by Ruby Ryan
His personality had changed in the past day; he was more, I don't know, normal. Before he'd seemed like a foreigner trying to translate words in his head, and then translate his response. Every eye-blink and word coming almost unnaturally.
Concussions are crazy, I thought, shaking my head.
"So now that you've had some wine, you want to tell me why you're all alone out here?" he asked, arching one dark eyebrow.
The question didn't feel as invasive as it had earlier today. With Eric's easy charm and disarming smile I damn near wanted to spill my guts to him.
"I'm a loner." I looked around the room for the words. "I just like it that way. I don't mind people, and certainly have friends, but at the end of the day I like to return to solitude."
"Solitude," Eric said, tasting the word.
"That's life out here in nowhere," I said, shifting my legs. It was impossible to make the movement without brushing up against him again. He had all that room on the other side of the couch, yet chose to sit this close. Where I could smell him, a combination of musk and the deodorant I'd lent him. "Better than living in a city."
"In a city," he repeated. He stared off at nothing for a long while, until I thought he might not say anything at all. "I miss my home."
His words were heavy with meaning. I paused before pressing him. This was my chance, so I had to be careful.
"What are you running from?"
His head whipped around to face me, eyes flames of intensity. I held up a hand soothingly.
"It's alright. I'm not gunna call the cops on ya. But it's obvious you're afraid of something. I've seen people who are afraid of hospitals, and your insistence on avoiding ours was more than that. Ya know? So, I don't mind you staying here a day or two until you remember everything. Or until you're ready to go. But I do wanna know what's really going on."
He looked at me then, really looking at me with genuine consideration. He wanted to tell me, I could see it, yet he was afraid.
"It's alright." I put a hand on his thigh, and was shocked at how solid he felt. "You can tell me, Eric. I won't hurt you."
The conflict raged behind his eyes, and I thought I had him convinced. But then he made his choice, the silent decision passing over his eyes like a veil.
"I'm not running from anything," he said, and somehow I knew it was the truth. "You are very beautiful."
I almost spit out my wine. "Excuse me?"
His eyes moved over my body like fingernails, slow and caressing. "You are an extremely attractive woman. And yet you are out here, in solitude, by yourself without a partner. Is something wrong?" He furrowed his brow with concern. "Is there a reason you choose this life?"
I don't know why, but the question didn't offend me--though it normally would have. Maybe it was the day of hard work we spent together. Or maybe it was the wine.
Or maybe it's because Eric is fucking gorgeous. Good looks gave someone a lot of leeway.
"I had a partner, a husband, for years." I tried to roll my shoulders in a no-big-deal gesture. "He died. And I didn't want to start all over again. Dating, or courting. The awkward period where neither of you knows where something is going."
Like right now.
"I'm not against, you know, finding someone," I added. "I've just never had a good opportunity with the right man."
Eric took a sip of wine while he processed all of that. Sorting it into columns and storing it away like a computer program.
"I think that is a shame," he finally said with a nod. I waited for him to say more, but he only stared at me with that same intense gaze.
"Why is that a shame?"
He twisted on the couch, pulling half of one leg up with him, brushing against my thigh again. His eyes never left mine, and his face softened with care.
"As I said, you are an attractive woman. Such beauty should not go unappreciated. Like a rose garden that nobody has ever seen."
The line was cheesy, similar to something I'd read in The King's Officer, but it made me blush like it was the most romantic thing I'd ever heard. I snorted and looked away to cover the growing heat on my cheeks, but I could still feel Eric's eyes on the side of my body.
Do it, a voice inside my head insisted. Make a move. Jump his bones right here. We'd both had two glasses of wine, we were sitting close together, and he was giving me goddamn compliments like he wanted to take me into the bedroom and ravage me. All I had to do was make the tiniest move and I could have what I wanted--which I did want, I realized, wanted desperately in my chest and loins.
But that simple gesture was too much for me, and I remained paralyzed on the couch.
Eric put his hand on my leg.
Instantly, with the kind of immediacy of a light turning on, I imagined him making a move. Pushing forward to kiss me, his lips warm and soft, then more forceful as his need for me became known. He dropped the glass of wine but I didn't care, couldn't care, only had a singular ability to feel his body pushing mine back against the couch until all I saw was his olive face and those eyes like shining almonds looking at me with lust.
Eric removed his hand from my leg, and then the image was gone.
I was panting like I'd run a mile in the snow, flushed and spent. Eric was still staring into my eyes, and it almost seemed like he knew what I was thinking, that it was a shared experience and not something in my mind alone.
And even though that was ridiculous, I blushed deeper at the thought. I wanted it, for him to take charge and take me, the way I'd imagined in the kitchen or there on the couch or a hundred different ways, so long as he put his lips on my skin and tasted me like I were as delicious and intoxicating as the wine.
He continued to stare back, and I was almost certain he knew what I was thinking.
The vulnerability in such a moment made me feel raw and exposed, in a way I wasn't fully ready for. And even though Eric insisted he wasn't running from anything, I suddenly had to.
"I'm going to get ready for bed," I said, quickly rising. Eric stared up at me with a calmness I certainly didn't feel.
"Sweet dreams, Jo."
Where did you com from, Eric? I wondered as I went to the bedroom, closing the door against any further thoughts.
8
ARIX
I slept, and when I slept I dreamed.
Karak did not have dreams. Nor sleep, for that matter. So it was profoundly shocking to close my eyes and surrender to exhaustion, and then experience several hours of vivid hallucinations.
I dreamed of Karak, though I still possessed my shifted human body on my home planet, a ridiculous juxtaposition that made no sense. I was running through the capital city, tall glass buildings on either side framing my route. I did not know what I was running from, but I knew if I was not fast enough something terrible would happen.
I woke on the couch covered in cold sweat, another unusual phenomenon of this new body.
I am becoming too human. Karak shifting did indeed result in consequences such as this, which is why shifting was typically not ideal for more than a few days at a time. I would need to take care to limit how long I possessed this fleshy vessel.
I felt my sexual organ underneath the blankets, stiff and demanding.
There was another dream, I realized. One before the one on Karak. Jo visiting me in the night, a silent shadow in the dark. She'd sat on the foot of the couch and ran a hand along my leg, fingernails caressing the lines of my muscles. And then she was removing her clothes, and sliding into the blankets with me, warmth spreading wherever our bodies touched.
I shivered. Too long in this body indeed.
I got off the couch and reached out with my mind. Jo was still sleeping, though only barely; her body was already stirring in preparation for her morning alarm, which would go off in four minutes.
Today needed to be more productive. And it would only be that way if I had some of my own solitude.
I pushed a trickle of emotion through the telepathic link with Jo--and stopped. I could sense her dreams, which were f
illing her with sexual lust.
Dream about me.
I felt a moment of joy, then paradoxical shame. Karak scouts were forbidden from any sort of sexual contact with a foreign species. Seeing my own human desires reflected back at me was a strange warning. That things had possibly gone too far.
I was a Karak scout, and I must not waver.
Being careful not to dip too deeply into her thoughts, I pushed a trickle of greater exhaustion through the link. Her body relaxed, her breaths coming slower. She would not wake for several hours, now.
I tip-toed (I was finally getting used to these human idioms) into the bedroom and disabled her alarm clock. Then I went back into the other room to grab my coat, but my hand froze before touching it.
Light from this planet's sun was just beginning to illuminate the landscape outside Jo's cabin, a painting of grey and white. But before I left, there was something I needed to do.
I closed my eyes--human eyes, mental eyes, deeper Karak eyes--and focused. I felt the particles in my body swirl and rotate, atoms rearranging in a uniform and controlled manner. The space around me brightened as my body's luminance filled the room.
I was Karak again.
I tried to take a deep breath to savor the familiarity, but of course that was a human response and I had no lungs in my photon form. Shaking my head--again, a human action, but the idea of it in my Karak mind--I slowly shifted back into my human form.
Shifting back should be done twice a day, I decided, pulling on my shoes. With the feeling of being Karak again still fresh in my mind, I set out into the forest.
*
The Karak have phenomenal senses of direction. It comes naturally to us based on the magnetic core of our home planet; it was no more difficult than a human pointing at earth's morning sun and saying, "That is east."
But in human form my sense of direction came with more difficulty.
I gleaned a significant amount of information from Jo's computer while she was in town the previous morning. Humans were technologically advanced indeed to already have a global information network, one of the few species we have experienced to possess such a luxury. Perhaps that is what caused them to advance so quickly in the past 50,000 years. The data gatherer in me wished to do more research into such a thing, but I didn't have the time right then.
Without Karak directional senses, figuring out where to go was difficult. I had been only partially conscious in my newly shifted human form when Jo brought me to her cabin; the twists and turns of the road were blurred in my memory.
But Karak scouts were thrifty and resourceful.
I followed the gravel driveway of Jo's property until it reached the paved road which had been our original meeting point. I remembered Jo turning left onto her property, so I turned and walked toward the right. How long had we been in the truck after she hit me? Only a few minutes, I thought, but that meant several miles of walking. Jo would likely wake before I returned, but that was not much of a concern.
So long as she does not call the police, I thought. She promised she wouldn't, and I believed her with a powerful trust. She will help me.
Afraid that I might get hit by another vehicle (which was an irrational human thought, since I could see them coming from a long distance on the straight road) I walked in the slushy snow on the shoulder of the road. Soon my boots were soaked from the effort of stomping through it, but it was better than striding through the foot-deep snow closer to the woods. And beyond the fear of physical injury, avoiding other humans was still the best plan. I did not wish to stray from that.
A cold wind blew down the road, like tiny needles pricking the skin of my face and arms. I realized I had forgotten my coat; I'd left it on the peg inside while I was shifting back into Karak form. Fortunately I would not be gone long; no more than an hour, surely. And if I needed to, I could run at any time to increase my internal temperature. Human bodies were remarkably robust. The scout in me was excited to experiment with such a mechanism.
I never saw any vehicles on the road. Jo was right; the town of Elijah, Wyoming was in the middle of nowhere. I counted myself lucky to have crash-landed here instead of somewhere more crowded; imagining landing in the middle of New York City or Dallas or any number of other populated city centers I'd researched on the internet made me shiver in a way completely unrelated to the cold.
The sun had risen above the treetops by the time I reached the place. Black skid marks in the road made it obvious, and then I was trekking into the forest in the direction of my craft.
As I stomped through the snow, I ran through everything in my mind. My craft was supposed to park in a high orbit above the planet. It could have crashed into something in space, or ran out of fuel for orbital deceleration. The latter was unlikely; most simulations I ran in my imagination ended with my craft sling-shotting around and away from the planet, not into it.
In case of an emergency, my craft would have sent distress signals back to Karak and to the nearest scouting craft. Even if my craft collided with something in orbit, that signal would have gotten away. The thought was reassuring.
Finding me on the planet's surface, however...
As I walked, my mind kept returning to Jo. The warmth of being cared for by a stranger, the way she smiled as if she was thinking of a joke nobody else had heard. And her body, thighs thick with muscle and a small waist begging to be gripped with both hands...
I shook off the thoughts and focused on my steps, which were growing colder as I walked. The snow was deeper here in the woods where nobody had cleared it away. I spotted straight lines of compacted snow and moved over there, which sped my journey and allowed me avoid getting snow in my boots.
The clearing appeared ahead.
Broken branches and splintered tree trunks marked where my craft had crashed. But the craft itself was gone, leaving only a circle of brown dirt where the snow had melted. I looked around frantically, feeling my pulse rising with panic.
My craft was here.
And now it was gone.
I returned to the trail of compacted snow and examined it with new eyes. They looked like tire tracks, leading from the clearing straight back to the road. I found two more additional tracks a short distance away. Two vehicles had come, and taken my craft home with them.
Somewhere, there were humans who knew what I was.
I groaned with deeper agony. A Karak scout's greatest directive was to not be discovered. Death was more ideal than that, as extreme as that was. It was impossible to accurately study a species if they knew you were watching.
For several minutes that failure overwhelmed me more than my selfish needs.
Finally my body began shaking from the cold. My craft wasn't here; there wasn't anything more I could do. Time to leave.
But first, I would shift back into my photon form, which was impervious to such temperature concerns. Yet as I focused, directing my Karak energy into organizing my atoms differently, I was unable to make the shift. I tried and tried again, each time running into an invisible wall.
My body is trembling too violently to shift back into Karak form.
I tried jogging to warm my body, but the snow made it difficult. I wrapped my arms around my chest and shivered all the way to the road. Then I started running, a strange sensation in a new body. I felt the blood pulsing through my veins and increasing my temperature slightly, but it wasn't enough. I was still trembling, and my fingers felt like they were being stabbed by knives. I held one hand out and looked at the tips, which were pale bordering on blue.
I tried shifting again, failed, and tried once more.
I began to worry.
If I died in my human form, that would be the end of that. Karak required consciousness to shift, and I would remain in this human form as my body rotted away. The thought of my atoms being given to this planet so far away from home was unnerving.
I jogged faster, though it didn't seen to help.
Soon I was nauseous from the cold, and had to
slow again to a walk to avoid vomiting. Each breath pained my lungs, pulling precious warmth into the vapor I exhaled. The robust human biology no longer seemed so hardy after all.
I'm going to die.
The thought invaded my mind when I was still not even halfway home. I was going to die unless someone drove by and found me, an unlikely occurrence.
I'm going to die on a foreign planet.
Karak scouts knew the risks of their calling. Always on the outskirts of the Dominion's reach, venturing farther and into deeper unknown than anyone before them. It was a constant worry in the back of every scout's mind.
Yet I had never truly understood it. Not with the immediate, pulsing knowledge I had right then.
My feet were slowing. Each stride felt like I was moving through water, my legs unnaturally sluggish. I could barely keep my eyes open.
Jo, I tried reaching out, though she was too far away to touch. Jo, I need you.
Help me.
Please.
I took three more slow steps, fell to my knees, and collapsed.
9
JOANNA
I was furious when I realized I'd somehow slept through my alarm; the dreams I'd had probably had something to do with that, my subconscious refusing to wake to reality. Dreams of Eric's head between my legs, tongue rotating so fast I couldn't breathe while I gripped his raven hair...
There was too much to get done. Wasting daylight was something you just didn't do.
My fury dimmed into disappointment when I realized Eric was gone. Not gone out on the property fixing the next item on my list, but actually gone, gone. I sighed and resigned myself to the fact that it was probably for the best.
And then I noticed that the coat I'd given him was still on its peg. And when I went outside I saw fresh boot prints in the snow, heading down the driveway.
Down the driveway, and to the road.
And farther down the road, without stopping.
I sprinted back to my truck when I realized Eric was doing something stupid. It was like I could hear him in my head, calling for help, begging me to save him.
