Page 8 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

That evening, they shared a meal outside the ship. It was Marina's idea. The crew needed to see the Weredragons as allies, not as another threat on a planet that already had too many.

Rowan set up portable tables near the cargo bay. The cooks; two crew members who'd been pulling double duty since the crash, put together what they could from the ship's stores. Protein bars, rehydrated vegetables, some kind of grain porridge that tasted better than it looked. Marina made sure there was enough for everyone, including the three Weredragons.

Toren studied the food with the same careful attention he gave everything. He picked up a protein bar, turned it over in his hands, and sniffed it.

"This is food?" he asked.

"We call them protein bars. They're nutritionally complete, if not exactly gourmet."

He took a bite and chewed. His expression went through several phases; confusion, assessment, mild dismay, and finally a resigned acceptance that reminded Marina of her first year of college cafeteria food.

"It is... functional," he offered diplomatically.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about those bars," Peter laughed from across the table. He'd relaxed considerably since the Drog attack. Watching three dragons save your life had a way of adjusting your perspective on interspecies relations.

Auren had no such restraint. He took one bite of the protein bar, made a face that could've been photographed for a dictionary entry under "disgust," and set it down with exaggerated care.

"On Dobromia," he announced to no one in particular, "we eat fire-roasted cave moss and crystallized mineral paste. Both of those tastes better than this. I want that on the record."

"Noted," Athena replied from the end of the table. She hadn't sat next to Auren, but Marina noticed she hadn't sat as far away as she could have, either. "For the record, nobody asked for your culinary review."

"Everyone was thinking it. I'm simply brave enough to say it."

"Brave isn't the word I'd use."

Khrelan sat apart from the group, as he always did. He'd accepted a portion of food; Marina had made sure to offer it personally, as a gesture of respect; but he ate in silence, watching the interaction between the two species with an expression that Marina couldn't quite read. Not hostile, or friendly, but evaluating.

Toren leaned toward Marina and spoke quietly. "He's watching how your people treat us. He's looking for signs of deception or ulterior motives. When he doesn't find them, he'll adjust."

"And if he does find them?"

"Then you'll have a very angry Weredragon on your hands." Toren's eyes were warm in the fading light of the twin suns. "But he won't. Your people are genuine. I can see that. Khrelan will see it too. He just needs more evidence than I do."

"Why do you need less evidence?"

The question came out before she could stop it, and it hung between them with a weight that surprised her. Toren looked at her for a long moment. The twin suns were sinking toward the horizon, and the light turned his rose-gold scales to copper.

"Because I've been studying your species for years," he said. "Movies, books, photographs. I've watched your stories. And in every story, when your people are afraid and far from home, they do the same thing. They share food and sit together. They make jokes about bad meals." He nodded toward the table, where Peter was trying to explain the concept of barbecue to a skeptical Auren while Athena pretended not to be amused. "You're doing it right now. Your ship is broken and you're stranded on a planet that's trying to kill you, and your first instinct is to set up a table and feed everyone. Including the aliens."

Marina didn't know what to say. She'd organized the meal for practical reasons; morale, alliance-building, demonstrating goodwill. She hadn't thought of it as anything deeper than that. But Toren had seen something in the gesture that she'd missed. Something that apparently mattered to him a great deal.

"It's just dinner," she said.

"No," he replied. "It isn't."

The twin suns dropped below the horizon. The sky turned from brown to a deep amber, and then to a darkness punctured by more stars than Marina had ever seen. Someone on the crew pulled out a portable speaker and played music. It was something old, from Earth, with a guitar and a woman's voice singing about rivers and home.

Toren listened with his head tilted and his eyes closed, and as Marina watched him listen, she didn't pretend it was for scientific reasons.

* * *

The next morning, she found Toren outside the ship at dawn.

He was sitting on the same rocky outcropping where he'd first landed, his legs hanging over the edge, watching the twin suns rise. The smaller sun came first. It was a white point of intense light that climbed fast and sharp. The larger sun followed, amber and heavy, filling the sky with heat that made the air shimmer.

"Do you sleep?" Marina asked, climbing up to join him. She'd brought two cups of the terrible instant coffee from the ship's stores. She handed him one.

He took it, sniffed it, and looked at her with an expression of polite alarm. "What is this?"