The crowd disperses the spectacle clearly over for today.

"Would you like food before your interrogations?" The woman gestures for us to follow her.

"Interrogations?" Santi audibly gulps.

"Yes, do you need food first?" She smiles again.

Someone must have answered her because the next thing I know, we're following her through a side door. I can't think of anything beyond being interrogated. Are they planning to torture us? What do they want to know? I don't know anything... I'm the one with questions!

She leads us into a room that looks like a kitchen, maybe. One wall is lined with shelves with baskets full of colorful fruits. Some I recognize, others are definitely not from here.

We all stand uncomfortably in the middle of the room, no one daring to reach for anything.

"Eat..." She looks confused.

Stepping forward, Santi pulls an avocado from one of the baskets. Clarisse and I shrug, it's something familiar at least.

When he bites into it, pulling the rough skin from his mouth she looks horrified. Quickly taking the fruit from his hand she moves around the room, gathering items. When she pulls out a gleaming sword-like knife, we all take a self-preservational step back.

With effortless grace, she slices the avocado and lays the thin, perfectly symmetrical pieces onto a dish. After it's sliced, she selects several more odd-looking fruits from the baskets and slices them.

"Eat." She slides the dish toward us.

Avocado and banana, I know. The rest is unknown and slightly jarring. One of the fruits has dark blue skin and creamy almost custard-like flesh inside. Another is deep purple and shaped disturbingly like a hand. When she cut it, it oozed red liquid onto the plate. I'm not convinced that it isn't, in fact, a hand...

Clarisse reaches out and picks up a slice of something slimy. It looks like a green peach. When she eats it, her face changes from nervous, to pleasantly surprised.

"It tastes like a mixture of orange and cherry," she shrugs and reaches for another.

Santi takes slices of the recognizable earth fruits. Not wanting to be rude or disrespectful, I reach for the dark blue...thing.

"This tastes like vanilla pudding," I take another bite. It's delicious.

The woman smiles and pulls glasses down, "water or a'shuur?"

"What is a'shuur?"

"It is a liquid made from the juice of the shuur plant." She pulls out a clear bag full of iridescent pink liquid.

"We'll try that!" Clarisse smiles. I would kick her if I could.

"It's very refreshing." The woman smiles and pours a glass for all of us.

"Prost!"

"Salud!"

"Cheers!"

We clink our glasses together while she watches us with questioning confusion before taking a sip from her own glass.

As soon as it touches my tongue, the room spins.

I vaguely hear Clarisse and Santi choking and coughing beside me. One small sip of "a'shuur" and I feel drunker than I have ever been in my life. It was offered with water, and I wasn't expecting it to be alcoholic.

"You're so beautiful," Clarisse giggles as I trip over my own feet to see who she's talking about.

She grabs my face and smushes my cheeks between her hands. For some reason, this is hilarious to me and I laugh so hard that I snort. This makes these others laugh so hard that Santi loses his balance.

The woman looks panicked, quickly running from the room.

"She poisoned us! We're dying!" Clarisse yells loudly right beside my ear. Then, to my horror, she gulps down the rest of the contents of her glass!

"Clarisse! What are you doing?"

"Can't let it go to waste!" She teeters on her feet toward the baskets, searching for more of the oozey blue vanilla pudding fruits.

The door opens and several women enter, shutting the door behind them. They are talking, the kind of rapid-fire babbling that happens when you're nervous. Why are they nervous?

"Are you sick?" One of them bends down to look at me at eye level.

"No, what's your name?" I can hear my voice slurring but I can't stop it.

"Olexa," her lips pull into a frown. "Why are you unbalanced?"

"Maybe it was the cryo-sleep, but we clearly can't handle liquor right now!" I giggle uncontrollably.

"Liquor?" She turns to the others but they only nod in confusion.

"What's your name?" I ask the woman who pulled us up the ladder earlier.

"Gaia."

"Thanks for saving us, Gaia but... are you going to kill us? Is the scary one going to kill us?" I do my best to sound serious but Clarisse's babbling behind me is making it difficult.

"The scary one?" Her perfectly arched brow raises slightly.

"Yeah... the scary one..."

One of them says something in their language and all of them laugh.

"Do you mean my brother?" Olexa's huge smile assures me that I haven't offended her at least.

Now that I'm looking at her, really looking, I can see the resemblance. While her power isn't as absolutely stifling, it's still there. She's regal... and stunning. Where he lacked emotion, hers pours from her eyes. She may be a gigantic alien with muscles to rip me to shreds but I can see the kindness in her.

"He will not kill-" her words are cut off by the door. A man walks in and says something that wipes the smiles from all of their faces.

"We will see how scary he is, he is summoning you," she grimaces, Clarisse and Santi have taken to dancing in each other's arms.

I'm in enough control of my mind to know that this is not good, but not in so much control that I can really be afraid. My new friends Gaia and Olexa will protect me...probably.

As we walk out into the, now empty, great hall, I can see that the sun has gone down outside. The glowing purple sky washes the room in a soft light that makes me feel tingly and warm.

"If he isn't going to kill us, why was he so upset?" I jog to match Olexa's strides.

"He intends to kick you out, to make you go survive on your own," she sighs.

"Are we prisoners here?"

"No... but you are not free to roam. He does not trust you."

I scoff, "well, I don't trust him either!" I clap my hand over my mouth as soon as the words leave it. Even drunk, I know that was stupid. I can't get too comfortable, even if Olexa does have kind eyes.

I get a feeling from their curiosity and general accommodations toward us that they didn't have anything to do with why we haven't seen any people. Until I'm sure though, I need to keep my guard up. They may just be softening us to make us more malleable before forcing us into servitude.

Her eyes are wide and she looks nervous. "This will be interesting..."

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