“I’m fine.” I stood up in a hurry and tossed the clipboard on my desk. “That’s enough research for one day.”
Linn’ar sounded disappointed. “You don’t want to see my cock?”
I almost choked on my spit. “No. I mean—yes, but not right now, thank you.”
“Okay,” he replied, relieved. He was apparently unaware of any almost-touching as he leapt to his feet. “That was very informative! Thank you for inviting me to do research together.”
The heat in my cheeks was distracting. I tried to push it away by sheer force of will.
“You’re welcome,” I mumbled.
“Shall I come by tomorrow, too?” Linn’ar offered hopefully.
The closed-minded part of my brain wanted to refuse, to avoid any more strange bodily sensations and uncomfortably close encounters. However, I was a scientist first and foremost. My thirst for knowledge outweighed everything else.
“Sure,” I conceded.
Linn’ar’s mane of feelers floated above his head—an expression of pure Maeleon happiness if I ever saw one. Despite my efforts to stay professionally distant, I had to admit it was endearing.
4 /Linn’ar
“What should I do, Zat’tor?”
My voice was strained, but I had faith my sibling would understand my feelings. Out of the whole village, he was the only one who’d fallen in love with a human.
I sat next to Zat’tor by the pond. In the early hours of the dawn, we were the only two Maeleons awake.
Well, three. Dai’zee was there, too.
Like Zat’tor, I was learning the human concept of pronouns, which didn’t exist in our language. Zat’tor preferred to be called “he,” and so did I. The actual significance of the words were lost on us, but we liked how they sounded.
Levi referred to Dai’zee as “she” and “her,” so we did the same. There was something fun about the variety of ways humans spoke of each other.
“How do you feel?” Zat’tor asked, turning to me.
I stared into the water. Our reflections stared back at us. We looked so different than the fleshy little humans.
“I feel like... I want him,” I stated. “I want him the way I want food, or sleep, or community.”
“That sounds like aneed,” Zat’tor pointed out.
I hadn’t considered that. “Ah.”
A warm expression crossed Zat’tor’s face as he gazed into the pond. “That is how I feel about Levi.”
“When did it begin?”
“As soon as I saw him at the wreckage site.”
I closed my eyes and tried to recreate the memory from Zat’tor’s perspective, but when I imagined Levi’s face, I felt nothing in my chest. No magnetic pull, no primal urge. He had no effect on me.
I tried the other little human, Paz. The same thing occurred.
But when I visualized Jaeyoung...
“Your feelers,” Zat’tor said.
I opened my eyes and glanced over my shoulder. To my surprise, my feelers rippled with frantic bursts of translucent color.
