Sweet Romance14 min read
"Lost Husband, Wild Desert, and a Smart Suit"
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"I can't find him," I shouted into the hot blue of the desert.
"Ivan? Dolan?" I tried every name I could think of and ended up shouting the one that mattered most. "Dolan! Where are you?"
The sun made the air seem like a curtain of glass. My throat felt on fire. My smart suit had melted down to useless threads. I tasted metal and dust. The desert answered with nothing but waves of heat.
"I won't panic," I told myself. "Not now. Not while the babies are inside me."
"Ivory?" said no one. The wind was the only voice.
I dug with my hands into a little dune where I had buried supplies. A stone marked the place. The stone was the same. The supplies were gone.
"I knew it," I whispered. "Someone has taken them. Or this is the wrong time."
I tore fabric and wrapped my head. I wrote with blood on a piece of torn liner, big letters: "Go East."
"I left caches. I planned for everything," I said. "I am a scientist. I prepare. Why did the plan fail?"
The sun rolled down. I waited half a day then crawled out. Each step took more will than the last. My belly gave me a soft reminder. I pressed two fingers there.
"Come on, little ones," I said. "If you can, move. Help your mother."
The desert stretched in a flat, heartless line. A low cry cut the night, sharp and hungry.
"A wolf," I breathed.
I flattened in the saddle of a dune and watched a gray shape move under the moon. It was alone. No pack, I thought. It could be danger or it could be chance.
"Hey," I called, more from loneliness than courage. "You—come here."
The wolf came with a cautious gait. It sniffed, then circled. I had a vial of toxin in my pocket. The smart suit had failed, but the chemistry kit still worked.
"Okay," I told the wolf. "You are a mother too, right? So soft spot. So I won't hurt you."
The wolf left and returned with three small pups. The wolf's nose touched my hand and then licked the stitches on my wrist. The pups tumbled like little planets around its legs.
"You saved me," I told them.
The wolf led me to an oasis it had kept secret. Water pooled among bones. It was small, barely enough for a drink, but it was life.
"Drink. Eat. Rest," the wolf said in the only language I had left. I drank like I had never been allowed to before.
I sat close to the mother wolf and let the pups warm my calf. In the dark I spoke the name that had become like a curse.
"Dolan," I muttered. "If you are out there, you better come back."
The pups answered with tiny, high wails. I laughed and told them, "If he is gone, I will remarry. I will remarry right here."
The mother wolf raised her head as if she understood. It leaned into me with a soft, sad sound.
"You and me both, sister wolf," I whispered.
I left water and some fish for them. I wrote furiously on a stone with what was left of my ink: five hash marks for the days I had waited. Then I left the pups and their mom to guard the oasis and walked.
I found a dead lizard, a snake, a poisonous beetle. I collected any scrap that looked like food. At one point I heard a weak mew and found a desert cat and a small, thin kitten in a shallow pit. They were dying.
"Not today," I said.
I used my last bandages and the small antibacterial salve in the smart suit's kit to patch the cat's leg. I fed the kitten with crushed lizard meat.
"You're coming," I told them. "You two are coming with us."
As I walked at dawn, a distant sound rolled toward us. It was like a thousand hooves. A ball, a shape, a tumble of animals and machines tumbled toward the oasis like a slow planet.
"I thought that was a mirage," I said aloud.
The ball came to a heavy stop. From it tumbled a broken camel, a bird, a sand rat, and a gray wolf soaked in sweat and dust. And then a figure rose out of the pile—huge, sun-browned, wild hair, chest like a tree trunk.
He saw me and his face split with a hard, bright shock. He grabbed my shoulders and held me like he would throw me across a fire if I tried to run.
"This woman seems familiar," he said, breathless. Then he said a name.
"Do we know each other?" he asked.
My hands went cold. I looked into the face that had haunted my dreams since I fell through some strange seam and landed in that distant world of stones and spears.
"Dolan?" I said, and then the world tilted.
He stared at me like a man who had found a carved memory. Tears pooled in the whites of his eyes.
"You... you look like—" He snatched a strip of my fabric, brought it close to his nose, and sneezed. "This tastes of the east wind. I think... I think I remember you."
"You do?" I asked, but his eyes were unfocused. He blinked. He seemed whole and broken at the same time. He carried scars that matched a million fights and a softness that matched a child's trust.
"Where were you?" I asked. "What happened?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. I woke in a rolling thing. Then I smelled you. Do we know each other? Are we kin?"
The question hit like an ice nail down my spine. Dolan—his name had sounded barbarous and brilliant on my tongue when fate first dropped me in that other age. He had no science, but he had a heart like a furnace. He had been my captor and my guardian and—"husband" was the small, ridiculous box we had put each other into by force and choice.
"Yes. We... we might have been very close," I said. "But listen—don't you dare play games."
He looked at me like a man trying to open a closed door. He smiled shy and bright. "Maybe we are siblings?" he suggested at last. "Maybe you are my sister."
"Do not," I said. "Sister is a word that used to save me. Do not sew it into lies."
He was so pure, so loud and stunned. Later, when he found a piece of the smart suit in my hand and recognized the flex, he offered it as proof to the world. "Look," he said, "this is the same as yours. You left me a sign."
"No," I said. "I left it for the wolf." I took the fabric back, stretched it, and used it to wrap the sunburn on his forearms. He cried like a child when I tended him, and I remembered why my heart tripped.
"You saved me," he said. "Did I save you?"
"I dragged you out of the ball. You dragged me into a cave once and we ate bitter roots." I laughed and then swallowed. "Dolan, listen. Don't be dumb. If you are playing at being a lost man, you will stop enjoying your lostness."
He was either very ill or pretending very well. He carried a sweetness like a weapon. He kept saying "my wife," and then pressed his face to my hands and sniffed.
"Call me sister, call me anything," he begged. "Just stay close."
"Fine," I said. "For now, sister."
We walked. He carried the injured wolf who had been trapped in the ball. The animals who had followed me rolled together into a ragged, moving kingdom. Somehow, with him in the lead, steps that once bit were gentled. He found tracks and water. He found a ruined vehicle like a stone and lifted it with two hands as if it were a child's toy.
"Where did this come from?" he asked like a child seeing a star for the first time. "What is this beast?"
"It's called a car," I said. "It is not a beast. But it might eat sand."
He learned to drive like a man who had been waiting all his life to sit in a machine. He drifted across the dunes like a practiced fury. I held on to the wheel and to him and felt something that could only be called home.
We reached a small research outpost—people with tents, tools, and sun-tough skins. The leader looked stern and large, with a scar that made her smile mean little. Her name was Jocelyn Guzman. She watched us approach and said, "You are new. Who are you?"
"I am Ivory Curry. We were lost and we found a ride," I said. "We found animals. We found troubles. We need a place to rest. We can help."
They were a ragged group of scientists, working at the brink of a new age. There was a young man with a baby face who fussed over a broken wrist—Aarón Bates. There was a handsome, teasing medical man—Cristian Patterson. There was a hard sister of a leader—Alejandra Dixon—who called Jocelyn "sister" like it was a command.
"Newlyweds," Jocelyn said with a laugh as she peered at Dolan and me. "Newlyweds? I see."
"We are not newly—" Dolan objected in a voice like a drum. He objected fiercely and then he sat, and his face went soft.
"Newlyweds," Jocelyn said again. "All right. We'll take you in."
They fed us, but I did not swallow much. The smart suit was in tatters and needed tools. I needed to know if the babies were alright. I felt them every now and then like shy weather.
"Is he... normal?" I asked in the medical tent, as Cristian ran a scan.
"About as normal as someone who can pick up a camel and not blink," Cristian said, grinning. "But his brain? The imaging is odd. Not broken. Not empty. Just... rearranged."
"Is that amnesia?" I asked.
"He has memory gaps," Cristian said. "But his body is fine."
"Good," I breathed. "That is the important part. We can wait for memory. As long as the body remains."
I thought of the small knot inside me. I thought of the wolf pups. I thought of all the things I had left behind and all the things I had to keep.
"Could you check—" I stopped, too shy for the word.
"Pregnancy test?" Jocelyn finished for me, with a kind look. "We can do that. We have the kit."
"Please," I said. "Discreet."
"Discreet," she said and winked.
The scan made me dizzy. On screen there were shadows—small, bright. Cristian set the machine to a low setting and the image cleared.
"Two," he said. "There are two."
"Two?" I repeated.
"Twins," Cristian said. "Three months gestation and healthy."
My relief came like a river breaking a dam. I laughed and then I cried and the laughter was wet and close to fear.
"They are twins," Dolan said, staring at my belly as if it were a new world map. "That is... ours."
"They are ours," I answered. I let him hold my hand. He smelled like metal and dust and something like home. His eyes were bright and strange and full.
"Do you remember?" I asked, because I could not help needing the truth.
He shook his head. "Only feelings. A taste. The word 'wife' rolls in my mouth like a stone."
"Then we will rebuild your memory," I said. "I promise."
He kissed the back of my hand. "Then I will be patient until memory returns."
That night we slept under tents. He tried to sleep near me and failed, grumbling like a child about rules we had made under different suns.
"Say it," he demanded at one point with a little smile. "Say I am your husband."
"I am your sister," I said, and he almost broke a laugh into me.
"Say it again," he whispered in the dark.
"I am your wife," I said, softly.
He kissed me like a man who might lose the word in the morning. He fell asleep as if a bell had tolled and called him home.
In the days that followed, the outpost grew to like a small burst of an orchestra. We worked and we argued and we laughed. There were repairs to smart fabric and tests of simple machines. I taught them what I could without breaking the timeline I believed in. Jocelyn trusted me and granted me access to the energy rig they were building—part of the base's dream to pull energy from the wind and the sun and something they called "the field."
"There's a storm coming," Jocelyn said one afternoon, her face a stone. "Faster than predicted."
"How fast?" I asked.
"Too fast," she said. "Too big."
We sent warnings to nearby settlements. People packed and scrambled. I read a file in the lab that was meant to be a rough forecast—a note saying that in a hundred years this desert will be worse. But the storm that came was now. Something had shifted. I thought of the seam I had traveled through and of something like a ripple.
"Can we stop it?" Jocelyn asked.
"We can try," I said. "But we need to be careful. The energy rig is not ready. The smart suit can act as a buffer, but it will be damaged if overloaded."
"Do it," Jocelyn ordered without hesitation. She trusted me enough to say a word like that.
I fitted the smart suit—its fiber throat glued with creative patches—onto the control array. I connected the suit to the rig. I set the suit to absorb and re-direct.
"Dolan," I said, holding his hand. "When I turn this on, there might be more storms. I need you to stay here and protect the animals and the people who cannot move."
He looked at me with that fierce warmth like river-fire. "I will protect our people," he promised. "Do what you must."
I turned the rig on. Winds rose like a beast. The suit drank the current like a drink. I felt it deep in the bones of my arms as the suit sang and gathered. On the displays I watched two huge dust fronts wedge toward each other like fists. I streamed the suit's collected energy into channels that pushed the fronts into collision at a chosen point far from the town.
"It is working," Jocelyn said like someone watching lovers fight. "They are colliding. The winds are canceling each other."
But the suit shuddered. Its seams hissed. I felt a hot flare running up my arms. I ordered the rig to moderate and then to bleed energy back out. The winds ground down like two dancers who had spent all their steps.
"It held," Cristian said, incredulous.
"It held," I echoed. But the suit had taken more than it should have. The fibers smoked. The micro-circuitry that had been folded into cloth hummed a dying song.
"Keep monitoring it," I said. "Every time we draw on it there will be another pulse. We can divert only so much."
We repeated the maneuver twice more. Each time it worked better, but the suit darkened. I felt a small, private terror. This suit was my passport and my last line.
"One more," I said finally. "We will send a tiny controlled front away from the city so they feel it but are safe. That will calm the larger currents."
We did, and the integrated team—Jocelyn at the maps, Cristian tuning, Aarón running errands, Alejandra coordinating evac—moved like a single machine.
When the line on the screen smoothed, the team let out a breath that sounded like a small church choir. Jocelyn hugged me hard like she was pulling breath into me.
"You saved lives," she said simply.
"We redirected, not saved," I corrected. "We did what we could."
That night in the tent I was exhausted and elated. Dolan lay awake, watching my face with the kind of hunger that scared me and made me safe. He wanted to say words he could not quite find.
"You risked the suit," he said. "Is it dangerous?"
"It will need repair," I said. "But it is not destroyed. Not yet."
"For us," he whispered, "or for the world?"
"For both," I said. "With this, we can go home. With this, we can also be dangerous."
That made him grin like someone who loved fire.
"This is my wife," he said, loudly and happily. "She makes storms behave."
"You say that like it's a job," I told him.
"It is," he said. "It is our job."
Days unfolded in small, delicious loops. People asked me about the future. I answered with care. Cristian studied the fibres and kept secrets in a folder he locked with his thumb. Aarón hovered like a proud nephew whenever Dolan did something impressive. Alejandra and Jocelyn grew softer in their laughter. Night by night, Dolan and I rebuilt what had been stolen from time.
At last I could not hold a secret in my chest any longer. I needed him to remember before one of our stolen moments became our final wound.
"Dolan," I said in the dark one night. "Do you remember a cave? A fire? A night when I hated you and needed you?"
He breathed. "I remember feeling hungry and then being full and a hand that smelled like rain."
"Do you remember a vow?" I asked. I tried to make the question small and iron-clad.
He smiled. "No vow. Only feelings. Only 'wife' and 'my home' and the sound of your voice."
"Then I will keep telling you," I said. "I will tell you everything until your memories come back."
"You will?" he asked.
"I will," I promised.
He held me like a promise, like a small animal taking shelter. He fell asleep with his face on my hand. I watched him breathe and counted the small, safe beats of his chest. My hands did not leave the place above my belly. Inside, the twins were restless like small tides.
In the morning a messenger from the regional command arrived—eyes like thin knives. He asked questions. He stepped too close to Dolan and made a gesture. Dolan's face darkened. I had not seen him like that since a long time ago in a place where things were simpler and harder.
"Stay away from my wife," Dolan said, his voice a soft, terrible thing.
The man's face went white and then hot. He tried to smile. "We are checking supplies."
Dolan's hand grabbed the man's collar. He brought the man forward as if pushing him toward an unseen wall.
"Who takes from the weak?" he asked, low.
The room tightened. Everyone watched the two of them. The man tried to step back. Some of the team recorded with their devices, mutely, because there are always witnesses now and witnesses keep the story honest.
Dolan set the man down and told him to go.
"Watch your hands," he said.
The man left, shaken. Everyone exhaled. Jocelyn slapped Dolan on the shoulder with such force that he winced and then grinned. "You threaten too easily," she scolded.
"I protect," he said. "That is my work."
I watched him and thought of the years he must not remember and the power he kept inside him like a pet tiger waiting for a name.
"I will help you get your memory," I told him again. "But there are jobs to do. The suit. The babies. The travel."
He laughed like a bell. "Then we will do them together."
In the weeks that followed, the research base became a home. We repaired the suit in pieces, and each time I fed it energy we learned something new. We taught each other. I taught Cristian how to weave fiber with nano ink. He taught me to make a medicine that tasted like citrus and soot.
The desert outside took its turns. Sometimes it roared. Sometimes it whispered. Dolan grew stronger and more whole. Little by little, flashes of memory began to arrive like mail—one scene: a cave hung with furs; another: a boy asleep with a stone pressed to his forehead; another: the way he had said my name in the rain.
One evening, as the sun slid like a coin into the earth, Dolan found a small wooden charm hidden inside an inner pocket of my robe. He turned it over like a relic.
"This was your gift once," he said. "I gave this to you and you tied it on me and the wolves laughed and the stars heard us."
I reached out and grazed the little charm. My breath stilled.
"Yes," I said. "You gave it to me the day we forced the first fire."
He looked at me and for a second, like a curtain lifting, his face cleared.
"I remember," he said.
I felt the room tilt and then right itself. There were no fireworks. Memory came like rain, quiet and cold.
"I remember the cave," he said. "I remember the time you cut your hand because you thought you were alone and the wolves came and ate the flesh from the bone. I remember being a savage once and then being something softer because of you."
He laughed, a big, rough sound. "And I remember saying I would never lose you."
"You didn't lose me," I said. "I lost you, and then you were found, and then there were ways we had to make each other trust."
He took my face in his hands. "Are you mine? Are you really my wife?"
"I am yours," I said, and for the first time he said, "I remember we laughed about the word 'wife' like it was a joke and then we made it real."
The research base celebrated with a small dinner. Jocelyn asked me to speak to the team about the suit, and I told them about the small miracles of technology and about the ethics of time. Everyone listened because there was something we all understood: the desert had teeth, but together we had fingers to hold.
"One day," I said, "the suit will be better than this. But for now it is ours."
Dolan stood and placed his hands over my belly in a gesture that made my skin go hot. "We will teach them," he said. "We will teach them to be better people."
"Start by teaching Aarón not to spill soup," I teased.
He smiled, and then his face took on a small, fierce concentration I knew well.
"I will teach him to be brave," he said. "And to respect his wife."
The future I had left was a map with many lines. I had been a scientist who bent rules to see if the world could give me a new life. That life had come with a wild man who had lifted cars and built fires, who had called me "wife" even when he did not remember why he loved the word. The babies inside me were a testament to the way the universe stitches seams.
As the night drew long and the tents hummed with the small sounds of living, I slid my hand over the fabric of the patched smart suit folded on the table. It had taken storms, it had taken sand, but it had given us time. It had kept two small lives safe while the world rearranged.
"Dolan," I said softly. "If you ever forget again, I will tell the story."
He bent and kissed my hand. "Tell it now," he said.
So I told him the night of the rolling ball, of the wolves and the kittens, of the caravan of animals, of the stone marked with our plan, of when I wrote 'Go East' with my blood. I told him about the yoga-sized water ball and the little fish that were almost gone, about the smart suit and how it caught storms like a net.
He laughed until he cried. He leaned his forehead to mine and whispered, "You are ridiculous."
"And you love that I am," I said.
He did. He said the word without thinking, like a bridge across memory.
"I love you," he said.
"I love you," I answered.
Outside, the desert wind sighed and then fell away. The twins kicked like two small hopeful things. The smart suit sat silent and proud like a small bird. The town slept, unknowing but safe. The wolves slept with their pups. Jocelyn and Cristian and Aarón and Alejandra and the team slept with dreams of weather maps and fiber strands.
And I, Ivory Curry, put the charm he had given me back into my palm and promised to keep it, to carry the story like a seed.
When morning came we would mend the suit some more, and then we would find a seam in time that would take us home.
For now I cupped my belly, listened to the small tides, and said something I meant.
"We go east," I whispered, the way I had written in blood. "We go east together."
The End
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