Starfish

Ten

Nina pulled on some comfortable clothes, soft pants and an over-sized shirt from her college days. Steadier now, she felt her way back to the kitchen and rifled through drawers and opened cabinets. She found freeze-dried meals shipped from Earth and decided she was hungry enough for even those. Risking the steps up to the sink to add water, Nina gave the rice and beans five minutes to soak before popping the container in the heating element. She waited until she was safely on the floor to let go of the counter. Looking around at the kitchen with its counters almost at her nose and the appliances so big she and another human could fit inside, Nina wondered how she'd feel about being so small by the end of her three-year contract. She leaned against the lower cabinets while she waited for the heater. Three years. It'll probably be over before I know it. How would her people be feeling about the Dreen by then? Doctor Ardus had said he thought they would come around, that progress was inevitable. He sounded so optimistic. Perhaps with his species being so much older than hers, he knew that any race sentient enough to look for life outside of itself would eventually come to the conclusion that once found, there was no way to un-find it. Maybe that was what he meant, that it would only be a few more years until Nina's people settled into the mindset of having neighbors. It would be nice not to hear about any more protests. It's a dumb thing to protest anyway – you can't be mad about whether another species exists, that's not up to us to decide.

Waiting on her rice and beans to cool, Nina looked through the stack of books and printed articles Doctor Ardus had sent to her. Or had he brought them with him when he'd dropped her off? He'd obviously had to let himself into her apartment to do so, and Nina quickly glanced around to make sure she hadn't left the place in a mess. She didn't even remember getting here, just soaking in the warmth from the sun and him like a black runner lizard on a rock, apparently feeling safe enough to fall asleep on him. She cringed at the thought – he'd done nothing inappropriate, but there she went taking a little nap on him. That hadn't looked good, she was sure. She shook the thought away like a clinging seed. But her mind kept coming back around to that, didn't it? His huge dark hands with their blue-grey palms and claws as long as a whole finger-joint, his forearms as thick as her calves, those sea-blue eyes ringed in black...

Nina stirred her dish, thinking hard about those eyes. The color of the ocean, the same clear, vivid shade as the impossibly blue waters of his world. The face that housed them wasn't that weird, was it? A little long, sure, but proportionally right for his stature, and he still looked recognizably humanoid. She'd seen enough Dreen to recognize he was what they'd consider handsome: a long neck, wide-set eyes and a narrow face like a triangle on its point, his skin richly colored, taut and smooth like supple leather. And even if she hadn't, she would have known by Meem's behavior that at least some Dreen women found him attractive. Nina wondered how old he was – she'd seen no wrinkles aside from that funny little crease on his nose-bridge, maybe the slightest beginning of crow's feet at the corners of his eyes. Hell, I have those and I'm not even thirty-two. If he was human he'd be fairly good-looking, probably not a knockout but easy enough on the eyes. Until he smiles. Sea gods, that smile is deadly.

Nina sighed, not completely aware she was smiling herself. Doctor Ardus had a smile that both worried and attracted, exotic and strange and oddly charming in its not-quite-human allure. The way one corner tucked more than the other, how it spread to his eyes and made them narrow such that it made her skin tingle. When his eyes narrowed like that, something squirmed anxiously in Nina's belly and made her blush. At his size Ardus should have frightened her, should have made her uneasy as though he was some ill-tempered sea creature. Instead, Doctor Ardus made her feel... The more she thought about it, the more shocking sense it made. His arms, his voice, the smile that surprised her and made her deliciously giddy – the feel of his hands returned with force then, hot and close and as fresh as if he was still touching her. She dropped her spoon and her hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide. Oh sea gods! Am I attracted to him?!

Nina felt her knees wobble and lowered herself to the floor before she fell. For a while she sat on the cool floor, her meal forgotten while she stared into empty space and felt the seawalls holding back every thought she'd suppressed, every fleeting feeling she'd tamped down into her subconscious collapse. She remembered seeing him on the beach, turning away before she saw more than she wanted to but remembering every line of his silhouette against the surf – his broad shoulders and long, narrow waist rising Poseidon-like out of the water, shiny and wet. She thought about how close she had been to his neck and face when he carried her, how the color faded across his face from abyssal blue at the temples to surf grey around his eyes, nose and mouth and along the front of his throat, and the smattering of dark pores around the base of his neck like a collar. He'd smiled at her and asked if she was all right, and she remembered uttering a sound little more than a helpless squeak at how huge and close and powerful he was. And how much she liked it. Oh fucking hell.

Ping-ping! The sensor at the door alerted her to a visitor, the sound startling her. Nina clambered up to her feet again and made her way across the front room to the viewer beside the door to see who it was. The screen showed her a familiar tall, slump-shouldered shape. You've got to be kidding me. Even as she shook her head in disbelief, Nina could feel a stupid smile growing on her mouth; the universe apparently had a twisted sense of humor. No fucking way! This can't be happening! Time for an experiment.