Star Side

Chapter 31

Stellar date (Earth Time): 02-25-2914

A few more things became readily apparent over the next week.

One: whatever language Gilrack spoke only had spoken words for nouns and only nouns. Pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, and an alarmingly small amount of conjunctions were all made in clicks, hisses, whistles, hums, growls, chirps, you name it. There were even a few words that included snaps of his fingers. Learning the names he had for parts of the body had put me into a false sense of security about his language, because now I struggled. A few 'words' I couldn't even make unless I had some snot on hand to sniff down as though preparing to hawk a logy. That's also how I managed to make a semblance of a purr, which delighted our resident alien a lot more than it delighted me. I felt disgusting on a third-grade-boy level. And if my sinuses and throat were dry, forget purrs, I couldn't make half the noises.

At least I could say his name perfectly fine. Gilrack. Sounded like an amphibious rock. But, hey, he doesn't have to know I'm judging his alien name. He probably thought my name sounded like, well, a logy. His version a logy, at least.

Second: The more Gilrack spoke, the more edgy Levi became. It got to the point where both Naomi and I had to pull him aside and remind him that the guy he seemed to be determined to piss off had claws, fangs, poison, wings, and about three feet of both height and width on him, not to mention probably two-hundred more pounds of muscle. And even if he carried around his rifle like it was his extra arm, it didn't guarantee anything if Gilrack decided he was done with us.

"Besides, he's a sweetheart," Naomi had waved around a pretty pendent he'd made for her as she said this. Its string had been made of carefully woven, long, satin smooth red and purple hair and spines that had been whittled down into various flower-like shapes beaded it.

Levi had glared at that necklace as though it were a personal insult and stomped off, which was how most of encounters involving our now resident alien eventually ended.

"Ugh, it's like he's a teenager again," Naomi had grumbled.

I had just nodded, unsettled by how much my friend seemed to have changed. Despite his past, I'd never seen him act aggressive until Gilrack had appeared. I saw more of the violent criminal I was told he had been then I'd ever wanted to see.

Third: Gilrack seemed dead set on learning English at an insane speed. Despite mine and Naomi's attempts to explain to him that he needed time to let the words we taught him settle, he either didn't understand or deliberately ignored us. If he wasn't following me around pointing and struggling to convey simple phrases or sentences, he was following Naomi around and doing the same thing.

Thankfully, Naomi didn't seem to mind his company. I wondered if the empty hole where Josh had once been didn't seem so vast when she had an eager porcupine demon asking "What this? What that?" in his smoke and lava voice. Yes, that's right, he caught on to the intricacies of 'this' and 'that' off the bat. Apparently, directions and placement were very important and ingrained into his own language. He caught on to prepositions faster than he did the nouns. Up, under, over, left, right, etc. He even seemed frustrated at some point by how vague ours were compared to his. He had a certain click for every degree of the circle. Like, so much for 'on your twelve'o clock.'

Fourth, and lastly, he seemed to become more humanlike by the day. Nothing in him physically changed, but he must have been watching us closely for he inevitably mimicked how we ate our food, our facial expressions, and even our gestures.

He didn't, however, move an inch from his concept of space. How we managed to function with only 'left, right, up, and down' was beyond him.

Never did he get closer than three feet from Naomi and Levi. When he had given her the necklace he had set it on the floor and then backed up quickly. Levi especially he gave a wide berth, though on the few occasions Levi managed to be especially confrontational the space seemed to shrink, as though being within reach of a blow was as much of a threat as the blow itself.