Page 25 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

Athena stood in the corridor with two cups of something steaming and an expression Marina recognized. It was the expression her sister wore when she'd been thinking about something for too long and had decided to stop thinking and start talking.

"Drink this," Athena said, pushing a cup into Marina's hands. "It's some kind of Dobromian tea. Melessra recommended it. She said it helps with focus."

"I don't need help with focus. I need help with section four of the alliance proposal."

"You need help with a lot of things, but we'll start with the tea." Athena sat on the sleeping platform and looked at her sister with the directness that only siblings could deploy. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine."

"Try again."

Marina took a sip of the tea. It tasted like warm stone and something faintly sweet, and it was better than anything she'd expected from a drink recommended by an alien scientist. "I'm exhausted, I'm in over my head, and I'm writing a document that could determine the future of two species, and I keep getting distracted by the way Toren's scales look in bioluminescent light. Is that honest enough?"

"Getting there." Athena's mouth twitched. "Peter told me about your conversation before we left Ceylara."

"Of course he did."

"He's worried about you. So am I, but for different reasons. Peter's worried you'll get hurt. I'm worried you'll get so focused on not getting hurt that you'll miss the thing that's actually happening."

"What's actually happening?"

"You're falling in love with an alien prince on a dying planet, and instead of dealing with that, you're writing a sixty-page diplomatic framework at three in the morning."

"The framework is important."

"The framework is a distraction. A useful one, and one that needs to exist, but right now you're using it to avoid the part that scares you." Athena leaned forward. "Marina. You like him. He likes you. The universe threw you together on a rock in space, and instead of just experiencing it, you're drafting subsection 4.3 of an alliance proposal."

"Subsection 4.7, actually."

"My point stands."

Marina set the tea down. Her sister was right, and the rightness was annoying in the way that Athena's rightness always was. It was delivered without diplomacy, impossible to argue with, and exactly what she needed to hear.

"I don't know how to do this," Marina admitted. "I know how to run a science team and draft proposals and present data to hostile audiences. I don't know how to fall in love with someone from a different species on a planet where the suns are dying, while also trying to save both our civilizations."

"Nobody knows how to do that. That's what makes it interesting." Athena stood. "Finish the proposal. It matters. But after you finish it, go find Toren and have an actual conversation that isn't about atmospheric data or food shipments. Talk to him about something that doesn't have a section number."

"Like what?"

"Like the whale movie. Like why he learned English from a children's book. Like what his favorite color is. I don't care. Something human." Athena paused at the door. "Or something Weredragon. Whatever the equivalent is."

She left. Marina stared at the data tablet, at the seventh draft, and she thought about Toren's collection of human artifacts laid out on a rock on Ceylara, and she thought about the way he'd said "it was the only one I had" about the children's book.

She'd finish section 4.7 first. Then she'd go find him.

* * *

She found Toren in the deep caverns, two levels below the inhabited sections of the Colony. He was sitting on a ledge overlooking an underground lake she hadn't known existed. The water was still and black, and the bioluminescent organisms on the cavern ceiling reflected off its surface like inverted stars. It was the most beautiful thing she'd seen on Dobromia, and she'd seen the waterfalls.

"How did you know I'd be here?" he asked.

"Auren told me. He also told me to tell you that your brooding is, and I quote, 'dramatic even by royal standards.'"

"I'm not brooding. I'm thinking."

"You're sitting alone in a cave staring at water in the dark. That's the dictionary definition of brooding."

He smiled. She sat beside him on the ledge, close enough that his scales almost touched her arm. The cavern was cool, and quiet, and private in a way that the rest of the Colony wasn't.