Page 25 of Fathom

He had brought me to the market a few times on the street over, and it became clear he was paying attention to what caught my eye. On the first trip there, I had spent several minutes smelling flowers at one of the vendors, and every day since, there had been a fresh bundle of flowers in a vase in the apartment. He would withdraw from my touch, pulling away from me, but he went out of his way to buy me flowers. His tail was always touching me, reaching for me even when he would grab it and tug it back with his hands.

I brushed away the thought of mixed messages.

I wasn't on Earth. Eun wasn't human. He wasn't from my planet of origin or culture, no matter how much like an elf he looked. He could have been buying the flowers because he liked them, not because he noticed me liking them. I had to focus on what was in front of me. I tore my thoughts away from him and glanced around the room.

Right now, the hamster alien was the only other person in the restaurant, as it wasn't near one of the main mealtimes when people tended to flood into the space. My questions bubbled up inside me at the new information on the page in front of me, but even if he were here for me to try to ask them, I didn't have thewords to ask or understand. I'd learned a lot in the last week, and there was a lot to be said for full immersion in a foreign language, but my crash course in tutor-led self-education wasn't easy. The last time I tried to learn a new language was in my early twenties, over a decade ago.

The fact of the matter was that this was hard.

To make matters worse, I was now confused and suspicious.

If there were multiple species and multiple planets, then there had to be interstellar space travel, and if there were ships coming and going, they had to come and go from somewhere, and that somewhere would be a good place to try to figure out how I'd gotten to this planet. Why hadn't Eun taken me to the spaceport to see if I recognized anything? All he'd done was rescue me, give me a place to stay, feed me, and provide me with the means to educate myself in the local language. That was a lot, and I was appreciative, but surely there had to be someone who could recognize a human.

Maybe there was a good reason he hadn't taken me there.

I wished I could ask.

I flipped through the workbook pages until I found a picture associated with the word I was looking for. There it was, spaceport. I ran my finger over the word, carefully sounding out the syllables as best I could. I said it out loud, slowly.

I heard a small series of squeaks that ended in the indicator for a question.

I looked over to see that the hamster alien was standing up next to their chair, looking down at my table at my workbook. I lifted it up so that they could see it better.

"Where is the spaceport?" I asked.

The hamster let out a few more rapid-fire squeaks.

"Bad talk," I pointed at myself. "Not understand."

The hamster made a come-hither gesture, then said, "Hand."

I held out my hand close to the hamster, moving slowly. The hamster grabbed one of my fingers and twisted. I followed its motion, flipping my hand over so that my palm was up. The hamster alien climbed into my hand, then squeaked and pointed down at my table. It was so small and delicate, and its tiny shoes were like little toe shoes with openings in the end to let their little nails poke out, so I could feel the tickle of them in my hand. I moved slowly, terrified I would accidentally drop it. Once my hand got close to my table, the multi-armed hamster jumped out of my hand. It walked over to my pencil and picked it up.

I moved my hands out of its way and watched as it manipulated the pencil with a skill I wasn't expecting, as it was the equivalent in size of me attempting to draw on the ground with a logged tree.

In a few moments, it had sketched a rudimentary map, with a building bearing the restaurant's logo. It chittered away for a few moments, pointing at the different markers on the map and the lines between them that turned at right angles in different places. It underlined one word in the middle of the map several times and drew an arrow around it.

"Thank you," I told it.

It flipped the page over and wrote something down on the next page, this time in large letters. Then it set the pencil down and chittered something else, slower as it reached out to pat my thumb. I recognized several of the words. We, herbivore, and together.

It chittered something and then pushed my hand over, climbing into my palm. I lifted it back over to its table. Instead of sitting back down, it made a beeline for the ladder, sliding down it rapidly until it got to the floor. It ran over to the tiny door set in one of the walls and darted out through it. Iglanced over at its table and realized it hadn't left any money behind.

I heard a sigh behind me and glanced up to see Eun had come out and was looking at the empty table, a miniature bill in his hand.

"Eun," I said. I held up the workbook with the page the hamster had written on.

His eyes darted as he read the note.

"Map?" he asked.

I recognized the word from the page showing the map of the solar system, so I flipped the page back over to show the map the hamster had drawn.

Eun reached over and ripped the page out of the workbook, his claws tearing through several pages at the same time in his haste.

"Hey!" I said, reaching for the map as he tucked it into the side pocket of his trousers. "That's mine."

"The spaceport is bad," Eun said, shaking his head.