With a low sigh he put his hand on the door knob and opened the door, well aware of how bizarre this was going to look to her.
When he stepped out into the late afternoon sun, her eyes snapped to him immediately and her mouth dropped open. She stared for a good few seconds and then her eyes darted to the screen in her hand and then back to the pile of wood that he had seemingly stepped out of.
"Either I'm dreaming, having a stroke, or I was right this whole time," she said, and Carver found that he instantly liked the melodic quality to her voice.
Sitheri were gifted in tongues, and it took him a second to parse her words before he understood them and nodded. "You are not dreaming. I can't vouch for the other two."
Her eyes widened. "You… you're not human are you?"
"No," Carver said. "You are?"
She nodded. "Yeah. I… holy crap. Holy crap. I didn't… I knew there was something out here, but I didn't…"
While she worked through getting her words out, Carver studied her. She wasn't any taller close up, and Carver was amused at how she had to crane her neck to see his face. Aside from that, he had to admit that she was lovely. He'd always thought that humans looked rather plain compared to the variety there was amongst his own people, but her pale skin, light eyes, and masses of hair suited her quite well.
She had a full mouth and a lovely bone structure, and there was an aura of power around her that he associated with people like his sister and his mother. It made him like her right away, even if that was rather silly considering he didn't know anything about her.
"You're from another planet," she said finally.
Carver nodded. "Khaosali."
"Excuse me?"
"Khaosali," he repeated, slower this time. "My planet."
"Oh. So it was your ship that crashed here? That those two guys saw?"
He made a face. Humans were clearly incapable of keeping anything to themselves. "Yes," he confirmed. "I am not meant to be here, though. I need to get home as soon as possible."
How much could he tell her without it being a risk? Could he let her know that his people were in danger? That he was stranded here? There was a part of him that leapt at having someone to confess all this to, someone to help get it all out of his head, but the part of him that had been conditioned by his father to be prudent and wise and every inch a leader urged him to hold back. There was no telling what spilling too much could lead to. Despite the strange pull that he was feeling towards this woman, there was no way that he could know if she was trustworthy or not. Not yet, anyway.
"So you need help," she said softly, blinking and then looking down at the ground.
Carver titled his head and looked at the ground as well, confused when he didn't see anything worth staring at so intently. Maybe it was a human thing that he didn't understand. "Yes," he agreed. "But I don't know where to find it. Humans haven't developed the tech that we have yet, and from the way it smells around here, I am not confident that you ever will."
She looked back up at him "What does that mean?"
"It means that your air is full of pollution. You are clearly still relying on combustion to power your machines, which is not only foolish since fuel sources are not unlimited, but short sighted because you are poisoning your planet."
"So what do aliens use, then?" she asked, one hand propped on her hip.
"Sitheri."
"What's that?"
He shook his head. Clearly he would need to speak slower for her. "Sitheri. That is what I am. Alien is too general a term. It means anything you don't understand, and while I don't mean to offend, the list of things that humans seem not to understand is probably very long. Things will go quicker if you give everything its proper name."
"Sitheri," she repeated softly. "A Sitheri from Khaosali."
"Yes."
A quick smile darted across her face, lighting up her pale eyes for just a moment. "Alright, then. What do the Sitheri use for fuel? Surely you have to be powering your ships some kind of way, and there's no way they can run on just solar energy if you have to travel through space. It gets dark up there sometimes, and unless you've managed to harness more solar energy than anyone has before, I don't think you could store it for long enough to make a full trip."
Carver was impressed. Solar energy was often used to power smaller things, things that were largely stationary and wouldn't have to move out of the path of the sun. He hadn't thought that humans had progressed that far yet, but there was something about this woman that made him think that perhaps help had come to him.
Finally, something going right.
"Not solar, no. Not for transporters. You are right in thinking that we couldn't harness enough of the energy the sun provides to make it through a full journey. And the recharge would take too long anyway. No, we use stones."
"Stones?" For the first time true confusion was clear on the woman's face, and Carver was seized with the desire to show her what he meant.
He wrote it off as just wanting her to help him and understanding that it would be easier if she knew what he was talking about.
Either way, he had to make a decision.
The confusion lingered on her face for a moment before being replaced by open, honest curiosity. It was something of a relief to find that he was as good at reading people here as he was back home, and he nodded to himself. "Tell me why you were here poking around."
"What? Oh." Her cheeks colored attractively, and he had to look away for a second. "There was a news story about the two guys who found your ship. It said that when the police came to look, it was gone, but there were signs of it being dragged away. I did a little research, and I found that this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Not by a long shot. So I wanted to see what was left around here. I… I don't know. I guess I just wanted to get a look at whatever it was. Something's clearly happening, and it seemed interesting, and I…" she faltered, and Carver's eyes narrowed.
She didn't seem to be lying, just embarrassed.
"I have a hard time keeping my nose out of things when there's new technology to be discovered or things to learn. I bet you could teach me a lot of things I don't know, and that's really just exciting."
Well.
Carver had no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth, and furthermore he found that he didn't want to doubt her. The open honesty on her face and the way her eyes were wide spoke of a desire for knowledge, and that definitely appealed to something inside of him. He was going to need help either way, and it seemed like she would be the kind of person who would help him just for the experience of it and not expect anything in return.
"Not ordinary stones," he said after a moment. "Gem stones. Mineral stones. Stones with energy."
She blinked and then grinned widely. "Wait. So there actually is energy in stones? Harvestable energy?"
"If you know how to use it, yes."
"Holy crap."
"You say that a lot."
She blushed and reached up to play with her hair a little. "Force of habit, sorry. You know, if you need help, I might be able to be of some use to you. I've got a degree in mechanical engineering, and I know my way around a toolbox."
"I see no reason not accept your offer." Carver offered her a smile. "My name is Carver."
"Oh. For some reason I was expecting something more… I dunno. Something different."
He huffed, but indulged her. "It's Carveri'silan in Sitheri," he said. "But that is quite the mouthful, don't you agree?"
She laughed, and it lit up her whole face. "Yeah, good point. I'm Vivian. Feel free to call me Viv. We should get started, right? If you need to be home as soon as possible? But first, can you tell me why you're standing in the middle of a swamp?"
Chapter 5: Grand Opportunity
Vivian had seen a lot of strange things in her life. She'd worked with students strung out on no sleep and running off of nothing but coffee and florescent green soda. She'd put together more machines than she c
ould count and then taken them apart again, pushing strange, fiddly bits back together to make a whole, working thing. She'd seen models of the first computer, big enough to fill and entire room.
And now she was sitting in a cabin that had been disguised as a pile of wood and a swamp, having dinner with an alien.
A Sitheri, she corrected herself. She didn't want to offend Carver, not if she was going to be allowed to see his transport and maybe help fix it.
Anyone else would have probably thought that this was some kind of hoax. Someone who had gotten bored and decided to pretend like they were an alien. People were militant when it came to explaining the unexplainable, but Viv had never been like that. She was always looking for answers to life's mysteries, and sitting and talking with Carver was proving to be an eye opening experience.
"So, wait," she said, putting down her spoon. The thick, filling soup that she had been eating was strange, but very good. She couldn't recognize any of the spices or vegetables in it, but it warmed her from the inside out, and tasted like nothing she'd ever had before. "There are other clans of… extraterrestrials out there?"
"Of course," Carver replied. "There's more than one kind of human, isn't there? Why shouldn't we be as varied as you are?"
Backtracking she could see how that might have come out wrong. "I just… some humans have a hard enough time accepting that there could be life on other planets. Hearing that there definitely is and that it's so varied is just… kind of amazing."
He smiled at her and inclined his head. "Well, there are very many different clans. The Sitheri are but drops in the sea when you stretch out across all the quadrants. There are ten different clans on Khaosali alone."
"Wow," Viv said softly, her mind supplying her with images of what these clans might look like. Carver looked human enough, if a bit taller than most normal human males. His hair was dark and long, and his eyes were a brighter shade of green than anything she had seen before, but he could blend in well if he tried. It was a bit disappointing to think that life on other planets might resemble humans so much, and when she said something to that effect, Carver laughed in his soft way.
"I am not making fun of you," he hurried to assure her, though amusement sparkled in those jade colored eyes. "But that is most assuredly not the case. Some Sitheri have horns and black skin. Others have scales and claws. The Des'kos have curved tusks that protrude from their mouths. There is a clan that lives high in the cold mountains called the Christash and they are covered in downy feathers but cannot fly. As I said, they are varied."
Viv's eyes went wide as she tried to picture that. It seemed so strange to hear him talking matter of factly about the different kinds of aliens there were, but she supposed she'd talk the same about different races of people.
"Okay, so how about you tell me what you need help with?" That seemed like safe territory. If she was going to help him, then she needed to know what the problem was.
Any lingering traces of amusement died in Carver's eyes, and he turned serious. "It is a long story," he warned her.
Viv shrugged. "I've got time. And more soup." She made a show of taking another bite, eyes never leaving Carver's face.
He nodded and launched into his story.
It sounded like something out of a fairytale. Two brothers meant to share leadership, one betraying the other. Carver seemed convinced that his brother was just misguided, motivated by his desire for revenge for the death of their mother, but Viv wasn't so sure. It took a particular brand of coldness to get rid of your brother not even hours after the death of your father. It spoke of pre-planning, but she kept that to herself. She didn't know anything about his family, after all.
"Ithril doesn't understand the Des'kos," Carver explained. "He sees them as big, dumb brutes, and it's true that some of them are, but more of them are clever and cunning. They know how to tear down clans. How else would they have seized so much control of Khaosali?"
"Makes sense to me," Vivian replied. "So what's your plan?"
"I need to stop him. I need to find some way to get my transporter working again so that I can return and fix this before he dooms our entire clan based on his hate. First, I need to get my communications working again. If I can get a message to someone, perhaps to my sister, she might be able to send a transporter here with enough fuel to get me back home."
Viv nodded. "Okay, that makes sense. If you can walk me through how your tech works, I can maybe patch something together. It probably won't be as good as how it would work on your planet, but I think I might be able to get something going for you."
They talked long into the night, Carver explaining how things worked to the best of his knowledge, and Vivian making precise notes. Already her head was spinning with possibilities and plans and when she got a text from her mother wondering why she hadn't come for dinner, she couldn't even bring herself to feel bad about it. Not when she was learning so much.
That first meeting set the tone for the next few. As much as she wanted to stay and immerse herself in all of the technology that Carver could throw at her, she knew that she would be better at it after she'd had some sleep and a chance to get her tools.
So she'd shown back up early that next morning, pleased to find Carver waiting for her. Part of her had half expected him to regret divulging that much to her and be gone by the time she arrived, but there he was, sitting in the fake swamp with his head tipped back to the sky.
"You get more sun here than we do on Khaosali," he murmured when she'd approached. "Our sun is much smaller than yours, I think. And we're farther away from it than you are. It's usually much dimmer during the day time, and there's not as much direct warmth. When he looked at her, the bright green of his eyes had been warm with pleasure, and Viv had swallowed hard.
Alien or not, Carver was really good looking, and seeing him sitting there, hair unbound and drenched in sunlight had made her stomach do a flip.
It was so rare for her to be attracted to anyone, and she wrote it off as him being something new for her study. Information had always attracted her, after all, so it made sense for her to want to be closer to him since there was so much new stuff that he could teach her.
It made more sense than her being attracted to someone she didn't even know, so that was what she was going to go with.
The first day, he'd shown her his communication device. It was roughly the same shape and size as a tablet, and she pulled hers out to compare, mind already spinning. It turned on once, a series of bizarre symbols flickering across the screen before it died again. After poking at it for a while, she decided that it seemed to be out of power, and the charging port for it was like nothing she had ever seen before.
"Do you think this can still get a signal to your planet?" she asked.
Carver had considered the question and then nodded. "I do, yes. It's supposed to be able to communicate back to Khaosali from anywhere. I haven't tested that theory, but my grandfather has been to Earth before and had to report back home somehow."
That was enough for her. If there was some way she could get the device to run on electricity or even accept a charge from an outlet, then she would be able to get him back into communication with his family.
When she told him this, his eyes had lit up, and he'd touched his hand to his chest and then covered her hand with his. "Thank you."
She had no idea what that gesture meant to him, but her cheeks had colored all the same.
"You're welcome. I'm just gonna… fiddle with this for a while."
Or that had been her plan. Once it became apparent that none of her tools could fit in the strange start shaped screws that held the device together, she had turned to Carver who disappeared into the woods for a bit only to return with a toolbox that had presumably come from his ship.
Her eyes had lit up when she saw the dizzying array of tools inside of it. There were several screwdrivers in all sizes with heads in shapes she had never seen before. There were clamps and screws and a little circle th
at emitted a sharp jolt of electricity when she pressed the middle of it. She was fairly confident that this was a whole new level of engineering that she had never even seen before and the part of her that thirsted for knowledge wanted in on it.
But she had a job to do, so she pushed that aside and got to work.
It took two days for her to be able to just make sense of what she was seeing inside of the communication device. For all it looked just like a tablet, none of the internal components matched up.
There was a motherboard, but nothing seemed to be attached to it, and she couldn't figure out how the charging port connected to the rest of it.
"This doesn't make any sense," she muttered to herself.
Carver, who had been preparing lunch from the usual store of strange dried foods, came over and looked over her shoulder. His hair was loose again that day, falling over his shoulder and into his eyes from time to time.
He'd been a warm presence at her back, and when he had started to explain how the pieces all worked together, one elegant finger tracing over each piece as he talked, Vivian had needed to suppress a shiver.
His voice was so pleasant, low and deep, and it ignited something inside of her. Once again, she told herself that it was just the fact that he was explaining something new to her. She was just excited because she had never heard of any of these things before, and she was figuring out how they worked. It didn't have anything to do with the fact that he was stupidly handsome and dangerously close.
It was only the buzzing in her pocket that broke the spell between them, and Vivian swore as she took her phone out. After missing dinner with her mother days before, she'd rescheduled, and she knew that her mother would never let her hear the end of it if she blew her off again. So she'd set an alarm to remind her to go so she could have plenty of time for her to go home and shower.
When she'd explained this to Carver, there had been a note of disappointment in his voice. Of course that was because he wanted her to fix this so he could talk to his sister, and she understood.
Alien Soulmate (Paranormal Romance Aliens) Page 5