When Artemis answered his question, Azdrei’in was pleased to find out that he understood her just as well as he could speak her tongue now. The communication barrier that had made it difficult for them to speak to each other at first was quickly evaporating. Once he’d started practicing English, it hadn’t been difficult for him to pick it up. After two nights of dedicated studying, he was to the point where he comprehended the grammar and most of the phonetics. All that was left was to memorize words and phrases that were common to the humans who spoke it, and then he would be just as proficient as any of them.

“Really? That is surprising to me, since you’re in a new place surrounded by members of a species you don’t belong to,” he remarked amusedly. “You’re either very brave or very trusting.” If their positions had been reversed, he knew he wouldn’t have slept soundly among an entire colony of humans. There was just something unnerving about the thought of being the only member of his kind in a room, especially if he knew very little about the other race that was in there with him. His instinct was to protect himself, but Artemis had demonstrated multiple times now that she didn’t care much about that. She hadn’t tried to fight him off when he’d threatened to bury his claws into her throat two days ago either.

Her following comment gave him pause though. It was true that humans didn’t seem to be as technologically advanced as his people were, but he wasn’t sure what that meant about his impression of her. Quietly, he studied her face while she ate, drawing his legs up slowly toward his chest and crossing his arms over his knees. He’d been so caught up in his assignment that he hadn’t given it much thought at all. She was interesting to him, certainly. Having lived his entire life on the mothership, he’d never encountered another being that was intelligent enough to communicate with him, so he was intrigued by the conversations they’d had so far.

However, he didn’t see her as just a novelty for his own entertainment. If anything, he probably could have done a better job of reminding himself that she [i]was[/i] just a human. Too many times now, he’d caught himself looking at her the same way he would look at a female Lunvalgan whom he found attractive. They were similar enough that she sometimes felt more like an exotic member of his own kind to him than an entirely different species. He liked the brightness of her hair and eyes and the softness of her pale skin. Even her smile made his hearts beat a little quicker, and he had to continually chide himself for forgetting that she wasn’t a Lunvalgan. It would have been strange and unnatural to take on a human as a partner over a female of his own race. And that was what he kept telling himself whenever he caught himself wondering if their species would be compatible in a more sultry setting. 

“I don’t know what a dolphin is,” he said first, taking a moment to think through a response before he articulated it. “You may not be as advanced as we are, but you still have something to offer that we can’t find anywhere else… My people are dying, Artemis. We need a solution to the infertility issue that followed us from Ashad’te, and everyone here knows it. If they scowl at you, it is only because they don’t know your value yet. They just look at you and see a violent human, not someone who has knowledge that can help us. Give them time. They may change.”

He wanted to think that his people would come to realize that not all humans were the savages that they had been made out to be. It was impossible to tell though. Elitism ran through the ranks of the Lunvalgans since they saw themselves as the new apex species of the Earth. To many of them, humans were just animals that needed to be put in their place. Not all of them shared his odd fascination with their kind, so he wasn’t sure if they would be convinced that humans were valuable even if Artemis helped them. Only time would tell.

At her question, Azdrei’in drummed his clawed fingers against his forearm in thought, trying to ignore the familiar uptick in his pulse when she mentioned getting dressed. “Soon, I think,” he answered. “I was only told that our doctors will see you in the morning. Someone could come here to retrieve us at any time, so if you want to put on warm clothes, you should do it now.” He paused for a second and then turned around to face away from her, crossing his legs on the floor. “Go ahead,” he said, glancing at her once over his shoulder before he turned and faced the wall. “I won’t look.”