Page 4 of Rock Hard Alien

She was soft and curvy like all of her species, without sharp angles. Her lack of wings and horns would have been disturbing if I hadn't watched her kind for rotation upon rotation. I'd got used to their small size, their strange language, their tendency to stay on the ground, rarely looking up at the potential waiting in the sky.

My senses were still waking up, but her scent slowly filtered through. Strangely familiar yet foreign, like a long-forgotten memory buried deep in the rocky cliffs of my mind.

And another thought surfaced. One so monumental that I couldn't quite comprehend it yet.

There was only one person who could break a gharrgoil's petrification when caused by the environment. No, it couldn't be. It wasn't possible. She couldn't be my...

“I'm dreaming,” she muttered. “It's shock.”

I had not spoken since the day our ship had crashed. That day when I'd woken up in the wreckage of my escape pod, petrification already setting in. I'd managed to take a few steps before the process completed, but there was no turning back once it started. My senses had still been fully functional when a native had found me. He'd spoken in a strange tongue and looked even stranger. It hadn't taken long to realise that this civilisation was still in its infancy. I would have cursed if I'd been able to move my lips.

The female slowly turned to look at me, really look at me. I'd been dimly aware of her presence, but I had not paid much attention to her. What was the point when these aliens believed I was nothing but lifeless stone?

“I'm dreaming,” she repeated. Maybe she wasn't very bright.

“Ew. Argh. Nott.”

I'd had plenty of time to learn their language, but what came out of my mouth didn't quite sound right. I had imagined speaking their tongue for a long time, had planned speeches and entire conversations - back when my mind had still been active and I'd been bored senseless. But it transpired that making my tongue create those sounds was harder than it had seemed.

“You. Are. Nott.”

Better. My voice didn't sound like myself. Deeper. Hoarser. Gravelly from eons of disuse.

“You can talk.” Her eyes were wide. “No. This isn't real. I'm unconscious after falling down the ladder. Have to be. This can't be.”

Oh great. I'd ended up with a stupid one. Just my luck. At least she was pretty, for her kind. Long brown hair peeked out from under a strange head garment crusted with dust and dirt. Her eyes reminded me of the colour of the field where I'd woken up. A deep green with flecks of brown. She would only reach to my chest when standing, but I was tall for my kind, and she was small to average for hers. Her bulky clothes were hiding her figure. No gharrgoil would ever wear that much fabric. We preferred to feel the air on our skin, only wearing the simplest of garments to satisfy other species' sensibilities. Until we'd become a spacefaring species, gharrgoils had not worn any clothes at all, save for ceremonial robes and jewellery to show wealth and influence.

Even now, gharrgoils rarely covered their upper bodies. Our wings and tails made most garments impractical. We wore fitted battle wraps and boots, just like I had when I’d been petrified. Somehow, my clothes had become stone like the rest of me and survived.

“I. Can. Tark.”

I tried to keep the sarcasm to a minimum. She couldn't help that she'd never encountered a gharrgoil before.

“How is this... I don't know... But you're a statue!”

I realised I was still holding her wrist. I squeezed it gently. “I. Am. Not.”

This time, I almost sounded like one of them. I just needed some practice.

“But... how?”

Where would I even start? Everything I had to say would blow her mind. And she'd already proven that she wasn't the brightest.

“Are you alright?” a male voice shouted from somewhere on the ground. I tightened my grip on her wrist again. Did he belong to her? Did she already have a mate?

“I'm fine! Can you go back to the car and grab the plans of the palace? I need to check something!”

She sounded so much more confident when she was talking to the other male. But as soon as she looked up at me, that confidence seemed to shatter.

“How can this be?” she asked softly. “How is this happening?”

I had so much to reply to that. But nothing felt quite adequate. How could I explain that I was from an alien planet, that I'd crash-landed here generations before she'd even been born, that there was a reason she'd been able to wake me?

I didn't want to scare her. I didn't want her to climb down that ladder and disappear. If she was what I thought she was, petrification would return as soon as she was back on the ground. I stretched my wings. They were starting to feel better. I folded them behind my back. Stiff, painful, but I was starting to feel more like myself. Strange how quickly I was returning to full mobility. The few times I'd experienced full petrification before, back at the Academy, it had taken days to be at full strength. Maybe it was her.

“I should go back down,” she whispered. “Forget this. And you have to go back to the position you were in. Keiran will notice when he looks up.”

She wanted to pretend nothing had happened. Wanted me to turn to stone again.