Everything about this creature seemed so starkly in opposition to myself. Small where I was large. Soft where I was hard. Delicate. Silken. Sweet.

There was a word for it. An important one.

I almost seized it before it was lost to the river. I snapped my jaws in irritation, and the little star gasped again and tried to shrink away from me.

I was scaring it.

“I don’t mean to,” I growled. “I am not trying to frighten you.”

I breathed out slowly and jerked my head away from the little star. I turned my attention to the river’s edge, studying it. The moonlight was bright tonight and I caught sight of my own reflection in the still water.

I nearly reared back with the shock of it.

I’d forgotten what I looked like, but even so I knew I did not look like myself.

I forced myself to confront the creature staring back at me. One blazing, maddened eye glowed like an ember in the water. The place where the other eye should have been, where I was convinced I’d had another eye before, was a mangled, dug-out mess of tissue. My hair was a harsh tangle about my shoulders, and somehow I knew that was all wrong, that I did not usually wear my hair that way.

A braid. It should have been fragrant with oil, shining and combed and arranged into a long braid, then tied at the end with a sleek metal clasp.

That was how a Bohnebregg male of my standing wore his hair.

A Bohnebregg male...

I tried to hold onto that thought, to follow it through the murk to some sort of conclusion, to connect it to other information about my life or this river or this world. But it slipped away. With a foul, frustrated grunt, I thwapped my tail against the water’s surface, shattering the image of a male I only halfway recognized and entirely rejected.

The little star said nothing, but I registered a tension in its hand as it tried to pull away from me. With a growl, I turned to face it once more.

“I will not hurt you,” I ground out. “I know I have done wrong by you. But I cannot...” My throat ached, and my voice sharpened in response to the feeling. “I cannot go back to the darkness without you.”

The little star stared back at me, mute and guarded. I forced myself to loosen my hold on its hand. Just slightly. Enough to indicate I did not wish to squeeze too hard.

But not enough to let it go.

“I will take care of you,” I rasped. “I will protect you, honour you, put your life above my own. You are my salvation and I will let no harm befall you. But make no mistake...”

A deep, primitive instinct spread dark wings inside me. An instinct that whispered, take, treasure, hoard. My spine prickled and my blood heated.

“Make no mistake. I will keep you. No matter the cost.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Suvi

The alien led me along the riverbank for what felt like hours, never letting go of my hand. It seemed as if he was looking for something but he didn’t even know what it was. Sometimes he would stop and look around, eye bright, as if on the verge of realizing something, only to jerk his head forward again with a deep growl and continue plodding onward. The only sounds were the gentle sloshing of the water, buzzing insects among the rushes, our footsteps, and the heavy scrape of his tail through the sand. I kept pace with him. Walking held the chill mostly at bay and gave me something to focus on. One foot in front of the other. Over and over again.

But I couldn’t keep it up forever. I slowed and started stumbling more often, then limping, pain radiating from where blisters had formed on my heels in my wet boots. The alien noticed and scooped me up into his arms without a word. I should have fought him. I should have wriggled and scratched him and screamed.

But I didn’t.

Adrenaline had abandoned me, left me limp and empty. I was cold and so, so tired. Everything hurt. And for a moment, it was easier to be carried by a monster than to continue being in pain.

But even the alien seemed to be faltering. Tension crept into his snout, and he walked more slowly than before. I thought of how he’d crashed into the surface of the other planet, how he’d created some sort of inter-planetary portal out of thin air, and wondered how much energy such feats would take. It all seemed to be catching up to him, his steps getting heavier and heavier. My heart sped up, my brain instantly beginning to examine all the ways I might use his new exhaustion to my advantage. Maybe he’d sleep, and I could creep away and... and...

And what?

I had no idea where I was or how to survive here. And it was unlikely I’d be able to hide from him for long. He’d pursue me, and even in his current state there was no doubt he’d be far faster than I was. Despair pressed down on me like fog, and I grew even more listless against his chest. I let myself sink into the warmth radiating off of him because there was nothing else to do. And maybe it wasn’t too bad, maybe it wasn’t too dangerous to relieve myself of a little bit of suffering. Just for now.

I must have dozed off for a while, because when I stirred and blinked my eyes, the landscape had changed. The river’s shore had grown rockier, and instead of just reeds there were what looked like massive trees clustered a little ways back from the rocks and boulders. The moons appeared to be in a different position, too, assuming that we hadn’t vastly changed course. I gulped and shifted, earning me a sharp downward look from the alien. I froze under his stare.

It scared me that I’d gotten so comfortable that I’d actually fallen asleep like this. Who knew where he was taking me?

Something told me even he didn’t know.

He paused, turning his head this way and that, sniffing the air but never quite seeming satisfied. Eventually, he turned towards the trees, taking me with him.

The trees were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. They had huge, tall, tapered trunks. But instead of branches or leaves or needles, at the top were giant white puffs streaked with what appeared to be metal, just like the river reeds I’d seen before but on a massive scale. My botanist brain was too tired to try to figure out how the trees might have worked. The fluffy tops of the trees, silver-white and gleaming with hard threads under the stars, gave the grove an oddly dream-like appearance, like I was being carried into the hushed illustration of a fairytale story book.

The alien carried me into the centre of the grove. Shadows pooled here, deep wells of darkness between streaks of light. He put me down, and it was pretty gentle, which I hoped was a good sign for whatever was coming next.

“Now what?” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest and shivering. Even though it was a relief to be out of his arms, I was already missing his heat. At least, my body was. My wet feet ached, blisters twinging beneath my socks. I rubbed my hands up and down my upper arms, hating the fact that I didn’t even have a shirt anymore.

The alien didn’t answer me. He peered around the grove with what seemed to be a vaguely thoughtful expression, then went over to a tree. He dug his claws into the side of the tree, slicing horizontally and then pulling downwards, tearing away a long, wide strip of what appeared to be a flexible sort of bark. I watched him in silence, lips pursed, as he did it again and again. Once he had several sheets of the stuff, he got to work arranging them together against the side of a boulder. He drilled holes in them with his claws, using long, durable blades of grass to bind the sheets together into a protective sort of lean-to.

Then he stood back and looked at me, something expectant gleaming in his eye.