Page 11 of Resisting the Alien Rider

I looked down to see Garrek sitting up in a bedroll at my feet. The dark blue line of his tail was fastened around my waist. Garrek violently kicked away his bedroll and stood, keeping his tail where it was. I shivered as tingles of sensation sprang outwards from that point of contact.

“What are you doing?” Garrek growled.

For a moment, I found myself incapable of answering him. In the darkness like this, he loomed like some sort of demon from an Old-Earth tale, imposing and surreal. He wasn’t wearing his vest, and his bare chest and shoulders looked like something carved from stone. Warm stone, apparently. I could feel the heat radiating off of him. I had to stop myself from leaning into it.

Garrek didn’t have nipples. It struck me as odd that I hadn’t noticed this yet. I’d been around multiple shirtless Zabrian males already. But it was only now, with Garrek standing in front of me without his usual vest, that I became aware of that odd little difference of anatomy.

Of course I noticed your eyelashes. When the sun hits them, they cast shadows all the way down to your cheeks.

Garrek didn’t have eyelashes, either. If he did, they would have been aglow with the light from his eyes, as if dusted by moonlight.

“Why do your eyes do that?”

Garrek inhaled sharply, then closed his eyes. Everything was suddenly so much darker. With what seemed like a monumental effort, he opened them again. They weren’t glowing anymore.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked me again, a note of impatience clipping his words.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I replied.

“And you haven’t answered mine.”

Silence stretched between us. My belly buzzed pleasantly from the pressure of his tail around me.

A littletoopleasantly. I cleared my throat and took a tiny step backwards. Garrek jolted, as if he’d only just remembered he’d left his tail there, and snapped it back behind him to its hook.

I tilted my head to look up at him. The hulking demon vibe was gone now, largely due to the fact that Garrek wasn’t wearing his hat and instead of lethal black horns he had the typical cartoonish, cutie-patootie ears that all Zabrians seemed to come equipped with. Those adorably rounded ears at the top of his head were an absurd contrast to the look on his face.

“You know,” I told him, unable to hold back a small smile, “if you really want your scowl to have the full effect, you should do it with your hat on and cover up your ears.” I flapped my hand up towards the top of his head where the ears in question had just twitched. “It’s like being glared at by a Terratribe II fieldmouse. Or a beaver.”

His scowl deepened. His ears twitched again.

“What is a beaver?”

“It’s an industrious little forest creature!” I told him. “Very fuzzy. Very cute.”

“Fuzzy,” he repeated in disbelief. “Cute.”

“Yup!” I said cheerily. “Just like those ears of yours. Anyway. It’s just a thought. Just trying to give you some pointers on your whole salty cowboy schtick. You can’t scare me when you’ve got a frown like the Old-Earth devil himself but the ears of a child’s plush toy.”

He stared down at me in silence for so long I half-wondered if he’d decided the conversation was over but just hadn’t bothered to move his body out of my way yet. But then he finally grunted, “My translator must be malfunctioning because I barely got any of that. Salty cowboy…”

“Verysalty,” I emphasized helpfully.

“And what in the blazes is a plush toy?”

I blinked at him.

“You guys don’t have plush toys for children? They’re like stuffed animals.”

The three moons were bright tonight in the cloudless night sky. They clearly illuminated the disturbed and disapproving slant to his dark eyebrows.

“Human children use dead, stuffed creatures as… as their playthings?”

I burst out laughing at his interpretation. I almost wanted to let him go on believing it. Maybe he’d think I was a little tougher, a little more interesting than I was. Maybe he’d even let me go pee by myself if he thought I was badass enough to carry around a dead cat or rat or something as my best childhood buddy.

“No. No, definitely not,” I said, still chuckling. “They’re made of fabric and beads and buttons. Little toys meant to look like animals. For children to keep in their beds.”

“Oh.”

---