The sum of all the parts was... utter confusion.
I had no idea what to make of him or what to do about him besides the instinct bleating at the back of my head to get as far away from him as possible. But that instinct was at odds with my body’s need to remain coiled inside the walls of heat his wings and chest had created. I tried to reconcile the two panicking messages – the messages telling me to stay warm and to run – and soothed myself, telling myself that I would figure out how to get away the moment fleeing from him was safer than being warmed by him.
I almost wanted to laugh bitterly. I wanted to punch him, or maybe the ground. Wanted to rage against the fact that this was what my life had become – that I’d been reduced to stacking my physical needs upon each other in order of importance, hoping the entire tower didn’t crumble. That I’d become so calculating in regards to my own survival, prioritizing one bodily instinct over another. Staying warm came out on top. For the moment. But that would shift the second I needed it to.
The Scilla madeirensis can grow among hostile volcanic rock. The Sideroxylon spinosum has roots that go deep enough to find water in the driest climates, producing rich argan oil. The Cyrtanthus ventricosus only flowers after wildfire, bright blooms against ash, earning its name the fire lily...
The survival instinct was everywhere. Even in plants.
It was in me, too.
And wasn’t that what Elvi had told me at the end? When she’d been in the hospital? She’d made me promise not to miss her. She’d made me promise to be brave and to live. Because that was the most important thing.
I’d thought that warmth, for the moment, was taken care of. But I’d presumed wrong, because before long, the alien was withdrawing his wings from around me. My bum settled on the ground, and I tensed and bit back a hiss at the sudden inward rush of cool air on my bare skin. I almost wanted to beg him to put his wings back how they’d been, even though I knew he wouldn’t understand.
Maybe I can get away and make a fire...
Find a safer way to stay warm.
The alien suddenly straightened, staring down the river. Night was fully upon us now, stars creating a glittering canopy behind what appeared to be two moons, one much larger than the other. His attention, for the moment, was not on me. Mouth going dry, I began to tentatively scoot backwards and away from him.
But the soft rustle of my backside against the sand made his golden eye snap to me like a slingshot finding its target. A huge, scaly hand clasped my upper arm, dragging me to my feet. It didn’t hurt, but the shock of the movement made me gasp. He eyed me sharply, scaly brow lowering as he peered downwards.
“What?” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. I still had one free arm, and I used it to hug myself, slapping my forearm against my breasts. The alien wasn’t wearing any clothing at all, so maybe it was silly of me to adhere to any human forms of modesty, but it made me feel the tiniest bit better to be somewhat covered under his strange scrutiny.
He spoke again, then, and it made my head spin to have an alien trying to engage in conversation with me. He was trying to tell me something, to communicate. That had to be a good sign, right?
But then again, even psychopaths were capable of speech. Serial killers could talk, too. It didn’t actually mean much, and that scared me.
Once again, he ended the string of unfamiliar sounds with aerra bai. I wondered if aerra bai was a phrase used in most sentences of his language. Maybe some kind of honorific, or a verbal form of punctuation.
“Aerra bai,” I repeated, entirely without thinking.
His nostrils flared, his eye focusing even more intently on my face. Clearly, I’d shocked him by engaging in his own language, but I wasn’t sure I could have even helped myself from doing it. I was so desperate to understand this situation, to understand him. My human brain couldn’t stop itself from poking and prodding at every edge of the problem, from sinking into the familiar back and forth of language even if that language was entirely foreign.
“Aerra bai,” he repeated back at me, his voice a deep rumble. He raised his free hand, bringing his fingers and thumb close together, like he was pinching something tiny and invisible between his long claws. “Aerra.” Then, he gestured upward with that hand. “Bai.”
“Pinch... sky?” I said, frowning. Was he talking about what he’d done in the sky? How he’d brought us here?
It occurred to me how absurd this was. That I was so focused on figuring out some random alien phrase instead of thinking ahead to what came next. But the puzzle of figuring out this phrase felt somehow safer. Trying to understand a new word was more comfortable than deciding when I’d try to run from him and how I’d survive when I did.
And it definitely felt safer than thinking about how I would probably never see another human again.
Don’t go there. Don’t fall apart.
“Aerra bai,” he said again. He was an alien, and I was entirely unfamiliar with his facial expressions, but there didn’t seem to be any malice or aggression in his tone of voice. He wasn’t snarling it, or growling it. The violence in him, the pure chaos of his power that I’d witnessed on the other planet, seemed to have been gentled somehow. Like he’d eased back from the edge of something terrible. I hoped it wasn’t some tactic to get me to drop my guard. But then again, someone as strong as him wouldn’t need to manipulate me into trusting him before he ate me. He could have killed me at any point.
But he hadn’t.
He repeated the phrase again, and when I showed no new or obvious sign of understanding him, he suddenly crouched. He didn’t let go of my arm, instead letting his hand glide downwards, clasping my hand firmly in his own. He grasped a fist-sized rock from the riverbed and held it up.
“Loirra pak.” He tossed it down, then grabbed a much smaller rock, a pebble. “Aerra pak.”
Big rock... Small rock...
I remembered the pinching motion of his fingers from before.
“Aerra! It’s small, right? Little?” I pointed to the pebble, then used my index finger and thumb to indicate “a little” in a similar gesture to his.
He stared up at me, then did something that nearly knocked me flat on my curvy human ass.
He smiled.
Despite the foreign features of his face, there was no mistaking the expression. His snout pulled, revealing his fangs in a way that wasn’t frightening or aggressive. His golden eye glittered. I was too dazed to smile back, and he turned his attention back down to the ground. His smile vanished, and he made a thoughtful grumbling sort of sound, rubbing at the underside of his snout with his free hand. His other hand was still wrapped possessively around mine, and I shifted back and forth on my wet feet, feeling antsy at the odd intimacy of it.
The alien stopped rubbing his snout and lowered his claws to the damp sand. Using a single claw, he started dragging deep lines through the sand. I recognized the two circles he drew but couldn’t figure out where I’d seen them until he gestured at the sky again.
Moons. He’s drawing the moons.
Around the two moons in the sand, he jabbed his claw downward over and over again, making a dozen or so little dots that I realized were stars. He pointed to one of the tiny divots he’d created.