Page 13 of Theirs to Crave

Shane had taken to performing for us—sometimes his own pieces, sometimes covers. I even cajoled him into singing Tom Jones, to the groaning laughter of the others. When we knew the songs, we sang along. It was a comfort. One day, about halfway through “Hallelujah”, Ilya joined in. Xe didn’t try to sing the words, but wove xyr voice through ours in breath-stealing harmonies. It was so stunningly gorgeous that the rest of us stopped singing completely.

It took some frantic gesturing and reassurances before the Quoosalk were convinced we weren’t offended. When Ilya realized our silence had been a compliment, xyr Tiffany blue skin flushed magenta with pleasure.

With the Quoosalk’s accompaniment, our concerts became infinitely more impressive.

Salat was astonishingly brilliant. Xe and Cassandra had grown close and often sat together on either side of the cell wall, sometimes talking and other times just being in each other’s company. Together, they were responsible for a huge part of bridging our communication gap.

A more surprising pairing was Therry and Mariano. Therry was beautiful, with bright coloring and a fluid way of moving that made me think of dancing. Something sensual. Salsa, maybe. Or bachata. But xe had the same impossible sense of humor as my brother, and that idiot had jumped headfirst into making a fool of himself—and occasionally me—to make xem laugh. Therry was kind enough to return the favor.

Mariano wasn’t doing well in captivity. He was a high-energy person, always moving, always doing. Growing up, I’d been happy to spend an afternoon watching movies or playing cards with my Nana. Mariano would last fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, then he’d fidget and pester until he got permission to go play outside.

Ria was the same, and the two of them started doing calisthenics together as soon as their bruises healed enough to let them. They’d jog laps and compete for who could do the most pushups, and other body-punishing exercises. The rest of us got stiff and bored and would often join them, but less competitively. Cassandra—who told us she preferred to be called Cass—tried to do yoga but gave up. Without leggings or walls, it was just too embarrassing.

Cass was slow to open up. Not because she didn’t trust us, I didn’t think, but because she wasn’t used to having people who’d listen to her. Back home, the only people she’d had werethe asshole who would not be named—who she never spoke about—and her father, who was...distant. When she told us about her dream to pursue art rather than the more “practical, appropriate” marketing she’d been steered towards, it was with a flinching hesitancy that said she was waiting for us to shoot her down.

Our support caught her flat-footed.

Mariano continued to call her Mariposa, and she never once questioned it. Sometimes, when he referred to her that way she got the strangest smile—wobbly and sad, but with a determined lift of her chin. I was pretty sure she didn’t ask because she understood and was trying her best to crawl out of her cocoon.

Ria was about as different from Cass as you could get. A foot taller, muscular even after almost a month in a cell with no real food or exercise, tattooed, and loud. She came from a huge, close-knit family that ran a sustainability-focused construction company. The whole clan had moved from Tennessee to California for the business—of which she was a foreman. She was blunt, open, and had the dirtiest sense of humor. Even Mariano blushed at a few of her jokes.

Shane’s humor was just as wicked, but more sly. Subtle, where Ria was bold. The two of them gave me flutters that were deeply inappropriate given our current situation. He was an interesting man. Quiet, contained, smart, he considered each word before speaking. But there was turbulence under that calm facade. He never raised his voice, never raged, but the knuckles of his fists had bled on the back wall more than once.

He’d also, in all the time we’d been on the ship, grown only a faint, rather fashionable goatee. This made Mariano wild with jealousy, as he was convinced his own modest but fuller beard was reaching mountain man territory. His rants about it weregood for a few minutes’ amusement, although I’d smacked him more than once when he wouldn’t stop scratching the new growth.

I was familiar with emotional intimacy. My family was close, and they’d always been the center of my world. It was just Mariano and me now, but we put their pictures on the ofrenda every year, and I carried their love with me always. Even so, the depth of the bonds that grew between the nine of us in such a short time were surprising.

I suppose they shouldn’t have been. We had nothing to do but bare our souls to each other. Small talk felt so pointless when all the day-to-day minutia had been ripped away.

So, we spoke of deeper things. Family, friends, lovers. Dreams, places we’d been, things we’d done. Food, comforts, home.

In the still moments, we stood witness to each other’s darkness. Our fears, old hurts and insecurities, the wounds we tried to ignore so we could get through the day to day, they all came bubbling up with nothing to hold them at bay.

Eventually, even those wells dried up. When that happened, the silence could stretch for hours. But it inevitably gave way to the one topic we always returned to: what was going to happen to us.

???

“Probably safe to say we’re not headed for an intergalactic butcher shop,” Ria said, wiping her face. We’d just finished ourtwenty-third “dinner”, such as it was. “After a month of eating this crap we probably taste awful.”

“Qwrr?” asked Yin, tilting xyr head inquisitively.

The Quoosalk language was complex, but we’d figured out a handful of words. “Qwrr” was “what”, and probably the one we heard most often. We couldn’t share in their language, but we could give them space to speak it, and we tried to do it as much as possible.

We might never see our peoples again. We had to keep them alive somehow.

Ria grimaced apologetically, her eyebrows furrowing as she worked to translate her thoughts into words the Quoosalk would understand. “We’re not to be food,” she tried, shrugging. “Or the bugs would give us better food.”

Ilya giggled that particulartsk-tsk-tsklaugh the Quoosalk shared, then covered xyr face with both hands when xe burped. Mortified, xe slunk to the back of the cell and began wetting the tunics for their nightly bath.

Yin smiled briefly at the younger Quoosalk—a small smile that didn’t show xyr small, pointed teeth—and nodded. “We not food,” xe agreed. “We are for...to be looked at?”

I puzzled over that for a moment. We’d come a long way in our communication, but more complex ideas were difficult to convey. “Do you mean, the aliens look at us...for curiosity?”

Yin bobbed xyr head and stretched, humming gratefully as Ilya ran the wet cloth across xyr back.

I nibbled my lip, considering. “Like a zoo, maybe? Or for science?” I slanted a look at Mariano, grinning. “What are the odds we get out of thiswithoutbeing probed, do you think?”

He rolled his eyes and punched me in the arm.

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