Page 39 of Fallen from the Stars

“Building sand castles. That’s a thing, right?” She looked down at the crumbled sand beneath her hands. “I mean Iwasbuilding a castle.”

Before I up and destroyed it the moment I saw you.

“I have seen younglings make little buildings out of sand,” he said, lifting his gaze to her, “and Arkon, another kraken, has done it with them. But I do not know what acastleis.”

“Oh, well, it’s a building from the old times. Like,reallyold Old Earth times. It was a huge building made of stone and— You know, never mind.”

“Why do you call itOld Earth? Is Earth not simply the planet from which your people came?”

“Yeah, it is,” she replied. “There’s this other planet the IDC colonized early on called Tau Ceti Three. I guess they sold it pretty hard as a second Earth to get settlers to go, and it was so popular that it became the IDC capital planet a couple hundred years ago. I saw some of the old ads after I enlisted —Why live on Old Earth when you could live on the new one? Go to Tau Ceti Three and claim your piece of a new world! I think they kept them around when I was in training to instill us with a sense of IDC history, but they were kind of a joke for all the soldiers.”

“Your people just…abandoned their old home for a new one?” Vasil asked.

“A lot of them, yeah. Probably because even then Earth was pretty run down and worn out. It’s not a very nice place, at least in my experience.” She pushed herself to her feet and brushed the sand from her backside, catching Vasil’s eyes straying to follow her hands. “Anyway, did you have any luck?”

“Only in obtaining food,” he replied, raising a tentacle. A large, hard-shelled creature dangled in his hold. It looked like a giant bug.

Theo wrinkled her nose, glad that, if nothing else, the creature wasn’t moving. “I’m not sure I want to know what that is.” She moved past him to the water and rinsed her hands in the surf. “And tonight, dinner is on me.”

“What do you mean?”

Grinning, she turned back to Vasil. “Iwent hunting today.”

The light came on at her wrist. “She stumbled across a bird by accident and blasted it near to pieces. Itwasn’thunting,” Kane said aloud.

“Way to steal my thunder, Kane,” Theo muttered.

“That’s what I’m here for, Theo.”

Brows lifting, Vasil moved toward their camp. Theo watched him, transfixed by the gracefulness of his tentacles as they flowed over the sand, by the muscles of his sides and back, by his powerful shoulders. He paused about halfway between the water and the camp and looked back at her.

“Do you have it propped near the fire right now?” he asked.

Theo blinked and straightened, dragging her eyes away from his well-defined muscles to meet his gaze. “Um, yes?”

“How long have you been buildingcastles?”

“Not too long,” she said, closing the distance between them. “Why?”

“It is not going to cook evenly that way.”

“But I’ve seen you do the same with the fish.”

He continued forward. “You have to watch it. Have to turn it so both sides are cooked.”

“Oh.”

As he reached the fire, he sank down — she still found it fascinating that he could raise and lower his torso so smoothly, even after seeing it so many times — and picked up the stick by its bottom end. The side of the bird facing away from the fire still looked pink and raw. He twisted the stick in his palm to show the other side.

Theo stopped and cringed at the blackened, charred mess he’d revealed.

For a moment, her mind was blank; she simply stared at the bird, unable to make sense of what she was seeing. Then the dam burst inside her. Despair and defeat rushed out to flood her from head to toe. She’d been so damn proud of herself…

Her eyes filled with tears, and, no matter how hard she tried to stop it, her lower lip trembled. She hadn’t any shed tears since she was a little kid — Theodora Velenti wasnota crier. What the hell waswrongwith her?

“I guess I should have watched it, huh?” she said, voice thick and broken.

Vasil kept his gaze on her for a time; its weight was crushing. Finally, he set the charred meat aside and turned his body to face her fully.

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