“So,” Lena says. “What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”

I finish chewing my current bite of food before I answer. We have been shown a place to eat in one of the open, crowded tents we passed earlier. “Interview with Prince Takkan. That’s pretty early, so don’t get too drunk,” I remind her, eyeing the bottle she’s nursing. “And then exploring the Capital at our own discretion.”

“No promises on the drinking,” she says. “What do we know about the prince?”

“Not much.” I shrug. “He’s fairly popular among the people. A council runs things, but he has a seat, so his voice still has weight. I think he’s a pretty public figure here in Veloria, but it’s hard to find much else on him. I know he wants to join the Federation, which is a bit polarizing.”

“Wait,” she says. “The Prince rules? What about the King?”

“He’s the reigning monarch,” I explain. “Veloria was founded as a principality.”

“They began as a small civilization, and one that was fairly barren as far as crops and whatnot. They had to ally themselves with larger nations and more populous peoples to advance, and for a while, they were reliant on them for trade. Calling themselves princes instead of kings put the rulers of the larger planets in a more generous mood. As the society advanced, they became conquerors in their own right, but the title stuck. So, they have princes instead of kings.”

Lena shakes her head. “Research is like fuel to you isn’t it? You couldn’t survive without it.”

I don’t deny this. Lena has chuckled at my ability to throw myself wholeheartedly into a topic, but it certainly comes in handy as far as journalism goes. For a few moments, we simply focus on eating. I’m honestly not sure of the names of most of the things on our plates, but they all taste good. Despite the research I have done, I’m fairly clueless when it comes to Velorian food, and I make a note to thank the cook before we leave. This line of thinking draws my eyes back in her direction.

“She’s super pretty, right?” Lena says. I recall the tone she used with the waitress as we ordered the food, and am not surprised at the change in topic.

“I don’t know,” I answer. “Objectively speaking, maybe. But personally, I’m not sure Velorians are for me.”

Lena lifts a brow. “Huh,” she says. “I get that women aren’t your thing, but are you really just writing off every male Velorian that quickly? They’re all so … tall.”

“They have tails,” I counter. “Not sure if I can get past the … tail thing.”

She takes another drink. “Mm. Some aliens think eyebrows are bizarre, even gross. Remember that one time?” She trails off, unwilling to remind me of the actual story she’s thinking of.

I laugh. “Eyebrows are weird,” I say. “And I think you’re drunk.”

“So, they’re attractive, and they have good alcohol,” she says. “Seriously though. Look past the tails. We’ve only seen one town. Maybe you haven’t gazed upon the right Velorian yet.”

A Velorian walks past, carrying a tray filled with large mugs that rattle together with each step. Lena stands up, eyes trailing after him. “I don’t know what that is. But it smells like hot chocolate,” she says. “I’m going.”

Abruptly, I’m sitting alone at the table, contemplating both my view of Velorians and my taste in friends. I don’t sit there long, watching Lena walk across the surprisingly wide expanse of the tent, before there is a shape in front of me, obscuring my vision. I lean back, letting myself focus on the Velorian man in front of me.

Perhaps it is just because I’m sitting down, but he seems larger than most, wide at the shoulders, which is saying something when it comes to his species. He is dressed in fairly simple garb, like most of the others here, but with a cloak that may have been to protect his face from the cold wind blowing outside. I cannot see the finer details of his face very well in the dim light, but what I can see is pleasing. He keeps standing there, directly in front of me, staring. It takes me a moment too long to realize that he has asked a question.

“Sorry.” I do my best to appear as though I were staring at something behind him rather than the Velorian himself. “What?”

He ducks his head in acknowledgement. “I said do you mind if I sit here? Everything else is taken.”

“You’re welcome to it for as long as it takes my friend to find her way back,” I say.

He considers the words for a moment before sitting. His face is... interesting. The way his features draw in slightly as he thinks; it’s very undeniably humanlike. But they are also different. Features sharper, eyes brighter. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what makes them seem so different. Other than the tail.

“That’s likely the best offer I’ll receive on such a crowded night. The festival draws in many people who normally prefer seclusion.”

I think about simply nodding politely and continuing to sip my drink. I am, after all, exhausted, and not especially in the mood for conversation after talking all day. Then again, I came here to learn and to see these people with my own eyes. There is no reason I cannot do so without Lena’s camera and my scripted questions acting a shield, keeping me safe from true connections. There is something fascinating about this Velorian in particular. Perhaps it is the deep, rich sound of his voice, or simply the careful way he arranges his words, as though he expects to be judged on each syllable. These are the reasons I continue to speak.

“Is that where you’re from?” I ask. “Outside town?”

It is hard to see the details of his shadowed face, but I can make out the upward quirk of one lip. “Yes,” he says. “I came in for the festival. I don’t participate too much, but I like to watch everyone come together. We have too few celebrations that prize peace.”

I nod. “It is an interesting celebration. Everyone has been very welcoming, although…” I pause, unsure if the words will be offensive.

He keeps looking, considering, waiting for what I will say.

“It seems strange to have so much fighting at a celebration for peace.” I start to take another drink to avoid looking at him as he answers, and then realize that I should probably forgo a second glass if I want to remain coherent without Lena here to spot me.

His expression, though, when I finally look, is more thoughtful than anything. “I know it must seem hard to understand, but fighting can be a joyful thing for us. It doesn’t always have to signify war—it can signify life. There are few better ways to feel alive than to fight a worthy opponent.”

“I can think of a few,” I say, and then immediately regret the innuendo behind the words, crossing my fingers that his translator doesn’t pick up on double meanings. If it does, he does not reveal it.

“You’re from Earth?” he says instead, and I find myself greatly respecting the fact that it is a question and not an assumption.

I shake my head. “Not exactly,” I answer. “I’ve been on stations most of my life, with a few stints on planets we were colonizing in between. I’ve been to Earth twice—once on vacation, and once to meet my grandmother.”

“I can’t imagine being detached from the planet of my origin. I have traveled, but Veloria is a part of me. What station do you call home?”

“None of them,” I answer, without stopping to measure the weight of the words. It’s true. Home is wherever I happen to lay my head. Other than Lena, I don’t have many attachments to speak of, to tie me to a certain place and keep me coming back. This job itself and the travel required keep me from putting down roots, and to be honest, it seems like a blessing at times.

“This is a much more fascinating conversation than I expected to find here,” the Velorian says. “I hope we may continue?”

In the background, behind him, I see Lena making her way back with two steaming mugs. She freezes, and gestures to the Velorian, one eyebrow raised in question. I give my head a slight shake. That is all it takes. Lena winks encouragingly and heads back to the Velorian who had served her the drinks, apparently meaning to continue whatever conversation she had been immersed in herself.

The Velorian doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, has the good grace to pretend he does not.

“We may,” I say.

He tells me more about the festival and its origins, and does his best to explain the lack of rotation on his planet, which is a concept I have always struggled with—usually such planets are too harsh to support much life.

In turn, I talk of life on a station and life on the road. Neither of us goes into descriptive detail about ourselves. I get the impression that he thinks me a wanderer, traveling the universe without a job or a plan. I feel myself falling into the role as the evening stretches on, and I wonder if he has chosen a role to play himself. I find myself taken in by his speech, the way he moves, the intensity in his golden eyes. I find him intriguing beyond measure, and I find, as the tent begins to empty out around us, that I do not want the night to end.

“I think they’re closing up,” he says, nodding at the cook beginning to fold up the tables, the people streaming out the door in greater numbers than before. Someone will approach us in a moment, and ask us to go. We will walk to the exit of the tent and go our separate ways. I do not want that to happen.

“I think so too,” I say. I look around the tent quickly, scanning the few remaining faces, the backs of those leaving, and see no sign of Lena. Perhaps her obvious confidence in me is what bolsters my own resolve. “But I’d like to—“

“Perhaps we could—“

We both laugh, a few short syllables, our eyes burning into one another’s.

I’m momentarily overtaken by the shape of his muscular Velorian body, so masculine. The scent of his skin in the warm evening air.

The way his lips look in the low light, and the way his presence is just so... calming. I’ve never felt so easily in tune with another, not so fast. I’m intrigued and I’m not ready to end this experience.

“I can find us a place,” he says.

“I’d like that,” I answer.

Together, we stand and leave the tent.

It’s been a long while on my end, since I allowed myself to have a meaningful night with a stranger. I have never experienced anything lasting, and at the moment, I have no particular wish to. I cannot imagine any man that I would halt my travels for, and that always seems to be what they want.

Tonight, we haven’t exchanged even so much as our names; it should be simple to put this behind me.

Outside, snow is falling harder. He takes my hand and leads me through the crowd, which is still shockingly large. “We keep different hours,” he says, at my questioning look.

His answers are simple and sure. He would make a good interview subject. I almost slip up and say so before I remember that I don’t want to break the anonymity of this encounter when we’ve already made it this far. It feels wicked, knowing I will soon touch him without knowing so much as his name. He leaves me for only a second, ducking into a long line of tents that have been abandoned as their vendors pack up their wares for the night. I stand in the middle of an open space, watching the flurries float to the ground. The people around all seem to be headed to the same place, flowing like a river to the crest of a hill where a large wooden figure waits. It is too large and too stationary to be anything alive.

When the Velorian appears behind me suddenly, he nearly makes me jump. “I found something,” he says, his voice low and even. “What are you—“

He follows my eyes to the crest of the hill, where something is now being set alight. “It’s an effigy,” he tells me. “Burned in tribute to the lives we lost in war through our own bloodlust. It reminds us of our past, and leaves us hope for a brighter future. A storm is coming, but they will tend it throughout, and make certain it stays lit.”

“It’s beautiful,” I say. It does not get fully dark in this part of the country during this part of the year—not ever. The lack of rotation sees to that and all sorts of other strange phenomena.

He is staring at me. So are you, he seems to say, with nothing but his unmoving gaze. My skin tingles, and I feel so alive as he takes my hand. Our fingers are too differently sized to fit together perfectly, but somehow that only makes our near-success all the more impressive. He leads me to a tent, lifts a flap, and tugs us both inside. There is a single lantern glowing in the corner. There is enough light out that we could probably still see without it, but it lends a certain softness to the ambience.

For a moment, we simply stare at each other. I try to picture myself through his eyes. He will see the red of my hair no matter how low the lighting. That much is certain. He will see hazel eyes and a face with too many freckles. I cannot think of anything to say, of anything to do.

I turn back to the open flap and close it as securely as I can manage, heart hammering like the pistons of an engine. I feel his body move closer to mine, crowding me against the wall of the tent as he reaches out with one hand and, testing, places it upon my shoulder. It seems impossibly large, his hand curving from my shoulder-blade to my collarbone, curling around. I place my fingers over his, feeling their strength and their gentleness.

I shiver.

“Are you cold?” he asks, “I can—“

Screw it, I think, and turn in a rush to connect our mouths. They do not meet perfectly; for a moment it is quick and clumsy and that is fine. I smile as he returns the kiss, deepens it; offers some firm guidance as my hands do their best to work their way beneath his cloak. Somehow, he makes me feel warm and cozy even though there is a strange chill emanating from his core.

Normally, I am sure of myself only in front of a crowd or a camera. I have made connections of this sort before, but they never feel this right. I am always on the nervous side, not quite sure of myself and waiting for the other party to set the pace. Tonight though, the movement of my hands on his skin feels instinctive, feels right.

I slip a hand to the front of his pants. He moans at the slight pressure of my touch and brings his lips back to mine. He tastes like something sweet, mixed with the colorful drinks we’d both been sipping; it is a taste that I want to learn all the separate notes of, a taste that I want to memorize. His hand covers mine, helping me undo the front of his pants with an ease gleaned from doing the same thing one thousand times. When the hardness trapped there springs free, I take a moment just to look at it. At him.

It is the same blue as the rest of his skin, though in the lantern light it is difficult to see the exact shade. It feels firm and warmer than the rest of his skin, all the blood congregating there. It is not so different from a human man’s as to be concerning. His breathing catches as I move my hand, sliding up and down the length he has on display for me, both of us hot and ready with an arousal I hadn’t expected to find here on this planet.

All the while he kisses me senseless, teasing my mouth open further with an insistent tongue. In any other encounter like this, such deep, hungry kissing may have felt too intimate, something done between lovers who intended to meet more than once. Somehow though, it feels right, and not at all like some sort of unwanted intrusion. His teeth skim up my jaw, his tongue teasing the end of my ear before moving back down, leaving me gasping, toes curling in my boots. I want to elicit the same noises from him, and as I much as I think I could lie here and kiss him all night, this is not the perfect location for a long, leisurely encounter.

“Lie down?” I ask him, whispering the words into his mouth.

He obliges, smiling at me curiously, and sinking down onto one of the many rugs that thankfully cover the floor of the tent.

I push him onto his back, first climbing atop him, kissing him, and then using my newly gained leverage to nudge him until he is lying atop the rug. All of his clothing is still on, and I mourn for a moment the fact that I cannot move slowly down his body, tasting every inch of skin I meet along the way.

When my lips find the tip of his cock, he gasps, as though shocked. I give him a lightning quick smile, before diving into the task in earnest, immediately taking him in my mouth. As I work with my lips and my tongue, his fingers travel down, lacing with one of my wandering hands. I can feel each twitch and clench of his fingers in response to me, and it gives me the confidence to stay here for as long as he needs. Soon he is breathing heavy, threading his fingers through my hair.

I know the universal signals for ‘I’m close’, but I don’t move away. I’m fascinated by every bit of him, intensely excited, awaiting the surge of his hot seed into the back of my throat. When he does, his whole body jolts, and his lips mouth, “You’re amazing,” in place of a name that he does not know. I let him slide from my mouth as I swallow his intoxicatingly sweet load. I give the bone of his hip a parting kiss, and crawl back up his body, lying beside him on the rug for a moment as we both catch our breath.

Perhaps Velorians recover from such things more quickly than human men, because he nearly immediately cups a hand behind my head and pulls me in for another kiss that is equal parts sweet and passionate, and no holding back.

“Allow me to do the same for you,” he says. He waits a moment, giving me a chance to change my mind, but I cannot contemplate doing so.

The lantern light flickers across his face, making his golden eyes glint. He works open the front of my pants with more ease than I had been able to demonstrate with his, only he does not stop with the zipper. He peels them off, sliding them down my legs. His fingers trail over my skin as he does so. I feel a prickling of my skin, a tingling ache. Heat travels through me and pools between my legs.

My eyes slip closed, overcome with arousal as he lowers his head, hands sliding up my thighs. His mouth finds my inner thigh, his tongue winding a path through the folds of my sex and to my clit. I arch upward, into him, wanting more of his lips and skilled tongue.

I grip his hand, tug it upward, and press it to my breast. I hear him chuckle, feel his breath against the most sensitive inches of my skin, as his fingers find the nipple, circling it as he continues to lick me into euphoria.

When I climax, it comes nearly as suddenly as the Velorian’s had, wracking me with hot, intense pleasure. I throw my head back against the rug beneath me, eyes shut tight and then flying open, watching sparks of light dance across the roof of the tent, mouth open in a soundless cry, not wishing to attract attention to a tent that we are almost certainly not supposed to be occupying. When the fog he’s left in me in lessens, I roll further toward him, noting how relaxed his body looks, muscles gone lax, though to be honest the floor is rather uncomfortable. The expression on his face is inscrutable, but when he catches me watching, his face breaks into a smile.

“That was amazing,” he says, and then looks to the door. “But we should probably—“

“I think we’ve been lucky not to have an interruption so far,” I agree. The words are teasing, but there is sadness in my tone. I have known such nights periodically since beginning my career, but never have I felt so in tune with someone else, so effortlessly comfortable. There was no worry of judgment, and I already know that, had the walls of the tent been just a bit thicker, the risk of discovery just a bit less, I would have cried out his name if I’d known it. This has been earth-shattering—both the climax and the connection. This feels, more than any other night spent with any other man, like it could be something more.

There is no time to protest, though, and I fear sounding desperate. We both stand, leaving the rug beneath us. I am still stepping back into my discarded pants when he finishes fastening his own. My chest aches as he moves toward the door and I long to follow him. He grips the flap, begins to pull it back. But then some thought makes him turn back with a sort of determination igniting his gaze. He feels something too. I know it by the set of his jaw, by the way he crosses the room, gathers me to him, and leans down to kiss me. It is short, just a press of warm lips together.

“I will be occupied for the entirety of tomorrow,” he says. “But I would like to see you again, if you’ll still be on Veloria.”

“I’ll still be here,” I say, because I will, and even if I wasn’t, I may have very well made some excuse that would allow me to stay. “What about two nights from now?”

He nods, and I do not think I imagine the relief in his eyes at hearing this. “I’ll meet you in the square,” he says, and then, more softly, “I very much look forward to doing this again, and perhaps learning more about you.”

He leaves then, before I can voice the same sentiment on my own behalf, the tent flap swinging closed behind him. I breathe out a long sigh and cross the tent once more, this time approaching the lantern still burning in the corner. I extinguish it with a slow flip of my thumb, plunging the room into shadow in slow increments.

Whatever happens two nights from now, whether he shows up or not, I do not think this is a night I will easily forget.