Chapter Text
Nate stared at the petite figure before him. At first, he thought perhaps one of his friends had slipped something into his moet champagne. He could still hear the party, muffled by the triple glazing on his bespoke lake house. But this felt far too real.
She was emerging from the water when he saw her. Her robust, healthy scales gleamed under the full, single moon that dominated his planet’s night sky. He’d never seen anything so sleek, not even when he was overseeing the design of his latest bill. A delicate metal device was nestled discreetly beneath her chin, so subtle that he would have missed it if not for an errant moonbeam highlighting it.
She looked at him with clear, unfilmed eyes that bulged so sensually they could almost have been designed to make his mouth go wet.
“Hello, human,” she said, her voice a low buzz against his ears. Ripples of delight coursed through him as reality hit.
This creature, whoever she was, was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Growing up in a culture that was unaware of the existence of other sapient species, it would be hard for anyone from a more sophisticated system to understand the shock even having confirmation that other planetary lifeforms existed would have on Nate, never mind the more intense experience of being in the presence of one. Even if it had been an orc, Nate’s galaxy-view would have been shaken.
As it was, his entire universe was rocked.