“Circle?” she said. The device binged merrily, and the image changed to a square. “Square,” she told it. Another bing, and she was looking at a triangle. She laughed, delighted.
“You’re teaching it my language. So we can talk?”
Rentir just smiled at her.
She worked rapid-fire through the images, burning through shapes, colors, and numbers. She’d made it to body parts when the other alien returned, shoving a bundle of black fabric at Rentir. They argued briefly, and the alien set two tiny, metal baubles on top of the bundle before shoving past Rentir, leaving them alone in the storage room.
Rentir pinched the baubles between his fingers, then held what was clearly a pile of clothes to her in an offer. She took them, and he stared at her expectantly.
“Well? Turn around.” She spun a finger pointedly. When he didn’t acquiesce, she grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him until he faced the far wall. “Stay there.”
She stripped out of the jacket and tugged on what he’d brought her. No bra, but there were a pair of men’s boxers that were serviceable, along with a pair of tactical pants and a soft but thick turtleneck that was two sizes too big. She rolled up the sleeves three times until her hands emerged from the fabric. Cordelia put on the socks last, almost moaning at the relief of a barrier between her bare toes and the cold stone floor.
“Okay.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m decent.”
He turned back to her, looking dumbstruck. His tail lashed back and forth as he looked her up and down. Heat crept into her neck. She held his jacket out to him, and it took several awkward beats before he recovered enough to take it. He slipped it back on, never looking away from her, hardly blinking.
Intense didn’t begin to cover it.
“I’m guessing you guys don’t have any shoes that would fit me, huh?”
He didn’t reply, naturally. Instead, he stepped toward her and held up the metal baubles he’d been holding, one in each hand. When she tried to take them, he gently pulled them out of her grasp. He tapped his ear, then pointed to hers.
She tucked her hair behind her ears. He stepped closer and pressed the little metal balls into her ears. At first, she didn’t feel anything but the residual warmth of his hands on the metal—then they wriggled, something like tendrils whipping around in the channels of her ears. The sound and the sensation were horrific, enough to make her lose her balance as she slapped her hands over both ears. Her fingers hooked inside desperately, trying to dislodge the metal as an agonizing pinching sensation flared deep within her head.
“No,” Rentir said sharply, catching at her hands and prying them away.
“The fuck do you mean ‘no’!” she snapped, shaking her head hard with one ear toward the ground as she wrestled with him. “What the hell did you put in my ear?”
He hissed as she elbowed him in the gut, sinking down to her knees like a flailing toddler as she tried to stop the sickening crunch of metal moving deeper into her ears. He followed her to the ground, straddling her as she kicked, holding her hands just out of reach of her ears.
“Bastard!” she shouted, turning her head to sink her teeth into his knuckles.
He grunted, but his gaze went molten instead of spiking with anger.
“Pervert!” She bucked her hips, trying to wedge a knee between them in hopes of kneeing him in his alien balls.
“Cordelia, stop.” Rentir sat on her pelvis and pinned her wrists to the ground. He breathed hard, his eyes bright, his tail lashing behind him like a cat watching a mouse toy dangle in the air. “Stop!”
She froze as the sensation ended, giving way to a strange fullness. Panting, she looked up at him.
“I understood that,” she said. He released her after a moment, apparently convinced she’d stop trying to dig for the devices. “Say something else.”
He did, but it was a bunch of alien nonsense—aside from one word, which she understood perfectly. “Ear.” It was one of the words she’d just defined for the holo around her wrist. She laughed, stunned out of her anger.
Seeming satisfied that she wasn’t going to keep trying to dig for her own brain, he released her wrists, easing off of her. When he held out a hand to help her up, she took it.
Rentir said another stream of meaningless words that ended in “food.” Her stomach growled in answer. He gestured for herto follow, and she did, stumbling twice in the hall as she tried to multitask with the device.
It was translating in real time, inhisvoice. They’d had similar tech on Earth, but nothing near this advanced. She looked down at her wrist, tapping it impatiently until another image appeared, and plunged back into teaching it as many words as she could.
The sooner they could speak to one another, the sooner she could coordinate a plan.
He gave her a long-suffering look, guiding her to the couch before wandering over to the kitchen. She was in the middle of defining parts of a ship when he returned with something steaming on a square metal plate. She didn’t recognize it, but the succulent steam rolling off it made her stomach cramp, and she was so desperately hungry she didn’t care what it was.
Cordelia was about to shovel it into her mouth when she realized alien biology would be different than her own. She had no idea if she was about to poison herself.
“Eat.” He urged her on, nodding.
