Page 34 of Exiles on Earth
What with my busy schedule keeping this place spinning, it’s been ages since a guy looked at me. My shoulders fall. No wonder I was so eager to read into a relationship with Terry Fassbender. Too desperate.
I straighten, armfuls of eggs carefully balanced. I won’t makethe same mistakes again, but… at the same time, a girl can look. As long as I’m aware, it can’t go anywhere.
Ilia ducks out of the hen house with his hands full of warm eggs, and I’m treated to the magnificent V of his back, followed by his flexing buttocks and thick thighs. A crack jolts me out of my staring; I just dropped an egg.
“Oops.” Biting my lip at my rookie mistake, I follow Ilia out of the shed to where Arabella stands gesturing at Gara’s amazing light model explaining it to Laura, the green scaled medic’s face like a thundercloud. One of the triplets keeps sneaking looks at Laura. Nicole holds a finger in front of the pilot waving it back and forth, to his evident confusion but utter compliance in following it with his eyes.
“Do you guys want to scan these or something before you try eating it?” I offer.
Ilia hands an egg to Gara, who holds his machine over it once and puts his head to his shoulder.
“That means okay, doesn’t it?” I try touching my cheek to my shoulder, shrugging the left one up high.
“It means yes,” Ilia says, his voice a rumble. “And your word ‘okay,’ it means the same?”
“Oh, it means lots of things,” Laura explains. She loves wordplay because, being a lawyer, semantics mean the difference between winning or losing a case. “It can indicate approval, acceptance, and acknowledgment, so in those cases, it means yes, but also indifference, hesitation, reluctance or doubt. An example sentence is… well, Ellen isn’t okay with you landing on her barn, but we’re glad you’re okay, and it’ll be okay when you fix the barn.”
“Replace,” Arabella says, holding up a finger.
“Of course, replace,” Laura amends smoothly.
With a crack, Gara bites down on the egg. The shell splits into shards, clear albumin gushing from between his lips.
“Gross!” Arabella cries, laughing, and Gara’s eyes bulge withoutrage, the scales on his chest flashing brown and red as he slams a hand over his mouth. He swallows with determination, then does the nod movement to the others.
They look at each other, then reach for the eggs in Ilia’s arms.
I step in the way with a laugh. “You don’t have to eat them like that! I’ll cook them.”
We all pile into the kitchen and I hang up my coat. As I wash my hands I mentally sort through the tasks to make breakfast for an alien taskforce plus my besties. I’ll need to put a new batch of bread on, but I manage to prepare ten scrambled eggs with heaps of butter on toast for everyone all at once. Meanwhile, they clear the table and get Gara settled, stacking my kit neatly to one side to let them sit down together at last.
“There,” I say, placing the last plate down and seating myself between Ilia and Laura. This is what’ll it’ll be like when the barn’s finished and operating as a bed and breakfast, and I like it. Pleased, I admire the presentation before I pick up my knife and fork to dig in. The scrambled eggs are as fluffy as clouds, if clouds were a gorgeous rich yellow.
Ilia’s forearms color to match, phasing from tropical island blue to sunny lemon. “Thank you, deeply,” he says, voice choked. Shock? The rest of the guys also stare, stunned immobile.
Nicole notices too, she never misses anything. “You come from a matriarchal society, you said?”
“Yes, females are special,” Arik answers, before glancing at Ilia. As the leader, I guess Ilia should be first to speak and decide what information is passed around.
Ilia raises his eyes to her. “Females are revered, guarded and protected,” he explains.
“Does that mean locked up?” Laura’s eyebrows twitch.
Ilia blanches, blue scales going white. “No! Never. Females have their own compounds and are free to go wherever theywish. They’re the brilliant minds of our planet and stellar leaders, often contributing to society through science. They are given everything they need in terms of resources, and multiple mates to provide them comfort and companionship.”
“So, do you share a female?” Arabella asks, never afraid to ask the invasive questions.
Gara and Dom pale and Ilia swallows hard, staring down at his plate. “No. We’re clones.”
My besties and I exchange glances. “Clones as in…?” Arabella begins, but I knock her foot with mine. “Hey! Oh, okay. I’ll ADHD all over you after breakfast.”
I bite down on my toast, and that seems to break the tension and get people eating. The guys follow Ilia’s lead, and Ilia himself looks at me to figure out a knife and fork. I pose with them for a moment, miming how to stab with the fork and cut with the knife, and he gets it immediately, then helps his crew. By the time they’re done, he’s only eaten half his breakfast.
I start collecting plates of everyone who’s finished. “What’s your home planet like?”
In between bites, Ilia says, “Brown. Sand. Hot. Lots of water, but not like this.” He glances out of the window, strong jaw working as he chews. “This is a very green world. We’d need many more samples of plants to make ours anything similar.”
“You don’t have any?” I can’t imagine a world without any flora at all.
