Page 65 of Citrine

I continue scavenging, and by the end of the hour, I have enough to eat and keep. The giant birds above don't swoop down to disturb me, so keeping the fruit under a branch will do. The giant tentacled man also serves as a deterrent to food thieves.

Speaking of the tentacled man, I think I'm delusional. It's dawned on me again. Kissing an alien? What has gotten into me? I can't even believe I was willing to go even further.

I've lost the plot. Completely lost it.

I turn my gaze to the sky and sigh. It's early morning and the sky still isn't blue. I never thought I'd miss the blue skies but here I am. All that air, all the normal elements I'm used to, all of it is gone. Now, I don't look the least bit like I used to. Who did this to me? Why?

More than that, I need shelter, appropriate shelter. Staying under a gigantic tree or just sleeping on my back is bound to catch up with me soon, even though my body somehow heals all physical wounds.

The daily discomfort and the mental dissonance are things that this strange healing doesn't help with. Sooner or later, my mind will break.

All I've got now is an alien, my perpetual horniness, and my never-ending urge to speak.

Isn't life just wonderful?

I contemplate calling out for him as soon as I wake up, but I decide against it. He's out there and will come around when he's ready.

I know it's useless, but I stare up at the sky, looking for signs of spaceships. There aren't even streaks across the sky to suggest there is air travel. I'm not sure if alien vessels employ carbon-based energy sources, anyway. Probably use nuclear or something I've never even heard of.

Where's your handy-dandy Geiger counter when you need it?

I'm not well versed in astronomy or space exploration but if I can get dumped on another planet and survive, then I bet humans have already found life beyond Earth and were just keeping it a secret.

All those theories and conspiracies I used to roll my eyes at, but a few dozen feet away from me, a giant tentacled man is swimming around in a lake.

I would have preferred to read about it or watch a damn show.

The more I move around the cove, the increasingly itchy my sides become. It feels like it's coming from inside my skin, like something is trying to force its way out. My mind races as many possibilities come to my mind, most of them involving me being a host for a parasitic race of insectoid creatures living on this strange planet.

This makes me stop behind a tree and check my sides, my clothes disappearing. My eyes widen as I see what has been bothering me the entire time.

The scream escapes my throat before I can stop it.

32

Wroahk

The night is silent and long, but the morning brings chaos. The sound of her screams bring me to shore and right into the cove. I find her reaching for her sides, screaming unreservedly.

"Wroahk!"

"Silence!" I click back stridently.

Her screams disorient me, making it hard for me to navigate. She stops, but her eyes are still wide with fear, and I realize that she is showing more of her skin again.

She points to her sides, and I see that they're different. She now has bumps on the side of her bare chest. They looked somehow like…

I look down at my torso, feeling the same bumps on my side. Only, they aren't bumps. They're gills. My gills that I use to breathe in water.

"What happened?"

"My ribs were itching from inside my skin, like the bones were pulsing all night long. I finally managed to go to sleep with that incessant itching and just as I'm finishing up breakfast, I notice these bumps!"

"They're not bumps," I say, frowning.

"What are they then?" she asks impatiently.

"Gills."

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