Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
I can’t take my eyes off him. Everything about him is majestic and wonderful and terrible. I owe him my life, and I feel a great desire to devote it to him. I want to tend to him. I want to feed him. I want to comfort him. I want to erase all the terrible things that ever happened to him with what kindness I can muster.
He spoons down his pie and ice cream nearly in one go. I take a few bites of mine but slide the rest over to him. It is good pie and ice cream, but he clearly needs it more than I do.
“Are you certain?”
“I have this all the time. I’ve had it far too much. It’s why I can’t outrun aliens.”
“You do not need to outrun aliens,” he says. “And you are perfect.”
He does take the rest of the pie and ice cream, though, and I take greater pleasure in watching him eat than I would eating it myself.
“This is the best meal I have ever consumed,” he declares when there is not a crumb left. “I do not think there is a better form of food in all the galaxy. Your cooking, my pet, is without compare.”
I always feared being little more than a domestic to a man, but I have never felt so wonderful as I do now to have pleased this one.
His very strange alien features are already starting to become familiar. His expressions range from fierce to thrilled. When he looks at me, his golden eyes gleam with approval and affection. The tusks on the lower part of his face could be quite intimidating if they were not lightly flecked with a little cherry.
“I would like to bathe,” he says.
“I have a bath. But it might be, well, will be too small. Let me see what I can do. I have an idea.”
When we emerge from the house, the ship is in the process of being covered by the villagers in all manner of loose material. Tree waste, branches, leaves, part of the roof that blew off the old cow shed last time the big storms came through. It’s not pretty, but it will stop snooping sky eyes from seeing what we have down here.
The city usually leaves us alone, but we have not lost our fear of that lawless, violent, and dangerous place. There has always been a divide between the city and the countryside, but now there is more of a chasm.
We rely on one another here, and when I know I don’t have anything to bathe Zain in, I know where to go.
There’s a house two down from me with a crooked chimney from where a storm blew on it too hard, and a thatched roof that’s slightly newer than most of the others because it had to be replaced from the same storm. Every now and then some wicked winds blow across the open plains. I’m getting pretty good at keeping us safe when they come, but the damage happened when I was younger and much less experienced.
“Mrs Trevers?” I poke my head in through the open kitchen window.
Mrs Trevers has gray speckled hair and a warm smile. She’s wearing a gingham frock, her favorite one I happen to know, covered with a white apron. She looks to be preparing the basic fixings for her famous stuffing, the most delicious of anybody in the village.
“Yes, Emily, dear?” She makes a waving gesture with floury, herbed hands.
“Do you still have that empty pond?”
“Sure I do. Why?”
“We’d like to make Zain a bath.”
“Oh sure. Of course. You’re welcome to it.”
The empty pond is a big poured concrete vessel that used to sit in Mrs Trevers’ garden until she decided to take it out for a vegetable patch. It’s a circle about seven feet wide and five feet deep. He won’t be able to stretch all the way out in it, but it will be much more comfortable than any of our human scale tubs.
“What is it you’re doing there?”
Burt Nichols calls out the question as Zain and I walk down main street, Zain holding the concrete pond aloft over his head as if it weighs nothing at all.
“Just making a bath for our guest!” I call back.
“Fine idea!” He says, taking that as an invitation to help.
Nothing in Hallow Grove is private, and nothing is done alone. So, the bath for Zain soon becomes a project for the entire town. Mr Nichols brings over a copper and Terry Fuchs uses his superior fire making skills to make a nice hot fire to heat it with. Then it’s just a matter of water. We’re going to need over six hundred cubic feet of water to make a decent bath for Zain, and we’re going to make sure that happens.
Once it's made, a big, propped-up concrete bath filled with steaming water from the copper, the villagers melt away to give Zain some privacy. He’s washed off most of the blood already in the water warming process, and now he strips off in the relative privacy of my back garden, surrounded by the climbing plants and flowers planted by previous generations of my family.