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I am hungry. I am thirsty. I need to pee.
Fortunately, it is not too long before he returns. Seeing him in the morning is like seeing him for the first time. I forgot how big he is, how his bulk fills the cavern and makes everything, especially me, seem small. I forgot how every part of him is muscled and ripples when he moves. There is no softness to him. His skin covers pure power and bone.
“Morning.”
His voice rumbles through me. Those blue eyes lock on me with a gaze of pure possession. I feel something in my stomach clench. Anticipation? Fear? Desire? All of the above? He makes me respond in ways I don’t completely understand.
“I need to go to the toilet,” I say. It’s embarrassing, but if he leaves me tied up here one more minute, I am going to soil this cave.
He nods and crouches down, pulling the vines free of my naked body.
“Come,” he says.
I still cannot work out how sentient he is. He seems intelligent. When I look into his eyes, I feel a mind very much like my own, but he does not present himself the way I do verbally. He doesn’t seem to feel the need to speak. He hasn’t even asked me my name. For that matter, I haven’t asked him his.
“I’m Tselia,” I say, following him. “What’s your name?”
“Zion.”
It sounds like a growl.
“Toilet,” he says, pointing to a hole in the rock that is sort of hidden round the back of a little outcropping deeper in the cave. The area around it has been smoothed by what I imagine must be thousands of years of human feet squatting around it. I have no idea where the hole leads. I don’t precisely feel inclined to investigate too deeply at this point.
He stands and he watches, his brow raised expectantly.
“Well, you can’t look at me.”
He keeps staring.
“You really can’t.”
“You tell me what I can’t do, and you will find out what I can.”
“Wow, a whole sentence! Let’s throw a party,” I snap sarcastically. My bladder is aching and I just want to pee and he’s holding the whole process up by finally deciding to speak to me.
His expression slides into a glower and I realize two things: antagonizing him is not a good idea, and if I want to toilet, I’m going to have to do it with him looking. No doubt it is not a shameful thing here on this planet, but in my world, excretion is not a group activity.
I have no choice. I try to work out how to squat over the hole so as not to splash myself. This was not made for women. Women need a seat of some kind. Or more bendy knees. I don’t know. I end up awkwardly perching, my hands on the rocks as I finally relieve myself.
He mercifully does not stare me down the whole time. He seems to be more inclined to watch the area around me, scanning the darker corners of the cave. This place feels bigger today than it did last night. I get the sense that is much deeper, larger, and older than I suspected.
When I am done, he hands me a leaf to dry myself with. It is surprisingly suited to the task, soft and pliable and almost as good as the ship’s tissue.
“You don’t need to watch me.”
“There are beasts.”
“I know. I’m looking at one.”
He ignores that jibe.
If anyone else was this reluctant to speak, I might begin to find them boring, but not him. He is far too intense to be boring. He leads me back to the relatively well lit, cozy place we slept the night before and once again he feeds me.
“I need to get back to my ship,” I explain. “I have to get back to the… the stars. Because there is a star lord looking for me, and he will be very angry if he doesn’t find me.”
“You’re mine.”
Two words that apparently erase all threat. He doesn’t understand. He’s just a simple backwards brute of a man. It’s up to me to try to make him comprehend.
“This man, he controls many star ships. He has an entire army of them. He will send them for me.”
“If you were his, he would not have sent you so far. You were alone.”
Good point, I suppose.
“I was alone, but we can speak at great distances. He knows where I am. And he wants me back.”
“He is your lover?”
“No. My father.”
Zion nods. “Your father may visit.”
I let out a laugh at the notion of the Patron deigning to set foot on land. He hasn’t been inside a planet’s atmosphere for hundreds of years. He certainly wouldn’t do it merely to see me. He is a busy man, occupied with the affairs of many millions of entities. I am one among them, due little more favor, and hardly more thought.
