Page 24 of Fathom

"It's... not...." I said, hunting for the words that would draw her in or push her away. She had only spent two days learning words in my language. What could I use to explain without making her feel like I was asking for it from her?

I stepped back, slow and careful, and gently slipped my hand free from hers. I felt a tug on my tailbone, and I lookeddown to see that my tail had curled around her calf. I attempted to unwrap it, but it tightened instead.

"No fuck," I said first, firmly, hoping that was enough to make sure she knew I wasn't asking for it. "Fuck is..."

I pointed at the hard line making an outline in my trousers, then I pointed down between her legs.

"No," I said firmly.

The upward tilt of her expression faltered, her shoulders dipping as she looked down at the floor. Just for a heartbeat. Then she drew a breath, lifted her chin, and that tentative smile bloomed again, brave, despite the crack I’d just seen. My heart fluttered in my chest. Did she actually want to go there with me? Had I just rejected her?

She was the one who had grabbed me last night, but I thought that was just self-preservation, a prey response to do whatever it could to keep itself from being eaten.

What if it wasn't?

What if she actually wanted to...

I swallowed again, hard.

“Eun, there?” she asked, pointing toward the second bedroom.

I opened my mouth to explain, no, this was her space. She wouldn’t be alone, of course, I would check on her and make sure she had everything she needed. I could bring her dinner every night, and maybe I could crash in the extra bedroom if I felt worried about anything. I would stay in my own place some nights, at least a few, and then anyone could just look up into her window and see her and find her doorway and...

“Yes,” I said instead. "I'll stay here too."

Because I couldn’t leave her here. Not yet. Not when her eyes searched mine like that, unsure if I was staying or vanishing like the rest. Not when her cheeks were coloring as she repeatedthe word of the obscene act we couldn't do because of what I was, because of what she was, because it was dangerous, deviant.

She was mine.

To protect.

I would protect her, even from myself, even if I couldn't seem to walk away from her.

NINE

LEIJA

I already knew I wasn't on Earth, but now I had clear proof that this wasn't some sort of situation where I time-traveled into the future and found a weird and wild Earth filled with four-armed creatures that had evolved from nuclear waste mutants.

The proof was on the map of the solar system.

It was in one of the workbooks. I'd been here for a week so far, at least, I'd been here for seven night-day cycles. The days were of similar length to Earth's twenty-four-hour cycle, but I couldn't be sure how much they differed, as I hadn't quite worked out their seconds, minutes, and hours. Abby came every other day to tutor me, and today wasn't one of her days, so I didn't have anyone but Eun in his small moments of downtime to try to help me work through what I was looking at.

It wasn't like the fact that I wasn't on Earth was that big of a surprise to me at this point. There was a hamster eating lunch next to me.

Watching a tiny hamster-like alien with four eyes and arms climb ladders to sit at tiny dollhouse tables set on a platform near a windowsill next to my table and to be served a bowl of food the size of its body was just another moment in this bizarro world of strange alien species and a city structure that was just as much foreign as it was familiar. There were other factors that clued me in, like the fact that the moon was huge, like it was a heck of a lot closer, and at night, it was clear from the glittering, criss-crossing lines that lit up at night that there were cities on it.

I watched Eun walk past, hurrying back into the kitchen, his tail reaching out in my direction as he passed. Most of the species I'd seen on this planet had four arms and eyes, but not all. There were the ones who had none, and a couple that had two arms and eyes like Eun and me, but those were far and few between. I still hadn't seen another one of Eun's kind. He seemed to be just as unique as I was.

He vanished from sight, and I focused back on the map.

Judging from the page in my workbook, this planet was the second planet out of five in this solar system, and three of them were in a habitable zone, or the goldilocks zone as some put it, where the distance of the planet from the sun was just right so that water could exist in liquid form on the surface. I stared at the page, looking at the lines that pointed to different points on the planets. It looked like all three planets were inhabited, and the range of intelligent species living on them was extreme.

I glanced over at the hamster, only to see one of the alien elephants stroll by the window, its body far too large for the restaurant. The restaurant still filled their orders. It took me a little while to figure it out, but there was an ordering panel high up on the outside of the restaurant that sent orders straight to the kitchen. Eun would put the huge bowls into a small elevator that would lift them up for the elephants to take.

I looked around the mostly empty restaurant. I'd come with Eun to work again today, and he was back in the kitchen, the only server right now. There were a few other people who worked at the restaurant, but they weren't as consistent as Eun. It was like they worked part-time. The difference between the other workers and Eun was stark. They were all here to do a job and get a paycheck...Eun was here for some other reason. He was dedicated, beyond what I would have expected. He took to every task as if it were a calling, as if the success of the restaurant meant something personally to him.

He had that focus in everything he did.