Page 12 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

7

KEL

The translator reached usable accuracy late on our second morning, and I immediately wished it hadn't.

Over the next three hours, she talked. Constantly. Without pause, without apparent need for breath, and with a fluency of complaint that I had never encountered in any species across twelve star systems.

She talked to herself. Extended monologues about her physical discomfort, the temperature, the humidity, the inadequacy of her footwear, and something called "coffee" that she appeared to need with the desperation of an addict in withdrawal. She described this substance in such vivid and longing detail that I briefly considered it might be a controlled stimulant.

She talked to the jungle. She addressed trees that blocked her path as if they had personally offended her. She narrated her own progress through the underbrush in what I gathered was meant to be humorous. She greeted insects.

She named things.

A six-legged ground predator broke from the ferns on our second morning, low to the ground and fast, its jaw opening in three hinged sections as it charged. I drew my sidearm and fired into the path a handspan before its front feet. Soil erupted. The creature skidded sideways, all six legs scrabbling for purchase, and she stopped behind my shoulder instead of running.

"Hey, Kevin," she said, breathless.

The predator looked at her. Looked at the smoking crater. And left.

"See? Kevin gets it," she said. "Kevin knows when he's not wanted."

I did not understand the significance of the name Kevin. I did not understand how she had decided this creature was a Kevin. I did not understand why the creature had responded to being addressed as though it were a social acquaintance. I added these to the rapidly growing list of things I did not understand about this species.

Among my people, you did not name a thing unless you intended to claim responsibility for it. A weapon was named. A ship was named. A bonded mate was named. A scavenger on a jungle path was assessed, categorized, and forgotten. She named everything. She was either claiming the entire planet or her species had a fundamentally different relationship with naming than mine did. I suspected the latter, but with this alien, I could not be certain.

She also talked to the food. Each emergency ration bar was greeted with a new variation of disgust. "Hello, sadness rectangle." "Back again, flavor void." "Oh good, compressed misery for breakfast." She ate them all. Completely. She never wasted food despite her vocal contempt for it. But the rations were designed for Valorian biology, not hers, and the gap was widening. She was burning fuel faster than she could absorb it, and it was starting to show in her face. Her body ran hot and constant, like an engine with no idle setting, and the bars were not giving her enough. Already, the slight tremor in her hands when she unwrapped each bar told me what she would not: she was starving by degrees. And she was hiding it from me with the same stubborn competence she applied to everything.

And she talked to me.

"So, Glow Stick. That's what I'm calling you until you tell me your name. Because of the —" She waved her hand at my forearms. "The light-up situation. Which, by the way, we are going to discuss at some point, because that's not normal. Well, I guess I don't know what's normal for you. Maybe all of your species do the glow thing. Maybe you're the weird one who doesn't glow enough. Maybe I'm glow-shaming you and I should apologize."

She did not apologize.

"You know what, let's start with the basics." She stopped walking, which forced me to stop as well since she was behind me and had proven she would simply stand still and yell if I got too far ahead. She pointed at herself. "Taylor." She enunciated clearly. "Tay-lor."

I looked at her. By then, the translator had been feeding me her words for the full three-hour stretch with increasing accuracy. I understood her perfectly. She did not know this.

I should tell her. Communication was tactically essential. We needed to coordinate on navigation, threat response, rationing, pace. Every hour without verbal communication was a liability.

What I could not reconcile was the crying. She had cried the previous night — briefly, silently, turned away from me, her shoulders shaking while she thought I was asleep. The resonance had delivered her grief as pressure — sharp-edged, heavy, with a texture I had no name for. Who or what it was for, the bond did not say; it gave me the weight of the thing, not its contents. She had stopped within minutes, wiped her face, and gone to sleep.

Among Valorians, grief was communal. You brought it before your clan and they held it with you until it diminished. The idea of processing loss alone, in silence, hiding it from the only other being present, was incomprehensible to me. I did not mistake it for weakness; I simply could not understand a culture that treated grief as private and needing comfort as a concession rather than a biological necessity. It explained the self-sufficiency. It also explained why the self-sufficiency looked, through the resonance, like it cost her so much.

I should tell her.

"Taylor," she repeated, jabbing her thumb at her chest. Then she pointed at me with an expectant look.

The problem was that the moment I revealed I could understand her, she would ask questions. Specifically, she would ask about the markings. She had been observing them with an analytical intensity that suggested a trained mind. She had already conducted proximity experiments, moving closer and farther to gauge my markings' response. She was building a hypothesis. Once she could ask direct questions, she would test it.

And I was not prepared to explain resonance to a being who did not know my species existed until two days ago.

She was still pointing at me. Waiting.

I was a coward. A decorated retrieval specialist with eight years of exemplary service and seventeen successful extractions, and I was afraid of a conversation with a creature half my size.

"Kel'vran," I said.

She attempted to repeat it. What came out was not recognizable as my name in any dialect. She tried three more times, each worse than the last, her face contorting with effort.