Neon Lava

Savannah wakes up slow. Dawn comes through the observatory window in a thin orange line. It sits on the wall like a crack of lava.

Alisa's arm is draped over Savannah's waist, heavy and warm as a stone left out in the sun. Alisa runs hot. All the vent-kin do, born of the mountain's own warmth, and the bunk has never once needed a second blanket. Savannah, who is entirely and ordinarily human, has spent the night getting slowly toasted on one side.

So. That happened.

Savannah runs the night back through her head, careful, like counting cattle through a gate. The storm that trapped them both at the observatory. The cards. The bottle of cheap wine Deepak left in the common room, which nobody claimed. Alisa laughing at her terrible bluff. The look that lasted a beat too long.

Then the asking. That part she remembers clearest. Alisa had said, plainly, "Can I kiss you? Tell me no if that's wrong." And Savannah had said, "It's not wrong. Do it."

After the kiss, there had been a long quiet, and then Alisa had said, "Can I take your shirt off? Say so if you want to wait."

"Take it off," Savannah had said. "Please."

Alisa's skin was hotter than any person's. In the dark, a faint red-gold light moved under it, the way embers breathe in a banked fire, and it pooled at her collarbones and the insides of her wrists. "Is this okay?" she had asked, her palm flat on Savannah's belly. "I can run cooler if it's too much."

"Don't you dare. It's like lying against a stove in January."

Alisa laughed and kissed her neck, then lower. She asked at her waistband, and Savannah said yes. She asked again before she put her mouth between Savannah's thighs, and Savannah said, "Yes, God, yes," and then said nothing sensible for a while. Alisa's tongue was warm as tea, slow and thorough, one hand holding Savannah's hip, the other pressed to her ribs where her heart was going hard. When Savannah came, it was with her fingers in Alisa's hair and her heels digging into the blanket, and the glow under Alisa's skin flared bright enough to throw red light on the ceiling.

"Still with me?" Alisa had murmured against her thigh.

"Come here. I want my turn."

"Tell me what you want."

"Your mouth, and then you. Inside. If you want that."

"I want that. Hold on." Alisa had dug the box out of her kit, said guides always carried them, and tore a packet open without making a ceremony of it. Savannah took it from her and rolled it on herself, slow, and Alisa's breath caught at the touch. "You're sure?" Alisa asked.

"I'm sure. Are you?"

"Very."

Alisa sank down onto her in one long, warm slide, and they both went still. "Okay?" Savannah whispered. "Okay," Alisa said, and began to move. She set a rolling pace, hands braced on Savannah's shoulders, the heat of her wrapping around Savannah like a bath. Savannah gripped her hips and met each stroke, and the red light pulsed with it. "Faster?" Alisa asked, and Savannah said yes, and when she asked "Harder?" Savannah said yes to that too. Alisa came first, with a low cracked sound and a glow that lit the whole bunk, and Savannah followed her over, face pressed into Alisa's neck.

Afterward there was water from the jug by the bed, and the two of them drinking it and checking in. Both of them had stopped at one glass of the cheap wine. Both clear-headed and saying yes out loud at every step, and neither of them spilling a thing worth regretting. Savannah remembers being grateful for that. No drama. Just two adults who knew exactly what they were doing.

She feels no panic. No shame either. Just a kind of quiet, like the hour before the herd stirs.

What she feels mostly is a question. Was that a one-off? A storm-shaped mistake? Or was it something that had been sitting between them for years, waiting for bad weather to knock it loose?

Alisa stirs. Her shoulders roll, and she makes a small grumble in her throat.

"Morning," she murmurs, eyes still shut. "Is it morning?"

"Just about."

"What time." She cracks one eye.

"Early. Sun's not over the ridge yet."

"Then it's not morning. It's a rumor of morning." Alisa rolls onto her back and squints at the ceiling. "God. My neck."

"That wine was criminal. We drank one glass each and I can still taste it."

"It was free. Criminal and free. The worst combination." She stretches, winces, stretches again. "How are you? Honest answer."

Savannah considers it. "Fine. Weird. Good weird, I think."

"Good weird works." Alisa turns her head on the pillow to look at her. Her hair is a disaster. She makes no move to fix it. "For the record, I don't regret it."

"Me neither."

"But you're doing that thing where you count fence posts in your head."

Savannah huffs. "I don't do that."

"You absolutely do. You did it the whole time we hiked the north rim. I could hear the posts clicking past in there." She taps Savannah's temple with one finger. Light. Friendly. "So say it. What's the count."

Savannah looks at the ceiling. The orange line has crawled up the wall an inch.

"I don't want this to be a thing that ruins us," she says. "Fourteen years of friendship. You taught me to read a gas gauge. I taught you not to swear in front of the vet. That's worth more than one good night, even a really good night."

"It was a really good night," Alisa agrees. "Thank you for confirming."

"I'm serious."

"I know you are. That's why I'm joking. One of us has to be calm and I drew the short straw by waking up second." She sits up, sheet falling to her waist, and rubs her face with both hands. "Look. It doesn't have to ruin anything. It also doesn't have to be nothing. We can let it be what it turns out to be. That's my whole position. Committee of one, motion passed."

"That's not a plan."

"That's the best plan anyone's ever had at this hour."

Savannah laughs before she can stop herself. And there it is, the tension in the room going soft. The same way it always does with Alisa. The woman has a gift for defusing things with sheer refusal to be solemn.

Alisa swings her legs out of the bunk and stands, hunting for her shirt on the floor. She finds it draped over the desk chair and pulls it on without noticing it's wrong-side-out.

"Your shirt's inside out," Savannah says.

"I know what I'm about." She buttons it anyway. "I need coffee. Do you need coffee? You need coffee. Everyone needs coffee. Deepak keeps the good stuff locked up but the bad stuff is free and I have no standards before sunrise."

"Debatable. You had that wine."

"The wine chose me." She points at Savannah on her way to the door. "Don't leave. Sit there and be weird in comfort. I'll be back in five."

She's gone. Savannah lies there a minute longer, listening to the building. Pipes knock somewhere. The mountain does its low quiet mountain thing outside, meaning it does nothing. Mount Ngozi has been polite for years now. The instruments all say so. Deepak checks them as if checking a sleeping animal anyway.

* * *

The common room smells like bad coffee, which is at least a smell. Savannah sits at the table by the window, wearing yesterday's jeans and one of Alisa's spare shirts, because hers got wine on it and the laundry situation up here is a bucket.

Alisa sets two mugs down and drops into the chair opposite. "There. Survival achieved."

"This tastes like burnt tires."

"Told you. No standards!" She wraps both hands around her mug and blows on it. "You know what I saw on the drive up yesterday? Before the storm."

"The giant pink sign."

"The giant pink sign! Thank you." Alisa is grinning now. "The DINER sign. Down by the garage. Half the letters dead. It just says DINR in these fat pink tubes and there's no diner. There's never been a diner. Geoff says the bulb that would've made it DINER... what, DINER with an E at the end? The R-to-ER bulb burned out years ago and he refuses to fix it."

"So it promises food it has never once delivered."

"Since before either of us could drive. It's a monument to false advertising. I love it. I want it protected by UNESCO."

"It's the only neon on this whole slope of the mountain," Savannah says. "One dead sign in a lava field. That's our entire nightlife."

"Neon Lava. That's the name of my memoir."

"You're twenty-seven. You don't get a memoir yet."

"I get a pamphlet. Neon Lava, a pamphlet by Alisa Fielding." She sips, grimaces, sips again. "Geoff's probably up already. He wanted to do your lesson this morning, remember? Stick shift. He's very serious about it. Said the truck is a company vehicle and company vehicles deserve respect."

"I remember. I'm the only rancher in the district who can't drive stick. It's humiliating."

"It's not humiliating. It's an automatic, that's all. But Geoff takes it personally, like the gearbox is a family member."

"He's been telling me for two years I'll never be a proper cattlewoman until I can row my own gears."

"He's sixty. He tells everyone that. He told Deepak that and Deepak runs an observatory." Alisa drains her mug and stands. "Right. Lesson first, then I owe you the lava tube tour like I promised. Assuming the storm didn't flood the lower entrance."

"And assuming I survive the gearbox."

"You'll survive. Geoff's a patient man. He's just loud about patience."

Savannah looks out the window. The sun has finally cleared the ridge, and the whole slope lights up. Scrub brush, black rock, the old fields where the lava cooled in ropes and folds a hundred years back. Her family's land sits lower down, cattle dung and red dust, a day's ride from here.

Home is down there. The observatory is up here. Alisa lives up here. The thought lands in her chest and sits there, heavy and warm, like a stone that soaked up sun.

Not a mistake, she thinks. Probably not a mistake.

"Savannah." Alisa snaps her fingers. "You drifted."

"I was thinking."

"About the sign."

"About the sign," Savannah lies.

Alisa studies her a second, then lets it go. "Truck's out front. Geoff's probably already wiped the seat down twice. Ready?"

Savannah stands and takes her empty mug to the sink. "Ready as I'll ever be."

"Good. And hey." Alisa pauses at the door, hand on the frame. "Whatever we decide about us, later, when we've had coffee and daylight. It's fine. Whatever it is, it's fine."

"I know," Savannah says. And for the first time all morning, she does.

* * *

Geoff arrives at half past eight in a pickup the color of old cereal. The truck rattles up the observatory track, horn going twice, because Geoff believes in announcements.

"That's him," Savannah says.

"That's him," Alisa agrees. She's on the porch rail with her second mug. "Look at him. He's already emotionally attached to that gearstick."

Geoff climbs out. Sixty years old, white beard, hat that predates both of them. He waves like he's directing traffic.

"Morning," he booms. "Savannah Bryant. Big day. Company vehicle, this. Treat her nice and she'll treat you nice."

"That's what you said about the last one," Savannah says.

"And you didn't treat her nice, and look what happened. Stalled at the gate. In front of the vet." He points at the passenger seat. "In. Let's go. Miss Fielding, you can watch, but no coaching. Coaching makes them nervous."

Alisa raises her mug in salute. "No coaching. Got it."

* * *

The lesson happens in the flat stretch of gravel between the garage and the lava field, right under the sign. DINER in pink tubes, dead bulb where the E should be, glowing faintly even in daylight like it's embarrassed.

Savannah stalls it three times.

The first stall is quiet. The second stall comes with a lurch that nearly takes Geoff's hat off. The third stall happens directly under the sign, and the truck shudders to a stop like it's died of shame in full view of the neon.

"Lots of people have done that," Alisa calls from the porch, way too cheerful.

"No coaching." Geoff yells back, then turns to Savannah, patient as a rock. Loud about it, though. "Now. You see what happened there? You panicked. The clutch is not a panic button. The clutch is a friendship. You ease into it. Again."

"Again," Savannah mutters. "Sure. Again."

She does it again. This time the truck crawls forward twenty meters before she stalls it, which by Geoff's math is basically a miracle.

"Progress," he shouts, delighted. "You moved. Did you hear that, Miss Fielding? She moved."

"I heard it." Alisa shouts back. "Very moving."

Savannah rests her forehead on the wheel. The wheel is warm. The sun is climbing and the black rock below the garage is starting to throw heat like a stove top. Geoff makes her do it four more times before he declares a break.

* * *

The break turns into a walk, because Alisa appears at the edge of the gravel with two more mugs of the terrible coffee and says, "Come on. Ten minutes. Geoff can yell at the gearbox without an audience."

They walk out onto the old lava field. The ground is ropey and black, cooled a hundred years back into folds and waves, like something that flowed and then got caught mid-sentence. Scrub brush grows in the cracks. Their boots crunch.

"So," Alisa says. "Last night."

"Last night."

"We should probably talk about it at some point."

"We should."

"Not now, though. Now I want to show you a vent." She points ahead and left, where a shallow bowl in the rock breathes out a thin line of steam. You'd miss it if you weren't looking. "There. See it? Deepak's instruments say the whole mountain's asleep, but that little guy never fully cools. Year round. It's my family's front door, technically. Vent-kin don't do doorbells. Just a whisper of heat."