“More conversation at tomorrow, at ceremony,” Olander said, brow arched high over his eyes as he followed Jaelle out. “I practice you, yes?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle a little as I nodded my enthusiastic reply. “I would like that,” I said.
When the elder Darians had made their exit, I sipped at my lukewarm tea before dropping heavily down onto the divan and finally taking the opportunity to look around the room. It was all dark wood and natural fibers, silk pillows and sweet-scented candles. There was a sofa that looked as though it had been carved out of the trunk of a great tree, and polished to a gleaming shine before it was filled to bursting with velveteen pillows. The divan, where I had been laid, was plush satin with intricate stitching, and there were three small wooden tables between the two. The room had the feeling of being, itself, inside of a tree. It was lovely. It managed to combine a rustic sort of naturalism with the sleek minimalism one might come to expect from an advanced alien race. I smiled faintly to myself, remembering that it was I who was the alien.
“How are you feeling?” Danovan asked at length, as though he had been giving me some time to settle and adjust to my surroundings.
“Better,” I said. “But…”
“What?” He canted his head gently to the side, his eyes searching my face.
“Whatever it was that your mother gave me… I’ve never felt that kind of pain before.” His eyes clouded with concern and he reached out to take my hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “My entire body was on fire, like my nerve endings were sending signals to my brain, and overloading my sensation receptors. It was utterly overwhelming.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, his voice thick with regret. “I should’ve taken better care of you. I should’ve—”
“Shh.” I had lifted my free hand to press my fingertips against his lips, silencing him. “It isn’t your fault. You saved my life, bringing me here. You’ve saved my life countless times now, over and over.” I felt a sudden surge of embarrassment, as though I were some heartsick teenaged girl. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… thank you.”
“It was nothing,” he said with a shrug, but I wouldn’t let him shrug off the enormity of keeping me safe on a foreign planet.
“Well, it was everything to me.” We were frozen together there, our eyes locked on one another for the unwavering length of a heartbeat. I thought, for a moment, that we might…
But time can only be suspended for so long, until the sharp pulsing ache in my leg brought me back to reality, and I sucked air in through my teeth and turned away.
“Are you all right?” he asked, shaking our moment off quicker than even I could.
“Where the venom hit me…” I said by way of explanation, and parted my legs only slightly to show him the bandages. “See?”
“Ah, yeah,” Danovan said, rising to his feet. “I know. I kind of bandaged you up in the field. Sorry if I did sort of a slapdash job. I’m sure my mother can fix it up in the morning…”
I jerked my head up, peering at him wide-eyed. He’d bandaged me. I felt my cheeks flush as I began to swell with gratitude, even as I absently wondered just how much of me he’d seen.
He hooked up one corner of his mouth in a roguish grin. “We should probably get some sleep,” he said, and I could only begrudgingly agree. “It’s been a long day.”
I nodded, feeling the weight of my experience sink me lower even than the pressure of the planet’s gravity. “Let me just get you cleaned up,” he said, and disappeared into the next room. Cleaned up? I glanced down at my body and saw nothing that wanted cleaning. But then I caught my reflection in the glass of a window at the front of the room. I moved toward it, squinting as I peered at myself. I had something that looked like clay streaked across my forehead. I gave a heavy sigh, wishing I’d know my face was covered in literal dirt throughout our entire conversation.
Danovan returned to the room with a cloth and a wooden bowl of water. “Here,” he said, and I joined him on the divan. He dipped the cloth into the water and began to wipe the mud from my face, his hands gentle and firm. I watched him watching me, his eyes darting around my face to ensure that he hadn’t missed a single spot. Satisfied, he set the dirtied cloth aside.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“I’m all right.”
“Some tea? Water? Are you hungry, maybe?”
I couldn’t help but smile and place my hand lightly atop his. “Really, I’m fine.”
He nodded silently and rose to his feet, crossing the expanse of the small room in two long strides. He knelt in front of a wooden chest with iron hardware and opened it, fetching a neatly folded stack of quilts from its interior. He laid them out over the sofa with a flare, and I saw that they were beautiful, but worn and well-loved.
“Thank you,” I said again, perhaps only to fill the silence, “I’ll be very comfortable here.”
Danovan grinned. “This is for me,” he said, and approached me, offering me his hand. I took it with a smile. “Come on,” he said, tucking my hand into the crook of his elbow as he led me back into the foyer.
The house was dim and sleepy, floorboards creaking the way they do when they’ve felt the heavy burden of countless feet through countless years. He led me to the staircase, and we ascended slowly so that I could favor my injured leg and run my hands over the polished wood bannister.
“That’s my parents’ room, the master suite,” he whispered, pointing to a set of double doors immediately to the right of the top of the staircase. We hooked a left and headed down the hall, where the walls were decorated with little round mirrors framed in amorphously shaped wood. It gave the hall the feeling of someplace aquatic. “Wet room,” he remarked, gesturing to a small tiled space to our right, but we passed too quickly for me to catch more than a glimpse of wetly gleaming stone tile.
“My sister’s room,” he went on.
“Oh, is she here?” I asked.
“I don’t believe so, but I wouldn’t dare venture in to check.” He grinned and tried to wink, but he just ended up blinking both eyes rather owlishly. I chuckled quietly under my breath, grateful for the momentary distraction from the sharp and constant pain in my leg. I won’t worry about it tonight, I told myself as the pain pulsed with the beat of my heart. I’ll look at it tomorrow. Along with the rest of my vitals, if I could get my hands on any instruments of modern Western medicine. For now, I was taking it on faith that I wasn’t simply having one last hurrah before dying abruptly in my sleep from whatever Ribomax venom still remained in my system.
Now that I was no longer distracted by pain or new faces or paralysis, I was beginning to think about what medicine Jaelle cal’Darian had given me, and what it might be, and how I might be able to appropriate it to help countless people back on Earth. I was so distracted that I hadn’t heard Danovan when he stopped outside of a final door.
“Ara?”
“Yes? Sorry. What?”
“This is my room—er, your room.” We pushed into the space, and Danovan lit the lamps so that everything glowed a warm sort of yellow. The room was a nest of pillows and blankets, tiny mirrors on the ceiling that glimmered like starlight.
“You grew up here?” I asked, running my fingertips over a wooden trunk that I could have easily fit into and stretched out in.
“I did,” he confirmed, crossing his arms over the broad expanse of his chest and smiling as he watched me explore.
“It’s… lovely.” I moved to stand by the window and got my first glimpse of the town: clean and cozy with yellow streetlamps dotting the cobblestone roadways. The town brought to mind the image of a hive, with the houses looking like they’d been molded out of organic structures that were still living, breathing, and infusing life into the town itself. The homes were ovaloid and made of wood and stone, shaped irregularly, making the entire scene look like an Edvard Munch painting.
“It wasn’t a bad place to grow up.” Sleepy and
cozy and quiet; no wonder Danovan had longed to experience something bigger. No wonder he’d enlisted and set about seeking a space adventure. I would have done the same, in his shoes.
Which isn’t to say I didn’t like the town—I did. But it was small and quaint, and the universe is full of mysteries.
“Anyway,” he interrupted my reverie, and I turned back to him, letting a set of gossamer curtains close behind me as I went to him. “I should let you get to sleep.”
“Yeah, I am pretty tired,” I agreed.
“All right, then.” He moved to go, but I caught him by the arm. And it had been my innocent intention to rise on tiptoe and press my lips to his cheek. That’s all. But when I tried to stand on my toes, the burns on my inner thigh screamed in protest, and I nearly collapsed to the floor.
Danovan caught me and closed the gap between us himself, catching my mouth with his mouth and kissing me with gusto.
I kissed him back, relishing the feel of his fingers as they tangled themselves in my hair, wanting more, more, ever more from the unspoken promise of his lips.
I pressed my palm to his cheek and we kissed and kissed like we would find all the answers we sought somewhere in each other’s breath. I had never experienced a kiss so delicious, so laced with unabashed wanting.
But after a moment—not long enough, not nearly long enough—he broke away. I didn’t realize that he’d lifted me into the air until he set me down again. He breathed heavy, his jaw slightly agape as he peered down at me. “I’m sorry,” he whispered on the wings of an exhale.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because… you are vulnerable. I shouldn’t be taking advantage of you.”
“You’re not—”
“Forgive me.”
“Danovan.”
But he didn’t give me a further chance to convince him. Instead, he turned on his heel and darted out of the room to leave me in a room that was his, that smelled of his skin. So I laid myself down in his bed, where he had lain for countless nights, and wrapped myself up in his blankets, and sank into a deep and dream-filled slumber where I could kiss him again and again and he wouldn’t pull away.
Chapter 11:
Danovan tel’Darian
She kissed me—no, I kissed her. We kissed. And that was the moment I lost myself entirely.
I retreated from my childhood bedroom and shot away from her, down the hall, down the stairs, back into the den, dimly lit, a place to disappear. My mother had raised a better man than that—to take advantage of a wounded girl, grieving the loss of her betrothed, an alien on foreign land. I kicked off my boots and dropped down onto the overplush sofa, snuggling down under the quilts my mother had made by hand.
It’s difficult to comprehend, let alone explain; the impulse that drew me close to her is the same one that pushed me away, the same one that knew she needed to be given her space. She was wounded, undoubtedly frightened, and grieving. This was not the time.
And yet… she’d pressed herself close to me and met my fervor; she had clung to me, the fabric of my clothes gripped tightly in her small fists. Maybe I should go back. Should I go back? No. No, I shouldn’t go back—what would I say? Oh, sorry, I made a mistake, let’s make out some more.
That was it. I’d blown my shot.
Which was fine, because the point of our companionship wasn’t amorous. I needed to make sure that I nursed her back to health so that we could continue on our quest to Pyrathas and find out what had happened to the Leviathan, and to the GenOriens scientists. There were bigger things at stake than my stupid infatuation. And if I could only keep that at the forefront of my mind, we would be just fine.
***
I slept fitfully, tossing and turning so that I awakened in a tangle of bedsheets and blankets, my immediate surroundings looking so disheveled that it seemed like I had been literally wrestling my demons in my sleep.
The house was already awake by the time I rose to join it, wiping the sleep from my eyes as I trudged heavily through the den, across the foyer, and into the kitchen. A Galatean kitchen was a large, open-air sunporch with a stone fire pit at its center. Sometimes there was a bubbling cauldron, but today, there was a spit with fresh meat roasting thereon. In a smaller pot, bubbling oats and fresh-picked berries. And tea, always tea, plenty of tea.
“Ah, my son wakes,” my mother cooed in our native tongue, circling past my father, who sat cross-legged on a pillow by the fire. She cupped my cheek in her hand and smiled a big toothy grin up at me.
“Thank you for your help, Mother,” I said, and bent at the waist to press a kiss to her forehead.
“I am happy to help my firstborn,” came her easy reply.
“Ara isn’t awake yet?” I asked, and she simply shook her head in response before returning to the task of making breakfast for her family.
“Let the child sleep,” my father said between sips of tea. “She must be exhausted down to her very bones. She has had quite the adventure.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I grumbled under my breath. I was soothed by the familiar smells of this meal, the unharried bustling of these comforting forms. I felt a pang in my gut. Would I ever be the master of my own abode? Certainly if I had stayed I would have mated already. I shook my head to clear it of the thought.
“Your sister is uniting today,” my father said, and I gave a start.
“With whom?” I asked, and perhaps my tone belied my surprise and disapproval. “And do you really think she’s ready?”
My mother tsked. “Your father and I were younger than she when we had you. She is ready.”
“The gods smile upon us, sending you to us in time to be with family for such a celebration.” My father was right—it was a fortunate coincidence. To unite, in Galatean culture, was much like marriage in human culture, with a commitment ceremony and everything. Except on Galatea, there was considerably less paperwork. Which is to say, none at all.
“Now. Why don’t you take a tray up to the girl,” my mother offered, “and tend to her wounds?”
“Shouldn’t you do that?” I asked. “You’re the healer, after all.”
“I am, at that,” she rejoined, propping her hands up on her hips, “and do you think I do not have other people who require my attention? Do you think I have all day to cater to my menfolk, is that it? Do you think I do not wish to look my best for my daughter’s commitment ceremony?”
My father wisely focused his attention on his tea.
“No, of course not,” I said, smiling faintly.
“Good. You will take up a tray with oats and berries and tea, and you will change her bandages.”
I would happily do as she bid me—she’d saved Ara’s life. She set a few bowls and cups on a wooden tray, as well as a vial of sweet-smelling oil, and sent me on my way. I climbed the stairs slowly, careful not to spill anything, and bumped my old bedroom door open with my hip. I lumbered in laboriously. Some nursemaid.
Ara’s eyes were open, but she was still abed when I came in, heavy, no doubt, under the oppressive weight of our gravity. “Good morning,” I said in low tones. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m all right,” she said groggily, forcing herself up on her elbows. “Thank you.”
“I’ve brought you some breakfast, and Mother says I’m to tend your wounds.” I realized, then, how odd I sounded, how formal. It was a challenging shift from Galatean to English. Galatean was such a formal language in comparison.
“It smells amazing,” she said, and I could see her trying to smooth out her unruly halo of red curls as I took a seat on the edge of the bed, cradling her tray in my lap. “What is it?”
“Ah, oatmeal and berries, essentially,” I said, and she forced herself up to sitting. As the blankets fell away, I could see that she was clad only in a white tee shirt and underwear, the bandages on her thigh fully exposed to the morning air. I tried not to stare.
She took the tray from me and sat beside me
on the edge of the bed, drinking deeply of the tea despite its steaming heat. Then she ate two hearty spoonfuls of oatmeal, and hummed her satisfaction. “Mm. This is amazing. It tastes like oats and honey and walnuts.”
I plucked the spoon from her fingers and tried a bite myself, giving a nod of my head. “Close—those are caperberries and plean nuts. And, yes, honey. We import it by the ton.” I smiled, and she snatched the spoon back and kept eating. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “It seems like you really are feeling better.”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Much. Though the burns hurt.” She paused, glancing up at me from behind a forest of thick lashes. “About last night…”
I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“It wasn’t… I mean, I did mean it, but—”
“Just—just stop talking for a second, would you?” And I did so, happily. I could see her cheeks color with her embarrassment and felt grateful that my skin wouldn’t similarly betray me. “I wanted to say… I’m glad. That it happened, I mean. I… if you thought I was, like… angry? I’m not. I’m not angry.” She laid her hand over mine and I think I was smiling.
“Good,” was all I managed.
“Will you look at my burns, then?” she asked after a silence threatened to become tense and strange. I was grateful for something to do with my hands, somewhere to point my attention.
“Of course.” I took the tray and set it aside before asking her to recline where she sat. I watched her as she moved, still slow and weary, but with a bit more of a spark to her than I’d seen since we escaped the Leviathan. I saw a smudge of clay that I’d missed when I’d cleaned her face the night before, but she was beautiful even then, in the early light of morning, unbathed and reclining.
I reached for the small vial of oil that my mother had placed on the tray alongside a bowl full of fresh gauze, and set about the process of unwrapping her. She parted her legs only slightly and I caught a glimpse of the shape of her sex beneath the thin fabric of her undergarments. But it was the reality of her injuries that captured the full breadth of my attention. They were deep and irritated, bright red and screaming in the midst of her otherwise flawless white flesh.
Alien Survivor: (Stranded on Galatea) An Alien SciFi Romance Page 10