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We remain in silence for a few more moments, but there's an odd tension now. Zha keeps glancing at me, zha’s expression curious, as though she's trying to read something off my skin, but my glow remains a steady green. It's distracting. I don't fully understand what's happening, but I cannot deny the pull I feel toward zha.

"Are you… well?" I ask, feeling unsure of how to approach this. “Is that blood I smell?”

Zha looks down. “Yes, but not mine. It’s for… I don’t know how to explain it, but apparently you’ll see tomorrow.”

I blink a few times, thoroughly confused, then shake off those thoughts and narrow back to what’s important right now. “What are we going to do?”

Olivia doesn't answer immediately. Instead, zha gets up and takes a step toward me, zha’s expression unreadable. I watch zha closely, my body tensing as zha gets closer and closer. Something in zha's eyes has changed—a new intensity that sends a strange jolt through me.

I don't fully understand what's happening, but I know one thing for certain: I do not want it to stop.

By the demiurge, I do not want it to stop.

27

Olivia

Idon’tknowhowthis is going to work. I don’t want to be touched and haven’t ever found pleasure in it and he seems to lack any of the parts too…

Wait a minute… whoever said Kroaicho was a he? "You know, now that I think about it, I never asked if you were a male or a female."

Kroaicho gives me a funny look, "I am me. Stop asking such redundant questions, Olivia"

I blink. "I meant to ask if you were masculine or feminine."

The insipid stare remains.

"He or she? I mean, I hate to break things into a binary that doesn’t really exist, but at least it’s a place to start, maybe?”

"Olivia …"

"What? You zhasie have no gender identities?" I ask, feeling out of my depth again.

"All zhasie are born equal, Olivia; your funny language makes no sense."

My funny language makes no…? Oh, you little…

I close my eyes and pinch my nose. “I thought you had met more sapient species than I have. Surely you have noticed there is variety?”

After a slow grind of tusks, Kroaicho responds. “I have noticed, but it does not apply to the zhasie.”

“You don’t have gender,” I state.

“No, and that word does not translate,” he… she... they… respond.

“What’s the pronoun, then?”

“That also does not translate. Should we speak in my language instead?”

“No,” I respond, then try again. “When you are angry with me because I just ran off down a tunnel, how would you finish this sentence? ‘I can’t believe—word missing here—ran off again. I am going to kill—word missing.’”

“Zha,” Kroaicho answers instantly and I smack my forehead when I remember him—zha—saying that before. It was lost in the craziness of everything being new.

“Alright. Zha. So how do zhasie actually mate, then? What parts touch… you know… what parts?”

“My species does not touch to mate and we only do it twice,” comes the chittering reply.

I blink, unsure how that even works. “Twice? Not just for pleasure?” I blurt out before I can think better of it.