Chapter 28

chapter 28

ELLE

I got blankets from my bed to snuggle in and brought the tablet out again. Two of the ROVs' footage was so damaged as to have been worthless—and the others weren't much better. It was like they were functional, drifting across the structure's sides, recording, but then did the wrong thing and died, dropping down like so many flies.

One of them tried to take a scraping of the wall—and my best guess was that the wall didn't "like" that.

Another tried to drill into it—and summarily went dead.

A third went black, but I didn't even understand why.

"What did it do?" I asked aloud.

Cepharius grunted. "Couldn't you see?"

I turned back to shake my head at him. He thought for a moment. "The concept is complicated. May I look for something related in your mind, to help me explain?"

As complicated, or less complicated, than divorce was?

I nodded—and felt him slip in.

Now that he knew most of my secrets, I wasn't scared anymore. In fact, having him use my mind to think—which was a concept that would've panicked me even a few hours ago—was pleasurable.

"Ahh. This. Like here."

He showed me images I'd forgotten I'd ever seen.

"What is that from?" I wondered aloud.

And then Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared.

"Ceph! That's not even real!"

I sensed his confusion. "But there is an alien in it, and everything."

"That's Predator . It's a movie," I said, pushing him out of my mind with a laugh.

"But that's what your ROV did to the wall," he protested.

"Oh!" I gasped and went up on my knees. "It scanned it! At some kind of frequency the wall didn't like!" Just like how the Predator could find his victims with his heat-vision in the movies. "But—how did you know?"

"My eyes are much larger than yours. I believe I can see many things you cannot—and this is the only footage that contained it. But you are tired now, Elle of the Air. I should let you sleep."

"Am not," I protested, but then glanced at the top of my tablet. It was almost midnight and I'd been going hard since 6 a.m.

I felt his amusement wash over me. "Fine, then, you are not tired, but I have a courting to plan, so I must go, and I would be very sorry if you solved everything here while I was not personally present."

"That's better," I granted him, smiling. "Goodnight, Ceph," I thought out at him, before yawning.

"Good night, Elle," I felt him think back as he faded, but he quickly returned. "May I ask you a few courting-related questions?"

"Oh my goodness," I said, standing up, ready to carry all my blankets back to bed. Just what had I signed on for?

"Tell me, how is it that humans breed?" My jaw dropped, as he continued. "I know if I were to inseminate you, you would die."

"What?" I said, aloud, and in my mind, panicking.

"Not from me, to be clear! But because we cannot truly touch for long. I would require longer and more vigorous stimulation than the place where you walk into the sea makes safely possible."

"Oh," I said, also aloud, in a high-pitched voice.

"But I still want to know how it is done among your kind. Do you lay eggs and then flutter seed over them? If so, how do you do that in the air?"

"Oh my Lord," I went on, putting a hand against the window's glass and laughing. I knew from sensing him he was absolutely sincere—and I was one-hundred-percent going to tell Donna about this the next girl's chat we had.

"Ceph—no. We, uh—there's a part—oh, God." I broke into giggles, and everything that was useless to send him burbled up in my mind—the night I'd lost my virginity, shitty sex-ed classes I'd had growing up, my favorite girl-girl-guy porn—and before I could make a choice, he interrupted me.

"Ah. So you have a breeding hole."

I was never going to be able to look him in the eyes again. "Uh...yes?"

"Good. I know what to do with that."

I gasped, and bit my lips before I could say the wrong thing, but his tone when he thought it?

My God.

"Can you bring an opaque bag out with you tomorrow morning?"

"Also yes?" I had no idea where I would find one, but I was sure I could figure something out.

"Please do. Good night, little pearl," he said, and swiftly swam away.

Any chance I had of going quickly to sleep had entirely evaporated. I stared up at my ceiling after crawling into bed, wondering what on earth I'd gotten myself into and smiling.