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.

We stopped several times to eat and for me to rest. He seemed confused every time I asked for him to boil my drinking water for me, but he did it anyway, thankfully, even though he often turned away when I began to drink it. So far, neither the water nor the fish seemed to be having any adverse effects on my human body, one small mercy I could try to be thankful for. The alien ate a lot, but he didn’t take much time to rest like I did. When I sat in the shade to take a breather, he prowled the banks of the river, hands knotted behind his back in a shockingly human gesture of intense, frustrated focus. Sometimes, when he seemed to reach a pinnacle of exasperation, he’d abruptly turn and stride towards me and put his hands on my body. He’d clasp my shoulders, or rub a few strands of my hair between his fingers and thumb, staring at my face like it could tell him what to do.

I was never really sure what he saw there.

Towards the afternoon, when I realized I was getting a sunburn and I started trying to ineffectually shade myself by holding my boots above my head, he noticed. Wordlessly, he lifted the wing closest to me and held it over my head as we walked, creating my own personal parasol of green flesh. His wingspan was very large, but in order to shade me fully he had to get quite a bit closer to me. I eyed him from the side, taking in the long, powerful line of his arm and the hard planes of his chest and abdomen. With the emerald scales so hard and shiny, his chest reminded me more of sculpted armour than actual flesh.

When we stopped for an evening meal at dusk, I let out a weary sigh and started regretting my too-proud-to-be-carried stance. I didn’t want to rely on the alien, but maybe I was just making myself suffer needlessly at this point. My feet were throbbing, and even though I hadn’t been wearing my boots, my blisters looked worse than before – angry and red. Fantastic. I didn’t have a first aid kit and I couldn’t even look at the plants to figure out which might have had natural antiseptic properties because I was on a fucking alien planet with no clue as to what was going on.

The alien built a small fire and boiled water for me, as had become our routine. But instead of letting it fully cool to drink, I directed him with limp gestures to dump warm water on my feet instead. He followed my pointed finger and when he noticed the redness, his eye immediately narrowed. In an instant, he was on his knees in the sand before me, gripping my ankles firmly and lifting my feet to inspect the blisters on the backs of my heels, the water levitating beside us for the moment.

“Yeah, this is why I have to boil the water. That river is teeming with bacteria my human body can’t handle,” I sighed at him. I should have taken off my boots last night, the moment I felt the blisters beginning to form. Sleeping with the soaking wet socks and boots when I’d developed open wounds on my feet had been a catastrophically stupid decision. Not that it had necessarily even been a conscious decision in the moment, but still.

Ugh. If my feet weren’t so sore I would have kicked myself.

“Staring at it isn’t going to help. Unless you have magic healing power on top of your interplanetary teleportation and telekinesis abilities,” I muttered peevishly. I tried to pull my ankles from his grasp but it was no use. He was too strong, and I was too fucking tired.

His expression was unreadable as he examined my feet from every possible angle. Eventually, though he didn’t exactly seem satisfied, he stopped his inspection in order to slowly let the warm water rinse my skin. I gasped, flinching against his hold at the hot sting of it.

He kept his hold firm as he controlled the flow of water, creating twin taps in the air that slowly poured over my feet. His thumbs gently rubbed my inner ankles. I realized he was softly muttering something, something that almost sounded soothing. He called me a little star again, and then his eye met mine.

“Suvi.”

Goosebumps broke out over my skin, and I swallowed hard.

“I wish I hadn’t told you my name,” I said quietly. “I wish you’d keep calling me aerra bai and that I could be just as unknown to you as you are to me.”

But that was impossible now. He knew my name. He knew what I needed to eat and drink. He knew what my body looked like when it tore and when it burned.

He knew too much and nothing at all.

After rinsing my feet, he pushed my knees towards my chest, saying something that seemed to be a reminder to keep my feet elevated. He’d get no complaints there. I wasn’t about to stick my newly-cleaned blisters in the sand. Leaning back on my elbows, my dripping feet in the air, I watched him as he sliced several river rushes at their stalks and brought them back. He pulled soft fluff from the cottony tops, avoiding the metal strands, and once my feet were dry he pressed the white stuff to the blisters on my heels, binding them in place with long strips of the green stalks. It was actually a pretty decent patch job. The cottony stuff was very gauze-like and he’d tied the strips of green stalks around my feet with a precise competence.