“Wash?” He stalks back to me—or to the table, I guess—and blows fire on the plates until the food flakes off.
“Well, okay. At least let me rinse the charcoal off.”
He does let me stay long enough to rinse his burnt-topped dishes, and then he dries them with more fire.
“Gosh, Rakhii are fun.”
Before we leave the kitchen, he collects my spoon, carefully setting it apart from the other dishes. Making sure my alien-touched dishware won’t infect the silverware drawer. If I harbored any hope that we were more than friends, this should set me straight.
He guides me to the doorway where we exit, leads me around the waterfall, and we journey away from his cave.
“I guess this is goodbye,” I tell him.
He shoots me a disgruntled (i.e., patented Bash) look. “I will escort you to the human preserve.”
“Human preserve sounds like we’ve been turned into a jelly or something.”
“Don’t give me pleasant ideas.”
I laugh. He doesn’t.
We walk in mostly silence, which means he lets me talk without contributing more than the occasional grunt as we move under the dark blanket of stars and strange planets overhead.
Uncharacteristically, I fall silent as we trudge side-by-side, heading for the place I’m staying. Where I’ll go to my lonely room with nothing as interesting in it as he is.
Bash doesn’t try to make conversation but he’s strangely companionable anyway, somehow.
At the outer door to the compound, his hand lands on the back of my neck and rests there, lightly. It isn’t a romantic touch. It’s harmony, it’s camaraderie, it's friendship.
And I can live with that.
It’s not everything I wanted, but I’d rather have this from Bash than nothing. This is okay. Am I still a bit down? Yeah, but my infatuation is a me-problem, and I can deal. Bash makes a fine friend, for a slightly malevolent alien. To cheer myself up, I tease, “Glad you're wrapping your big paw around the back and not the front of my neck. I might be concerned you were going to choke me.”
He leans in. “I don’t want to choke you, Isla.”
“Smother me?” I ask, my tone suspicious—but playful.
But Bash must miss the playful part, because his face instantly shutters. He drops his hand from my neck and steps back. “It wasn’t my intent to smother you. Apologies,” he says stiffly before he turns to go.
“Wait!” I call.
Bash slows to a stop but doesn’t turn.
“Did I… What did I say?”
He still doesn’t turn. All his head quills and dorsal spines lower though. Finally, he says softly, so, so softly I almost wonder if I’m making his voice up in my head just so I can have answers, he shares, “I’ve been accused of smothering a female before. And… I was.”
“Whoaaaaa. Hold up!” I’m on him before he can escape. “Where do you think you're going? You can’t just drop something like that and walk away.”
Stiffly, without so much as lowering that chin he’s got jutted up, he speaks like he’s ripping off a verbal band-aid. “I joined the service of Gryfala. I was a fool. A smitten fool who took what we had too seriously. I was young, she was young. I… was not good at sharing her with her hobs. She was in love with her career, and I accepted that. I understood her dedication. ...But when she wasn’t working, I wanted all her time.” He swallows, his features stiff. “I couldn’t have it. Eventually, she accused me of smothering,” he admits.
This is clearly some painful subject matter for him. This is also maybe the most he’s ever said at once. It probably hurt him on more than one level to manage sharing this much. “Thank you for telling me,” I return just as softly as he’s been speaking, and I say it sort of quick because I’m afraid he’s going to leave before I can put the words out there. But I am glad that he’s shared. At the same time, I’m brain-screaming Bash had a Gryfala?! She broke his hearts and threw him away? Did he become closed off and grumpy after his hearts were crushed, or has he always been this way? Oohhhh, I have sooo many questions. “When I said it, I didn't mean it like that. I was joking to test out how close you were to silencing me forever. You know, because I’m bothering you.”
“You aren’t.”
“See! That’s great.”
“I don’t want to smother you to death.”
“Even better, if my opinion matters.”
Bash shoots me a smirk, but it’s not the biting, arrogant, confident