The Cherished One by Carolyn Faulkner

died of it.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It was a long time ago.  Lots of people I knew died of it, or whatever the equivalent was in my time.”
    He was tense, and she sensed it. “Do you not like to talk about when you were human?”
    “No, frankly, I don’t.  I don’t have much connection with it.  It was, as you so kindly point out, so long ago.”
    Fawna didn’t think that that was the reason why he declined to discuss it.  She wondered what the real reason was, but didn’t want to press.  Instead, she took his face in her hands and kissed him, very slowly, and very deliberately, not open mouthed at first, because she thought that was a very gross and gauche thing to do immediately, pretty much regardless of the extent of one’s relationship.  Instead, she almost teased him with her lips and her kiss, nibbling on his lower lip, butterfly kissing him, and then gradually deepening the kiss until her tongue had gently invaded his mouth.
    Max, however, had had enough of her tiptoeing, apparently, because he wrested control away from her at that point and leaned over with her, as if he was dipping her in a tango, so that she was hanging in mid air, and kissed the breath out of her, only allowing her up when they were both shaking and she was struggling for air.
    Fawna stood immediately, shakily, leaning on the desk for support and hoping desperately that he hadn’t noticed just how weak kneed she’d become.  It wouldn’t do at all if he knew just how much he was getting to her.
    “I’m hungry.  I’ve got to go downstairs to get something from the big freezer.  Is there anything I can get you?”
    He looked a bit stunned himself, more bamboozled than she’d seen him.  He was sitting in the chair – which must’ve been getting his butt wet, considering the rivers she’d cried onto that cushion a few minutes ago – looking somewhat defeated and distracted, which she already knew on short association was unusual for him.
    “What?  No, no thank you.   There’s nothing I need.”
    Fawna hummed the words to “The Rose” as she descended the very narrow, winding wrought iron staircase down to the root cellar where two enormous freezers had been set up.  There was enough food stored in those freezers to feed an army – some things her Mom had cooked and frozen individual portions of for Dain to feast on when he was here with his friends – lasagna, chicken, stuffing and mozzarella casserole, pies, coffeecake, homemade waffles, pancakes, slabs of cornbread and brownies and even homemade ice cream. 
    The room that the freezers – a chest and an upright – were in was small, barely big enough for one person at a time to get into, but the other thing it contained was something she hadn’t remembered until about five seconds before she’d darted down there:  there was an escape hatch that her father’s father had dug.  And as soon as she’d remembered it she’d spent the rest of her time trying to keep that memory out of her mind.  She wasn’t quite sure where the escape hatch by the freezers was, she’d have to find it, but she figured that he’d be delayed a long enough getting to her, because the only entrance to the stairway that led down there was very small, and she highly doubted that he could even make it through the small hole at the back of the pantry floor that lead to the stairs.  You really had to know it was there to find it, and then you had to squeeze down into it like a girdle.  Her father and Dain were big men, and it took them a bit of an effort to get down here.  They had to be contortionists, but then the idea was that they wouldn’t be trying to get down here – they’d be fighting off whoever the invaders were, anyway, while the women squeezed down there and got out through the tunnel.
    She knew exactly when he realized she was trying to escape, and had just found the well camouflaged handle to the heavy steel door.  She could hear the bellow in her head as well