As Rowan opened her eyes, the sound of snoring from the other room confirmed that despite the surreality of the previous night’s events, she hadn’t imagined them. Unless the source of the sound was something other than the vaguely familiar but inhuman senshi who had accosted her in the park. With a sigh she met her own grey gaze in the mirror across from her bed, assessing the state of herself. Dark circles ringed her eyes, contrasting sharply with her pale skin and the bright red braid that draped across her shoulder and down her chest. She’d spent hours listening to the Tuath man chatter about everything from food he’d eaten on Tempesti in the long distant past to his apparently already overwhelming hatred for mosquitoes. He’d dismissed their common name in favor of “little flying b*****d ********,” insisting that the more evocative term suited them better.

No one could accuse Fin, Bacchus, whoever, of lacking topics for conversation, even if they might find his taste in subject matter questionable. Years of isolation had taken an understandable toll on the clearly gregarious alien. Under the circumstances, she could overlook the fact that he’d chugged two dusty bottles of wine from a long forgotten gift basket tucked into the back of a cabinet. And the fact that he’d left a layer of what appeared to be silt in the bottom of her bathtub. After he’d moved past his confusion at the concept of a shower, he’d been strangely enthusiastic about the whole idea and used far more of her toiletries than she would have expected. Still, it had rid him of the pond smell that clung to every inch of him when he’d stumbled upon her and she couldn’t resent that.

With a soft sigh she pulled an airy, dark blue robe over her nightgown and strode across her small apartment into the kitchen, the volume of the snoring increasing with each step. At this distance she could distinguish a smaller, softer snore mingled with the alien’s heavy breathing. Reginald, it seemed, had taken a particular liking to their houseguest. The orange cat lay on his back, splayed across Fin’s chest, a bead of drool hanging in the fur around his mouth as his back feet twitched in the throes of a dream. A grey hand with long, slender fingers rested on the ginger fur of the cat’s stomach.

“Uuuuuuuugh…Why is it so bright?” The alien dramatically flung his arm over his face, his forearm landing squarely across his eyes to protect them from the light creeping into Rowan’s living room.


“It’s morning, did you sleep alright?” Fin smoothed his free hand across Reginald’s fur as he stubbornly refused to uncover his eyes.


“As well as I could, this bed is better than the ground at least. She didn’t bother correcting his inaccurate description of the couch, instead pouring a tall glass of water from the filtered pitcher in her fridge and setting it on a coaster atop her end table. “That should help if you have a hangover.”


“A what?


“If you feel sick from drinking all that wine last night.”


A miserable sounding grunt was his only reply and sent her to her bathroom medicine cabinet to fetch the Tylenol.


“Take two of these and drink all of that water. Then drink more. Water, I mean.” She felt the need to clarify, even if she no longer had alcohol in the house.


Resuming his attentions to the cat her murmured, “I’ll wait for this one to get up.”