Despite how worked up he had been before the human had influenced him to doze off, Caeyin slept soundly through the night. He’d sprawled on his side as comfortably as he could with one arm bound to an immovable object, eyes closed and jaw hanging slack as his chest rose and fell with slow breaths. The trick she had used had worked wonders, relaxing him so thoroughly that he didn’t stir again until the next morning, and even when he did, he was still so drowsy that he was reluctant to leave the grip of the world of dreams.

A low groan left his throat, and he shifted his stiff body on the ground, not yet opening his eyes. For a moment, he was disoriented. The visions that had flitted through his mind while he’d slept had been vivid scenes of the colonists’ ship and even of his people’s home planet, a world he’d never been to before, Lunair. Each dream had been pleasant and warming, so he clung to them until he passively sorted out the fact that none of them had been real and that he was actually on the Earth, assigned to prepare the way for the rest of his people to descend and make the planet their new home.

He had also been taken prisoner by an irritating human.

As the latter thought entered his mind, he was prompted to finally open his eyes, slightly disheartened when his gaze was filled with the familiar sight of the vehicle. Nothing had changed. His wrist was still chained to the pole, and he still had no way to free himself.

He swallowed reflexively, noticing how dry his mouth had become over the course of the night. He could only last five or six days without water before he would succumb to dehydration, and he wondered if the human was aware that his kind needed it to survive. On the outside, they seemed similar enough. Perhaps she needed it too. If she was planning to keep him around as some sort of pet, she would have to provide him with nourishment eventually or he wouldn’t last very long.

Tiredly, he rolled from his side onto his back, resting his free arm across his midriff and fixing his gaze on the ceiling. His shoulders and neck felt sore after he’d laid in a semi-awkward position on a hard surface for such a long time. His chained wrist hurt a bit too as the metal began to chafe his skin, and dull bruises had begun to form under the constant pressure of the binding. The discomfort was more of a nuisance than anything else though. His kind healed quickly, so if he did live long enough to get away, it would take no time at all for the minor injuries to disappear. He was more concerned about whether he was going to recover from the mistakes he’d made yesterday or die at the hands of his captor because of them.

Belatedly, he realized that he had woken up to what sounded like the crinkling of a package, and he glanced sideways toward the back of the plane, where he found that the human was already awake, eating a meal of her own. The sight and faint scent made his empty stomach cramp, and his luminescent eyes fixated on her container of water. Watching her only reminded him that he wouldn’t have access to his own food and drink as long as he was her prisoner, so he forced himself to look away. He had to hold fast to his convictions, which meant telling her nothing and suffering the consequence of starving.

He didn’t look at her again until he heard her get up, instantly alerted by the sound of movement. He braced himself for her to confront him again in another attempt to get information, but instead, she seemed to have a different plan in mind. As she approached a shelf with a plant on top, Caeyin sat upright and leaned against the wall, studying her quietly from behind. To his surprise, she took care of the plant and even spoke to it as if she’d formed a bond with it. He’d never seen anything like that before, and he hadn’t expected to see such gentle behavior from a creature that had threatened to kill him numerous times. He’d assumed humans were cruel and savage, not empathetic. It was an odd shift from the way she had been acting yesterday.

However, just because she was tender towards a plant didn’t mean she was better than the rest of the kind. His momentary intrigue was replaced with a twinge of bitterness as he reminded himself that her people were the ones who had taken his parents’ lives. They needed to be exterminated for the safety of the other colonists. It was non-negotiable, and it was why he’d been sent ahead of the rest: to finish off any survivors he came across.

“Why bother?” he asked her with a scathing edge to his voice, leaning his head back against the wall as he broke the silence between them. “It’s only a matter of time before the others find you here, and they’re going to kill you when they do. Why spend your time tending to a plant when you most likely only have a few days left on this planet?”