Page 95 of Citrine

I approve.

My mating tentacles stir as the desire to touch her and give her pleasure surges. Higher than anything I have ever experienced. I want her fingers to dig into my flesh as I taste her. I need to feel her again.

"Don't look at me like that, Wroahk. It was easy to figure out. I always know when you're listening and when you're not. You probably don't realize it, but you have atell."

She is clever.

Our nights are going to be even longer now. I hope my mind will survive intact.

41

Eli

He finally lets me go and I swim up to the surface to feel the sun on my skin. I rub along it like I'm bathing, and that's when I feel it.

Something is different about my skin. It doesn't look like it's changed much, but on closer inspection, I see there's a hint of blue around the fins at the back of my arm, and my skin feels just like his now. I sigh and float along the water, spotting him at the corner of my eyes.

I want to start yelling, but what's the point?

It's already changed. All I can do now is live with it. I don't have much of a choice, really.

He brings me breakfast. He seems to vacillate between letting me feed myself and some irrational fear that I won't takes over him and I can tell he's battling his desire to stuff food in my mouth.

I drift along, trying not to think of anything. The cliffs look fine after the storm the other day. It took down trees, but I guess the rocks were indestructible. I let my mind wonder what they're made of, thinking of all mythical metals stronger than diamond.

My eyes fly back up there and I notice something, just for a moment. I feel like my eyes are playing tricks on me and I almost shoot out of the water. His tentacles recoil like a rope, pulling me back in. I just knew he wouldn't let me go so easily, not like this.

"You cannot leave."

Of course I can't. I can't beat him or even fight him at all. But I do have the right to find out if what I saw was really real and not the sun of an alien planet playing tricks on me because I cannot afford tricks right now.

"I need to check, Wroahk."

"Check what?" he asks, eyeing me nervously. I wonder why he's the one who's nervous when he's the one who has me trapped in his tentacles.

"I saw something over there," I tell him, pointing to the cliff. He and I both turn to the look at the same time and the shadow I thought I saw was no longer there. I hear him speak.

"There is nothing there."

"There was something just a moment ago. If you let me go check…"

"Too unstable. You cannot leave the water yet. You will…"

He doesn't complete the statement, but I realize that he believes that if I leave the water, I will die. I mean, there is some truth to it, but I can't accept that there aren't windows of time that I can be out of the water.

I swear, he might be more scared of me dying than I am.

But that's the thing with fears. You have to take them one day at a time or they will overwhelm you. You need to let them go just as fast as you can.

I draw closer to him, putting my head back down to face him. As I thought, his face is becoming more expressive and human like. I don't know if this is a good thing, but I'm glad for the ability to understand his emotions.

"Wroahk, are you absolutely sure there's no one else here?"

"There is no one else here."

"You haven't seen a creature that looks like me, well, looks like how I used to? Are you sure I'm the only one of my kind here?"

He hesitates. My heart starts beating faster, watching him. He's hiding something from me and I assume trying to figure out the concept of telling an elaborate lie to cover an initial lie.

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