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“You could never hope to earn my trust, human,” he growled.
Konan might have been determined to be in a bad mood, but Elizabeth was not. She was alive. She was fed. She was clothed, and for all his growling and rumbling and general displeasure, Konan was looking after her.
Something had happened between them in sex. Something more powerful than a cheap and dirty orgasm. She’d felt a bond being forged. She thought maybe he had felt it too. But of course a monster like Konan couldn’t be soppy and sweet and start declaring his love. At least, not yet.
She sat, quite happily chained like an animal, because there was an endless number of things to see. Every time she looked around, there was something new happening. She wanted to see some alien animals more than she wanted to see anything. So far it was plants and vistas, massive plains and distant mountains, a feeling of expansiveness and wilderness which spoke to the core of her. A small tear glimmered in the corner of her eye. She and Konan’s crew were the first, and perhaps only aliens to ever see this world. What a waste, and what a rare privilege. She had so many feelings inside her, all warring for top billing. None of them managed to emerge coherently. Instead they all sort of tumbled out in bittersweet tears which made her feel better for having cried them.
As the day waned, a golden liquid glow covered the landscape. It was like watching a painting which was continuously changing, and yet remained consistently beautiful. For hours, she was utterly immersed in the details of the wild.
“Eat,” Konan said, putting a plate beneath her nose. It smelled good, though as usual it didn’t look like anything she particularly recognized. She wondered where he’d gotten it from.
“What are we eating if the ship is down for service?”
“It prepares fresh foods to last thirty days. The refueling only takes three. We will not starve, human.”
“We're not going to eat local food?”
“Eating ‘food’ from new planets is a good way to be poisoned, or find yourself hosting an unpleasant parasite. Never ingest anything here. Beauty hides danger.”
She wondered if he could actually appreciate beauty? Or had he seen so many wonders in his time that there was no sight capable of eliciting any emotional response?
“Why are you looking at me like that, human? Tired of your captivity?”
“I’m enjoying myself more as a captive than you seem to be as a king,” she said. “Kind of sad.”
He growled, the way he did whenever she said anything remotely insightful. She knew she was getting under his skin. She couldn’t seem to help it.
“Tonight, I will take you to my chamber and I will enjoy myself greatly, spy. I will ravage your body so thoroughly…”
“SIRE!”
Konan turned on his heel and walked away mid-carnal threat. There was something like panic in the alien’s voice. Elizabeth wondered if there was an emergency of some kind, then promptly stopped worrying because not only was it not her problem, she couldn’t have done anything about it if it was. Being chained really absolved one of responsibilities.
When Konan returned, he was in a bad mood. To be fair, he had been in a bad mood when he left too, so she wasn't sure that anything of any note had taken place.
“Is something happening?”
“There’s always something happening,” Konan grunted.
“I mean, you were called away. It sounded bad.”
She didn’t really expect Konan to tell her anything. She expected him to launch into another one of his speeches in which he wore mistrust like a badge of honor. To her surprise, he actually gave her an answer.
“Analysis has determined that this is a gremlin class planet.”
“What is a gremlin class planet?”
“You should know. You come from one. It’s a planet where there are forces which make everything go wrong constantly. You could call it bad luck, but it’s not luck. It’s a skewing of fate toward a negative outcome which amuses the planet’s true inhabitants. Gremlins.”
She thought about that for a long moment, trying to understand what on, or rather off-Earth he was trying to tell her. Having become his confidante in some small way, she didn’t want to blow it.
The moment she opened her mouth, she blew it.
“You’re saying fairies are real.”
“Not fairies. Gremlins. I’m saying that there are gremlin-infested planets, and Earth is one of them. It’s one of the reasons it was never conquered. It’s why your people will never develop interstellar travel capacity in any meaningful way. You are the property of your planet. And if we stay here, we will become the property of this one.”
She couldn’t hide a smile. She knew it was a bad idea. Awful, even. But she couldn’t help it.
“Why are you smirking?” Konan was not pleased. His white brows drew down over dark eyes, and his hands flexed as if he were considering some suitably painful punishment for her irrepressible impudence.
