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He trails off, skin still lighting up in that odd combination. My brows furrow, then I glance down at the long green hair draped against my chest. “Green, huh?” I ask him. “Like me?”

He grinds his tusks. “Almost exactly like you, but far less interesting.”

I blink. Am I his favorite? No way. I’ve been as difficult as possible.

"But it was destroyed," he growls, distracting me, voice deep and vibrating with fury. "The genali came. They took everything. Burned my cavern to ash before they captured me. How could scavengers like them not see the value of it? My treasures, my home—gone."

I freeze for a moment, caught in the weight of his words.

I mean, I can empathize, but I don’t know how I feel about being the favorite of a collection.

A huff of breath escapes as I circle back around to how terrible it must have felt to lose everything. He was kidnapped too, and his life’s work destroyed. Even more than that, I realize, since he has mentioned that it was passed down. Is he trying to make up the loss?

The fire I've been trying to start suddenly feels insignificant in the face of Kroaicho's loss, but I don't have time to dwell on it, not right now.

"I'm sorry," I say quietly, unsure of what else to offer.

Kroaicho doesn't respond, his eyes now focused on the growing flame as it finally catches, spreading through the dry sticks with a soft crackle. He watches, entranced by the fire I've built, the orange light dancing across his skin.

For a few moments, we sit in silence, the only sound the crackling fire and the occasional shifting of Kroaicho's limbs as he watches.

"You like it?" I ask after a while, unable to resist a smile.

He nods, a rare look on his face, which I realize with a start has somehow stopped looking odd to me. "It is remarkable," he says softly. "I never thought of it this way. A living thing, as you said."

His skin glows an even brighter shade of orange than the fire.

I chuckle and my mood shifts lighter. "So," I say, leaning back and stretching my sore leg. "Tell me more about your people. What were they like? What did you all do, you know, besides hoarding treasures?"

Kroaicho's gaze snaps to me, and I can already see where this conversation is headed. His skin glows white again, a sure sign that he’s about to launch into another long-winded speech about his precious hoard.

"The treasures," he begins, "were everything. Every zhasie had a collection. Some were small, but mine… mine was the greatest. We competed, of course. Who could gather the most, and who had the rarest items. Our way of life keeps the treasure’s stories intact."

He’s stuck on a treasure loop and I’m beginning to think their culture doesn’t extend much past it. That fact grates against my long-held distaste for materialism, but I push the thought away. I don’t have the energy for it right now.

I shake my head. "You don't say."

"And the hoards," he continues, undeterred by my sarcasm, "were our history. Each piece was a chapter in our story. A reminder of what we had conquered, what we had survived. The oldest zhasie had the grandest hoards—thousands of years old, passed down from zhann to zhannel."

I sigh, half-amused, half-exasperated. "Right, but… what about, you know, culture? Art? Music? Anything other than treasures?"

Kroaicho looks at me, blue lighting his skin, genuinely confused. "Why would we need anything else?"

"Figures," I mutter under my breath, shaking my head.

Despite the circular nature of our conversation, there's a strange charm to it. I continue cleaning the creature in front of me, my knife making slow but steady progress through the thick hide. Every now and then, I have to stop to retch—the smell is unbearable—but I keep going, determined to make the whole process worth it.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, I manage to get the creature onto a makeshift spit, propping it up over the fire. I sit back, wiping sweat from my brow, and glance over at Kroaicho, who's still staring at the fire with wide eyes.

"Stay with me, Kroaicho," I say, giving him a nudge. "Don’t stalk off to treasure hunt. I'm going to go wash my hands."

I make my way to the underground stream that runs along the far side of the cave, plunging my hands into the cold water and scrubbing furiously. When I return, the fire is still burning strong, and Kroaicho hasn't moved a millimeter.

I sit back down beside him, the warmth from the fire already making me feel better. The creature begins to cook, the smell of roasting meat filling the air.

"So," I say, trying to find another way into the conversation. "Where did you get that rusty piece of metal, anyway? You said it was valuable."

Kroaicho's eyes snap to mine, and he brightens again, eager to tell the story. "Ah, that. It was part of an ancient machine, left behind by a species long gone. I found it in an abandoned room, on an odd little shelf. It reminded me of an item I traded some useless, ugly rocks to get. They said it was from a long-extinct culture. I couldn’t figure out the writing, but it was still crisp and new, a testament to how advanced they must have been.