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“What will they do?”

Despite my exhaustion, I felt for her. “Give you the basics, and support to identify your Call, or at least your Temporary Call. We don’t rush the process. But they won’t come for a few days, as they know I’ve provided you with medical care.” I ought to contact them again, tell them she needed their help sooner rather than later.

She wasn’t my first refugee. She wouldn’t be my last. They knew that, while caring for injured beings wasn’t my Calling, supporting others to access their Call was everyone’s priority. She needed to heal, and she would, here. They wouldn’t hurry.

It all seemed simultaneously too far away…and not far enough.

chapterthree

eve

The returningache chased me back to consciousness. I lay still, feeling my heart beating heavily, barely aware of the warmth of the air or the comfortable covers. He had painkillers. I needed them. He wasn’t giving them to me. Where was he?

As if summoned by my thoughts, his sleek purple form passed by a window.

His steps were quick and his movements hurried when he appeared before me, kneeling low and offering me a dropper full of a bright blue liquid. “For your pain,” he said.

I opened my mouth and took the drops gratefully. The taste was something like blueberries, and also like nori. I’d had worse things. I collapsed back in the bed, the pain a bone-deep ache that set my teeth on edge and rattled my brain in my skull.

“It’ll take a few moments to work,” he told me.

I didn’t try to respond. He got up and moved around and I just drifted, waiting for his alien juice to work.

Relief came like the pull of the tide, slowly and surely. I struggled up and ate the soup-like substance he’d put beside me. Salty and a little spicy, it was filling, and by the time I’d finished it I felt much more human.

Meanwhile, he’d seated himself at a table, his legs folded together to one side, a screen of some sort in front of him. His feet were some sort of variation of flippers, arranged to look graceful as hell. His tentacle fingers wiggled through the air deftly, rearranging images and streaks that looked like a bunch of tiny barcodes among icons.

With some difficulty, I manoeuvred myself up, curious. But he glanced up as if he’d forgotten I was there, blinking at me. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. “I regret my distraction,” he said, with a flick of a bunch of tentacles that made it all vanish. “Is your body comfortable?”

“My body is comfortable,” I told him, which wasn’t too much of a lie now the painkillers had kicked in and my belly was full. “What were you doing?”

“Current type exodus pattern interpretation Aquatic Species Native To This Planet,” he said, in answer. “Distraction will happen for some days, I am socially sad, reminder it is central to the unending achievement of existence.”

I tried to sift through that, but all I got was that he had a problem. “What’s happening?” I asked, thinking about global warming and plastic pollution and the state of our oceans on Earth. I hadn’t seen any litter here, but I wouldn’t necessarily see it at home, either.

It surprised me to feel a twist of regret at this strangely calm little patch of purple ocean being under threat. I wasn’t a monster, but I was accustomed to living under the mantle of constant dread of the future.

“The state is complex,” he said, hesitantly, not in a patronizing way but with a concerned glance that made me wonder how many people had ignored his interests in the past. “It is not my wish to tire you with additional information not required.”

“I get tired fastest from doing nothing,” I pointed out. I doubted he’d like me when I was bored. “And I’m interested, anyway.” Imagine my luck to accidentally find myself freed from a doubtless predatory situation, only to crash-land in the middle of a trash-fire of a planet. That sounded like exactly my style.

He hesitated, looking up at me from his seat at the table. “I could explain it to you, but I need to travel below the surface to my laboratory.”

I remembered the deep-dive and those cute-ass fish he had all over the place. And how I’d seen him staring at me in the reflection of the glass.

Trash-fire planet with hot alien was probably still an upgrade from where I’d been.

“Can I come?” I asked him, and when he just nodded I assumed the accidental double entendre hadn’t worked with the universal translator. That probably was a good thing, really. I had no idea how his anatomy worked, whether he was single or if he’d eat me afterwards.

His lips were unsmiling as he turned his face toward me. I didn’t stare at their shape, mostly because navigating the sandy surface on crutches was a pain in the ass. If he was impatient at how slowly I moved toward the water, he didn’t indicate it. I kind of liked the slow, relaxed way he strolled alongside me, his shoulder-length black-green hair ruffling in the wind and his expression thoughtful, bordering on sexily brooding.

Maybe the soup was full of aphrodisiacs. Maybe I’m high. I didn’t hate the idea.

“If you remain calm, you will find the descent simpler,” he advised me, seriously, as we approached the water. “I will need to remove your mobility devices to wait above the high tide mark. It is safest if you sit.”

I let him take the crutches without complaint, glad to see the back of them. My poor clothing was still ever so slightly damp from the last trip down, however many hours ago. It was lucky it wasn’t cold.

I followed his advice and sat, wondering if I could get a fresh change of underwear and a new bra at some point, or if I’d need to hope they had size 18E coconuts. And if I didn’t get out of these jeans, I was going to need medical treatment for thrush, as well as the killer chafing I was doubtless going to feel once I sobered up.