Briar made an affirmative noise and turned back to the path.
“Don't you have a name?” Marcie asked. “And, also, is grunting the only thing you're able to do?”
“What?” Briar tightened his fingers on her arm, not looking back.
“Does your kind or species or . . . whatever . . . not actually have communication?”
To his surprise, Briar laughed. “My name is Briar.”
“Briar . . . what?” prompted Marcie. “Do not have a last name?”
He glanced over his shoulder and frowned at her.
“A surname? The name of your people?” Marcie asked, her voice getting higher in pitch and, Briar couldn't help but notice, more accusatory.
“My people are the Verda,” Briar said, comfortable in repeating the information he had already let slip earlier.
“Huh . . . Briar Verda.” Marcie’s voice sounded pleasant saying his name. “Well, it's nice to meet you.”
Briar assessed Marcie from head to toe, his gut twisting. “Same.”
When Marcie laughed, the sound was clear and crystalline and beautiful. “Same?”
“What's so funny?” Briar asked, shocked to find that he too was now smiling.
“It's just that that's kind of like a saying back on Earth. Slang. Like, thrown.”
“How are words thrown? Did you think I was being aggressive?”
“Just . . . just don't worry about it,” Marcie said, wiping tears from her eyes. Though Briar couldn't tell if the tears were from the mirth of the moment or if the strange woman was down was sad about the prospect of her people leaving her.
For the briefest of moments, he considered actually taking Marcie to her alleged excursion pod so she could communicate with her people. Perhaps if she lied and told them there was nothing to see here . . . That her tests were failures, or that there was hostel life . . . Animal life, he would be sure she specified, and not intelligent life like he and the other Verda. Maybe they would come and get Marcie. Take her back to their ship and go back to this Earth from which she came.
If humans had never seen any other creatures before, perhaps they would stop their search.
But Briar couldn't be confident of that fact. He couldn't know for a certainty that Marcie’s people wouldn't try to come down to the surface themselves, to look around the Verdant Lands. To investigate.
He couldn't allow that to happen. Wouldn't allow that to happen.
As if reading his mind, Marcie said, “If you could just let me go back to the excursion pod, I'll send out a communication, and then I'll be gone for—”
“No,” Briar said firmly.
“But it wouldn't even be a problem,” Marcie insisted, her voice strained and panicked. “I wouldn't even need—”
“I said no.” Briar said the word so sharply and so firmly that Marcie's lips snapped shut, bathing the moment in blissful silence.
He hadn't realized how much the woman's voice had been grating against his already raw nerves, but the silence was good. It was healing for a moment to not have to think of anything except getting back to the settlement, and he tried very hard not to think of what he'd seen at the lake. The aquatic beast with Moss’s eyes and face.
He also tried not to think about how good Marcie’s flesh felt under his hand. About the way her eyes looked when she was happy. Or about the tears that slipped down her cheeks now as they traveled silently in the dark.
9
Marcie
They stopped at length to sit under the branching fronds of a purple tree with wide, deep furrowed bark that shimmered slightly white in the light of the moons overhead. Marcie fell against the ground with a great huff, longing to let her body rest.
She’d gone through so much in the previous twelve hours that she didn't know which would give out first: her body or her mind. Not only had her position aboard the SF Jupiter flashed into unsettling reality—knowing that she was expendable to the people that she’d gotten to know for four years was no small thing. But she’d also piloted her first craft, crashed—well almost crashed—on a foreign planet previously unexplored by anyone from Earth, almost gotten eaten by some giant squid-looking monster, saved by a man with green skin who had vines that shot out of his arms, and now she was metaphorically breaking bread with an alien.
The food that Briar presented to her was nothing like anything she'd ever seen before. Sure, it looked like a fruit, specifically like a type of pepo, the rind thick and the flesh inside tender and pale. If she didn't know any better, she would almost bet that if she'd seen this plant on Earth, she easily would have categorized it right up there with cucumbers and watermelons. It even smelled faintly like a cucumber as she held it before her nose and sniffed.
“Is this poisonous?” she asked Briar before flicking her tongue out against the fruit’s flesh and licking it gently.
He gave her a shrug, yet as he bowed his head to take a bite, Marcie could see that the skin around his eyes was wrinkled. He wasn't making fun of her, but she could tell he wanted to.
Briar shrugged his shoulders again.
“It's not poisonous to me,” he said gnawing on the fruit, tearing at the flesh with his teeth. “But for humans . . .” He said the word with a slight slant, giving it both emphasis and a mild amount of derision. “Who knows? Maybe this can be another one of your tests.”
Marcie glowered at him as she nibbled on the rind of the plant. She scraped her teeth against it, feeling the skin peel back. Testing it between her teeth, she chewed the skin softly and found to her surprise that it was delicious. That is, until her lips began to tingle.
Frowning, she went to work peeling the skin from the fruit, leaving only the pale tender flesh in her palm. When she bit into it this time, she got only the sweetness with none of the tingle.
“Well?” Briar asked, arching his brow. “Do you think you'll live through ingesting armelle?”
It was Marcie’s turn to shrug.
“No clue,” she said, masticating her food very rudely and talking around it. But Briar had done the same. Maybe he would overlook her lack of decorum as she ravenously at the plant. “I guess we’ll have to see.”
“I suppose so,” said Brian with a small smirk. When he offered her another of the strange plants, Marcie took it gratefully, quick to peel it and devour it.
Their humble meal finished, Briar discarded Marcie’s peels into the foliage and then, to her surprise, grabbed her hand. Lacing his fingers through hers, he started traversing the path that only he could see in the dark.
Feeling the strange man’s palm against her sent a jolt of electricity through Marcie’s body, and she jerked away.
“What are you doing?” she asked, holding her hand against her chest as though the Verdan had burned her.
Briar reached up and rubbed it his neck, looking so much like a man from Earth in the faint light filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead that Marcie’s entire body began to shake. She felt disoriented suddenly; her mind was grappling to come to terms with the reality that she was now presented with—life existed in the universe outside of Earth, and she was standing with one such life form. Alone, on a planet lightyears from her own.
“I didn't mean to offend you,” Briar said, “if such a gesture is offensive on your world. I only thought it perhaps a more pleasant way to guide you through the darkness then by your arm, like a prisoner.”
Hearing that word—prisoner—was like dousing Marcie’s mind in ice cold water.
She sharpened, straightening her spine and holding her hand back out to him confidently, no matter how much the touch had reminded her of Mark. No matter how much she found herself discomfited by the fact that the Verdan’s touch was pleasant and comforting. If her only options were holding Briar’s hand and walking with him freely or having him grasp her arm like a captive, she would choose the former every time.
“It's alright,” she said by way of apology. “I just . . . It's an intimate gesture where we come from. Where I c
ome from,”
“Intimate?” asked Briar, slamming his brows together. “Intimate as in close? Because I would think touching any part of your body, by those terms, would be intimate. And we’ve done that already.”
His words made warmth flair into Marcie’s cheeks.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said wanting the subject to drop. She was not about to mention anything close to emotions or sexual sensations in front of this alien. No way, no how.
“Huh,” said Briar as he guided her through the dark landscape. “Your people must be a very distant sort, for flesh-to-flesh contact to disquiet you so.”
“Yeah,” said Marcie, her gaze focused anywhere but Briar’s face. “I suppose so.”
They traveled quietly through the night, the only sounds surrounding them that of the various nocturnal creatures that skittered on limbs overhead or flew through the night air, their piercing cries darting through the darkness like heralds guiding Briar and Marcie ever forward. She had no vantage point from which to gaze out over the terrain, to find the landmarks she had planned on using to get back to the excursion pod. She didn't know what to do.
Looking down at her watch, her heart plummeted. It was still dark, still the black of night. And though her legs were burning, and she knew they had traveled for a long time, Marcie’d had no concept of the amount of time that had passed.
Ten hours. They had been walking through the dark for ten hours.
Fatigue slammed against her body like a wrecking ball, and she squeezed Briar’s palm, urging him to stop.
“Can we rest for a while?” she asked as she paused to lean against the trunk of a tree.
The Verdan sucked in a sharp breath and pulled her against his chest, yanking her away from the tree’s bark.
“Hey! What the fuck are you—”
“Look,” Briar said, nodding at the tree from which he had just pulled Marcie away.
Where she’d been leaning, exactly in the shape of her body, protruded thick, vicious, sharp thorns. Marcie gazed at the glistening protrusions, watching with wide eyes as they slowly retracted back into the tree.
“Defense mechanism,” explained Briar. “Meant to keep the fruits safe from scavengers.”
“Well, it certainly seems as though the mechanism is doing its job,” Marcie said shivering at the thought of all of those thorns piercing her tender flesh.
“I would say so,” agreed Briar. And though Marcie couldn’t see his face from where her cheek pressed against his chest, she could tell by the sound of his voice that he was smiling. But when he spoke again, there was no mirth to his tone. “Do you really need a rest? The night is only half over, and—”
“Half over,” Marcie said, cutting off his words. Dread made her chest feel tight. “We've been walking for ten hours! How is the night only half over?”
Briar stepped back from her, giving her a blank look. “It just is. The sun won't rise for a while yet, and when the Rising happens . . .” The Verdan’s voice trailed away.
There was something he wasn't telling Marcie, that much was obvious.
He looked down at her his jaw firm. “I don't particularly want to carry you all the way back to the settlement, so I suppose if you need rest, I'll build us shelter here.”
“Um . . .” Marcie gave a pointed look at the tree that produced thorns when one brushed against it. “Maybe there's somewhere a little safer?”
Briar smiled at her. “Not scared now, are you? Surely thorns cannot be enough to keep you in line and keep you at my side,”
Marcie shivered at the way he said ‘at my side.’
She nibbled on her lip, searching for something to say. “I just don't feel particularly safe here, to be honest.”
Briar smiled at her and said nothing, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her through the darkness again. But this time, they didn't just go through the thick foliage of the forest that surround them. Now, they were going up a steep incline that lead to a sharp outcropping of rocks.
Marcie’s heart thudded in her throat. He wouldn’t . . . She gave Briar a terrified look, but he kept his gaze averted from hers.
Sending his vines out to wrap around a tree, Briar went to the edge of the cliff, wrapped his arm around Marcie’s waist, and jumped.
Marcie screamed, clinging to Briar for dear life. The feeling of falling weightlessly through space was mitigated only by the strong, warm arm of the Verdan around her waist, and Marcie was surprised to find that despite the fear of dying, she felt . . . safe.
They didn't fall very far, and instead of banging against the face of the cliff like she had expected, they swung gently into a divot in the rocks. Briar made sure Marcie was steady on her feet—a task that required the Verdan’s help a few times, because Marcie’s knees felt weak as jelly. Once she was steady, he eased her back against the rocks and released her waist.
As he called his vines back into the strange holes in his arms, Marcie assessed their surroundings.
The depression in which they stood was more than just a break in the cliff—it was the mouth of a cave, it's blackness going deep into the rocks.
“It's a cave,” said Marcie, stating the obvious.
“There's definitely not much plant life down here for you to worry about,” said Briar with a small smile. “Other than me.”
Marcie’s brow wrinkled at the words but she followed Briar as he lead her deeper into the cave, his glowing fingertips lighting their way. He stopped short at a small stack of blankets piled neatly against the wall.
“You’ve been here before?” Marcie asked, eyeing him as he worked at unfolding the blankets and setting them out. Her gaze following the glow of his fingertips.
“I don't often jump off of cliffs and just hope for the best,” he said, grinning at her. “Yes, I come here pretty often to observe the sky, and sometimes just to be alone.”
Marcie gave Briar an affirmative noise and sat on a rock close to him, not knowing what else to say.
After he finished spreading the blankets on the floor of the cave, the Verdan sat down and patted as spot close to him.
Marcie gulped as she assessed Briar’s scantily clad body in the light of the silver moons shining into the cave, her body acutely realizing just how long it had been since she’d been with a man.
Steeling herself, she walked across the stones and sat.
10
Briar
“Tell me about your world,” said Briar. He knew the Earth woman needed to sleep, and he knew she would probably not respond to his command favorably. But something in him craved more knowledge of her. Not of her people or even her planet, as his question seemed to suggest. No, what he really wanted was to know more about Marcie.
Marcie rolled over on her side and propped herself up on her elbows. Even in the faint light, Briar could see the wetness in her eyes.
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t have anything good to say right now.” A tear broke past the fortress of her eyes and slid down her cheek.
Without thinking, Briar reached over and brushed the wetness away with his thumb, feeling like an absolute fool. Of all the things in the universe to ask her, he’d asked about her world. About the people who would choose to abandon her in the Verdant Lands, if she didn’t successfully complete their little tests.
Anger stirred in his breast, but he squashed it.
What he was feeling right now . . . this stirring of his vines . . . it extended to his seeds. He’d never felt anything like it before, and feeling it now frightened him.
“Tell me about you instead,” Marcie said, sliding across the blankets to nuzzle against Briar’s chest.
The motion surprised him, and his entire body went rigid. He knew there was a chance that Marcie was using this intimate moment between them to milk him for information about the Verda, but some primal part of his being needed to submit to her. He longed to give her whatever she wanted. Gods, even his body, if she would have it.
The thought startled him.
; Briar wasn’t a neophyte. He knew how planting season worked . . . He’d just never found a Verdan woman with whom he’d wanted to plant. Had never felt the calling to do so, even, until this moment. How was it possible that he was feeling such things about Marcie, a woman who was not his species?
She stirred against him then, curling into his chest, her breaths coming warm and wet against his skin. He shuddered at the sensation.
Trying to distract his body, he asked, “Why do you want to know about me?”
Marcie drew back, and cool air replaced her warmth, making Briar frown.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said, her eyes wide as they ran over every inch of Briar’s body. “But . . . I just feel compelled to know. If that makes any sense.”
It makes perfect sense, thought Briar as he adjusted on the blankets, feeling awkward under the Earth woman’s scrutiny. He was feeling a similar sort of strange pull.
“Let’s see,” he said, rolling over onto his back. To his surprise, Marcie laid her head on his chest, her arm draped loosely over his waist. A flush ran through Briar’s body at her touch, and he began speaking of the first thing that came to his mind. “With the next rising, planting season will begin.”
As soon as he said the words, he regretted them. In such close proximity to Marcie . . . feeling the sensations he was currently feeling . . . Planting season was the last topic he should have brought up.
But, fortunately, her question did not pertain to that.
“What is a ‘rising,’?” asked Marcie. Her voice was soft and dreamy, though no longer tired, Briar noticed.
“It is when the sun comes over the horizon,” he said, his fingers gently brushing against her dark brown curls. “When light returns to our world, and the moons sink.”
“Huh,” Marcie said, laughing slightly. “I was expecting it to be something more . . . well, alien.” She laughed again. “We actually call it something similar.”
“Oh?” asked Briar, breathing in the scent of her warm scalp. “And what do you humans call it?”
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