He said it strangely, softening the z and rattling on the r, but he said it and it was easy to hear because no one else made a sound.

Meoraq tipped his head to the side in that way he seemed to think was threatening and said, once more in lizardish, that no one sent him anywhere and if S’kot or any other human (he said that oddly as well, drawing out the ooo-sound and hammering a hard T on the end) thought otherwise, he would…something. The word he used was not a familiar one and in this context could have meant anything. Whatever he said, he sounded like he meant it. And then he tipped his head even further on its side and asked if S’kot understood him.

“Yes,” said Scott at once, his eyes huge.

Meoraq asked if he was sure. S’kot apparently heard nothing but hisses and grunts (he exaggerated the animal quality of these sounds; Scott flinched hard both times) of a lizard when Meoraq spoke.

“I…” Scott rolled his eyes wildly back at Amber, waxen-faced. “Say something, for God’s sake! What does he want?”

“What does he want?” Amber huffed out an angry, humorless laugh and rubbed a final time at her unwounded mouth. “He wants a fucking apology, Commander.”

Scott’s mouth worked as his face slowly filled up with color. He made a few half-hearted shrugging gestures, looking for help in the crowd while Manifestors averted their eyes and his loyal lieutenants just looked at each other. “I’m…responsible for these people,” he said at last. “I wasn’t trying to be rude, I just…need to be sure what we’re dealing with. That’s all.”

Meoraq’s eyes narrowed. His head tipped. He waited.

“That’s as close as he’s going to get,” said Amber. “You might as well let him go.”

Meoraq hauled back one hand and slapped Scott again. The sound was a shocking thing, loud as a gunshot. People jumped, Amber among them, but Meoraq kept slapping. His spines were flat, but his throat was dark; his arm raised and swung five more times as Scott thrashed in his grip, and he was calm the whole time. At the end, he just stopped and waited while Scott brayed, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Get him off me!”

Meoraq released Scott with a shove and turned around. He went back to his place at the fire and crouched down. He picked up a stick and stirred coals.

Scott looked at Amber, wild-eyed and shock-white everywhere that Meoraq hadn’t slapped him purple, his clothes still bunched up around his neck. His mouth worked a few times, but his eyes kept cutting at Meoraq. Finally, he spat, “You just remember to watch your mouth, Bierce,” then spun around, grabbing at Eric and Crandall, and staggered away.

Amber sat down and waited while people cleared rapidly away. She could hear Scott across the camp, loudly holding court, but she couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. She didn’t have to. She could guess.

Meoraq was watching her. After a while, she looked back at him.

He pointed at her and said something stern about never speaking for him again. He was a…foot?…and when he wanted something said, he’d say it.

She started to get up (but not in a huff she could be pissed off without going off in a huff like a stupid girl), but he caught her shoulder and shoved her back down. He said something she was too angry to catch, squeezed her shoulder extra-hard, then let go of her to pat her once on the head. He told her he didn’t need…something. Defending? But that he acknowledged her obedience and he forgave her for wandering off.

Forgave her. Like she’d done something wrong. Big scaly son of a bitch.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, looking back at the fire.

“Eh?”

“For calling you a lizard all those times. I guess it is pretty rude.”

He snorted, then tapped at her knee with his knuckles. He told her he knew she didn’t mean it as an insult.

“Sometimes I do,” she admitted. “Let me ask you something. Honestly.”

He rolled his hand through the air in a bring-it-on gesture that translated perfectly.

“Is there any point to this? To you and me, I mean. Talking. I don’t know.” She rubbed at her face. “It doesn’t feel like anything’s changing. Unless it’s getting worse. I don’t mean just me and Scott, although God knows that’s about as bad as it can get.”

Meoraq grunted in what she was coming to think of as his affirming way. His stare was unnervingly direct.

‘He’s getting this,’ she found herself thinking. ‘And if he’s not getting every word, it’s at least nine out of every ten.’

“Is it just me?” she asked, and immediately wished she sounded more frustrated and less…whiny. “I always thought I was pretty good at coping with things, but I’ve got to tell you, Meoraq, I suck at this marooned-on-an-alien-planet crap.”

His hand rolled again, inviting examples.

“We have to start working together. We have to start planning for our future, you know? Otherwise, he’s right, all we’re doing is killing time while we wait to die. And I realize that I could maybe be better…”

She gave him a chance to comment, but he merely looked at her, wonderfully inexpressive as only a lizard could be.

“But damn it,” she sighed, combing restlessly at her hair, “if the future means getting along with that son of a bitch, I’d almost rather see it all end here.”

His head cocked the other way. He leaned forward, the tip of his snout in kissing distance of her face. He spoke. You blah blah blah, something about God…blah blah and stop whining.

“Easy for you to say. If Scott gets bitchy at you, you can slap him around and leave. I have to live with these people!”

Meoraq scowled and scratched at the side of his snout. After a moment, he asked what kind of help she wanted.

“Oh hell, I don’t know.” She rubbed at another chunk of headache. “But I feel like I’m the only one who’s actually trying to find a way to live here! And everyone else is trying to find a way to live back on Earth. I want to go home too! I want clean sheets and a cheeseburger and a hot shower and everything else they want, but it’s not happening! We have to be here! We have to kill things if we’re going to eat and pick grass out of the water we drink! We don’t get soap and we don’t get toilet paper and if we can’t figure out what we do get in one hell of a hurry, we’re all going to die here!”

He looked briefly heavenward and then rubbed at the bony ridges over his eyes. He muttered something about his God sending him to them.

“Yeah, and I can see you’re thrilled to be a part of that—”

He snorted.

“—but I’m glad you’re here, because we’re all going to die without you.” That sounded a lot more true than she liked. She tried to hide it with a smile, but it wouldn’t stick. “Everything is so hard. I’m tired. I can’t…do this forever.”

He stood up, saying something she mostly understood without guessing: “Things will get easier when we can speak more freely.”

“Easier is a relative term, lizardman.”

“Truth,” he agreed in lizardish. “But then, life is in the journey. If you cannot have an easy journey, have an interesting story.”

“That needs to be a fortune cookie,” said Amber. “I don’t know how my story can possibly be more interesting than it already is without…well, I was going to say alien invasion or a giant lizard, but we appear to have those bases covered.”

He grunted and gazed into the fire.

After several minutes—she had all but forgotten he was there, lost in her own relentless playback of the whole rotten day—he nudged at her arm. When she glanced his way, he was holding up that square of jerky and staring straight ahead into the fire.

She took it. “Thanks. What is this stuff, by the way?”

“Cuuvash.” He clasped his empty hands and watched the embers.

She repeated him, pretending not to see the way he rolled his eyes at her pronunciation, and gnawed off a piece of the dried meat. Her jaws were still sore from the last time he’d shared this stuff, but it was still pretty good. Like jerky, only not as salty, with a richer flavor and a weird undertaste almost like cheap wine. She ate, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’re not having any.”