We have to kill it.
San’ten clicks at her and makes to move toward her but the female shrieks and kicks at him.
I hear a low thrum from someone else—impressed by the female’s will.
It reflects my own feelings.
She’d impressed me from the moment she pointed her stick weapon at me.
I set my hackles down and click at San’ten.
“Wait.”
He casts his gaze my way, his symbiotes writhing a little. Annoyed.
“It is growing by the day,” he clicks. “Why wait? We should kill it now.”
“There is still time.” My gaze bores into his dark eyes till his ba’clan settle down and his hackles flatten.
The brown-haired female is looking between us now and I notice she meets my gaze more often than not.
Perhaps I am becoming less terrifying.
Taking a step forward, I crouch to her level and her dark-haired friend scoots away and almost backs into Ga’Var, who has returned from the water.
“The Gryken is planted. The message clear.”
He clicks at me and I click approval back.
The brown-haired female’s gaze is darting between Ga’Var and me now and at her attention to us, I hear him thrum.
Immediately, I hiss at him.
I do not know why.
He blinks at me, but his thrum stops.
For a moment, I blink at him too before pulling my gaze away.
She is still staring at us, those expressive eyes of hers confused and a little frightened.
But her fear scent isn’t as strong as the night before.
It is bearable now.
“What is your designation?” I rasp. Her language is strange on my tongue. Too many syllables.
She blinks at me, those wide eyes getting a little bigger.
“M—my name?” She glances at the other female who has moved slowly away from Ga’Var. “You want to know my name?”
My ears twitch at the sound of her voice. A thrum starts in my throat that I stop before the others can hear.
“Yes.”
She glances at the other female again. “My name is Adira. Adira Mosely.”
The name is surprisingly short for the amount of syllables in her language. I turn it over in my mind.
“Adee’rah’mohs’lee.”
She blinks at me as if she cannot believe I am speaking to her and her lips twitch and turn up a little. “Just Adira is fine.”
Adee’ra.
“And you? What is your name?”
I pause for a moment. She has given me the shortened version of hers. So I will do the same for her.
“Fer’ro.”
She blinks at me but her eyes are not as wide as before.
She glances at the other female and they exchange something in their gazes that I do not understand.
Hope?
“Nice to meet you, Fer’ro. Welcome to Earth.”
ADIRA
They did not let the dead alien rest on the ground for long.
With hisses and snarls, clicks and thrums, they pierced the octopi-like alien thing with a sharpened pole and planted it near the edge of the lake like some sort of effigy.
It is like a ritual, one celebrating the death of the thing, and I do not know if they do it for me and Sam or for themselves.
One thing is for sure though, they seem to hate the thing as much as we do.
It is drying out even as I stare at it, shriveling under the morning sun like a raisin.
Mina is awake now, her eyes barely open and I notice the alien with the charcoal eyes watching her.
He’d approached her earlier with those spikes of his rising and his fangs bared.
I’m sure he and Fer’ro had been talking about her.
Maybe they know what’s inside her.
Maybe they were going to hurt her.
I’m not sure, but the dark-eyed one had stopped when Fer’ro spoke to him and I’m getting the sense Fer’ro has some sort of rank over the others.
I watch them now, trying to figure out where me and the rest of humanity stand, when Mina leans against me.
She is so weak, she cannot rise.
She needs to eat if she has any chance of surviving this for much longer.
We all need to eat.
I look toward the lake and wonder if there are any fish in it.
Maybe, if I could catch some…
But the aliens around us still have the hairs at the back of my neck standing on end.
They don’t scare me as much as before. They seem intelligent and it doesn’t appear that they mean us any harm.
I am still hesitant to trust them though.
They are not from this world after all and I still don’t know why they are here or what they want from us.
None other except Lava Eyes, Fer’ro, has spoken to us and my gaze searches the shore for him. I catch him as he rises from the water and his eyes find me immediately.
It is somewhat disturbing, the way his gaze seeks me out and I find myself glancing away quickly.
He doesn’t stare at Mina and Sam like that, and I wonder why.
When I look up again, he’s setting down a piece of shiny metal into a pile, his gaze still on me.
They seem to be dismantling the machine piece by piece and it hits me that…their ship, the black bird, is nowhere to be seen.
I wonder if it sank during the attack too.
I stare back at him as he rises and, either I’m getting used to the stares or I’m getting used to the fact that he and the others have mostly left us alone.
Apart from that strange circle they’d formed around us while we slept, they haven’t come close again.
They watch us though.
Always watching and I know there isn’t a chance of us escaping without being noticed and caught immediately.
I’m still looking at Fer’ro when he takes a step toward us.
My heart skips a beat and I hold my breath.
Is he going to speak to me again?
I have a lot of questions I want to ask.
But as he nears, my stomach takes that moment to growl and he pauses suddenly, his ears twitching underneath his suit.
“We’d be getting that nasty food sac around now, wouldn’t we?” Sam whispers.
She was right. As much as I don’t want to think about the time we spent in that machine, now would be when we’d be eating. The orb…no, the thing controlling the orb fed us on rotation. Once every day and at the same hour.
My stomach growls again and I press my palm against it.
I will have to try and find us food.
It’s clear these aliens aren’t going to let us go, not that we could get far anyway, in our condition.
That means there isn’t much of a chance to forage—not that this is the ideal location for foraging either.
I know nothing about living in the wild.
Sam moves toward us and presses the back of her hand against Mina’s forehead.
She takes her temperature like this at different intervals, making sure it’s stable and hasn’t risen.
While she is taking care of Mina, that means I need to find us food.
I’m not sure how I’m going to manage it.
I have my broken wrist curled toward my body and every fiber within me aches.
I’ll have to hunt one-handed and limping.
There’s a click close by and I realize it’s the burgundy-eyed alien. I didn’t notice his approach and that makes me stiffen a little.
They’re big, huge, but move so fluidly and silently.
A few more sharp clicks come from his mouth and several of his kind look our way.
Fer’ro steps toward us.
I don’t know where he gets it from, but something appears in his hand.