Page 7 of Rock Hard Alien

“Gharrgoil.” He repeated the word, adding a rough sound in the middle that came from deep in his throat.

“That sounds suspiciously like gargoyle.”

“I know. I have had a long time to consider the similarity and have yet to find an explanation.”

I went over his words again. “Planet. Planet. You're... Actually, that makes more sense to me than magic bringing a statue to life. You're an alien.”

“You're taking this surprisingly well.”

“I think the freakout will come later. And so will more questions. But for now, I want to know how I can help you. Do you want to sit up?”

He finally opened his eyes. They were dark, almost black, but sparkled with life. His skin looked softer now than it had when I'd first approached him on the castle wall, but it was still the same graphite grey. Some of his features were human, yet he very clearly was anything but.

He - Cairn - blinked up at the sky, then his gaze focused on me. My chest constricted. There was something about the way he looked at me... I couldn't put my finger on it. He was hard to read. Not that I was very good at reading people. It's why I liked to work with stone. It didn't talk back, didn't have opinions, and didn't want anything from me. Stone was easy. Sometimes, a rock would tell me the shape it could take, the art waiting deep within. All I had to do was set my chisel in the right place and slowly, gently reveal the hidden beauty inside.

“I will be alright in a moment. Gharrgoils heal fast in the presence of their mates.”

His lips pressed tightly together, as if he hadn't meant to say that.

But he had.

“Mates?” I echoed.

He hissed in pain as he folded his right wing, then his left. He slowly pushed himself up, but his arms were shaking with the effort of holding his weight.

“Let's talk about that somewhere else. It was foolish of me to aim for the tower. A deep instinct that overwhelmed me upon invigoration. Gharrgoils like to roost in high-up places. I should have known better than to fly right away. And over a populated area at that.”

The implications of that slowly crystallised. “I bet someone filmed us. We might already be on TikTok. On the news. A gargoyle carrying a woman. Not something you see every day.” I laughed despite myself.

“I have watched your kind for a long time, yet my understanding is still rudimentary,” he said slowly. “Are you aware other species exist across the universe?”

“No. Not really. I think many scientists accept that there has to be life out there, but they keep talking about bacteria on faraway planets, not actual aliens.”

“That is what I thought. I have been reckless. We should hide.”

“Hide?” I laughed again. I sounded hysterical. “Where are you going to hide? As soon as we leave this clearing, we will encounter someone. If you fly, you will be spotted. Everyone has a phone nowadays. You'll be seen, filmed, put online. And I don't know what would happen then. One video can be explained away as being made by AI. Two, three, ten - I don't think so.”

He had the decency to look guilty. “I am sorry. The exhilaration of finally being able to move again overwhelmed me. And the joy of - no matter. You know this planet more than I do. What do you suggest we do?”

Typical. A guy gets me into trouble, then expects me to find a solution. Story of my life. Except that all my previous male encounters had been with humans, not a seven-foot gargoyle with wings and impulsivity issues.

“We can try walking through the forest, away from the paths. That will get us to a road. I can ask my apprentice to pick us up. He's young, but he's-”

“No,” Cairn growled. “No other males. Not yet. Not while I'm still recovering.”

“No other... Fine then. We can either call a taxi and hope that the driver is a woman who doesn't report you to the police, the media, whatever, or we can ask one of my friends. Either way, someone else is going to have to get involved unless you want to walk from here back to the castle where I have my car. That's at least three miles. And there will be people everywhere.”

He thought for a moment. His brow was furrowed, a valley of stone between two cragged mountains. As long as he didn't move, he still looked like the gargoyle from the castle wall. Only when he breathed, shifted, talked, did his skin look softer than rock. Slightly.

“Is your friend female?” he asked eventually.

“I have more than one friend.” I didn't know why I felt like I had to establish that. Maybe I didn't want him to think I was lonely, or unsociable. “The closest one to here would be Cleo. We went to school together. She works for a dating agency and she's a bit... alternative.”

“Alternative?”

“She believes in things others don't. Once, when we went out and got a bit too drunk, she said that she believed in aliens. That she'd met some. I obviously thought she was pissed at the time, and I still doubt that she's met any - what are the chances. Or do aliens frequently come to Earth?”

“I have not been in touch with my people for a very long time. When we crashed on your planet, it did not yet exist in our interplanetary databases. But that was many generations ago. For all I know, Earth could be a destination for alien tourism by now. The one thing I can say for definite is that I never saw an alien in the castle I watched. Unless they arrived while I was asleep. That is a probability. I lost track of some of the rotations.”