Page 28 of Rock Hard Alien

One Earth hour later, we were sitting at the table with about a hundred different tubs, boxes and plates. Georgie had wanted to introduce me to all her favourite foods at once. It was adorable.

The different scents tickled my nose and made my stomach growl. The only food I had eaten since waking had been a biscuit at the dating agency's office. And the hot chocolate - that had been so thick and rich that it should count as food rather than a drink. But before that, my last meal had been on board my ship. Sten had cooked - a word used loosely as he'd simply instructed the food processor - and we'd sat together, laughing, telling stories, preparing for the mission ahead. It had been such an ordinary meal. If I'd known that it was to be the last time I’d be around a table with my best friends, I would have...

No. I didn't think I would have changed anything. And there had been no way of knowing that the ship was about to crash.

“You've gone very quiet,” Georgie said softly. “What's wrong?”

She was so perceptive. I considered deflecting, but I would have to tell her about my friends eventually.

“I was just thinking of the last meal I had before I crashed onto your planet. We were on a diplomatic mission to deliver a message in person to the planetary government of Cyprien-9. We'd been at war with them for half a generation, but peace was finally in sight. To show our commitment to the peace process, our leaders sent us with a gift. It was supposed to be a simple mission. Fly there, deliver our cargo, take back anything they wanted to give us in return, and get paid handsomely.”

“What happened?”

“My memory is somewhat foggy. There was an issue with the board computer. I'd disabled the autopilot to run an update, but then everything went wrong. We were on a collision course with a planet I'd never even heard of. The door wouldn't open, so we couldn't leave the bridge, couldn't get the protective suits we needed to survive in hostile environments. I managed to get us all to the escape pods, but...”

Georgie put her hand on mine without saying anything. I appreciated her quiet attention as I fumbled for words.

“Sten and Hallr were ejected from the ship, but Sten was injured. He was barely conscious. Hallr was bleeding, but it didn't seem to be too bad. I was the last one to leave. I was in charge of the ship. I should have prevented this. I should have looked after my crew, my friends. Instead, I killed them.”

A bitter taste filled my mouth. I balled my hands into fists. I wanted to throw something, shout, fly off into the night. But my mate was here and I owed it to her to be the best gharrgoil I could be.

“What happened to them, your friends?”

“I assume they were killed. I never let myself think of their fate. Not in all the rotations I sat on that wall. It was too painful. They were either dead or trapped in their own bodies like myself. I'm not sure what would be worse.”

“But you survived. And now you're awake. Is there any chance that they might still be out there, hidden in plain sight as statues or grotesques?”

I wrapped my tail around my leg to keep it from bashing the floor. “What are the chances? It was a small miracle that the human found me and put me onto the castle wall. If he had left me where I'd crashed, I may have been destroyed by locals or simply fallen over, becoming one with the mud, cursed to forever stare into darkness, unable to die, unable to live. I would not wish that fate on my worst enemy.”

“It sounds horrible,” she whispered. “I don't think I quite understood how awful it must have been to be frozen in place for so long. I can't even imagine it. Hundreds of years. Even just sitting in place for a day would be boring. You did it for...”

“Too long.” I sighed deeply. “I don't want to ever be put in that position again. If I get petrified one more time... I don't know what I would do. Anything but endure it again.”

“I will make sure that won't happen. You'll stay close to me. We'll figure out just how far away you can be from me. And if you need my blood again...” She licked her lips. “It actually felt really good. It's strange to think of it now, and I probably shouldn't crave to repeat that experience, but I do.”

Oh how I yearned to taste her sweet blood again. But I wouldn't, not unless I absolutely had to. It was wrong. I couldn't exploit her like this. I had burst into her life, had disrupted her work, was going to sleep in her dwelling and eat her food. I wasn't going to take more from her, especially not her blood.

Georgie squeezed my hand again. “If you want... This may be a silly idea - it might be hopeless, as you said - but I could search the records for other statues made from the same stone as you. The Guardian was always seen as special because he was not built from the same sandstone as the rest of Stirling Castle. Through my work, I have access to the databases that list all historic monuments in Scotland. It's worth a try, right?”

I wasn't sure what to say. I didn't want to raise my hopes only to have them shattered again.

“Even if you were to find them,” I said eventually, “How would we wake them? I needed your touch. My mate's touch. The chances of that happening were too small to even begin to calculate. With all the planets in the universe, I happened to crash-land on the one that my mate was going to be born on hundreds of rotations later. What are the chances of the same thing happening for Sten and Hallr?”

“You know more about this mates business than me. But could it be that we're mates-” She swallowed hard, as if it had been difficult to use that word. “Because you were on Earth? Surely whoever decides who is mate to whom wouldn't just choose someone you never had a chance to encounter throughout your life. That wouldn't make sense. Nobody would ever find their partners.”

My head was spinning. Maybe she was right. Maybe Hallr and Sten were still out there. And maybe we could find their mates to wake them.

“We shall call the dating agency tomorrow morning,” I announced. “But now, we shall eat.”

Eleven

Georgie

I woke with a start, wide awake. I sat up straight and looked at the side of the mezzanine platform where Cairn had been perched overnight. He was still there. I searched for movement, anything that would tell me he hadn't turned back to stone. His chest expanded as he breathed in.

I almost sighed with relief.

I'd woken up multiple times during the night, always worried that he had either disappeared or turned to stone.