I must not have to pee.

Strangely, that was Fensa’s first thought. Because if she really did have to pee. If her bladder was anywhere near as full as she’d previously thought, she would have evacuated right then and there.

“Female 7-133…”

The voice came to her from a distance, though it was technically inside her head.

“No, no…” she said out loud, not caring that he couldn’t understand her spoken language. She didn’t understand…couldn’t understand what she was looking at.

“Female 7-133. Come back inside, or at the very least, return I may at least replicate a warmer coat for you. It is very cold outdoors for one in your condition.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she recognized this as a false invitation. She could just see him locking the lab door for good once she went back through it, and forcing her to pee into a replicated bucket for the rest of her pregnancy.

But she didn’t bother to call him out on his bullshit invite. Because she could only stare in horror and wonder at the two moons. One a rusty red. The other, the gray one, familiar and shining white like the one she’d known all her life.

“Female 7-133…”

“Why are there two moons?”

She felt rather than saw him come to stand beside her. His body’s superheat filling up the air to her right as if someone had placed a radiator next to her. “I do not understand your question,” he answered inside her head.

“Why are there two moons?”

A terrible thought occurred to her then. “Did you guys bring a space station when you returned? Am I looking at, like, the Death Star or something?”

Oh, God! Oh, God! she thought, remembering all those alien invader romances Koko loved to read.

“Female 7-133, calm yourself. There have always been two moons here. Once there were three. But two of the moons collided to create the bright one.”

“No, no! There’s only one moon. One fucking moon! So why is there a second red moon? I don’t understand! Where am I? Who the hell are you?”

“Female 7-133…”

“MY NAME IS FENSA!” she screamed, her voice tearing across the double-mooned night. “FENSA! AND WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE TWO MOONS IN THE FUCKING SKY?”

All sorts of scientific explanations started speeding through her mind. But there was only one that made any sense: Earth had caught a moon. An asteroid, like made of iron oxide, had fallen into the planet’s gravitational field.

Which would explain the new ice age. And the new moon’s reddish tint. A new satellite would have fucked the planet for sure. Even caused a few of the manufactured satellites to come crashing down. She remembered a G20 Climate Conference she had once watched on the wall TV of her room at the facility. One of the speakers had raised concerns about the number of satellites now hovering above the planet like a second metal atmosphere. The speaker had stated for the record that only a few computer algorithms stood between an earth city being destroyed if any of those satellites fell from the sky.

Things were bad before. But somehow, staring at two moons made it that much worse.

The divorce spell dropped from her lips without warning. Another inheritance from her papa. One he’d never used, of course. Though ironically, in the end, it was her mother who’d cast their final divorce spell. With papers and lawyers, instead of magical incantations.

But Fensa recited the Old Norse words now. Shouting them over and over and over.

Nothing happened. Oh, God. Oh, Fenrir Wolf.

Fensa didn’t realize she was trembling until the dragon’s face appeared in front of her. “Female 7-133, you burn extremely upset. Please, let me help you. Tell me how to cure this.”

There was no cure. No cure for finding out your getaway car from this post-apocalyptic madness never showed up.

“Hold me,” she whispered into his head.

“Hold…?” he asked.

And she instantly knew that like handjobs and kissing, hugging was another thing the dragon knew nothing about.

“This,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his large body. “This is a hug. A form of holding someone close to give them comfort, love, or greeting.”

“I know comfort and greeting. But the word…”

Fensa closed her eyes. Her heart icing over with dismay, even as she pushed her face into the heat of his chest. Trying to get warm, even though it felt like the cold was a disease that went bone deep.

“You don’t know the word ‘love’? Where you come from, they don’t even have the concept of mates being in love, do they?”

“Again, I do not understand this question. This mind link offers no translation. Perhaps you could give me a picture?”

The borderline-hysterical urge to laugh came over her. Here she was, hugging an alien under two moons in the post-apocalyptic world her planet had apparently become. Okay. Why not? Why not just go ahead and explain the concept of love to him, like they were reading a children’s picture book together?

So clinging to a dragon man in the cold under the light of two moons, she showed him. All the acts of love she could recall: her hardcore grandfather taking off his motorcycle pack jacket to put Neosporin and a band-aid on her boo-boo… her parents smiling secretively at each other over their morning cups of coffee… Tu and Grady holding hands as they welcomed all the teenage Royals to their summer camp… Gena Rowlands and James Garner dying at the same time, in the same bed in The Notebook… her Aunt Alisha dancing to Michael Jackson with her triplet sons… her twin sister, Ola, pulling Fensa into her arms as facility workers rushed up the side of the mountain towards them, holding Fensa tight as she whispered the incantation that would bring her here… love… oh God, love…

Something this man…shifter…serpent—as the Vikings had referred to his kind—had never heard of. Couldn’t even comprehend. Oh God, oh Fenrir Wolf…

With a profound realization, Fensa thoroughly understood the meaning of a word she’d read but never experienced: wept. She wept against the dragon’s chest under the two moons of an ice planet she no longer recognized. Pushing the same questions over and over into his mind.

“Where am I? When am I? Where is Ola? Where the fuck is Ola?!?!”