Paradox by A. J. Paquette Page A

surface. She throws her arms out flat toeither side, feeling the stretch all the way down the muscles of her back.
    Her fingers, dangling off the sides of the rock, brush up against a cluster of something small and knobby. She cranes her head over the edge and looks down. A small vine is growing out of a fissure in the rock, and it’s heavy with small gray berries.
    Curious, she plucks one. It’s firm, like a chunky blueberry. She squeezes, and the berry bursts. A trickle of pinkish-purple juice runs down her finger.
    “Todd,” she says, “do you know what these are?”
    He scoots off the rock and crouches down next to her. “Rockberries, sure. Word on the street is they’re just about the best berry in the galaxy!”
    He laughs out loud, and Ana figures it’s as much for the bit of knowledge, trivial as it might seem, as for the fruit itself.
    “They grow out of the rock?” Ana asks.
    “Sure. They taste good, too.” Todd plucks one off the stem and leans toward her. She freezes as his fingers graze her cheek. Her heart pounding in her chest, she parts her lips and he pops the berry in. She bites down, and the tiny fruit fills her mouth with a tart sweetness that is like a bite of blue sunshine. “Oh!” she gasps.
    He rubs his fingers together, and his thoughtful look gives her a strange discomfort, a fluttering in her chest that she’s quick enough to recognize and smart enough—
Honestly, Ana! Now is not the time for boy thoughts!
—to quash immediately. Sheleans over the side of the rock and starts harvesting the berries. “I’ll beat you to the patch, then,” she says.
    He grins and shoulders her out of the way. They empty the little vine in minutes, making a mad dash for the last few and then turning to chase the ones that have tumbled onto the grass.
    Finally Ana collapses on the ground. The fullness in her belly spreads down to her toes, a warm satisfaction that she wishes she could capture and keep in a bottle.
    Todd lies sprawled next to her, his eyes closed. Ana studies him, considering the curve of his jaw, the jut of his cheekbone. There’s a twist of thornbush stem twined in his hair and she reaches over to tug it free. He opens his eyes, and his look jolts her. Then a sharp pain in her finger makes her jump. She looks down to see a thorn halfway into the pad of her index finger.
    Todd takes her hand in his, pulls off the thorn stem, and tosses it away. As he rubs her finger, she holds his gaze. “I …” She stops. What can she say? That she doesn’t know what’s going on but she thinks she might want to follow it and see where it leads? That when he looks at her with that sleepy half smile, she has a desperate wish to capture this moment and keep it forever?
    It’s ridiculous enough to even think these things, so she doesn’t say anything; she just sits and fills her memory with his face.
    Then the peace is shattered by something so unexpectedthat Ana can only sit up and goggle in wide-mouthed shock. Two figures throw long shadows in the high morning sunslight. Two forward-striding, rapidly approaching forms, coming, calling
—yelling!
—with voices that ring out across the wide clearing.
    “Hiya, strangers! Thought you’d never show up! Had time to miss us yet?”

Todd is up and moving so fast that he’s halfway across the clearing before Ana has even fully registered what she’s hearing. Words! Honest-to-goodness, spoken-out-loud-by-people words!
    By the time she scrambles to her feet and starts off after him, Todd is up ahead confronting the two newcomers. There’s aggression all over his posture, though they don’t seem especially threatening.
    Ana slips a hand inside her vest to check for the solidity of the pistol, wishing she’d thought to pull it out earlier to see how it works. Hoping that her muscle memory will do its thing if it comes to that, she strides toward the group.
    “Todd?” she calls. “Everything okay over here?”
    It’s as if someone has pulled