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Imagine, after decades of your world becoming colder and colder, you are saved. A single Eridian, the only one of twenty three to survive, arrives in an alien ship, accompanied by a creature you can barely conceive.

Everything about the alien is so loud, hinges formed from tissue thumping and stretching in constant movement, even while unconscious. Completely organic, reliant of oxygen and hydrogen. Instead of a protective carapace, it regrows its damaged tissues. It has senses you do not, and technology so unlike your own, both able to utilise a force you have never heard of. The same force that killed almost your entire mission team. Highly adaptable, able to teach itself how to fly its ship in under a week, able to become fluent in the engineer's dialect in less than four years.

And if Erid's best engineer is correct (and there's no reason it wouldn't be), this creature not only managed to breed a predator of the warmth-taker to survive in various atmospheres, including Threeworld's, but also turned around to provide aid when it discovered that the predator could escape xenonite.

And you think: Surely, this creature which protects itself without a carapace, which sleeps so lightly and knows so much and learns so quickly, which saved two planets at the cost of ever returning to its thrum, surely, a creature so extraordinary must have a name to match

And you think: Perhaps it is strength, Mountain-Base or Lonsdaleite-Carapace. Perhaps it is intellect, Diamond-Claw or Lockpick-Mind. Perhaps it is courage, Song-Through-Silence or Path-Carver

And you think: None of these names hold the true weight of what this creature is to them. How do you describe something like that, which aids without expectation of anything in return, which risks its own life for the sake of a species it cannot touch, which performs miracles simply because it was asked.

is this anything?

One of these is your classic TMZ highly invasive round-the-corner spy shot of Shane and Ilya--like, waiting for an Uber, is what it looks like, and the bass from inside the club is pounding and you can barely hear what they're saying except that the guy standing next to them is also TMZ and he's got a directional mic sticking out of his pocket pointed at them and when he gets into position you can hear Shane Hollander, like, fucking giggle.

"I'm sorry," Shane says, and his arms are around Ilya's neck. "I got--I'm a little drunk."

"It's okay," Ilya says, and he brushes a hand through Shane's hair. "Did you have fun?"

"Ye-s-s-s," Shane says, nodding his head decisively. "We won the Cu-p."

"Yes we did. I am proud of you."

"I'm proud of you!" Shane cups a hand around the back of Ilya's neck and giggles again into his shoulder. "Why aren't you drunk? I drank the same things as you--"

"I'm drunk," Ilya chuckles. "But I have twenty pounds on you and I am Russian, so."

"That's not a thing. That's not really a thing." Shane sighs and goes a bit boneless against Ilya's body and says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have, uh--"

"Shh. You said you had fun, and this is all that matters. My beautiful winner." He kisses the side of Shane's face, loudly and repeatedly.

Shane makes a sound that Twitter, TikTok and Instagram comment sections will all agree is a purr.

"This might seem like me betraying you, but this is actually me believing in you."

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