With clean hands, he sinks a claw into the top of the gourd and splits the tough skin open with a satisfying crack.
The flesh inside is pale, fibrous, and glistening with moisture.
A cool, clean scent drifts out, earthy and sweet, like a carrot crossed with a melon.
My mouth waters instantly. Painfully.
He scoops out a chunk of the soft flesh with his fingers and holds it out to me.
“Eat,” he commands gently.
I stare at the offering.
It looks amazing. It looks like life itself.
But then I look at my own hands.
I can’t flash-fry bacteria with my mind. The red smear on my palm seems to settle in even more at that thought. I imagine the bacteria crawling on my skin, the poison that’s killing us waiting to get inside me.
I recoil, shrinking back against the wall.
“I can’t,” I whisper, feeling bad now.
Sarven freezes, hand still outstretched. “Noh?” He asks in English. Then the earbud pulses his next words. “You… hungry.”
“I am,” I admit, tears pricking my eyes. Stupid fever tears. “But my hands… Sarven, look at them. They’re covered in that stuff. If I touch the food, I’ll poison myself.”
I hold up my trembling, stained hands as proof.
“I can’t wash them. And I can’t do the...” I gesture vaguely at his hands. “...the hot-hands thing. If I touch it, I die.”
His brow tightens as his gaze drops, looking from my dirty hands to the clean, white chunk of fruit in his own sterilized fingers.
He could feed me.
The thought slams into my brain, unbidden. He could reach out and put the food in my mouth.
The intimacy of that idea makes my face burn hotter than the fever. No. Absolutely not. That is a line we are not crossing. I might be “bad,” but I’m not fed-by-hand-by-an-alien bad. Not yet.
Sarven seems to reach the same conclusion, or perhaps he senses my distress. He lowers the food, eating the piece himself with a thoughtful chew.
He swallows, then wipes his hand on his thigh.
Slowly, he reaches for the small pouch at his hip. I don’t know what he carries in there. Whatever’s inside doesn’t look heavy enough to be a weapon.
He unfastens the tie now and his movements grow slow, as if he’s trying not to spook a startled animal. When he finally pulls something out, I don’t catch what it is because he keeps his fist closed around it, knuckles tight against his golden skin.
He looks at his fist. Then at me.
His glow flickers. A quick, nervous pulse of light along his collarbones that completely betrays him. He’s unsure.
Sarven, the hunter who catches women falling off cliffs and fights rockslides, looks nervous.
He takes a breath.
Then, very carefully, he uncurls his fingers.
It’s…a spoon.
