“Oh,” Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p said, feeling discouragement. “That is all right. Thank you anyway, dude.” He cast a downtrodden look at his poor ship, light smoke still rising from the parts that had been engulfed in the worst of the flames, and sighed sadly.
“For fuck’s sake,” the human murmured. He turned back to look at it with a questioning expression. The human twisted its mouth, and then let out a humorless laugh. “You know, for an alien that looks a bit like a lizard, you’re really good at pulling the ‘woe is me’ card with those big Bambi eyes.”
“I do not understand, dude.” Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p tilted his head in bemusement.
“I’ll help you,” the human said, and his heart leapt. “Or at least, I’ll try. You can stop calling me ‘dude,’ by the way. Call me Jude. It rhymes, plus it’s my actual name.”
“Jude,” Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p said reverently. It was a nice name, and he was honored that Jude considered him worthy of being addressed directly by name instead of by the formal “dude.” But having a title made it suddenly uncomfortable to continue referring to Jude as “it.” He asked, “Is Jude a title for males or females?”
“Technically, I think it can be for either. If you’re asking my gender, though, I’m male, despite the fact that I don’t know how to play sports and I don’t know anything about cars.”
“Is information about sports and cars requisite knowledge to be considered male?”
“If you ask my brother, yes,” Jude said with a hint of bitterness. “But no, it’s not requisite knowledge.”
“I am considered to be male on my planet, and this is not requisite knowledge for me either.”
“Pfft, okay, well, that’s good to know, sir.”
Sir. Was this word more or less formal than “dude”? He’d have to look into that later.
“Okay, then. From now on I will call you Jude, and you will call me Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p.”
“Uh.” Jude blinked. “So, I’m totally for not forcing people to Americanize their names and everything, but in this case I think I am literally incapable of pronouncing whatever you just said. Not without a whole lot of practice, and maybe vocal cord surgery. Can I call you something else? Why not Al? It’ll be your human name, at least for now. Definitely not short for Alien. Psh, that would be lame.” For reasons unknown, Jude winked.
Excited to be gifted with an English name, Al accepted it immediately. “I can be called Al,” he said, nodding vigorously. “I like that.”
“Cool. Well, weird as all this is, I guess it’s nice to meet you, Al.” Jude held out a hand and looked at him expectantly.
That’s very forward of him,Al thought to himself, wrinkling his forehead. His species was able to do distance telepathy with practice, but all of them, even children, possessed some degree of touch telepathy. It wasn’t quite the same as mind reading—it was a way of reading each other’s emotions, both on a surface level and subconsciously. It could be intense, especially when shared with a party you were compatible with, so it was mainly reserved for family members or lovers.
But it seemed humans were not touch telepaths, or if they were, they didn’t have the same reservations. Jude likely didn’t know that he was crossing a social boundary, and Al didn’t feel like it was his place to explain it to him. He was the one infringing on Jude’s planet, after all, and as such, he was the one who should be abiding by unfamiliar customs—not the other way around.
A single handshake wouldn’t be disastrous.
At most, it would be momentarily uncomfortable, and would pass the second they dropped contact.
So, keeping his mouth shut and making the executive decision not to let Jude detect his feelings of distress, Al accepted Jude’s hand in one of his… and immediately had to bite down on his own tongue to keep himself from gasping as he was overcome with a tsunami of emotion.
Anxiety, uncertainty, resignation.
Then deeper feelings.
Loneliness, helplessness, betrayal.
The strong desire for companionship shrouded by stronger feelings of distrust and worthlessness. Then, beneath it, a cavernous well full of love longing to be given away, and a fundamental adoration for life and beauty in all its forms—but it was all so buried beneath the negative feelings that it had become smothered.
Feeling it there, suffocating, nearly broke Al’s heart in two.
He let go of Jude’s hand abruptly, struggling to regulate his breathing. He hadneverhad a reaction like that before. It had been so intense, his head was still spinning.
But how was it possible?
It didn’t make sense.
What he’d just experienced fit the description of the connection his elders said occurred between True Mates, and those were rare—veryrare. His people usually found companions with whom they were compatible enough to be comfortable with and settled down with them rather than waste time searching for someone they might never meet. After all, on Darvrok 6 alone there was a population of five billion, and that was just of Al’s species. The chance of meeting theoneperson you were perfectly matched with, out of everyone in theentireuniverse, was next to impossible.
And who was Al to be a statistical anomaly? He was not special—an unknown not worth knowing, who caused others to feel disappointment wherever he went, and whatever he did. He was destined to be a metal miner, and would likely die by being drained slowly of his nutrients while impaled by the proboscis of a Sand Dweller. There was nothing special about him. He had to be misinterpreting. There was simply no way he had found his True Mate on a random planet he crashed into by mistake.
