Page 12 of Theirs to Crave

She was covered in wounds. The fresh red bruises ringing her neck and arms were bad enough, but it was the burns that made my heart stumble. They covered half of her face, angry and red. More crosshatched down her arms, over her thighs, and disappeared beneath her scorched tunic.

“Mariposa,” Mariano whispered.

A succession of dull thuds rang from Shane’s cell. He’d split his knuckles open at this rate.

Cassandra raised her chin. “I’ll live.” Her eyes flickered to Logan’s mangled body, and she didn’t have to say the rest.

“You will,” I confirmed. Secretly, I worried about infection. This place was filthy, and burns were so hard to heal. But she’d survived abduction and assault. Surely she could survive this too.

She nodded and curled back onto her side, as far from Logan’s body as she could get. She made no noise as she wept.

Chapter 4

Estrella

Chapter 3 Summary

Estrella wakes, bloody and hurting, after being knocked around the electrified cell during a very rough exit of Earth’s atmosphere. Mariano swears he’ll get them out, that they won’t die in a cage. Logan loses it, takes his fear out on Cass, not for the first time. She ends up burned from forced exposure to the cell wall. We discover the Quoosalk can spit acid when Yin melts Logan’s back, after which he dies. Cass thanks the Quoosalk for their aid, cries. Everyone is traumatized.

The bugs must have been monitoring us somehow, because two of them came in before too long and dragged Logan’s body away. They did so quickly and without fuss, which I was thankful for since the fucking cowards activated our collars before they even opened the door.

Although, given that we now knew the Indigo Girls were reptilian assassins, the bugs’ caution made some sense.

Nah, fuck that, and fuck them.

After a couple “days”, roughly estimated by the delivery of our delightful protein shakes, Cassandra started talking again. Her wounds weren’t healing very well, and she cried often, but everyone understood.

We all cried sometimes.

After a couple of embarrassing breakdowns, we established a system. Three knocks in succession meant we pretended not to see, hear, or smell anything from that person until they knocked again. It mostly worked. The illusion of privacy was better than nothing at all.

The pinche bichos didn’t believe in day to night cycles—or beds of any kind—and we couldn’t ever really relax, so sleep was rough and hard to come by. For our own sanity more than anything, we agreed that the “protein shakes” were dinner, after which we had quiet time until “morning”, which was whenever our bladders dragged us off the floor.

It had been twenty-two days since we left Earth.

I used a wet finger to mark the days on the grimy back wall of our cell, the only one that wasn’t electrified. None of us could bring ourselves to drink from the almost-bidets, but we’d all broken down and used them for general washing. Still, my skin itched and crawled for want of a bath. Thankfully, the only bugs on the ship were the ones who’d captured us, so nothing else crawled on me.

The poor Indigo Girls were struggling. Their colorful skin dried out quickly, so they used the tunics they otherwise didn’tbother with as sponges, turning their cell into a rustic communal bath once or twice a day.

My desire for a shower with hot water and soap grew by the hour.

There were a lot of hours.

Mostly, we spent them talking. Learning to communicate with the Indigo Girls took a lot of time, but we were motivated, and it wasn’t as if we had other things to do. Every other conversation topic became painfully depressing, sooner or later.

We figured out quickly that learning their language wasn’t going to work. Their long black tongues were hyper-mobile, and they could vibrate their throats at different frequencies at the same time. The language was beautifully layered and harmonic, but our human mouths just couldn’t replicate it. The words we approximated—like their names and the name of their species, the Quoosalk—bore only a basic resemblance to their originals.

Shane was a singer. He had a very good ear, and he spent several memorable hours coaching us until we managed a passable version of “hello” in concert. The Quoosalk were thrilled.

I taught them a few words in Spanish, just to see how their trilling voices would sound. I’d never heard my language sound lovelier. We mostly stuck to English, though, since Ria and Cassandra spoke very little Spanish, and Shane didn’t speak it at all.

There was a lot of miming in the beginning, which was hysterical and frustrating in turns. But as our understanding grew, their personalities emerged, and soon they were less “aliens” and more “people”.

We had a stumbling block when it came to gender. The Quoosalk didn’t identify as either male or female, and it took a while to realize theyunderstoodthe concept, they just didn’tembodyit. The closest we could come to their pronouns was “xe/xem/xyr”, which we used to refer to xem individually. Our attempts to pronounce their word for a group of Quoosalk sent them into cascades of laughter—apparently our mangled version sounded a lot like “asshole” to them—so we compromised on “they/them” rather than insult them constantly.

Of all the Quoosalk, Yin seemed to be the oldest. The others were respectfully deferential to xem in a way that made my heart ache, missing my Nana and Tata. Xe was dignified, thoughtful, and kind, but I never forgot that xe could also liquify people with xyr spit.

Little Ilya was the youngest, and Yin’s child. Xe was shy and quiet, with a clear soprano voice so pure it broke your heart. When Ilya’s blue head lifted in song, nothing else existed. Xyr voice was so shockingly exquisite, it caused a minor interspecies incident.

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