Alien Desire by Hannah Haze
Chapter seven - Emma
Tor sits at the computer and fiddles. I try to explain to him that it is futile but we still struggle to understand each other, despite what appears to be a growing number of English words in his vocabulary — something, I think, to do with the small disc attached to his forehead.
I watch him for a while, fearful he’ll break our only means of communication with the outside universe, but he’s determined to play, working with a small, smooth box; which appears to have no buttons or screen but which captures a lot of his attention.
What can I do? So far, he has appeared civil, pleasant even, and although I find his huge presence intimidating, I am finding myself more and more comfortable in his company. Perhaps it is my desperation and loneliness. Determined to make friends even with a creature who may any moment decide to rip my head from my body and devour my remains. His teeth do look especially sharp behind his plump lips.
I shake my head. I’m doing it again, letting my imagination scoop me up and run away with me. I need to stay focused and alert. The communication system is not worth a fight over; not when I may need to fight him for my life.
Watching him only increases the peculiar feeling I have in the pit of my stomach. A feeling I’m struggling to decipher. It is new and unfamiliar. Fear? But I’m not scared, not when I look at him. He is huge and powerful, but he is also beautiful, and it is his beauty that ignites the unusual spinning in my belly.
Shaking my head more violently to dislodge these thoughts, I leave him and try to concentrate on the remainder of my daily routine. Night is falling outside, the temperature tumbling lower as I complete my inspection of the tanks and my circuit of the station. By the time I return to the door, the stars prick the black canvass of the sky. I can’t help but seek Tor out to show him.
He is still at the computer, thoroughly lost to whatever he is doing, and I don’t think he realizes I am there until suddenly his head snaps up and he captures me with those golden eyes.
“Omega.” that word again that I am beginning to recognise, like the final letter in the greek alphabet. I don’t know what it means but whenever he says it, the hair at the nape of my neck stands on end. Most bizarre how one alien word can do that. What can it mean?
“Come see the stars,” I tell him, suddenly a little shy at this girlish request.
“See,” he repeats.
“Yes, see.” I motion for him to come with my hand but he does not respond. I reach out and take his hand in mine and a jolt of electricity skips between us, so fierce we both gasp. I stare at our conjoined hands, my fingers curled around the outside of his and into his palm. He stares too for several long moments, and my heart thuds erratically in my chest.
Have I broken some rule? Perhaps this is considered rude, unsavoury, in his culture. But then slowly he curls his own long fingers, copying my grip and grasping my hand. It makes me giggle with nerves and amusement. We are so alien to each other.
—Turning, I walk away but am yanked back. Tor remains in place.
“Come,” I say, tugging on his arm.
“Come?”
“Yes, come with me.” I move and this time he follows me, our hands still entwined. I go to drop his hand — now he is following me there is no need for it — but I don’t want to. How long has it been since I held someone’s hand? I think the last hand I held was my mother’s.
There was never time for relationships when I was in school, and such things were forbidden among peers in the space cadets. So it has been — what? — ten years? Yes, ten whole years since I held someone’s hand. I was fourteen the last time I saw my mum.
We step out into the frigid air, so cold it stings my eyes and assaults my skin, but it doesn’t matter. The sky soars above us, a dizzying assortment of twinkling light from stars near and far. I point upwards and he tips back his head, his golden eyes surveying the universe above our heads.
“Good,” he says, quietly.
“Beautiful,” I correct him and squeeze his hand. The electricity from before sparks a second time, less strongly than before but still powerful,. When I drop my gaze to our hands, I see his arm shimmers with colour, and his deep scent seems to swirl in the air between us.
“Where are you from?” I whisper, knowing he can’t understand. I try something simpler. “Home?” I ask, gesturing to the stars.
He squints, his eyes examining the constellations. He shakes his head. “No Tor home.”
“Oh.” He is learning so quickly. I am failing utterly in my ability to speak his language. The melody of it does not come naturally to my tongue and certain noises seem impossible for me to make.
“Emma home?” he asks, gesturing like I had to the sky.
“Earth.” I tell him. “It’s a long, long way from here.” Suddenly, I feel sad and cold and I pull my hand away and wrap my arms around me.
The melancholy seems to infect him too. “No Tor home.” he repeats, shaking his head.
I guess he’s lost.
I’m overwhelmingly tired by the time we step back inside. It’s early, but caring for him these last few days has left me exhausted, emotionally and physically.
“I am going to go to sleep now,” I tell him. It seems a strange formal thing to say but I feel as if I need to make this announcement.
“Sleep.” He nods and points towards the floor space we’ve shared for the last two nights, the blankets I covered him in discarded on the floor.
“No, come.” I show him the dormitory with the cots. It is clear which one is mine. There is a collection of novels stacked at the end of the bed, empty food packaging, and worn clothes littering the floor by my bed.
“Emma’s bed. This is where I sleep.”
“Sleep?” he asks.
“Yes, I’m tired. I’m going to sleep but you don’t have to—”
I halt mid sentence as Tor pulls off his top and climbs into my bed.
“What are you doing?” I gasp.
“Sleep.” He lifts his arm like he’d done when laid out on the floor, signalling for me to curl up beside him. The bed is built for a human, and his calves and feet dangle off the bed, of which his wide torso takes up most of the space. “Emma come.”
“No,” I say, frowning, an expression that he examines. “That’s my bed. Emma’s bed. You can have any of the others.” I sweep my arm in the direction of the other cots. “Tor bed.”
“No.” His tone is stern. “Emma come.”
I step away. “That was just to warm you up,” I lie, knowing it was about companionship and the need for another being’s touch. “You need to sleep in your own bed.”
He purrs at me and my feet move towards him before I know what I’m doing. What the hell? “Stop that.” I grit my teeth. “This is my bed.”
A glimmer of hurt flickers across his face and it makes my stomach sink. I’m almost tempted to relent, but we can’t sleep together like two cats curled up on a bed. I’m a space cadet. It’s ridiculous.
Slowly, he curls up and off the bed and I crawl under the covers. Usually I sleep in just my underthings, the temperature regulation seeming to veer into overdrive in the night time as if to compensate with the plummeting temperatures outside. But tonight I hide under the covers, deciding it best I stay dressed.
He strides across the room, his tail whipping in what must be annoyance and selects a bed. I expect him to climb inside, but instead he lifts it easily and deposits it next to mine.
I roll my eyes. “Seriously?!”
I stare daggers at him but he meets it with a blank expression, and in the end I huff loudly and turn my back towards him.
He disappears after that, back to the computer I assume, so I tell Shelia to turn off the lights and stare at the wall.
Tomorrow, I’ll find him a job to do. I’ve learned in my time on training expeditions and on cramped space voyages that males like him need something to occupy their time. They need something they think is important to inflate their ego and exercise their body.
I’ll find him something that needs repairing tomorrow, and I’ll check the computer. See what he’s been doing to it. I also need to check for messages. Surely by now, after six months stranded, my message will have reached human eyes.
I imagine the message hurtling through space, through webs of communications links, lighting up satellites and connections. I see it speed through the blackness of space, passing the stars I see every night, moving further and further away, travelling faster, skipping between galaxies and finally, finally finding its destination.
The stars glow on my closed eyelids with the strange pattern I know by heart. I think of the way Tor examined them, and once again I wonder where he came from and what brought him here. I have the strangest, fleeting understanding that it was me. It’s such a ridiculous idea that I almost laugh out loud in my bunk.
There is no such thing as fate. Or destiny. Or luck. Bad things happen. Good things happen. It is the chaotic nature of our universe. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it. It is chance that I survived the crash, when the others did not. Chance Tor’s ship crashed here too.
Although, it’s hard to keep believing that and to not take these things personally when they keep happening to you. The loss of my parents and my brother felt deliberate and personal, the beginning of a train of events that have led me to be ruminating in the dark, sharing my temporary home with an alien.
Eventually, I fall asleep. It must be much later I’m woken by him creeping into his bed. He rolls up against me and his strong arm drapes over my waist as he tugs me against his cool body. I could twist away. I could give him a verbal bashing. But I don’t move, observing the way his skin heats against mine, noting how that excitement in my stomach returns. And I stay where I am.