She opened her eyes, suppressing the urge to sit up with a start. Instead, she took some time to think things through. She had been trying to get away from what must have been an awful fight. Deciding just to move as fast as she could, she'd guessed that she could always figure out where she was afterward, though she'd known that her general direction was toward the plane where she'd just come from not long before. Then something had hit her, hard. It had caused her to black out, and then all that she remembered was that she was cold. She didn't think that the projectile had injured her in any way, but she still had no idea what it had been.
She wasn't very cold anymore. She remembered being picked up, but being too cold and weak to do anything about it. She also had a vague recollection of being carried very carefully and not being alarmed over it, and then she felt warmth and comfort. She moved her hand to her chest, and felt something soft and a bit heavy there. It was almost hot against her but it felt good to be warming up. She guessed that another of the things was at her feet. That was about all that she could get from lying here, other than that all of her joints ached for some reason.
There was something else, something that felt new to her. It was a gentle sense, a presence within her that she felt from her core to all of her extremities. It was almost like feeling a piece of knowledge. Like knowing a thing without knowing what it was. She had awareness before, but this was a different kind of awareness. She had always been aware that she was alive. For some reason that she couldn't get a handle on, she now felt ... as though she was living. It made no sense to her, so she shelved it. She would examine it later. She felt that she wasn't alone, and that took precedence for the moment.
She opened her eyes slowly. Since there was a man sitting there, she deduced that she was back on Earth now, though couldn't remember how she got here to her present location – lying on a piece of furniture. She smelled the air tentatively. There was a food smell, but not much else. Vaguely male smells came to her, but she smelled nothing of a female human here. A few more moments, and she knew that they were alone, there was nothing else living in the building, aside from plants.
She congratulated herself for her self-control. Normally, she thought that under the circumstances, any other of her kind would have leaped at him and killed him out of hand before sorting out what to do next. But as far as she could tell, he hadn't harmed her. It even looked to her, the more that she thought about it, that he'd tried to be kind to her – and that was remarkable, if nothing else. Why would anybody show her kind any kindness? It hadn't ever happened before, as far as she knew.
She studied him for a few moments. Not young, but handsome to the females here, no doubt. That thought made her go back to sniffing. No, there was no female here, other than herself. There were no residual female smells either, so she knew that he wasn't living with one. He didn't look too tall; she liked that, not being large herself, though she could make herself that way if she wanted. He wasn't fat, not thin either - more in good trim, she thought. He had kind of a stern face – no, it was because he concentrated on the light square in front of him. She'd seen many of the things lately here. People spent long periods of time staring at them.
She wondered about her own thoughts just now – since when had she cared what the males here looked like? She'd never cared what anybody looked like. What was the matter with her?
He turned to look at her. The stern look vanished and was replaced with a warm smile and ... concern, maybe. She wondered what he would do now. She could always kill him and had no fear of him. She decided that it was up to him what she would do next. The thought suddenly crossed her mind that she didn't necessarily want to kill him, but it was up to him, really.
Tobias was stunned. He thought she was drop-dead gorgeous. If it weren't for one little detail here, he'd have thought that now they'd have the embarrassing few minutes where he'd tell of finding her and she'd explain about the impossible way that she'd ended up where he'd found her. Then he'd lend her something to wear and as soon as she could arrange for a cab or a ride, she'd be gone.
He could overlook maybe seeing her tail move by itself – he could even tell himself that he'd imagined that. He could tell himself a lot of things about how there was nowhere for her to have flown FROM out there before she'd crash landed. He knew that county road like the back of his hand. There was nothing but some distant woods in that direction, maybe half a mile away. At her angle of flight, she'd have been far over them that far back. They must make some dependable professional-grade actor's adhesive for her horns, he supposed. He might have been wrong in his observation about her contact lenses – it was snowing like a bastard and getting worse.
But those really nice, odd-looking eyes there regarding him coolly told a different story. Contact lenses or not, they were glowing faintly. He was about to make up another general rule of thumb, but rules of thumb were for recurring situations in life. Naked flying women in blizzards were about as far as he was prepared to go.
There were no rules of thumb for this. Anybody with a working brain would be pissing themselves in their fear, or trying desperately to get to their feet and run or perform some sort of semi-intelligent action that lent itself to a situation such as this. Not Tobias. His brain wasn't even locked up in fear. If he'd had the time to analyze it, he'd have made the obvious self-depreciating remark in his mind about needing to be bright enough for that. He didn't know at all what he was looking at, other than one thing – one word that he had no follow-up for.
He was looking at wonderful.
It came to him that if there was going to be some passage of information between them, then he'd better get his jaw up off the floor sooner rather than later. He considered what he ought to say. Half a dozen things came to mind that he imagined a fairly bright man would be able to manage. He summoned up all of the fairly brightness that he had within him and proceeded to attempt something reasonably intelligent here.
With the most important decision out of the way, what came out of his mouth showed about as much grace and articulation as any dog might demonstrate while trying to fuck a football.
"Well, you're awake. I found you in the snow. I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't just leave you there, so I brought you here. Let me know if you're hurt or anything." He thought that was a pretty good way to open the conversation – for an idiot. He'd have preferred to keep his mouth shut, but you have to say something to a woman who wakes up naked on your couch, don't you? He wasn't certain, but he thought it was likely considered bad form not to.
From his speech, she figured roughly where she was on this world. She was a bit troubled that he wasn't losing his mind in fear. Why had he done this?
She cleared her throat, "You should have left me in the snow."
He thought that she sounded like a portable cement mixer full of wet gravel.
To her amazement, he smiled!
"Why do you smile?" She demanded.
He held his hand out in a placating manner, "I'm sorry," he chuckled, "I've never seen anything like the things I've seen tonight. I saw you land in a field of snow. I don't even know how I saw you in this storm. I figured out that I couldn't just take you to the hospital, not after I saw your horns and your tail. While you were lying here, I looked at you and I guess I had some idea about how you would sound if you spoke – and I was obviously wrong. Please forgive me. Now, are you injured? I did my best to see, but we were in a snowstorm, and it's dark outside. I might have missed something."
She moved her limbs experimentally, "I hurt from my joints, but I do not know why. I do not think ... I don't think I'm hurt other than that. I don't speak to people here. How should I sound?"
He noticed the shift in her speech as though she was seeking commonly used speech patterns from him and trying to match them. "If I had landed like you did, I'd have more broken bones than not. If your joints hurt, that's probably why, and I'd say you were pretty lucky. You sound fine to me now that I've gotten used to it, but women usually have slightly higher voices than men."
"I don't understand something," she said, shifting her voice upward a little at a time, "Why did you help me? Do you know what I am?"
