Egara reached out a hand and gently rubbed my cheek.
“You are a great woman.”
Then his eyes flicked over from my cheek to my eyes.
No one had ever said that to me.
No one had ever thought I was special or unique.
Just one of many.
“We should get some sleep,” I said.
“Yes,” Egara said. “With any luck, tomorrow we will be on our way off this planet and we will never return to it again.”
That sounded good to me.
I curled up and rubbed my arms around myself.
I still felt a little awkward sleeping without a blanket.
I mashed the sand up, forming a rudimentary pillow.
It was chilly and I shivered.
Egara curled up behind me, spooning me, and wrapped his arm around me.
He would be my blanket, I realized.
My security blanket.
His warmth pressed against my back and I hugged his arm.
He couldn’t have been comfortable with the position but did not complain.
Concealed within his warm embrace, I found sleep easily.
I knew something was wrong the moment I woke up.
The sand slipped down my collar and rubbed at the delicate skin of my lower back.
I slept well for most of the night but for about the past thirty minutes or so, I drifted in and out of sleep due to a lump digging into my back.
I took it to be Egara, growing amorous during the night.
He didn’t wake me, didn’t probe me further.
I suspected we were both exhausted from the previous day’s activities.
I rolled over and got more comfortable.
That would last for a few minutes before I once again felt that lump digging into my back.
When I blinked and opened my eyes, I stretched and peered up at the night sky.
The stars were completely different from what I was used to.
But right then, that wasn’t what took me most by surprise.
It was the fact they were moving.
Of course, that was impossible—at least, not at the speed I was watching them move now.
Another sliver of sand slipped down the back of my shirt, causing me to shiver.
Then I realized.
The stars and the sky weren’t moving.
I was.
But how could that be?
I reached down to Egara’s arm wrapped around my waist.
My hand came in contact with something cold and slimy.
It wasn’t Egara.
My groggy eyes burst open, suddenly wide awake.
I peered down at that strong arm wrapped around my waist.
It was green.
And there were no fingers on the end of the long arm, no knob of wrist muscles.
In fact, no muscles at all.
Even if I thought it was his arms clasped tightly around me, I knew it couldn’t be Egara.
I couldn’t feel his muscular chest pressing comfortingly against me.
I couldn’t feel his powerful heartbeat pulsing.
Or the warm sensation of his breaths pressing against my neck and the occasional kiss of his lips while he dreamed.
Then there was that mysterious sand sliding under my shirt and out the other end.
And then, of course, there was the smell.
The rancid stench of rotting eggs hit me full-bore.
The thing wrapped around me wasn’t Egara’s arm.
But it was an arm.
It trailed like a thick rope across the desert floor behind me, pulling me up an incline.
It was so long I couldn’t make out what was at the other end as it disappeared over the rise.
It was leading me toward that disgusting smell, I thought. The stench grew stronger the closer I drew to it.
Whatever it was, I didn’t want to go anywhere near it.
I placed my hands on the vine belt wrapped about my waist and pulled at it.
When that didn’t work, I clawed at the slimy surface with my nails.
I scratched it and in response, it tightened its grip.
“Let go!” I said.
It squeezed harder and sucked the air from my lungs.
I could hardly breathe.
I felt those same panicking breaths I had the day before when I first came to this new environment.
I rolled over and gripped the vine.
I pulled against it and slammed my fists on it.
And still, it continued with that slow relentless journey up the incline.
I peered at the line my ass left in the sand, disappearing over the rise, leading to the sand dunes in the distance.
“Egara!” I yelled. “Egara! Help! Something’s got me! Egara—!”
Another vine—smaller than the main one pulling me up the incline—snaked up from between my breasts and wound around my face.
It gripped my cheeks and pressed hard into my mouth.
I struggled and bit at the vine but it only tightened further.
Finally, fearing it might rip my head from my shoulders, I stopped biting at it.
My breaths rushed through my nose and I could barely draw in one breath before another had to be drawn in to replace it.
Angling my head up to peer at the summit, something began to emerge.
A dozen other tentacles slithered out from the hole at the top of the sand dune, shaped much like a volcano.
From the hole, the largest and most dangerous creature I had ever seen unfolded.
It had the appearance of a giant flower and angled upward, its petals opening at the dawning of a new day.
That giant flower bent over and aimed at me.
It yawned and a huge gaping hole opened wide.
And still that vine drew me up the incline.
I was going to be this thing’s lunch!
Tears streamed from my eyes, more in shock than anything else
“Agatha!” a familiar voice bellowed from the lower horizon.
“Egara!” I muffled beneath my gag.
It was a mistake as the gag only squeezed tighter and made my jaw groan under the pressure.
Egara came running up the incline and drew the twin shivs he had snatched from the alien twins.
He bellowed and hacked at the vine drawing me upwards.
The vine didn’t stop, didn’t pause to defend itself.
One, two, three swipes, and he’d cut through the vine that’d snatched me in its grip.
I slipped slightly and the vine lost its hold on me.
I wanted to celebrate, to scream and shout in victory but I daren’t do it with the vine wrapped so tightly around my face.
Egara pulled his arm back to hack through the last of the vine when half a dozen others slithered down
