noh-mi.

Hari is nine years my senior and with me being just twenty-six years old, that makes him damn near ancient as a wrangler. He’s got nine years of experience over me, nine years of drinking, smoking, and hard-living beyond mine, and a couple extra notches on his bedpost back on Earth over what I’ve managed to chalk up — though I suspect he may have paid for more than one of that tally.

According to Hari he “wasn’t born nowhere worth talking about” and I suppose that now we’ve left it all behind to burn, he’s sort of got a point.

That said, his bunk is arms-length below mine and between the grunts and gurgles of his often-disturbed sleep rich with throaty snores and laboured breathing, he talks, mumbles mostly, under his breath in fits and starts, calling out the name Naomi.

“Nah – omi, you c’mere.” He blurts between the inaudible mix of snorts and gasps. “No-me, noh-oh, get back.” And even weeks on I’ve never had the guts to ask him so much as who he’s talking to in his sleep, let alone why.