After Aurania’s outburst, Samara called a short break to their meeting so everyone could clear their heads. Soren had been granted supervised leave to get cleaned up, so he and Tamiyo returned to the guest house she mentioned. The structure was roughed up from the earlier quake and the furniture had all been knocked askew, but it was still standing. Soren and Tamiyo were escorted back by the ones called Violet and Veolo, and the front door of the guest house hadn’t been closed even a minute yet when someone knocked aggressively.

  Soren watched from the kitchen, the translator in one hand while Tamiyo answered the door to reveal Violet again.

  “Hey, Tamiyo,” she said in a flat tone. “Samara ordered fresh clothing be made for him, I have a seamstress with me.”

  “Hmm,” Tamiyo said thoughtfully, then stepped aside. “Very well.”

  Violet entered followed by another lacravida, this one had long silvery-white hair, ears like a snow fox, and sly, intelligent eyes. She had something long like a cigarette in her mouth, though it wasn’t lit, and she wore yellow robes that reminded Soren of a kimono.

  “Remember,” Violet told the woman. “Behave, or I'll have to call Aura.”

  “Oh, hush, Vi,” she cooed. “I’ll be nice.”

  She sauntered over to Soren with a hungry look in her eye, but other than introducing herself as Kizara, she kept her tongue firmly lashed. She had Soren stand out away from any walls or furniture, then took so many measurements that he lost count.

  As she was finishing up, he muttered, “Feel like you could build a clone of me after all that.”

  Kizara cast a sultry look over her shoulder as she headed for the door and said, “Now there's an enticing idea.”

  “Kizara,” Violet said sternly.

  The fox-eared woman just giggled and took her leave.

  Violet sighed, looked at both Soren and Tamiyo, and said, “Sorry, she's the best seamstress in town but she really has a thing for humans. Even when they’re not… so big.” Her eyes darted up and down Soren as she said the last bit, but he noted it wasn’t a hungry look like Kizara—more like tactical analysis.

  “Get cleaned up,” Violet added. “She'll have clothes ready for you before we reconvene with Samara.”

  Then she walked out, closing the door behind her.

  Tamiyo showed Soren where the shower was—luckily, the water still worked in the house—and he found himself grateful that it was actually big enough to fit his giant body. He peeled off the ill-fitting trousers and climbed in, scalding himself intentionally with the hot water. It felt like he hadn’t bathed in years, and he wanted to scrub everything away until the world made sense again.

  Even after getting himself clean, he stood in the hot water for a while, until he heard Tamiyo’s voice call out, “Everything alright in there? Need me to help with anything? I’m designed for end of life care so nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about.”

  He was finding this girl to be very kind, and it grounded him amongst all the chaos. A smile touched his lips, and he called back, “I’m alright, thank you.”

  He turned off the water and grabbed a towel, but as he was drying himself off, something occurred to him. “Hey, Tamiyo? I have a question.”

  The door cracked back open but she didn’t step inside. “What is it?”

  He wrapped the towel around his waist and strode over, opening the door. “Why do I not need a translator to understand you? And why can everyone seem to understand me? The first lizard-man I spoke with said I was speaking something called Terr-English.”

  Her antennae twitched as she stared up at him, thinking. Then she turned, leading him back to the main room. “Yes, that’s correct. The reason you can understand me when we speak is I intentionally calibrated myself to use words you understand. Though I have to admit, the words you’re using are extremely old. What everyone else is speaking is basically an evolution of the language you’re used to.”

  Soren pondered this. The words did sound familiar. “It sounds like they’re speaking Dutch mixed with like… Japanese. And fuckin’—I don’t even know. Auctioneer.”

  She thought some more, then said, “Yeah, that makes sense. It sounds like you’re speaking from a very specific time period, what year do you last remember?”

  Soren leaned against a large reclining chair in the main room. “2090.”

  Her eyes got wider. “Shit. Well, yeah. You’re speaking 21st century English. That was over 7,000 years ago, language has changed a lot since then. But even the words you’re used to are an evolution from what they originally meant.”

  Soren never claimed to be a language expert, but he supposed that all made sense. This girl sure seemed to know a lot, and he decided to test her knowledge. “Like what?”

  She leaned against another large chair across from him, then crossed her arms, thinking for a moment. “Let’s see. You’re used to using the word ‘nice’ to describe someone or something pleasant, correct?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Well, that word originates from the Latin words, ‘nescire,’ meaning ‘not know’ and ‘nescius,’ for ignorant. The original usage of ‘nice’ in English was a way to call someone stupid.”

  Soren stood again and studied her. He paced one direction, then back, observing her from multiple angles. She stayed perfectly still, allowing him to assess, following his movements with only her electric-blue eyes. There was definitely more to her than met the eye, she seemed both young and experienced at the same time, as if she’d learned a lot of hard lessons in a very short time.

  “Tamiyo,” he finally said ponderously.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “That’s me.” She stared back up at him, her posture like a stubborn wall. No—not stubborn. Resilient.

  “So it was your ship I woke up on?”

  “Yep.” A sliver of amusement crept onto her face. “I found you floating naked in space.”

  That was a troubling piece of information, but he filed it away. There was an interesting energy between the two of them. He couldn’t point to any one reason and say why, but his gut told him that he could trust her.

  “You pulled me from the void?”

  She nodded. “I did.”

  “How nice of you.”

  Her eyes darted away and a wry smile broke across her face. She tried to fight it, but a giggle poked its way through before she finally looked back at him. “You’re going to be trouble, huh.”

  “I’ll try not to be.”

  “…So why do you think he gets under your skin so much?” Kizara’s voice was casual, but the tilt of her brow said otherwise. The needle in her hand moved in a flash, a strip of dark cloth tugging between her fingers like it owed her something.

  Aurania didn’t answer right away.

  The room smelled faintly of pressed linen, bitter root tea, and the earthy smoke of the dried leaves and sweetroot bark Kizara had smoldering in a thin cigarello between her lips. Bolts of cloth and rough-cut lacravida robes lay half-completed all around the shop.

  “He doesn’t,” Aurania muttered.

  Kizara snorted softly. “Babe, I’ve seen you kneel in the rubble with a child’s body in your arms and come back swinging the same day. You’ve bent pirate crews to your will, making them mutiny against their own captains. And that general, you kicked him out of his own meeting, what was his name?”

  “General Quib”

  “Yeah, General Quib. Kicked him right out of his own meeting, didn’t even raise your voice. Plus you somehow keep that Riza on a leash.” She flipped over the piece she was working on and resumed stitching. “And we’ve buried a lot of friends together over the years.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” Aurania said. “It was one pirate crew. And General Quib was a dick, everyone hated him. What’s your point?”

  Kizara paused and gave Aurania a condescending stare. “You threw a chair across the war table, sweetheart. And then you broke down crying. In front of your sister.”

  Aurania shifted where she stood, arms crossed, her eyes locked on the far wall. “I didn’t throw it across the war table...”

  Kizara just stared, eyelids half-shut.

  “... technically I threw it across the room.”

  went back to stitching without a word, her long white hair moving faintly with each tug of the needle. Her hair was matched by the white of her ears, the vulpes shape complementing how sly she liked to act.

  Aurania’s jaw clenched. She hated that Kizara noticed things. Hated it more that she was right. She was probably—no, she was Aurania’s oldest friend.

  She’d seen her at her highest highs and lowest lows, and she had always been the one person Aurania couldn’t bluff, couldn’t outmaneuver, and definitely couldn’t lie to. She loved to flirt with almost everyone and couldn’t keep her nose out of Aurania’s personal life, but Kizara was one of the only people she could go to when she needed to sort her head out. Her advice almost always pissed Aurania off, but it was seldom wrong.

  She’d almost gone into heat when she saw Soren but Violet said she at least kept her tongue in check for the most part. But she also said Kizara’s robes grew more and more revealing the more measurements she took. Once they were alone in her shop, it took everything Aurania had to get her to shut the fuck up about ‘how tall he is’ or ‘his bulging muscles.’

  “Are you done with the clothes or should I find someone else?” Aurania snapped lazily.

  Kizara didn’t rise to it. She just tilted her head and gave a half-smile like she was watching a toddler bluff their way through a lie. “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t realize you were in such a rush to get back to pretending everything’s fine.”

  She folded the waistband of the trousers down and stitched a line without looking up. “You can bark orders at everyone else, Aura. Doesn’t work on me.”

  The cigarello flared as Kizara took a drag. She pulled it from her mouth and tapped the ash into a little clay dish on the table. “He survived you. That’s the part you can’t let go of, isn’t it?”

  Aurania let the silence stretch. The floor creaked as she shifted weight, arms still crossed, her jaw locked like it was holding back a scream.

  “I wasn’t trying to kill him,” she said at last, but it was too fast, too sharp.

  Kizara didn’t respond.

  “I could’ve,” Aurania added, quieter. “If I’d wanted to.”

  Still nothing. Just the rhythmic scratch of needle through cloth.

  Aurania hated that. Hated how Kizara left the words sitting there like bait.

  “Besides,” she muttered, eyes narrowing. “Whatever that thing is, it’s not human. It should’ve died.”

  “You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself more than me, Babe.”

  Aurania scoffed, but it came out thinner than she meant. She turned away from the table and paced a slow arc across the room, like she could walk the weight off her chest. “I don’t need convincing.”

  She stopped near the far wall, fingers flexing like she wanted something to hit. “I know what I saw. I hit him. I knocked him out when he should have died. And then he goes and crawls into my fucking skull and makes me watch as he slaughters my friends.”

  She paused for a long moment. “And he wasn’t even the one at fault. He was defending himself after Thamdir got scared and made a mistake. Gods… I don’t even know how to break that to Brolgar and Orlina.”

  She exhaled hard through her nose, disgusted with herself for even saying it aloud. “He’s not normal.”

  When she turned around, Kizara was standing in front of her holding a large duffle bag. “You’re a bit abnormal yourself Aura, you’re both freakishly tall.”

  Aurania jutted her jaw and glared off to the side, muttering, “You’re a freak.”

  “Until now, you’ve gone your entire life knowing you can rely on your strength, on your skills. But he calls all of that into question, your strength won’t work on him. As strong as you are, you could throw everything you have at him and he would win. And that terrifies you.” Kizara just stood there, leaning closer so Aurania had to look her in the eyes.

  Her voice softened. “You chained him like an animal. Built him up in your head as this monstrous thing because you were scared of what he might be. And when he woke up, he wasn't even angry with you for attacking him. He…”

  “…he was sorry.” The words slipped out of Aurania’s mouth raw and ashamed, like they’d ducked under her defenses without permission.

  Kizara let out a quiet breath. “Aura… whatever he is, no matter how strong… deep down?” She tilted her head. “He’s just a scared little boy who woke up with the strength of a god. He probably has no idea what to do with that power or why he even has it. And he's not going to be able to figure that out alone.”

  Aurania stared back, a heat rising behind her eyes, and her jaw tightened. “He’s weak.”

  Kizara slid into a sly grin, lightly biting her lower lip. “No he’s not.”

  Aurania narrowed her eyes. “You just said he’s a scared little boy.”

  Kizara gave a soft laugh. “Aura, all men are scared little boys inside, especially humans. Doesn’t mean they’re not also dangerous, or beautiful, or worth unraveling a little.”

  Aurania rolled her eyes. “Lustful bitch.”

  “Stubborn sow,” Kizara retorted with a wink.

  She yanked the bag from Kizara's hand and stormed out of the shop before she could say another word.