Something To Protect

The alien awoke in the early evening to a scorched sky, a desolate earth and a cruel, dusty wind carrying the ashes of so many that had come before. She tried not to think on how many of her own kin must have joined the dust. She was far past grief; now that she was awake, it was time to move on.
As her body slowly unfurled from her fetal seated position against the hard stone wall of the cavern, so did that long prehensile tail of hers extend skyward, until each vertebrae lead onto the next in a perfectly smooth curve that crested over the creature’s exoskeletal muscular frame.
She was a born huntress. Every member of the colony had known she was destined to lead their ancient predatory race into a new age of conquest over planets light-years from their own. But this place, this planet, had given her reign a premature death. It had taken so much from her, and left her here to… what? Not to die, that was for sure. She couldn’t die. Not yet. Not while she still clung to the few things that mattered; her pride, her dignity, and her body, honed as she had made it to serve as an example of what her race had been… No. What her race was. There had to be others out there. She would rebuild their glory… somehow.
There was no denying that she was a prime specimen of her kind. Every inch of her body was a brilliant black, from the reflective plates of her limbs and her skull which protruded out behind her in a symmetrical design reminiscent of a crab’s pincer, to the exposed but by no means weak muscle tissue lining her limbs, to those claw like fingers and talon like toes. Upon the end of her tail a wide, razor sharp stinger sporting five pointed spokes, not unlike the head of a Guan Dao, shivered to itself lightly as the creature shook out the last dregs of her sleep-gathered lethargy.
The creature rose to her feet, talons digging into the densely packed earth beneath. She bent her knees to kneel back down just to sample some of the dust that had gathered in her new makeshift home over the course of the night, letting it sift through her fingers. There wasn’t much of it… in fact, there was too little. The dust lining the cavern ground had drifted elsewhere during her midday slumber; a sandstorm would soon be approaching. She had to move. Where didn’t matter. Picking herself back up, she strode with those powerful legs of hers to the entrance of the cavern to survey the landscape.
She peered with that smooth hardened skull of hers just outside of the dark cavernous hole in the cliffside where she had taken residence. No abnomalies could be sensed in thermal or electromagnetic capacities; the land was as desolate as it had been the night before, and the night before that. Wasting no time, the alien promptly took off sprinting, keeping to the wall of the cliffside in which she’d found that cavern to begin with. The sweltering daylight sun and the ashen grey sands of the wasteland offered her jet black body little by way of camouflage, but she had learnt the hard way not to get tangled up in one of those sandstorms. No time to hesitate, you move or you die, that was the logic that drove her to keep surviving during these dark days. At least she could see far to the horizon, while the sands just gently danced along the breeze. This planet was probably quite the prize for the taking, once.

“Hello?” No response. Tamiela pulled on the door knob, the hinge opening with a pained reluctant creak. “I’m gonna come in, okay?” Still nothing. She opened it all the way, staring into the abyssal darkness of the seemingly abandoned homestead that she’d been lucky or foolish enough to discover. “Don’t shoot, now...” She posed to the nothingness inside, on the offchance that someone had actually lived out their days since the world went to hell in this hastily fortified husk of a house, and was readying themselves to defend whatever supplies they still kept in stow. Her words echoed away into the house, finding not the slightest audible utterance in reply however, the silence within it made that much more pronounced after Tamiela shut the door behind her, muffling the merciless howl of the dusty sands beyond.
Tamiela swung her backpack around from where it sat upon her left shoulder, before kneeling and rummaging around its’ contents, somewhat hastily and not without the occasional cautious glance into the darkness that now embraced her. Her eyes had learned to adapt quickly to absolute darkness over the last few years, not that she had much choice in the matter; it was that, or risk an untimely death. Still, she’d trade that ability in in a second if it meant a ride off of this planet that had left nothing for her.
Feeling around with her hardy leather fingerless gloves, Tamiela eventually felt the cold plastic handle of her flashlight and wasted no time in hefting it out of her bag and flicking the switch. In a flash, a dim oval of light was cast upon her surroundings, and the first thing she saw was the cracked tiled floor of the room she’d wandered into, strewn with broken glass, dust and god knows what other grim bric-a-brac that had either been blown into this unsurprisingly dilapidated house from the wasteland, or which just made up the remnants of whatever lives once called this place home. Either way, it looked no different from the handful of other buildings that had kept a roof atop themselves somehow after all these years of draught, hunger and isolation.
Tamiela tentatively crept further into the house, trying to sidestep the shrapnel lining the floor at every turn. Thin ribbons of light streamed through the cracks in the haphazardly positioned boards covering the windows, as well as through the bulletholes. No prizes for guessing what happened to these folks, then. Still, the building must have retained some kind of structural integrity to have stayed put through the storms and bandit raids that it had clearly bore witness to over the years. It wasn’t much to look at, but as long as whatever or whoever lived here before no longer posed a threat, Tamiela could call this place ‘sanctuary’ for the coming night.
As she continued to survey the ground floor, there was no stopping her heavy black hiking boots from treading on a few small bits and pieces of debris that thickly littered the floor of what was once a lounge. As much as Tamiela had learned to keep her guard up at all times though, she was cautiously optimistic that there was no-one and nothing left for her to startle within this ghost house. The setting sun peering in from outside and the sparse light from her flashlight did little to illuminate her brilliant crimson locks of hair, cascading down to brush across her shoulder blades in naturally straight locks, with trimmed bangs guarding her forehead. Outside of the coating of dust that travelling through the wasteland inevitably caused, she had quite the thick, healthy head of hair to be proud of. Tamiela’s slim figure bent down to search under destroyed couches and armchairs, her faded grey figure hugging trousers creasing themselves whenever she knelt. Like the rest of her outfit, consisting of a brown leather jacket usually zipped up tight, stained white cotton tank top underneath, thick long socks and simple sports bra and cotton panties (after the world ended, comfort and functionality of one’s attire tended to win out over sex appeal), those trousers had proven themselves hardy and reliable, even if as with her leather jacket, she’d had to sew on a new patch here or there over the years of rough and tumble they’d endured.
Tamiela didn’t like sewing. Well, that was a lie, she did like the act of sewing, and she was good at it. But that was before the world ended. Wasn’t as though she had had a shortage of practice over recent years mind, but when you’re fixing a tear on your favourite (and now, only) jacket that your Dad got you, with the small sewing kit your Mom got you, and neither of them are around anymore and you’re cold and alone and scared and…
Tamiela wiped the tears from her eyes, dragged herself out of the bog of her own memories and tossed her sleeping bag onto the closest thing to a salvageable couch she could find in the lounge. It wasn’t much, but perhaps it would afford her the slightest bit of comfort. If anything, Tamiela was grateful that the place wasn’t much at all to look at; riddled with bulletholes and scarred by sandstorms as it was, whatever creatures still clung to life out there were likely either too dumb or too afraid of the cold clutches of Death to risk scavenging around inside. As for other human beings, there was definitely no need for concern; the only survivors foolish enough to travel by night these days were the few struggling brigades of bandits out there, and if the evidence so far was anything to go by, they’d already come and gone long ago.
Before settling down for the night, Tamiela forced her weary muscles to carry her through the rest of her inspection of the house; never could be too careful. She scanned the kitchen for any scraps that might have remained (to no avail), sweeping the floor with her flashlight. A small metallic casing caught the light, reflecting it faintly back at Tamiela, catching her eye. She leant down to inspect it.
“Nine by Nineteen Parabellum round.” She whispered to no-one in particular. Now she was certain; the local cut-throats had already picked this place clean, leaving behind nothing but bulletholes and casings. But they’d moved on now, and things being as crazy as they were these days, Tamiela highly doubted that any other intelligent life would return here.
Used to be that she would’ve had to make certain arrangements with the bandits, trading fuel for those precious bikes of theirs or… ‘favours’, for food and water, maybe even a battery or a few bullets. But they always were a paranoid bunch, even if their machismo would never have permitted them to admit it, and the last time she’d spoken with them, they told her they were hitting the road for good, to try and see about crossing the state line northbound. They advised her not to go looking for them again; Tamiela almost laughed at the insinuation that she gave a crap, but considering that she took that warning while staring down a shotgun barrel held in shaky, trigger-happy hands, she instead opted for a calm nod of agreement. Still, their fears were not unfounded; over the past month, something out there had been picking humans off.
It had started weeks before; every few nights someone would go missing, never to return. The first time it happened, the victim was on guard duty while the others slept. Once his buddy awoke to take up the post, he was greeted by nothing but an empty chair, a discarded gun and a tiny blood spatter on the ground. At first they frantically feared that the man had just turned traitor, stolen from the group’s supplies and hauled ass, but after checking and double-checking their stock, they had to reluctantly admit that someone or something out there was after their blood. The most worrying thing about it all was the precision of the attacks; every single time it was as though one of their ranks was just spirited away the moment their backs were turned, leaving little to no trace of their existence to begin with. Whoever, whatever was doing this, they knew what they were doing and the bandits were easy prey.
The only thing that had Tamiela worried when she’d first heard of the attacks (seemingly even those morons knew right away not to suspect her; she was a good hunter, but not that good, and she was certainly no cannibal) was whether she would be next on the hit-list. But for all the sleepless nights that she’d lost to superstition and fear as a result, it became apparent after the attacks continued solely on the bandits themselves that for whatever the reason, this person or creature was not after prey that travelled alone. Thankful as she was for whatever sick logic was driving this elite killer, Tamiela couldn’t help but feel a little intrigued by this mystery. Maybe it was just the lack of entertainment in this new world she was forced to live in, but her theorizing had led her to this conclusion; the killer was still around, and he/she/it was hunting not for food (primarily, at least) but for fulfillment.
But the bandits had driven off into the sunset, and now, as Tamiela reminded herself upon shuffling into her sleeping bag with her backpack for a pillow and her pistol for a teddy bear, the facts were simple. Night was coming, she’d found shelter, and in the morning she had to move on. Find somewhere a little more permanent, possibly. Find a way to escape this world, hopefully. But for now, find as much shuteye as she could get, definitely.
Don’t dwell on the past; live in the present; hope for a future worth living for.

There was no-one left, the alien accidentally reminded herself while her powerful legs tore across the plain. She was the sole huntress, the only remaining specimen of her great race on this damnable doomed rock of a planet. More were coming, they had to come. They wouldn’t dare leave her, she thought, baring those fangs of hers that had lost none of their predatory bite, honed over generations of careful eugenic conditioning to create a higher creed of being such as herself and her fellow sisters… of whom only she remained. Her sole ally now was the night.
Recalling what she knew about this planet’s orbital trajectory around its’ solitary sun, and the relative position of her current location on its’ surface relative to its’ tilted axis, the sun would rise from the eastern horizon, track it’s course through the sky over approximately nine hours, and fall in the west. The evidence of the coming storm had dissipated by now; she seemed safe. Slower creatures would be in dire straits, but that was none of her concern. The alien slowed her pace by a minute fraction, and gave a staggered yet relieved breath.
Soon night would fall, and then the blanket of sacred absolute darkness that enveloped the world as a result would place the alien within her own element. Travelling at the speed and direction that she had taken, too, she would even have the pleasure of witnessing the demise of the sun over the western horizon for another day. And with a good (all things considered) day’s sleep behind her, the nocturnal huntress had every reason to strongly anticipate the coming night.
Or at least, that was what she told herself as she sped across the plain. Usually at this time while out in the diminishing evening sun she would begin strategizing for that night’s hunt while stalking her prey, finding their newest encampment, sensing the impending death in the air and allowing that anticipatory adrenaline to guide her towards the kill she so yearned to deliver upon those inferior ugly little monkeys.
Only, when she searched for that same yearning now in the caverns of her mind, the only thing she found was a foreboding emptiness. Not only had she become aware of the prospect of her own death, a terrifying enough sensation for a member of her proud battle-born race to begin with, but also a concern for the well being of other life forms had begun to brew inside of her. Not that the alien would have named these unwanted feelings thus; she dared not indulge these emotions with a single second’s worth of her conscious thought. As for as she was concerned, these sensations were an abnormality, a flaw which life on this planet had infected her mind with; she would no sooner name these emotions than one would name a malignant tumor. Humans may have identified these feelings as newfound respect for life, an acknowledgement of the temporariness of one’s own existence, perhaps a drive to protect life rather than to take it.
She just called them Weaknesses. She hoped beyond hope to recover by the time she was rescued by her kin. What was taking them so long, anyway?!
Even after she regained her focus, just in time to see the final slithers of sunlight slip over the cliffside of the horizon, the fact was clear: the hunt no longer gave her that familiar thrill, that adrenaline, that feeling of being alive that came only in perfect tandem with the constant lingering risk of death.
Finally, the world plummeted into all-consuming darkness, and the blanket of shadows embraced the alien, the subtle moonlight peppering through the thick grim layers of clouds in the polluted skies to cast dancing reflections upon the hardened black plates of her body. Confident that she had outrun the now distant storms (the likes of which her honed hearing and vibration-sensitive radar could still hear humming far behind her, like the ripples of a pounding bass emanating from a lively scene), she slowed to a stalking stride. Even while walking upon her powerful feet, it was as though she didn’t know how to not be intimidating.
Rearing her shield-like head upwards, she took a moment to try and sense any changes in the air, any movements in her vicinity. That brisk evening jog awakened her tired huntress’ muscles, but after that warm-up, she needed a good workout. If she knew where her usual band of prey had escaped to she could probably track them down, with the whole night still ahead of her, but there had been no time to search for the tracks those wheel-machines of theirs left from their most recent campsite before she’d had to make haste from her cavern. The sandstorm would have left no trace of them anyway. Much as she hated to admit it, staying alive was more important than slaying a few more monkeys.
Still, she had to find some kind of entertainment; something to stalk, kill and eat. Ideally something that would renew her terrifyingly dwindling predatory instincts. Seemingly though, the patch of wasteland she’d sped to by now was just as nondescript and dead as the rest of the land, except for…
Her senses immediately sharpened like the finest of blades. She could just about see it in the distance, too vivid to be a mirage, but more tellingly she could sense it; life. Intelligent life, a single lifeform at rest, warm flowing blood from a steadily beating heart. It dwelled in an otherwise completely ignorable ransacked husk of a human settlement.
She took off like a rocket. No-one would deny her this kill. Saliva filled her fang-filled mouth, body practically electric with anticipation. Yes, now she was feeling the thrill again. Whoever, whatever this creature was, it was hers for the taking.

The crimson-haired pale beauty opened her eyes to feel her weightless, naked body drifting through an empty, silent void. Where many minds would fill with fear, she saw only fascination, peace, and potential in this eternal nothingness. Before she could reach out to attempt to steer her floating form, something else reached her. A mass of warm flesh in her palm… another hand. Not human, but not harmful. She pivoted her body to face whatever had made contact, only to be greeted by more of the void. Still she clutched the hand tight, fingers interlocking, before her other hand was met by the same sensation. There was no telling where this invisible visitor ended and the vast void around her began, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered, she knew as she felt more warm, unfamiliar yet exciting flesh pressing closely into her torso, was that she wasn’t alone, and she never would have to be again.
Tamiela opened her eyes, greeted by a brilliant black dagger poised over her neck in the darkness.

It had started off so easy. Evidently the creature sleeping peacefully within this temporary shelter had thought itself alone in the wasteland, or at least hidden well enough by this ransacked building to not be found by whatever lay in wait outside. Evidently though, it had not planned for an elite xenomorphic huntress to be stalking through the night in search of a fresh hunt to savor. And savor it she did. Her victory was surely a foregone conclusion; her prey slept unaware of its’ impending bloody demise, and if it was another one of those monkeys then even if it awoke and was made aware of the slowly stalking silent huntress strafing its’ resting body preparing for the kill, it would have no time to flee before her stinger pierced its’ fear-gripped heart. But the luck she had had in finding this specimen had put the alien in a generous mood, so she granted her prey the honour of devoting her total concentration to making this kill count. Besides, it had been too long since she’d had an opportunity like this, and even longer since the hunt had evoked a good bloodlust in her. Maybe this was what she needed to fix whatever was wrong with her mind.
The lack of alternative routes into the property – holes, structurally weak walls, underground tunnels, had meant she’d had to slip through one of the doors on either end of the house, but that was where her situational disadvantages ended. Swooping in like a jet black dart, her expertly sharpened talons clung to the walls, keeping her swathed in absolute darkness as her night vision allowed her perfect visibility of the wreck that was once a home.
She could hear her prey now, gently breathing in its’ slumber. But by the tone and strengths of each breath… was it a woman?
‘Fear’ was not an emotion that her species knew, or at least, were supposed to know. It had never even been obliged with a translation into her native tongue by her ancestors. Thus, the alien had no idea how to comprehend the sharp stinging bad feeling filling her head at the realisation of her prey’s gender. It should not have even mattered; all these monkeys were just prey, to be killed, captured, eaten or otherwise put to use for the colony. So then, why did the thought of striking this woman down fill her not with elation, but dread?
She knew this much, though; the longer she thought on these wrong feelings, the worse it would probably get. Wasting no more time, she released her talons from her vantage point near one of the corners in the frontmost downstairs room, dropping down to the floor with as minimal noise as she could muster. She strode forwards at a steady, stealthy, silent pace upon those powerful feet, slinking around the couch that her prey lay upon.
The woman’s breathing was clearer than ever now, inhaling and exhaling in a steady, rhythmic, peaceful way, as if this planet of hers wasn’t as dead as she was about to become…
She had to do this, now. Launching her body over the back of the couch, she poised her four limbs over the woman. Her body was wrapped in some kind of fabricated cocoon of sorts, making the approaching strike even easier. The alien’s tail raised high up, curled downwards in a perfect arc with that pristine sharp dagger-tip hanging like a pendulum over her prey’s elegant slender neck, threatening to descend at full force at any moment.
But then, her prey opened her eyes, not sharply out of fear, but slowly out of a pleasant sleep. For the first time in her life, the alien had been defeated. No bullet, sword or fire could have done what this redhaired young beauty did the second she woke up.
Tamiela looked upon the creature above her, with its’ beautifully smooth curved headplate.
The alien looked upon the creature below her, with its’ wide, brilliant green eyes.
Tamiela knew that it would have been perfectly understandable to be frozen with fear. But whatever this creature was, she had a feeling that if she was going to strike her down, it would have done so already. From what little her darkness-acclimatised eyes could distinguish, this thing atop her had the body and the musculature of a killer.
But, she was still alive. Or at least, she thought so. But whether this was reality or another layer of the dreamscape she’d only just stirred from, Tamiela felt neither fear nor panic.
At the risk of angering the creature, she opened her mouth to tease out a solitary word.
“Hiya.”
It was the simplest of greetings as they come, from what she understood of the human tongue, but the way in which it was said, that delicate, youthful yet quietly confident tone in which this human spoke, dealt the final blow to the alien’s killer instinct. Her tail retracted, slowly but surely upwards. She sat up straight, knees still either side of the woman’s cocoon, just looking down at her for a moment. No more words were spoken from those delicate lips, but none were needed, the damage had been done. The alien raised her right leg up and back behind herself, pivoting to the right before descending from the couch and slinking off absentmindedly into a corner of the room.
She felt absolutely defeated. A look from this human woman had frozen her, a word enough to completely negate the instincts she’d been born and raised to act upon without hesitation. Whatever the motives of these terrifyingly unfamiliar emotions that had been brewing in her brain to boiling point, she conceded to them. The only thing that gripped her mind when she relived the past few moments in her head, as questionably real as they seemed in her memories, were the horrible pangs of what she would later acknowledge as ‘guilt’. What kind of huntress was she, that she would refuse to kill on no grounds other than a newfound sense of morality for a creature of an inferior species?
Those once valuable warrior senses of hers allowed her to perceive the woman’s movements even as she stared down at the floor pathetically. The woman sat upright and unfurled herself out of that artificial cocoon. Perhaps this creature would kill her, instead. She didn’t care anymore. She was no huntress. She didn’t know what she was any more. She just curled up into a fetal pose on the ruined wooden floor and-
“Hey!”
Tamiela barked out at her curious visitor as she sat in the corner of the room, looking utterly distraught. She didn’t quite comprehend what was going on, but whatever ill will had drawn the being to her in the dead of night, evidently it had changed its’ mind. Her utterance had gathered its’ attention enough for it to slowly crane its’ head over its’ left shoulder to peer back at her with whatever kind of vision that seemingly eye-less smooth skull accommodated for, but it didn’t seem like it cared very much for whatever she would do next. The poor creature just looked so utterly defeated.
Maybe it was pity, dumbstruck curiosity at the sudden turns of events that this night had already dictated to her, or just fascination with the clearly intelligent lifeform that had wandered into her neck of the woods, but Tamiela showed little hesitation in walking calmly towards the jet black creature and placing a hand upon its’ pincer-like head.
She marveled at how warm the solid armoured exoskeletal plate seemed to be; it looked like cold black metal, but radiated a gentle heat. Or at least, she marveled thus for the fleeting second it took for the alien to leap to its’ feet and turn to face Tamiela in what she assumed was surprise, and hoped wasn’t fear or rage.
Her hand… it was warm. She had reacted instinctually; even members of her own species were forbidden from so much as brushing an elite huntress of her rank. Bodies like hers were akin to a temple, to worship and respect at all times. Her warrior pride (what remained of it) might have led her to see such conduct as grave disrespect and perhaps discipline the woman, but even she had to concede that there was no way for the woman to have known of such protocol. Besides, however brief, the contact didn’t feel charged by negativity, and it certainly didn’t feel bad. It felt quite good, in fact.
The alien relaxed her posture slightly. Now that they faced one another, she could see that the woman was quite a bit shorter than her. Had the alien been aware of human measurement methods, she might have surmised that there was at least a good foot and a half between her head and the woman’s, not counting her own shielded upper skull. She seemed to be dressed in nothing but some flimsy pieces of fabric; one that snugly covered the sizable swells on her chest which she assumed were this human’s own breasts, a mite larger than her own pair, and a simple white undergarment of sorts. A lot of soft human flesh was on show right before the alien’s atypical eyes, and the resultant pondering as to how much of her was similarly as warm as the woman’s hand encouraged a light chirring growl from deep behind her fangs.
Deciding it was her turn to indulge curiosity, the alien leant her hand down to grab the pale, smooth right hand of this curious human, wrapping it between both her palms and in so doing demonstrating the sheer difference in size between the two of them; the woman’s hand easily obscured completely from view within the larger creature’s clutches, like an oversized Venus Flytrap. Just as she’d suspected, from that initial touch against her skull; warm, fleshy and soft almost to the point of frailty, though the alien’s previous experience with humans made her aware just how much it could sometimes take to keep them down. In her view, humanity’s most valuable and dangerous assets were their intellect, imagination and sheer spontaneity; in other words, their minds. Though the more her fingers snaked along the hand in her grasp, the more the alien theorised that a body like this might have its’ uses as well.
Tamiela’s heart was pounding. Not out of fear, but out of sheer awe. She didn’t know where this creature came from, what it was, how it came to earth, whether it was the only one of its’ kind or if there were more… but in a way, she didn’t want to know, not yet at least. Having just about decided that this was happening and it wasn’t just the next layer of some cruel dream tempting her with promises of life outside the dim futile norm of the wasteland, Tamiela simply wished to revel in the mystery surrounding her newfound visitor. The creature literally and figuratively overshadowed her as they stood face to face, with that superbly tall frame and a body Tamiela could only wish to have chiseled for herself over these harsh years. But most astonishingly Tamiela discovered, as more and more of moonlight streamed in from outside to aid her vision, that this creature was a ‘she’. Like her skull and long prehensile tail and much of her limbic structure, upon her chest a pair of modest breastplates (or were they her breasts themselves?!) sat, just as reflective and brilliantly black as the rest of her. Applying the same logic by which she too would want to be visually inspected, Tamiela quickly redirected her gaze upwards towards her companion’s smooth skull and what she could now make out was quite the wide jaw, now feeling a tad sheepish for considering the non-human female genderless, with the fine measurements she seemed to be sporting…
Tamiela’s growing blush was only exacerbated after what she was working on assuming was an alien female took her hand, inspecting it with a piqued sense of fascination between her own. Once again, she found her sense of gleeful curiosity vastly outweighing the risk she took by letting this predatory female inspect her thus. She felt talons admiringly scraping and stroking along her palm and the back of her hand in slow motions, and in a way, feeling these touches while her hand was out of her sight only made the movements more enchanting.
With the hope that her new friend was warming to her fueling her adventurousness, Tamiela reached out with her left hand now to gently grasp the alien woman by the forearm, gazing back up with a nervously encouraging smile.
“Do you… understand me?” She asked. She didn’t doubt that the woman was a self aware intelligent lifeform, but who was to say how much contact she’d had with humans.
She understood enough to nod, her wide jaws opening just enough to pull what she hoped was more of an amiable smile than a menacing grin.
“Cool…” Tamiela absentmindedly replied, tapping her fingers on the seemingly unphased alien’s arm, casting her gaze loosely elsewhere nervously.
She didn’t quite see what was cool; if anything they both must have been quite warm by now. She felt warm, that was for sure. Or, she hoped she wasn’t cold, for her new friend’s sake.
Before the shock of her carelessly comprehending this human as an actual friend of hers could really be internalized, the woman spoke again.
“Hey, so, wanna come sit with me?” Tamiela asked, instantly hearing how stupidly spontaneous that sounded. She was thankful enough that this visitor had relaxed in her presence enough to not go sprinting out the door on those powerful legs of hers, but the last thing Tamiela wanted was to intimidate or confuse her guest. She stumbled through various mumbled unintelligible noises in an attempt to ease the mood before the alien took over the reins, still clutching the nervously grinning woman’s hand as she led them towards the couch where they’d first laid eyes upon one another.

Base +6, Soul Reaper 94 +6, mickeysofine -4