She had to know some of it. My conviction, of course. But she did not know this. This curl of vicious hunger that made me feel more animal than man.

Empire help me, I did not deserve her.

I was going to do everything in my power to keep her anyway.

“Seriously. Thank you for this,” she said as she came back to me. “I would have gotten super sunburned if I hadn’t had it.”

I took the hat and held it awkwardly in front of my groin. If she saw my erection, she’d no doubt know just how wrong I was inside. She’d know I’d been staring at her backside, feral and white-eyed and hard-cocked, and she’d go running back to the warden the first chance that she got.

“Hey, your eyes are all white again,” she said, shading her face with her hand and squinting up at me.

“Yours are still white,” I told her in rather defensive response.

“Well, yeah!” she said with a little laugh. “They always are, at least around the outside.”

I marvelled at that. I could not imagine going through life feeling my emotions so keenly at all times that my eyes were permanently white. I was not sure I would survive it.

Zohro had said that humans were weak. But this could not be true if Cherry could smile and chatter and go through life with her eyes gone-white and her insides tempestuous with wild feeling at all times. How did she even sleep?

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she did not require a new bed at all.

Human females are powerful indeed.

Powerful or not, I’d apparently been right about the possibility of human sunburn, and was glad I’d given her my hat. I was beginning to notice the sting of sunburn on my own ears now, but paid it little mind, thinking of more important things. Cherry would need her own hat for daily use. I had a couple of different ones, but they were all too large to be comfortable for her on a long-term basis.

Except…

“Come on,” I grunted, turning to follow Tarion to the shuldu stalls. I was pretty sure that it was still there…

And there it was, hung on a low hook, untouched for cycles now and much too small for me.

But not too small for Cherry.

I patted dust off of it, hoping it didn’t smell too badly of shuldu, and passed it over to her.

“You can have this one.”

“Oh! Thank you!” She tried it on, then gave me a smile that for some terrifying reason made my heart feel as if it had stopped. It clattered rather painfully back to life, loping unsteadily in my chest as I studied her in the old hat, memories surging up against a present, a female, I never could have seen coming.

“Perfect fit!” she said, still beaming, still stopping and starting my heart at unexpected, lurching intervals. “This must be way too small for you, though,” she went on. “Did it belong to someone else?”

“It’s mine. From childhood,” I clarified.

“Oh, wow,” she said softly, casting her eyes up at the underside of the brim and touching it gently. “That’s so cool.”

Was it cool? That was good, I supposed. I didn’t want her head getting too hot.

“I don’t have much left of my childhood. Except my pan. It was my mama’s.” She indicated her bag, still attached to Tarion, and I got to work untying it for her.

I did not have much left, either. At least not from my life on Zabria.

Once Cherry’s bag was untied. I hoisted it over one shoulder with my tail while I removed the saddle and reins from Tarion and quickly rubbed his hide and horns free from dust. I could feel Cherry’s eyes on me as I worked, sending prickles of discomfort down my spine, though I could not say why. It was good she was watching, learning what needed to be done around here. There was no reason for me to feel so strange about it.

“Do you have other shuldu?” she asked as I gave Tarion another yellow sweet-nut – his third of the day, lucky beast. I nearly dropped the thing.

“Of course,” I answered immediately, not wanting her to find my animals lacking. I left the stalls and she hurried to follow me. “There is my wagon,” I told her, aiming my tail at the wooden contraption with its cattle hide cover and large wheels.

“Oh, right! So you said!” she said brightly, appearing to give the wagon an approving look that made my insides feel simultaneously too tight and too loose at the same time, as if such a thing were even possible.

Once past the structure of the stalls with the wagon behind, I pointed out the gardens. I stared at their paltry yields with a critical eye, feeling the need to defend the sparse sprouts.

“It is only just the beginning of spring,” I said, my tail twisting around the hook on the back of my belt. “There will be more soon. And some of those trees at the edge will blossom and then bear fruit later in the cycle.”

The trees, too, were not particularly impressive. At least not yet. If she’d come when she was supposed to in twenty-two days, it was likely that at the very least the tuhla trees would be in full, white bloom. But despite this, Cherry turned to me with her eyes wide in astonishment.

“Fruit?” she gasped. “You grow fresh fruit here?”

She said it with such feeling that I almost worried it was not a good thing. Was fruit bad for humans? I hadn’t yet gotten to the nutrition section of the human manual book.

“Yes,” I said uneasily, but she smacked her small hands together and beamed at me as she had done before.

“That’s amazing!” she said. “Fruit is so expensive on Terratribe I that I practically never get to eat it.” She gave a small laugh. “That’s where my name comes from, you know. Cherry is an Old-Earth fruit. They still grow cherries on Terratribe II, but I’ve never actually had one. I’ve always wanted to, though…”

“You are named for a fruit that you have never tasted?”

“Mama tasted one. Only once. Before I was born, some big-wig politician came to visit the shuttle factory to announce an investment into a new arm of infrastructure there. They really rolled out the red carpet for him and his team. There was a massive fruit tray with the most amazing assortment of stuff.”

She smiled, but not as happily as before, staring at the still-naked trees.

“The regular factory workers weren’t supposed to touch any of it, of course. It was only for the fancy-pants boss-types and the politician’s team. But Mama managed to sneak one little cherry off the edge of the tray and pop it into her mouth without anybody noticing. She said it was the sweetest, most beautiful moment of her life.”

Cherry rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes and gave an oddly wet-sounding inhale through her nose before continuing. “She said that me being born was the only thing that had ever eclipsed the experience of eating that cherry. Her new most beautiful moment.” She laughed shakily. “Plus, my face was as round and as red as a cherry when I was born, so I’m sure that contributed to the name choice.”

She cleared her throat and blinked many times. Then she sighed and said, “If I’m talking too much, you just let me know, Silar. They used to call me Chatty Cherry at school. It won’t hurt my feelings if you tell me to shut my trap, I promise.”

It was good she knew how to set traps for vermin, though I pondered what this might have to do with her propensity to fill near-every moment of quiet with chatter. All this talk in that high, pretty voice was loud and strange and not exactly comforting, but…

I could not ever see myself telling her to stop.

At my lack of reply, she sent me a questioning look.

I cast about for an appropriate response. “They call me Silent Silar,” I told her at length.

A smile unfurled, slow as sunrise, as she took that in.

“Sounds like we could be a perfect fit, then,” she said. “Just like this hat!”

A perfect fit. Maybe this really would work out. Maybe, after the thirty days were up, I would not have scared her off and she would stay with me. She would really be my wife.