#tinabik

He wolf-whistles when you exit the tent, and you frantically twist your fingers around your shirt buttons, trying to dress yourself. Exhausted from your half-finished task, you drop your hands and roll your neck, working out the sore muscles from sleeping on the ground. You’re never fully awake until you shower. There aren’t any showers in the outback, however.

He was sitting on the ground, shoes off, exposing his inhuman two-toed feet. Between them, he clutched a navy-blue water bottle with the school’s emblem on the side: New Earth International Ambassadorial Academy. He held the handle of a small pot and carefully emptied the contents into the bottle.

“Morning, Princess,” he says, flicking golden eyes toward you. You suppress your instinct to shudder at his alien gaze. Your father had trained you well to avoid his kind. Even your insatiable curiosity of their being couldn’t make you unlearn that gut-twisting fear that follows them. The break in concentration causes hot water to dribble onto his red foot. Looking around groggily, you notice something.

“Where’s the fire?” He was purifying drinking water for the two of you, right? You need fire to do that, right? You learned that in the Young Men’s group you belonged to back home.

“Babe, I am the fire.” He sets the pot down then throws his hand towards you, the back facing you and his index finger raised. He watches you as the finger ignites. It wasn’t a finger-- you knew that. It was a claw that held a frightening potion of venoms. It glew red, hot without being on fire. He was right. He was fire.

Virusa have always captivated you as a species, forbidden, and mysterious. It was illegal for them to be within your home country’s borders. The Terrever Republic wasn’t known for its hospitality.

There was only one other student from your country at the Academy. Their name was Mal. Well, their last name anyways. Kiara Malcomb was their full name, according to the black placard on their door. The same door you found ajar last night when you went to give them the phone to call home. Their parents waited on the other end, eager to speak with their child halfway across the world. Their bed was unmade, and you would have immediately assumed a kidnapper had taken them in the night, but then, ever attentive, you noticed something.

Their bag was missing, as well as the scarf that was an extension of their body. Mal was funny, and just a little too sensitive to anything.  They always had this scarf with them. They said their mother had knitted the green and gold monstrosity for them. The special, home-made touch was evident in how it was wider at the middle, making it easier for the particularly sensitive teenager to wrap it around their head, in an effort to block out any sounds, lights, or curious aliens.

Mal’s particular sensitivity didn’t apply just to their physical senses. Mal had a tendency to shut down, to turn their brain and forms of communication off. You could be talking to them and they’d just deadpan, and not listen to what you were saying. Maybe they’d stand up, and wander out of the room and into the courtyard between your dormitories. Mal loved being outside.

Though, now, it seems like they’d taken that insatiable, unpredictable wanderlust to a slight extreme, and left the campus completely. Immediately, you notified their dorm advisor, who shrugged and said that it was a big campus and that Mal was “probably at the library, or something.” Mal hated the library.

You packed a bag, putting a few bottles of water from the vending machine, as well as a bag of some brand-name cheese-flavoured chips. A semester into this new culture, and you still weren’t used to the commercialization and processing of something simple as food. You went back to your room to snag the book you were reading - Sun Rain- off your nightstand and sneak out before the security patrol caught you, when you roommate stirred.

He wasn’t your first choice for a roommate, all angles and burnt orange skin. He was weird, and tall, and just so alien that you didn’t like talking to him. He was handsome, you guess. But his fascination about your being combined with your dislike of making eye contact with him made it difficult for you to like him.

“Where’re’ya going?” He had asked, already sitting up. He wasn’t wearing any clothes. That was another weird thing about him, as if there weren’t enough already. You rubbed your eyes under your glasses and avoided looking at him.

“Mal’s gone.” He stood, pulling on a pair of blue jeans and tieing his matted indigo dreadlocks into a ponytail.

“I’m going with you.” Clawed hands fit through his Academy hoodie's sleeves. He took his keys off the hook, and searched for the button-thing that unlocked his automobile. Cars unnerved you. They weren’t legal for citizens to own in Terrever. You make a noise as if to say ‘No,” and he sets the chain back on the desk. “Fine, Princess, no cars.”

“My name is Codah. I’ve told you this.” He laughs.