Page 68 of Sohut's Protection

He seemed interested in everything she had, asking her how she’d crafted it, how she knew how to craft it, and other questions.

It was all so alien to him and the way he oohed and aahed was filling her with pride.

She’d done all this…survived in an alien wild place all on her own.

“And these?” He asked as the first light of morning began filling the sky. “How did you know how to do this?”

He was holding her fire board and spindle as if they were two parts of a puzzle he didn’t understand.

“My father taught me,” she answered as she used her finger to detangle a knot in her hair. She was pretty sure her hair was wrecked beyond repair but with most of the mud gone, it was easier to get the strands free from the tangles.

A strange look came over the alien…Sohut’s face. He wasn’t exactly like she thought he’d be.

He was…softer…nicer?

Don’t get her wrong, he was all hard edges. But his personality…he was surprising her with every second that she was in his presence.

When she’d seen him hop from the orcs’ vehicle and head into the jungle, she hadn’t expected him to be like this.

He was so…different.

The muscles in his arms flexed even with him just turning the spindle in his hands.

“Your daran…” he said. The word didn’t translate in her head.

“Daran?” she asked.

“Yes. The male who begot you.”

“Oh, my dad. Yea. He used to take me camping all the time.” She paused, memories of time spent with her father resurfacing. What she wouldn’t do to see him again.

“He was all I had. My mother never wanted me. She threatened to throw me away.” She huffed out a laugh. Funny she could talk about it so easily now. As a child, she’d felt like a reject because of that one fact. And that’s why her father, the great Thomas Barlow, had worked so hard to make her tough.

She wasn’t a victim.

She was a survivor.

“Dad taught me everything he knew.” She fingered another knot in her hair, working her way through the strands till they were straight again. “He taught me how to make a shelter, taught me how to find food, taught me how to make a fire from nothing. He taught me everything I needed to know to survive.”

As if he knew he’d leave me one day and I’d need them in this exact situation.

She didn’t say the last sentence but when the faraway look left her eyes, when the glaze of unexpected tears drained away from her vision, she realized the alien was looking at her with a strange look in his luminous green eyes.

“He was everything a child like me needed,” she finished.

A sort of wry smile twisted the alien’s lips. “Must be nice,” he said.

The words sounded bitter despite that his facial muscles displayed no emotion.

As a matter of fact, it was almost as if he had completely closed off suddenly.

For a beat, he just stared at her, his eyes having a faraway look—the kind you got when you were looking at something that wasn’t there…remembering something.

And then he sniffed.

Whatever he smelled pulled him straight from wherever he’d gone and his eyes widened slightly.

With a deliberate pull of his nostrils, so hard the little bumps that ran down his septum bunched up a little, he inhaled again.

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