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But she was not done yet. In some instinctive attempt to guide the flow of water, she’d reached up to cup the sides of the levitating spout I’d created, her eyes closed. It looked so much like she was gently holding and drinking from a thick cock that one of my own almost emerged in response.

A spasm went through me, snapping my threads of control. The water lost its shape and fell in a sheet, drenching her face. Her eyes snapped open in astonishment and she wiped rapidly at her eyes before throwing me a betrayed glare.

“Please accept my sincerest apologies,” I ground out. “It appears I cannot maintain my own power and imagine you sucking a cock at the same time. It has apparently become quite difficult to hold two different thoughts in my head at once.”

Two different thoughts... More like two hundred. The river was still spinning and churning and belching up words and images and sensations at a wingbeat-rapid pace. I could not process most of it.

She blinked at me again. And again.

And then she laughed.

It started small. A tremulous sound that I feared was some sort of choking sob. But as it grew in strength, and her smile stretched her features, I realized what it really was.

“I suppose I deserve that,” I said, my own grinning growing to mirror hers. It was impossible not to smile back. Her laughter was like light made sound. It made my ribs feel warm in the strangest way.

Taking a shaky breath and still chuckling, she began repeating a word and tapping her chest, smearing beads of water as she did so.

“Suvi. Suvi Harju. Suvi. Suvi.”

“Suvi,” I repeated, feeling the sounds roll around my mouth. I placed my hand over hers, sealing her palm to her wet chest. “That’s your name, isn’t it? You are Suvi.”

Her nostrils flared, and the dark parts at the centre of her eyes blossomed.

“Suvi,” she said again with a short nod.

I felt a smile on my snout once more. I’d wanted to know what to call her but hadn’t had a good way to ask. But I hadn’t needed to. She’d given it to me freely, handed me her name like a gift.

My smile curdled and turned cold when I realized I could not respond. She waited, gazing up at me expectantly, but I had nothing to give her in return.

I could not tell her a name that I did not remember.

Her laughter stopped, her open expression shuttering.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Suvi

Maybe he doesn’t have a name.

I looked away, brushing water from my skin, though the warm sun and slight breeze was already drying it. I was aware of the alien’s intense gaze on me, but I couldn’t meet it. I felt weirdly hurt, maybe even embarrassed, that he wouldn’t tell me his name.

He really might not have one...

But he had language. And he seemed like a person, if an extremely alien one. He understood the concept of names, because he’d seemed to grasp mine right away.

Which pointed more and more towards the fact that he had a name but just didn’t want to tell me.

It was probably a good thing. A reminder of the power balance here. A reminder that he took me, stole me from my friends, and that he was not someone to be trusted even if he kept me warm and built me fires and used fucking psychic energy to control water and wood like the elements were a part of his own body.

He was doing it even now, like it took no effort at all and was the most natural thing in the world. I watched in stunned awe as he crooked his claws and raised a jiggly globe of water out of the river, dispersing it over the fire with a sharp hiss. It may have been my imagination, or a trick of the light, but it almost looked like all the golden lights on his body glowed brighter as he did it.

If he wanted to, he could draw up a tsunami and drown me in it.

I didn’t think he would, but really, what did I even know about him? I had no idea the extent of his capabilities or what his true motivations might have been.

I didn’t even know his name.

But he sure as hell knew mine. And now I felt like the scales had been tilted even more towards his side. Like I had even less power than before.

“Suvi.”

The sound of my name in his alien rumble of a voice startled me. He stood at the edge of the grove, my boots and socks in his claws. He held them out to me in a very clear gesture. Take them because we’re leaving.

I snatched my stuff from him in a movement that could only be described as petulant. But after everything I’d gone through, I thought I’d earned that much.

“So, what, are we just going to keep walking along the river again? Do you even know where you’re going?” Paska. My socks were dry, but my boots were still very soggy. The thought of putting them on and walking made me cringe inside. But the only alternative would be having him carry me again, and I vowed that I wouldn’t let that happen. I’d been too weak last night. I’d given in too easily.

I could be stronger.

I would be stronger.

It was nice and warm right now.

I’ll walk barefoot for as long as I can.

That actually didn’t turn out to be too much of a problem. Once we got through the rocky area by the shore, we were back on sandy banks, rushes dancing in the wind on one side of us, the river placid on the other. We didn’t speak to each other, obviously. But even if we could have communicated, we likely wouldn’t have had much in the way of conversation. The moment he’d refused to tell me his name he’d cracked whatever small thing had grown between us. He had reminded me that the only reason I was here and separated from my friends in the first place was because of him.

If I never saw a human being again it would be his fault.

So we didn’t talk. Just walked, because it seemed like there was nothing else to do. When I wasn’t looking at the ground to make sure to avoid any sharp pebbles in the soft sand, I was studying him in silence. He was such an odd jumble of contradictions. At times on our journey, he looked powerful and certain of his path. He seemed almost regal, like this land was deeply known to him, like it belonged to him. But then sometimes he just looked... lost. Lost in the literal sense of not knowing where we were going but also in a much larger, almost existential way. Every once in a while, he’d slow down and then stop walking entirely, cranking his head this way and that, frowning at the river like it had just woken him from an important dream that he couldn’t quite make out anymore.

I contemplated the possibility that not only was I trapped with an alien, but one who perhaps was not entirely sane. He certainly hadn’t seemed sane when I’d first encountered him, and I chewed on the inside of my cheek with worry that he could descend back into that senseless, prowling rage again.

At least I didn’t see any of that chaos in him now. Just an unnerving swivel between calm and confusion.