Kex waved his hand through the light. “Monai,” he said. It was a word I’d heard him use before, but I didn’t know what it meant. Then he pointed to the red dot. “Emily family.”
I gasped. “Really?” I asked. I looked at him, and he smiled and kissed my forehead.
Turning back, Kex made a few gestures over the map and it shrank and stretched. White outlines, dots, and markings appeared in different colors across the surface. Kex pointed at one of the blue spots near a white outline. “Kex family,” he said, and I assumed he meant the village we had been in earlier. Then he pointed at a yellow shape far to the right. “Kex Emily.” And he pointed at the floor.
I pointed at the floor and then at the yellow blob. “Kex Emily?” He nodded, and I traced my finger along the path toward my friends. It felt like so far, but in a hover car, we could be there in no time. “When can we go?” I asked. “Wait or walk?”
Kex frowned and opened his mouth, but a small chime rang through the room. The door opened, and the woman from the hallway entered, carrying a large tray. She set it down on the low table before us without making eye contact, then bowed and waited. Kex said something, and she left. The tray was filled with small plates of unfamiliar food and a small bag.
Kex reached for the bag. He opened it and pulled out a long device like a hot glue gun with a thin needle on the end. Yeah, that didn’t look exciting.
Kex pulled a small tube out of the bag and set it on a marked circle on the table. He picked up his tablet and tapped at it. When he paused, he gestured at my throat, then made a talking motion.
“You want me to say something?” I asked.
“Earth English identified. Is this correct?” a voice said from the tablet.
“Oh my gosh, yes, that’s correct!” I said. I looked at Kex, and he grinned, then tapped a few things on his tablet before wincing. After a moment, he shook his head and picked up the needle gun and fit the small cylinder on the back. He rubbed my shoulder soothingly for a moment, then tapped the needle gun and then tapped the back of my neck. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like this next part. I took a deep breath. I trusted Kex.
He moved me to sit beside him on the couch, gently pressed me forward, and I braced myself on my thighs and lowered my head. Carefully, Kex parted the hair at the nape of my neck, and a moment later, I felt a small pinch. It lasted only a second. Kex set the needle gun down on the table. He turned me to face him, and then a sharp pain cut through my head. I tried to flinch away, but the pain overwhelmed me completely before disappearing just as suddenly. I straightened carefully and glanced at Kex.
He looked concerned and held my face between his palms. “Can you understand me?” he said in his rich rumbling voice, and it was the best thing I’ve ever heard.
“Yes! Oh my gosh! Yes, I can understand you!”
A wide smile broke across his face and he pulled me closer, as if to kiss me, but instead he gently rested his forehead against mine before pulling back and looking me in the eyes, his shininglike molten silver. “My dearest Emily. You are mine. My true mate, and I will never ever let you go.”
Time froze around me as I tried to process. “What?” I asked.
He frowned. “Did that not translate? Let me try again. You are mine, the other half of my soul, the one creature in this universe created just for me. Mine. My fated one, my heart, my forever. My beloved. Do you understand?”
I grinned. “Not really, but I’ll take it.” I leaned in and pressed my lips to his.
He met my kiss with ferocity and then I was back in his lap, and his hands were sliding up my thighs beneath my tunic.
I leaned into him, so happy to finally be able to communicate properly, but then reality returned, and I pushed against his chest. “Wait, what about my friends? We need to get them. They’re probably starving out there, and that’s if one of those creepy blue scorpion tigers didn’t eat them.”
Kex turned back to the image over the table and swiped until a long string of symbols appeared. “Your crash was almost immediately detected upon entry into the atmosphere. A team of Monai’s protectors would have been immediately dispatched to the area.”
“Monai, what does that mean? You’ve said it before.”
He squeezed me against his chest. “Monai is our goddess, the creator of life on this planet. It is also the name of her forest. The sacred land marked by the boundaries.” He gestured to one of the white borders and I remembered the line of marked trees before we reached the village.
“And that’s where we were? Within the sacred land?”
“Yes,” he said, and scrolled the text. “The report says a protector checked in yesterday. He made contact with your people and reported them as a group of twelve unknown beings. He reported a sizable craft and requested a larger crew to assistwith retrieval.” Kex frowned and leaned closer. “You were in a lmmp escape pod?”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s an odd race, they are?—”
“Wait, let me guess. They are an amorphous blob the color of baby poop?”
He chuckled. “I’m not intimately familiar with baby poop, but if it’s an off-putting yellow, then yes.”
“Yep, those were the guys.”
“Hmm, that would explain why you were covered in slime when I found you.”
