Alien Soulmate(16)

Carver nodded. "Khaosali."

"Excuse me?"

"Khaosali," he repeated, slower this time. "My planet."

"Oh. So it was your ship that crashed here? That those two guys saw?"

He made a face. Humans were clearly incapable of keeping anything to themselves. "Yes," he confirmed. "I am not meant to be here, though. I need to get home as soon as possible."

How much could he tell her without it being a risk? Could he let her know that his people were in danger? That he was stranded here? There was a part of him that leapt at having someone to confess all this to, someone to help get it all out of his head, but the part of him that had been conditioned by his father to be prudent and wise and every inch a leader urged him to hold back. There was no telling what spilling too much could lead to. Despite the strange pull that he was feeling towards this woman, there was no way that he could know if she was trustworthy or not. Not yet, anyway.

"So you need help," she said softly, blinking and then looking down at the ground.

Carver titled his head and looked at the ground as well, confused when he didn't see anything worth staring at so intently. Maybe it was a human thing that he didn't understand. "Yes," he agreed. "But I don't know where to find it. Humans haven't developed the tech that we have yet, and from the way it smells around here, I am not confident that you ever will."

She looked back up at him "What does that mean?"

"It means that your air is full of pollution. You are clearly still relying on combustion to power your machines, which is not only foolish since fuel sources are not unlimited, but short sighted because you are poisoning your planet."

"So what do aliens use, then?" she asked, one hand propped on her hip.

"Sitheri."

"What's that?"

He shook his head. Clearly he would need to speak slower for her. "Sitheri. That is what I am. Alien is too general a term. It means anything you don't understand, and while I don't mean to offend, the list of things that humans seem not to understand is probably very long. Things will go quicker if you give everything its proper name."

"Sitheri," she repeated softly. "A Sitheri from Khaosali."

"Yes."

A quick smile darted across her face, lighting up her pale eyes for just a moment. "Alright, then. What do the Sitheri use for fuel? Surely you have to be powering your ships some kind of way, and there's no way they can run on just solar energy if you have to travel through space. It gets dark up there sometimes, and unless you've managed to harness more solar energy than anyone has before, I don't think you could store it for long enough to make a full trip."

Carver was impressed. Solar energy was often used to power smaller things, things that were largely stationary and wouldn't have to move out of the path of the sun. He hadn't thought that humans had progressed that far yet, but there was something about this woman that made him think that perhaps help had come to him.

Finally, something going right.

"Not solar, no. Not for transporters. You are right in thinking that we couldn't harness enough of the energy the sun provides to make it through a full journey. And the recharge would take too long anyway. No, we use stones."

"Stones?" For the first time true confusion was clear on the woman's face, and Carver was seized with the desire to show her what he meant.

He wrote it off as just wanting her to help him and understanding that it would be easier if she knew what he was talking about.

Either way, he had to make a decision.

The confusion lingered on her face for a moment before being replaced by open, honest curiosity. It was something of a relief to find that he was as good at reading people here as he was back home, and he nodded to himself. "Tell me why you were here poking around."

"What? Oh." Her cheeks colored attractively, and he had to look away for a second. "There was a news story about the two guys who found your ship. It said that when the police came to look, it was gone, but there were signs of it being dragged away. I did a little research, and I found that this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Not by a long shot. So I wanted to see what was left around here. I… I don't know. I guess I just wanted to get a look at whatever it was. Something's clearly happening, and it seemed interesting, and I…" she faltered, and Carver's eyes narrowed.

She didn't seem to be lying, just embarrassed.

"I have a hard time keeping my nose out of things when there's new technology to be discovered or things to learn. I bet you could teach me a lot of things I don't know, and that's really just exciting."