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“Yes,” I said, with a stronger nod and a silly smile. “But only if you explain to me what that means.” I wiped the tears away from my cheeks. “The human in me is a little nervous, but the xenoscientist in me is pretty thrilled.”
I felt a wave of the most pure, most perfect joy from him. It was just as strong as the sorrow he’d given me earlier over the loss of his wife, and it also took my breath away.
“Then I will endeavor to make both halves of you happy—and I will do better than explain things. I will show you, beginning tomorrow morning.”
I walked up to the window and touched it with my hand—and another hand came out of the depths to meet it, matching mine, half again as big in any direction, in the same blue I’d told him was my favorite, on the opposite side of the glass.
“But for now, open your tablet back up,” he said in my mind. “Were you able to flip the feed?”
I blinked myself back to reality. “Yes.” I’d set up a basic algorithm to do it and extract the symbols in order before I’d gone to dinner.
“Good. Then let us consider how we might solve this puzzle together.”
I curled back up against the window, knowing that he was behind me, and we were working together.
It was the perfect first date.
chapter 27
CEPHARIUS
I had had no idea how imaginative two-legged were until Elle let me see inside her mind—nor how fiction driven.
We’d been working for hours, discussing what we thought the additional marks on the symbols might be: weather patterns, tide patterns, astronomical symbols, signals of ambient pH, and Elle had an example either from the air or their made-up stories for almost all of them.
Then I’d had to be patient while she worked through setting up the cameras she’d pulled from the ROV’s loading—but now she was back near me, where I preferred her, by the window.
She rested her head back against the glass, and I wished with all my might that I could touch her. “Okay—what if it’s supposed to be scary?”
“Back to the bombs?” I asked.
“No, more back to the plague ship. There’s places in the world above, where they’re trying to figure out the best way to mark where they’ve left nuclear waste, where they’re trying to figure out how they can warn someone ten thousand years from now that a site is dangerous.”
I found this entire concept intriguing—and then was worried about what the pump the two-leggeds were doing to their ground.
They had so little of it, compared to our oceans. One would think they’d take care of it better.
“What did they do?”
“I don’t think they’ve done it yet. But they were going to use impressive architecture—like make huge thorns jutting out of the earth, or put black obsidian slabs over it, just in case people in the future lost the ability to read the words.”
“Ah. Yet another instance wherein having a ’qa would come in handy for you humans.”
Elle stuck her tongue out and made a face. “Stop making your way of life sound so superior.”
“Only because it is.” She turned to smile at me, and I smiled back, even though she couldn’t see me. “May we take a break, so I can tell you how beautiful you are?” I watched her flush bright red. It seemed a significant color choice—then I remembered that two-leggeds couldn’t control themselves like that.
“Sure,” I heard her tell me quietly.
“You are the most beautiful human I have ever seen.”
She spun in front of the window, laughing. “And just how many have you seen, sir?”
“Three?” I guessed. “Twenty?” I teased. “Or maybe all of the ones that you have seen prior, in your life, through you in your mind, and yet you are still the most lovely.”
Elle’s jaw dropped with surprise and she looked away, but then she slowly turned back to face me. “And what about your wife?” she asked, with a curious tone—I knew she wasn’t being mean.
“She was the most beautiful kraken. And I fear you will have to let me give her that.”
