by T M Roy
Another three-inch branch cracked over his thigh; the pain felt good. He could deal with physical pain. The burning ache in his guts and heart was another matter. Memories of nights of fabulous sex and exchanged declarations of love tore at him. Discussing children! All the while that little bitch had been doing half the campus. Well, Jim at least. She implied there had been others. How many? He couldn’t bear to think about that.
“I loved her. I loved her. That little sneaking…Probably entertaining herself and her boyfriends while I was at work.”
He tilted his face to the sky. The tall, long-needled trees surrounded him like a comforting wall. “I loved her. I trusted her. What a jerk I am.” He grabbed another thick branch from the ground and started to bring it down in another vicious and angry motion toward his knee, but a soft husky voice and slender hand stopped him.
“W’inno! J’lem neka mak’le.”
His muscles turned to liquid and his hands fell limp. The branch dropped from his nerveless fingers with a thud. He dragged his unwilling gaze from the ground and sidled it sidewise like a slow pan camera shot. First, the tips of narrow boots with odd designs, gleaming a dark, gunmetal blue in the golden morning sunlight. Up long, slender legs encased in material of the same color. To a tiny waist cinched by a heavy, thick belt containing odd pouches and…things. To the six-fingered hand on his jacket sleeve.
He blinked.
A hand blue as the Oregon sky.
Thick, shaggy jet black hair framed her face and dangled into her huge, tilted eyes, which were a jewel shade of purple with blue overtones and fringed with black lashes so long they looked fake. Her small nose tilted over a small mouth with full lips of pale lavender. Her face, as exotic and beautiful as he recalled from last night, was the same color as her hands.
Blue as juniper berries.
Kent had no trouble understanding his first-glance error of the night before, thinking this…this…being standing before him with such concern was human. At least until he’d seen the six fingers on each hand.
But if he had any lingering doubts of her origins, they vanished in an instant.
She wasn’t human.
POVRE GAZED UP AT THE being with concern. Her feeling of utter abandonment and worry faded away.
“Stop that,” she repeated. “You’ll hurt your knee.” She pressed her hand lightly on his arm, which had fallen to his side as if the ligaments were cut.
In the light, she saw her rescuer’s long, straight hair was a beautiful deep brown. A fine band of some unknown material gathered it behind his neck so it hung like a tail down his back. She felt an urge to smooth the mussed strands behind his strange, stiff-looking oval ears with their ridges and valleys. His eyes were also the loveliest shade of brown—smaller, rounder eyes than those of her kind. He stood half-a-head higher than she did, and Povre was considered tall. She and H’renzek were the tallest Sirgels aboard the ship. This being was taller than H’renzek and broader shouldered. The rest of him appeared lean and fit, but hard to tell under the clothing he wore.
Just as she thought this native looked very handsome, even by her standards, his face changed, becoming darker and flushed into a reddish shade. He roughly shook off her hand and stepped back. He reached for the stick he dropped, brought the length of wood up in a defensive motion, and started to shout at her.
Povre’s ears flattened. She covered them and her head in a protective reflex, turning away and stumbling as she forgot her injury. “No! Please!” Her ankle buckled and with a cry of pain she fell to the ground and remained in a small crumpled ball as he continued to rage.
“My fault for coming back,” she whispered in misery. “My fault for not listening to orders.”
Povre hunched even tighter into herself and the cold ground as the being ranted over her. If she moved, he would hit her. If she didn’t…Povre shuddered, letting out a soft whimper of fright as the stick hit the ground an arm’s length from her body. Chances were good he’d hit her no matter what she did. For her to fight back meant for her to injure him. She was capable of self-defense, even offense if the situation called for it. But fighting with intent to injure or kill a living, sentient creature was unthinkable. More unthinkable than her accidental contact.
“You warned me, H’renzek,” thought Povre as she waited for the blows that would end her life. “I didn’t listen.”
~~
“…and I’m not going to. Do you understand? Jeez! I came here to be alone, damn it! Not to find another female problem. I don’t want to be with anyone. Especially not with someone who’s blue! You should’ve stayed as a freaking dream. Why did you have to come back and be real? Damn it! Oh, I get it. You’re one of her actress girlfriends, playing some trick on me? Bet you have one of those battery shockers up one of your sleeves, huh? Well, I’m not falling for it.”
Kent stopped mid-rant. He turned to glare at the female as he brought the heavy branch down in a final, vicious arc. Instead of landing with a thump on the ground, there was a resounding, sickening crack. He saw her cringe at the sound, and the stick fell. A second later, so did Kent, realizing too late that shifting his glance had also altered the course of the branch. That wet meaty sound had been his left shin. With a groan of pain, he curled over his injured leg and fought the tears of pain and scream he wanted to let loose.
“Damn!” escaped in a harsh breath through his clenched teeth. He tasted blood, probably bit his tongue or lip. Whatever. The fiery pain across his shin obliterated everything else.
~~
Surprised she remained whole and unhurt, Povre cautiously lifted one arm and peeked. Her empathic sensitivity to the feelings of other living things allowed her to sense his pain. The intensity of it overshadowed her fear and wiped out her exhaustion. “I told you you’d hurt yourself,” she said under her breath.
The being curled on the ground, hugging his injured limb, rocking back and forth with a never ending stream of harsh words and sounds escaping his lips. He didn’t look at her as Povre unfolded her body from its protective knot.
“You poor thing,” she said, scrambling closer. After a second of hesitation, she touched him again on the shoulder. “This is all my fault, isn’t it? I suppose it must be.”
The emotions seethed from him: anger, resentment. He shrugged off her touch.
“Let me help. It’s the least I can do.”
His round dark eyes glared at her through a glaze of agony.
Povre set her jaw. “You are a stubborn headed male! You must be a male. Only males get so emotional and violent and end up hurting themselves.” Her grip re-tightened on his shoulder and her other hand pressed on his chest and made him lie down. “Now let me have a look.”
He fought her, trying to shove her hands away, scrambling out of reach. All the while, she kept her ears flat against her skull in response to his loud voice and hard sounding words. His roiling, savage emotions made Povre wish she wasn’t an empath. All her fur stood partly on end. Very uncomfortable.
“By the Goddess who birthed us! I’m not leaving you alone until I see your injury. Since I caused it in the first place, the polite thing to do is see if I can help. Now stop.” She had to shout at a volume she was sure reached right up to the ship in its orbit. Maybe they would hear her. She hoped so.
He’d risen partway to his feet. She grabbed him with her left hand and slammed him unceremoniously to the ground. He went flat on his back with a whooshing grunt. Only her right hand, held protectively behind his head, kept the silly creature’s brain from becoming completely addled.
Then again, maybe she should have let his hard head smash against the ground. Perhaps then he’d see reason.
He stared at her with wide eyes, gasping for breath with his mouth wide open, but remained still.
“Now stay there!” she said. “I have to look at your leg.”
“…leg…your leg?” he gasped, using her language and still trying to breathe.
She shook her head. “Not my leg. Your leg.”
He tried again. “Y-your leg.”
“That’s better. Your leg. This leg.” She touched the limb in question and moved her hand to the foot covering. Studying the laces, Povre quickly figured how to unknot them and slid the boot off, then the covering underneath, which was soft-rough, thick. She adjusted her position and lifted his leg into her lap so she could see better.
“There,” she said, trying to be soothing. “Good. I’m not going to hurt you.” She smiled. He stared, his straight brows almost joining over his strong jutting nose. “At least you don’t look so angry now. I’m only trying to help.”
Povre pushed up the sturdy blue material covering his lower body and legs. “How nice,” she said, using a soothing voice to keep him calm, “to have cloth and fabrics of natural fibers. Where I come from, natural substances like this are very rare.”
His lower leg wasn’t a thick, stumpy appendage like a Lazorta’s. It was a long, well-shaped limb with strong muscles and a sparse covering of coarse dark hair. Red blood smeared over the site of impact, which swelled even as she watched.
Red blood, something shared by most of the creatures on this world, the iron-based molecule in the essence of life. The Folonar had red blood, too. Her blood was a deep blue-purple color. Rather than iron, cobalt was her base element.
Povre’s fingers probed the swelling. He flinched only slightly as their skins made contact. “Easy,” she said. Povre closed her eyes to focus her concentration on the bone underneath the surface wound. “Badly bruised, not broken.” The trick of making her voice soft and talking to him seemed to be working. “You may as well have broken your bone. It probably hurts as if you had.”
She went automatically for her medical kit, for the heal unit which could send soothing waves to break up the clotting and speed the cell regeneration. Then she recalled she hadn’t carried a field medical kit. She had only planned on a short hike in the first place. And in the second place, it wouldn’t have matter if she had carried the unit because none of her equipment worked anymore. While she hadn’t actually tested any of her tools, the disappearance of the survey team and the camp was enough of a warning. Procedure required that a mission commander immediately broadcast a disabling signal to the missing person’s gear. Which, of course, was the reason for her still-limping condition.
“Goddess step on his thick head,” muttered Povre, thinking of H’renzek. But she couldn’t feel truly angry with him. He had to make sure the others would be safe before anything could be done about her.
She rummaged through her pack. Nothing she had would be of use because it all relied on her technology. With a sound of disgust, she threw the bag aside and covered his exposed foot with her hands while she considered her alternatives. His toes twitched against her palms, then remained still.
The native spoke to her and she looked at him. One side of his mouth curved upward and his blood vessels dilated again, causing another red flush to color his complexion. Not in anger this time, though. Not like before. Embarrassment? wondered Povre, trying to interpret the new emotions overcoming the angry ones.
He pointed at his shelter and then at her discarded backpack, speaking his incomprehensible gibberish slowly. As if that would help, thought Povre.
Before she could make a guess about what he was struggling to say, he wrinkled his face and blurted out: “Backpack?”
“Backpack?” she repeated, pointing at hers. He nodded, and then shook his head when she reached for it. She followed his pointing finger once more to his flimsy shelter.
Ah ha! The creature had his own backpack in the shelter, and perhaps, inside it, he had equipment. Then why didn’t he use it last night on her leg?
“Silly,” Povre chided herself. “His unit might not work on people from other planets. We already know they’re not as technically advanced as many other worlds.”
She scrambled to her feet and limped to his shelter, lifting the flapping material to peer inside. There was a large pack. She lifted it and returned to him.
~~
“Hey, thanks.” Rather embarrassed, Kent sat up, took his pack, dragged it close. Jeez, she was strong, a lot stronger than she looked. First, the way she’d forced him flat and then the way she handled his backpack, which Kent couldn’t even heft without a grunt. He remembered the weight of her pack and the ease in which she hurled it aside moments ago in disgust.
Her long, large purple eyes met his briefly and then slid aside.
He couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Anger? Curiosity? Concern? He didn’t expect concern. She should be angry, or at least scared. He’d behaved like a madman. Yelling and screaming like that. Frightening her and making her fall. And with all the stick waving, she probably thought he was going to kill her more likely than not.
Some representative of his race to an extraterrestrial he was. And to think he’d dreamed a couple of times of just what he’d do if ever he met aliens. Aliens!? Who the heck would believe me when I say I met an alien? Great, I can see it now. Forget the lecture circuit, forget my career, I’m going to be hottest thing on the talk show circuit since “I Spotted Elvis in the Shopping Mall.” Movies and TV shows he’d seen dealing with the human-alien subject came to his mind. Was it going to be like that? Was this a dream? No. It hurt too much.
He groaned, the throbbing in his leg drawing him back to his immediate circumstance.
She resumed her seat on the ground and returned his injured limb gently to her lap. More small shocks zinged into him as her hands and fingers touched his bare skin. Did she hold some low voltage current inside her body? Now that he was expecting it, the sensation wasn’t unpleasant at all. Stimulating. Soothing. And now that he expected the zings, Kent hoped he could handle the other reactions her electric touch produced.
Yeah. Like hell. Not without a lot of concentration. He felt anger heating him again, tensing his muscles.
She lifted her hands immediately, leaving his leg where it lay but no longer touching his skin.
Kent noticed the anxious look on her face. He’d been glaring at her again. “Hey. I’m sorry.” He met her gaze for a long minute. Still watching her, he extracted his first aid kit from the bottom of his pack.
He opened the plastic bag onto his lap and she leaned closer to look.
“Disinfectant,” said Kent, holding up the packet. “Bandages. Tylenol.”
He opened the packet with the antibacterial scrub and reached to his bleeding shin to clean to wound. She intercepted his hand and her nimble blue fingers took the soaked square of gauze. She smiled at him—a small smile of reassurance more than pleasure—and proceeded with gentle skill to attend his leg.
The combination of medicinal sting of the antiseptic and the tiny shocks from her touch felt good in a strange way. Kent thought he could feel the bruising and swelling shrinking, the heat leaving. He kept himself busy opening an adhesive bandage and covering it with antibiotic ointment to fight against infection. As if they were a coordinated team of paramedics in perfect understanding, soon Kent’s leg was dressed, his jeans pulled back down, his sock on and boot laced exactly as it had been before.
She moved his leg from her lap, drew her feet under her, and stood. Giving him a sorrowful look, she limped to the place she threw her pack, slung it across her shoulders, and turned to the woods.
“Wait!” said Kent, heaving himself into an upright position. “Ow! Damn it!”
His angry shout caused her to take a few steps farther away.
“Please,” Kent begged, gentling his tone. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry. I wasn’t swearing at you but at my own stupidity. Okay, well before I was yelling at you, but not exactly at you.”
He knew he was talking too much, prattling on like old Professor Markowitz when he’d had a few too many brews at the High Street Pub. Anything, he thought, just keep talking. She was standing still, listening, her genuine effort to understand him apparent.
“It’s all very complicated. How would you feel if you suddenly came upon an
alien in the middle of the woods?” He stopped, considering what he’d just said. “Okay, so you did just come across an alien in the middle of the woods. I’m not making much sense am I?”
Her head lowered, she remained in place, allowing him to approach her but watching him from the corners of her eyes and the shelter of her sooty long lashes. Kent extended a hand and she recoiled the slightest bit.
“What I mean is, I’m not going to hurt you. That stick thing back there? That wasn’t really me. It was a jerk who took over my body for a couple of minutes.” He eyed her with suspicion for a moment, but then had to smile. “Don’t suppose your…uh…people can do that? Take over bodies? No?”
Needing something to do with the hand she had rejected, he moved it to scrub over his face and scratch the past several day’s worth of beard on his jaws. “I acted like a real idiot, didn’t I? I’m not angry with you. Lord knows you didn’t do anything to deserve getting screamed at like that.” He laughed. “As a matter of fact the person I should’ve screamed at like that got off easy. Stay? Please? It’s not every day I get the chance to met a blue…whatever you are.”
She was watching him in a more open manner now, but her guarded look remained.
He inched a bit closer. “So why did you come back, anyway? Don’t tell me…let me guess. You’re lost. No maps in your part of the galaxy? Well, that’s okay, a lot of us Earthlings have that problem out in the woods. So, you’re lost, or have a transportation problem of some sort. What do you say, am I close?”
It’s all in the tone of voice, Kent, he kept telling himself. But can she read my thoughts, too?
He stretched out his arm and slid one cautious finger beneath her elfin chin to made her look at him. He felt the small shock, a shiver. Heard a small squeak in her throat. He felt like a monster. “I’m sorry. Thanks for helping me. You didn’t have to, and Lord knows why you did. But for whatever the reason, thanks.” He gave her credit for standing her ground.
He removed his light touch, took one of her six-fingered blue hands, and stroked it gently with his thumb. He hardly felt the zings now. She felt as soft as a chamois cloth. The fine blue hairs covering her were much shorter than the average hairs on even a human woman’s arm, but there were many, many more of them, making him think that if ever a bath towel was made from the finest silk, it would feel exactly like this.