“Does this always happen when you do?”
“No. Thank god.”
“Hmm.”
She sat up slowly, feeling twice her age, her stomach bloated but no longer clawing at her. She looked at her alien. His hair fell like silken snakes over his broad shoulders. She wanted to touch it but held back. Yahiro had to remind herself she knew very little about his culture.
“How do you eat?” she asked, diverting her thoughts.
“Not like you, human. We absorb. Our sustenance comes from the light of the sun.” He eyed her. “It’s less messy.”
“Hah. What about when there’s no sunlight like right now? And at night? Do you just go hungry? Do you feel pain too?”
Quist absently twirled one of his lip piercings. “We go without but will indulge in second-light from fire if the need comes upon us. The darkness saps our energy, the shadows slime our skin, but pain? No. I haven’t felt pain since I was born... until you.”
Yahiro looked away and watched the phena swim in circles under the water. She was envious. Pain was part of her daily life, so much so that she could tolerate high levels of it without much effort. Though she knew the difference between real pain and that of a gashed foot.
When her... family didn’t come to her trial to support her after she had escaped, that was pain. The day her body crawled out of the drug den had been painful, knowing her life would never be the same and that every lurch forward would never get her farther away. That nightmare had slithered up onto her back and bowed her down. It whispered horrible mantras into her ear and when she looked over her shoulder at it, it grinned down at her with sharp, syringe teeth.
She could never stop herself from looking back, having become addicted to it in a self-harming sort of way. A stomach ache, tired muscles, and a swollen foot were nothing compared to what lurked behind her.
“I don’t like the dark either.”
“Are you sure you’re not of Lusheenn?” He smirked down at her, teasing. She smiled back.
“No, I promise. I’m not. I can even prove it.”
The coy twitch of his lips deepened, and her eyes fixated on his lips.Quist looks almost human. Almost.Too dangerously beautiful though. He looked like a cosplay angel who led a lurid cult where each member had to alter their appearance with liquid gold, copper, and bronze until every inch of skin was branded by it. His features were too symmetrical, too perfect to be human, and she suspected that his piercings weren't piercings at all. There were rows over his face, star-points and barbells through his nipples, and now that it was day and he was no longer distorted by night, she saw a row of dots that started on each side of his neck and followed the outline of his body down to the armbraces, coming out on the other side to end at the tips of his middle fingers.
“How?” he asked.
The question startled her back to the present but his eyes were pursuing her body as she had his. Yahiro shivered, wondering what he thought of her.Dirty most likely. Dirty and gruesomely orange.
“The crash site will have the proof and the wreckage will have objects from my world intact. Technology not of this world, and even some charged electronics...” Yahiro had come to the conclusion Quist’s world held no modern day appliances. “Guns,” she said grimly. “And the men who caged me.”
“So your Creator’s temple?” he asked, leaning back. She huddled closer to stay within the shelter of his wings.
“Sure.”
“Good. We’ll find this place and make your Creator finish their job.”
“Job?”
“To teach and train you in the ways of Sonhadra.”
Yahiro rubbed her eyes and didn’t stop Quist when he pulled her into the shelter of his arms. His cock swelled and hardened beneath her. She leaned her head against his bare chest, letting the moment happen, too tired to stop it.
I don’t think I want to go back. I don’t want him to know how messed up I really am.
She liked the idea of a clean slate.
