“Are they better?” Azdrei’in wondered aloud when Artemis told him about leadership among humans. “Lunvalgan males and females are the same here.” Trying to indicate that they had the same cognitive abilities, he tapped one clawed digit to his head. “Both can be leaders if they are good at the work. Colors don’t matter too. That is only…” He trailed off as he wracked his brain for the words to explain that skin tone only mattered in terms of physical preferences. Their mates were selected for them based on reproductive compatibility, but they all had different tastes when it came to what they found aesthetically appealing.

“Some males like females with gray skin; large here,” he gestured to his own chest. “And some females like males with black skin and large… Bhanleq.” Assuming there was no word that would translate directly to English, he used the Lunvalgan word for the crest on his forehead, lifting a hand again to point to it in indication. “Those are common likes but not all Lunvalgans have the same ones. And it does not matter for leaders; only for pairs.”

Beauty standards of their kind could make a male or female more desirable as a mate or even as just a partner to have for a night if he or she wasn’t committed to anyone else. After all, young member of their species weren’t dissuaded from being intimate with each other before their lifelong mates were selected for them. Sometimes casual encounters resulted in chance pregnancies, which was always a good thing for a people that was slowly dying out. If that happened, the Om’phaers would have the couple that managed to produce a fetus mated in the hopes that they would have more offspring.

After he changed into the borrowed shirt, Azdrei’in looked at the image Artemis showed to him on a screen that fit in the palm of her hand. “You are small,” he agreed amusedly, once again fascinated by the diversity of the human race. Every individual in the picture was very different, from the color of their skin to the shape of their noses. His people were far more homogenous with less features that varied from one Lunvalgan to the next. Their heights weren’t as drastically different either. Males were taller and more muscular than females, but they usually grew up to reach similar statures in general.

Glancing at her face, he noticed her kind apparently changed colors too. “You are red now,” he observed out loud when she moved closer to him to fasten the ‘buttons’ that he hadn’t bothered to secure. “What does that mean?” There were a few species on Ashad’te that could change the color of their skin, but they did it to blend into their environments. He’d never seen one that would do it for seemingly no reason, and he was curious about what could have caused Artemis’s pink-white flesh to turn vermillion. Oddly, he found the color visually pleasing too.

“Cold? No,” he replied to her question thoughtfully. “I have not yet been cold or hot here. Why? Are you?” His pellucid eyes swept over her as he wondered if humans had a more limited range of temperatures in which they were comfortable. He supposed it would make sense if they were more vulnerable to changes in the weather. Her skin was much thinner and more delicate than his was, so it was probably difficult for her to regulate her body temperature.

When she explained why she wanted to leave her planet, he listened quietly. Some of the words she used were still unfamiliar to him, but he understood most of what she said. She was fascinated by space and his people. “I would have killed you,” he reminded her with a wry smile, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I don’t think my leaders will. I think they want to study you. You did not die from our virus, and you told me you know how to help us. They want to know more.” Reaching out, he touched the tip of one claw to her belly to indicate that she might be made into a surrogate. “They could want to use you too.”

Letting his arm drop to his side again, he stepped back from her and strode to the door with a lazy wave of his hand for her to follow him back to the common room. “You don’t need to fear being alone now. I am staying here until Zalla tells me what to do with you.”