By the skies, she’s breakable. It made me nervous.

She seemed to enjoy the fish at least, so that was something. I knew I was capable of feeding her and injecting at least a little strength into that ridiculously tiny body. After eating several helpings, she started touching her throat then pointing to the river.

“It’s water,” I confirmed. “You can drink it.”

Assuming her kind drank water at all, anyway. I went to the river and used my power to raise a spout of water to my snout, taking a long sip. It was clean and good.

Her mouth twisted, and she moved her head back and forth. She pointed to the river again, then to the fire, speaking rapidly.

“The water will put the fire out,” I told her slowly. She seemed to know about fire, but maybe she did not know that water would kill it? She seemed apprehensive about drinking water at all, so maybe there was no water where she came from.

Perhaps she wants me to put the fire out now... But then why touch her own throat and mimic thirst?

She started speaking again, pointing at the river then the fire, over and over again, and then miming cupping her hands above the flames.

Understanding dawned, and I felt like a fool. I’d told her that water would put out the fire, which she undoubtedly already knew.

She was asking for hot water.

“Cold water’s better,” I muttered, but I did not argue further. I drew a large bubble of water from the river then held it suspended above the fire. The little star watched in what seemed to be stunned silence, her eyes fixed to the orb of water above the flames.

I kept waiting for her to tell me the water was hot enough, but she didn’t. It made me uneasy, thinking of water that hot going down her throat. Maybe her skin was more durable than I’d thought.

The water had been bubbling steadily and releasing steam for some time before she finally indicated it was hot enough. I levitated the orb of water away from the fire, but she made no move to touch it. She mimed burning herself again and shook her head.

“What? You’re the one who made me get it this hot!” I said, frowning in confusion. The movement made the scar tissue of my left eye pull, and I grimaced. To speed up the cooling process, I manipulated the orb, making it into a very thin, flat rectangle of water that would release heat more easily. Once it had been suspended for some time and had no doubt grown tepid, the little star finally approached it.

She had no cup, and her hands would do a piss-poor job, I was sure.

“Just open your mouth,” I said softly, twisting my fingers until the water had transformed into a suspended spout, ready to pour into her mouth. She licked her lips, her gaze flickering between me and the water, before she opened her mouth and waited.

She’s thirsty. She just wants water.

I reminded myself of that as my cocks jerked behind my slit. There was something so softly submissive, so erotic about the way she’d opened her mouth to me, waiting for me to pour into it.

I focused all my energy on controlling the flow of the water instead of on the way the hidden place at my groin felt swollen and needy. Even with my intense focus, the flow of water was a little too much for her. Some of it gushed out of her mouth, coursing down her chin, throat, and breasts in shining rivers. The image of myself bent over her and quenching my own thirst by licking water from her skin with my forked tongue slammed through me so hard it felt like something that had come from outside my own mind. I pushed it roughly aside and clenched my jaw, praying to a god whose name I could not recall that she might be done soon.

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.