“There’s an explanation? I’m not crazy?”
Crazy. It means not good in the head, I think. This happens to the Draci, most especially in the eldest of our race. I do not know why Juliet thinks she is crazy. But I shake my head. “No, you are not crazy. I will explain. Come.”
Again, I offer her my hand.
When she takes it and allows me to pull her to her feet, my heart sings.
Together, we slip out the apartment door, down the stairs, and out into the night.
Chapter Twelve
Shak
Juliet stares at me after I have explained. She brought us to a temporary dwelling and now we sit, each on our own bed.
“You’re an alien.”
“We are Draci,” I repeat. “From planet Draci in the Nextar galaxy system.”
“And your ship was sent out to discover and explore. And share and exchange technological knowledge. Like the atmospheric filtering and the terraforming stuff.”
I nod, feeling a twinge as she repeats my lie. It is what we have told her government and quite simply, I am afraid to be too forthright with her.
It has been half an hour since we arrived in this temporary dwelling, this motel, and only now is she beginning to believe that she is not crazy—that all I have told her of my planet and my voyage here is truth.
Well, mostly truth. She has already been through so much tonight. How would she react if I told her that I am on a mission to breed with a human female? And that I want that female to be her? It might overwhelm her all over again.
Do I feel like a coward for not telling her? Yes. Yes, I do.
“Holy shit, Ana was right,” Juliet whispers, leaning back against the headboard of the bed. The interior of the motel is drab compared to her colorfully decorated apartment. There are no chairs in the room, just the two beds with scratchy bed cloths. I sit far away from her only because I do not want to spook her by getting too close.
“Ana?”
“My friend, Ana. She kept saying that all that technology was way too advanced for us. That it had to be alien.”
Then she frowns. “But what are the chances that I run into an alien right after I have that conversation with her?” She looks afraid. “This could still totally be all just in my head.”
I feel frustrated. “I do not know how to prove to you that I am real. Can you not see me with your own two eyes? And smell me with your tongue?”
“Wait, what?” Her head snaps my way.
Now I am the one confused. “What do you mean, what?”
“You smell with your tongue?”
“You do not?”
She laughs, a hand going to her forehead. “Uh, no. We use our noses to smell.”
Oh. I tilt my head sideways and look at her nose. “I did wonder about that. Why humans had such an unnecessary protuberance.” I point to my nose.
She laughs again and then runs her hands through her hair. “Okay, well that seems like too specific and random a detail for me to make up on my own.” She takes a deep breath, eyes watching my every move. “Tell me more about you. Maybe the more you tell me, the more I can believe this isn’t something that my insane brain didn’t just cook up.”
“You are not crazy,” I stubbornly insist.
She swings her legs over the side of the bed and stares at me. “Then prove it.”
I mimic her posture, and with my long legs and the small space between the bed, our knees are almost touching. It reminds me of earlier tonight when things were so much simpler and I had her in my arms.
“What do you want to know?”
“If you’re a dragon alien, then why do you look human?”
“Draci,” I correct again. “And not all of us do. I was altered so I could walk among you. But my DNA is still eighty percent Draci.”
“But you’re twenty percent human?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Are there a lot of you down here?”
I shake my head. “There is a small diplomatic staff of four, who are quarantined wherever they go and only allowed to interact with specific government officials, but they have not been made to look human. And then there is me. I am the test case, sent out amongst the public to interact more freely, as if I am one of you.”
She blinks and then whispers, “So, are you guys like here to take over? You’re obviously so much more technologically advanced than us. Plus stronger and faster. What could we possibly have to trade that would interest you?”
I shake my head emphatically no. I decide not to tell her that there are those like First who would indeed like that very thing.
But how can I explain my presence here otherwise? “We have problems on Draci. We lack…” I look to the ceiling as I try to find the words. “…diverse organic materials. Our geneticists perfected our…um, our livestock to the point of sterility. If we are to survive, we must introduce diverse genetic material.”