“Well, let’s see. I’m from a place called Earth. No idea whatsoever where that is in relation to this planet. My kindhaven’t even made it past our own moon yet, so we’re not exactly what you’d call a space-faring people.”
Braxxos said something, a look of confusion on his face as he gestured around him.
“Ah. What am I doing on your planet if my people don’t even have real spaceships. Yeah, about that. I was abducted.”
He gazed at her with a look of sympathy, shock, and horror.
“Yeah, it sucked. And it only happened a couple of days ago. These big, green alien guys were the ones that took me.”
If he’d looked shocked before, his face now expressed a new emotion as well. Hatred. Hatred, disgust, and something that looked almost like a deeply hidden thirst for violence.
“I see you know them. Raxxians, one of the other prisoners called them.”
“Raxxians.” He nodded in confirmation, then shook his head.
“Yeah, we agree on that. They arenotgood people, that’s for sure. But to answer the question I know is hanging in the air, they’re the reason I’m here. I don’t know what happened, but I’d only just woken up on their ship when the whole thing blew apart and the section I was in somehow wound up here. I don’t know how, exactly, though. I hit my head pretty hard, and it knocked me out. I woke up on the surface, but the others were gone.”
Braxxos moved closer, concern in his eyes. He asked a question, the words still total gibberish, but his fingers gently probing her hair made the intent clear.
“Sure, you can take a look. It feels okay now. I think I—Ow!”
He stopped immediately, freezing in place.
“No, it’s okay. It’s just you found the bruise, is all. But there’s no blood, right?”
He shook his head.
“Okay, good. Well, at least I’ve got that going for me, right? Minimal head trauma is at least better than severe head trauma.”
He looked at her with a confused expression.
“It’s a joke. On my world we call it gallows humor. Making light of a bad situation with humor to relieve the tension.”
“Johhk,” he repeated, an amused little grin on his lips as she subtly shook his head at her surprising display.
Apparently, diving head-first into humor despite the world going to shit had struck a funny chord with him. Given his living situation, she supposed it wasn’t so uncommon a thing out here in the wild. But she wasn’t about to delve into that with him. Not when they were still unable to properly talk. It was one thing having a conversation. It was quite another when it was this sort of very one-sided affair.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea. It’ll be fun.”
His eyes perked up with curiosity.
“I want you to teach me some words. What do you say?”
He said quite a lot, leaving her utterly baffled.
“Okay, I didn’t meanliterally. That was rhetorical, if that word translates. But seriously, teach me stuff. If I can’t understand you without one of those ear thingies, at least I can start to learn to communicate the old-fashioned way. So, what do you think? You willing to give it a go?”
He studied her a long moment, gazing deep into her eyes, studying his most unusual guest.
“Fraghazi,” he said with a confident nod.
“Uh,fraghazi?”
“Fraghazi,” he agreed with a chuckle, as if laughing at his own inside joke.
“Okay. Fraghazi it is. Now, are you gonna tell me what that means?”
She’d find out soon enough.
