryer on the highest heat.

By midday, the sun was directly overhead and the beetle started slowing, its six legs skittering at half stride, then quarter stride.

The beetle stopped dead in the sand.

’Uh oh.’

"It’s happening," Neve said, wiping saliva from her power nap.

"Huh?" Ezra was wiping his own saliva off his lips. "What’s happening?"

She unhooked the harness from the cartilage on its side and the beetle went to work. It dug into the sand with its horns and sent it flying in every direction.

"Is it digging our grave?"

"Yours, maybe."

’Cold, even in a desert. That’s talent.’

Another minute later, the beetle was satisfied enough with the size. Its body sank below the surface and the sand began rising around them.

Ezra grabbed Neve’s arm on instinct and she shoved it away in the time it took him to blink.

"I can handle it," Neve said. She tried to lift herself off, making it halfway before the lower half of her body refused to negotiate.

Without anything else to lean against, she plopped backwards onto the sand.

Ezra met her glare from above and didn’t even try to hide his smug smile. "Nice try."

"Stop staring at me and do something."

"Ask nicely."

She threw sand at his face and he coughed it out of his teeth. To be fair, that was probably as nice as it got.

Ezra knelt down to the ground and she wrapped her good arm around his neck. She locked her elbow tight, nearly choking him in the process.

"Watch it. You’re gonna kill your only ride. Well, the backup anyway."

"Oops." She threw her other arm over his shoulders and failed to hide the whimper that followed.

Ezra heaved her over his back with more muscle than he intended. She weighed nothing.

That didn’t seem right.

"Now wait for it to open up," Neve said against his ear. She was resting her chin on his shoulder, eyelids half-closed.

The beetle had sunk level with the ground by the time he stepped off the shell. Sand rose around them in a shallow bowl and the heat hit different without the elevation.

’It’s even hotter down here, and that’s only a two-foot difference. This heat is fucking weird.’

Then with a low growl, the beetle’s back split open.

The elytra cracked down the center seam the way a normal beetle’s would when flying, except there were no wings underneath. He only knew that because beetles used to swarm his opened soda cans during nightly anime binges.

Instead, a slick membrane stretched across the cavity, and it was already sweating out a thick, blue liquid. It pooled in the concave shell and spread outward until the whole surface was a shallow bath.

It smelled like dirty socks.

Ezra fucking hated dirty laundry.

"Get in," Neve said.

"You weren’t fucking kidding."

"Nope."

"What is it?"

"It’s an evaporative layer," Neve said. She was looking west now. Back towards the Ossalaka, the river, the summit. Ezra looked too, and saw only the endless desert. "Keeps the temperature below lethal for twenty minutes while it thermoregulates underground. Get in or we cook."

"Okay, but what is it?"

She put her chin back where it had been and sighed.

"Its saliva."

’I was really hoping she was fucking with me.’

Ezra stepped back into the open shell. The fluid was warm and viscous like the hair gel he used to hoard as a kid. He swallowed the queasiness building up and sat all the way down.

Neve let go of his body and settled, letting the gel take her in and hold.

It was crowded with Ezra taking much of the space and her squeezed in the back. The liquid swished out the rim with each of their breaths.

"This is actually not bad," Ezra said. "If you can ignore the odor."

"It’s a biological cooling mechanism. Be grateful it shares its saliva with us."

She was rubbing the blue liquid over her shoulders, across her chest and under her breasts. Slow about it, too.

"Do you mind?"

"I, uh..."

The beetle shook left and right, sending the overflow onto the sand. The blue liquid hissed and dissolved in the blink of an eye.

"Help me."

"Say what now?"

"My back is burnt." Neve grabbed his arm. "The saliva will soothe the skin enough until Harken."

He let her guide his hand.

"Just dive in the shit yourself. I’ll make room."

"Getting it in my hair will leave grease in the strands for weeks."

Ezra folded his legs and switched spots with Neve. Her backside was raw and red from the sun, but still paler than it had any right to be. The shoulders he’d stared at for hours already were new objects to his eyes now.

Sharper than he expected. She was more brittle than he’d realized.

’This woman is dangerous.’

"You want me to rub your back?"

"I don’t want to repeat myself, brute."

He didn’t know the first thing about applying lotion to a woman’s back.

’Fuck. Take over, System. Take. Over.’

His palms moved without his input. He started from the hips, working his way up the skin that held her ribs tight. He applied pressure where it was needed, loosened where her breath caught through her lips.

Like lathering sauce on a slab of meat.

His fucking Palate Arts at work, no less.

She was leaning against him, mouth shut to dampen any more surprises.

Ezra’s hands were at her stomach now, careful not to touch the hole he had sealed. His left palm faintly brushed against her Keepsake in her navel while his right passed under the curve of her breast.

She let out an overdue sigh.

"That’s enough."

The remaining minutes passed in silence. Ezra stared at the sky through the heat shimmer and thought about anything that wasn’t in front of him.

The smell helped, though the softness of her skin said otherwise.

Neve had gone quiet, speaking only when the beetle began stirring.

"Time’s up."

The beetle was already moving. The fluid drained fast through slits in the shell and the elytra started closing like a jaw.

"It’s not waiting for us?"

"It doesn’t care about us."

Neve tapped her shoulder and that was enough.

Ezra scooped her up by the knees and back and stepped over the rim before the shell snapped shut. The beetle surfaced grumbling, shook the sand off its horns, and resumed walking like nothing had happened.

He set her on the closed shell. A thin film of dried blue saliva covered both of them and caught the afternoon sun.

"We never speak of this," Ezra said, tying the harness back into the cartilage on either side of the beetle.

"Agreed."

Neither of them specified which part.

The beetle had been walking for another ten minutes when Ezra heard it.

A skittering behind them, fast and uneven. Something small running on sand and losing traction every few steps.

And the chanting, getting closer with every step.

"Ossa, ossa. Ossa!"

It could only be one thing.