Terrestrial Alien ✔

Chapter 63: To Trust One's Enemy

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"Hmm..."

Bennett sits in his backward-facing seat on one side of the room, resting his arms on the table and his chin on his arms. He peers across the dull surface of the table to Seth on the far side of the room, where the alien is still seated in his chair, guarding the meteorite and avoiding Bennett's stare.

"Hmm..." Bennett longly exhales again, tilting his head to the side and squinting at Seth.

A moment of silence passes as Bennett thinks. Then he tilts his head to the other side.

"Hmm..." He exhales once again.

"Will you stop that?" Seth asks finally, snapping his head up.

It's not like the scientist hasn't been doing it for the last half-hour or anything. Oh, wait. He has.

"Hm?" Bennett sits up and leans back in his chair, holding onto the front edge of it to keep from falling off. "I'm trying to figure out what this means, Seth, and where we go from here."

He's still peering at Seth introspectively, and the alien soon averts his gaze again, unable to stand it.

He could hardly stand Bennett's observing him before, when it was just because he's an alien. Now the scientist is staring at him twice over, his brain-gears visibly grinding over this revelation of relation.

Are they truly related? They both wonder. Does it even matter, in the long run? It doesn't really seem like they can do anything about it, either way.

Tilting his head downwards, Seth regards the meteorite clutched to his abdomen instead, watching the way the stones glimmer like northern lights, captured and brought to earth.

Where could this thing have come from? Some planet somewhere, struck into a million little pieces like this one? Or is it something special and lonely, something made of coincidence and space dust?

Seth wants to comprehend the answer just as much as Bennett does, if not more, even if he doesn't like to align himself with the scientist's curiosity. If only he had his own answers! If only he knew!

"I don't know how this should affect my work," Bennett speaks aloud after a while, when Seth doesn't offer a response of his own. "What are you, exactly? A product of my blood?"

He rises from the seat and crosses around the table. Seth keeps his head down, clutching the rocky artifact more tightly, till he can feel it digging into the dark skin of his palms.

Pausing at the end of the table, the edge closest to Seth, Bennett takes a seat atop it. He leans his elbows into his knees, and the ends of his tie hang from his chest like the undone tethers of an astronaut lost in space.

"It would explain your being male, at least. I imagine a creature born of gas from a space rock would have little need for gender unless the element was externally introduced; Comme ça." With an unnecessary flourish, Bennett flexes his hand in front of him, curling his fingers with their hazy tattoo and the scar galaxy.

"Then again, it doesn't explain why you don't look like me at all. In fact..." Bennett hops down from his perch on the table, crossing the space between them thoughtfully.

Seth nervously lifts his eyes, already wary of Bennett and the unsettling revelations that seem to follow him like a stormy apparition.

Bennett pauses a step in front of Seth, and as he looks down at him, something crosses his features. Something thoughtful, but also full of wonder, and—to Seth's surprise—care. It throws him, this look, and Seth doesn't know how to respond.