Chapter 16
It’s onlyIndiz and me in the room, and several piles of clothes now the orb aliens have left. I pick up the clothes and start folding them because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to leave him, and he isn’t moving. His back needs treating, or at least cleaning. There’s a first aid kit in my bag, and a bigger one in the ship.
I used to joke about having first aid kits in a survey ship, thinking that if something happen a first aid kit wouldn’t do squat in the vacuum of space. Turns out if one crashed on a planet with breathable air, and survived, those kits are useful.
I kneel opposite him and unhook his claws from the table. “Indiz, you need to get up. I need to clean your back and put some antibacterial gel on it.”
If he doesn’t want to move, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
He opens his eyes; they are dark and have lost their luminescence. When I touch him, there’s no static or clean storm smell around him. He’s broken somehow, and I don’t know how to fix him.
“I’m sorry.” If I wasn’t here, he’d be living his life as a happy orb of light and occasionally becoming flesh. I lean forward and rest my elbows on the table and my chin in my hands. “Why did you help me? You must have known they wouldn’t approve?”
He sighs and closes his eyes again. “You do not want a mate…so why does it matter.”
His voice is laced with pain, but I wonder how much is physical and how much comes from within from the wound I caused.
“I want to understand.”
“I have said too much.”
“And I have seen them. I know they must have all crashed here and have somehow been changed. I know that happened to you, so fill in the gaps for me. You survived the hundred days alone?”
“I did. Then I lived here for another hundred with one other learning about the city, making my own set of clothes. Then I was given a choice. I could exist as the city’s caretaker, leave for the wilds, or join them. I waited one thousand days for my people to come. For anyone. I joined the Storm the day after.”
“By join them, you mean you became like them. Until then you were still you and couldn’t become light?” If the change wasn’t automatic how did it happen?
“They are elemental. Air, the storm, the balls of lightning.” With a groan he pushes up off the table so he can look at me. “They aren’t the only elemental ones here. You crashed in the mountains, so you were ours to claim. But I’d watched your ship. I saw it fall, and you were the first to come here in so many years. I was worried no one had survived, but then you came out, looking so much like a warrior in your uniform. Your eyes blue like the sky of my home. And while you aren’t Selouan, I was entranced.”
“I’m no warrior. I was surveying the planet for a mining company that wants to extract anything of value.” I lower my gaze to the claw gouges in the stone table. This wasn’t the first planet and it wouldn’t be the last the mining company destroyed.
“You haven’t given up and you fight for what you want…or don’t want. That makes you a warrior. On my world the man doesn’t ask for permission to mate; he invites his intended to bathe. If they accept things progress. You seemed to like my attention. I thought you knew.”
“No, but I did like it.” I smile. “Are there no others like you among the Storm?”
“I think there is another among the Earth. But many have been here so long they rarely take flesh. I am young, so I still crave touch.” He reaches for me and I clasp his clawed hand. “I am attracted to you…if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have invited you to bathe. I wouldn’t have shared my bed with you.”
“You would’ve left me in the city alone?”
“I shouldn’t have brought you to the city, but I didn’t want to lose you and I know how hard it is to last the hundred days out there.”
“And now we’re banished,” I sigh.
“And I am stuck in skin and all that entails.”
“Like?”
“Hunger, thirst and pain. For so long I have avoided them by being light.”
“Oh…but you knew it would happen.”
He nods. “I accepted this outcome the moment I became flesh and helped instead of watching as light. If not for the kot, I would’ve waited longer. But I do not regret interfering.”
“You might if you get an infection and die.” I would regret it if that happened. I didn’t want to be stuck here with a bunch of elemental aliens who picked who they let into their tribe. “How many have been left to die? Or didn’t survive the hundred days?”
“For the Storm, I am the only one to survive a crash during the war.”
“And the other elementals?”
