Adaptation: book I by Pepper Pace Page B

down the stairs of the little townhouse that she and Jody had shared their first year of marriage. He was in the kitchen wearing slippers, pajamas, and a white T-shirt. He was yawning and flipping pancakes when she skidded to a stop at the kitchen door.
    He raised his eyebrows, his dark hair a mop of messy curls over his head, morning stubble on his cheeks. “Mel, what are you doing out of bed? I told you I was going to make you breakfast in bed.” He came over and kissed her, and her knees went weak as tears pricked her eyes.
    Her arms went around his body and she clung to him. “Jody …”
    He gave her a tight hug, pulled back, and smiled at her. “Get back in bed. This is my gift to you.”
    Carmella’s eyes opened and she looked around her darkened room. “No,” she gasped. “Jody?” She gripped her sheets in her fist realizing that Jody’s presence was only a precious dream. It had seemed so real …
    Why couldn’t it have lasted longer?
    Carmella rolled onto her side and felt tears slip from her eyes to wet her pillow.
    Why did I have to live?
    ~***~
    The next morning before using the slop bucket, Carmella hurried to her bedroom window and peered down to the porch below. The blankets had been replaced by a basket of eggs and some milk. She smiled and went to pee then hurried down the stairs and collected the items from the porch.
    The alien was at the pump splashing his face and upper body. He had removed his shirt, and the water had streamed down his torso to wet his linen pants.
    He looked so human … except that his skin was not the bronze color she would expect on an Asian man. It held an undercurrent of blues and grays. It was still obviously skin, but it was as if the alien was millimeters beneath the surface.
    She realized that she was staring when he looked up and met her eyes.
    “Thank you,” he said as he reached for one of the blankets.
    She averted her eyes and worked her lips before words would come from them. “You’re welcome,” she mumbled then hurried back into the house.
    Carmella paced for a few minutes before looking out the window. He had dried off with the blanket and was pulling on his shirt. Her face burned and her brow furrowed as she stared at him. Long, black tendrils of hair ran limply over his shoulders, and his torso was very … nice. She scowled to herself as her eyes stared at his wet pants. Linen pants became translucent when they were wet, and she could see that he had no underwear …
    Carmella gripped the curtains and pulled them closed.
    ~***~
    Bilal felt too tired to do much of anything. He wrapped himself in two of the blankets and curled into a ball on the barn floor. He fell into a restless sleep. When he awoke, his body felt achy, whether from the cold, the hard floor and his unyielding body, or because he was becoming ill, he did not know.
    Centaurians did not become ill in the same way that humans did. He would know what to look for if he was treating his friends. He would burrow his feelers into their bodies and locate the clusters of white blood cells for the illness and then remove them from their bodies.
    Bilal still possessed his feelers, but now they were hidden in his tongue. He didn’t need to extract them to find and get rid of what ailed him because he no longer had the capability to heal himself. His human body was not built for such things, and even though he still possessed Centaurian know-how, he was unable to do it.
    He would need to start a fire. Too bad he didn’t know how to do that without matches. He couldn’t make himself warm internally and he couldn’t heal himself, and he cursed himself for opting to make himself more human than Centaurian and being stuck being useless. Bilal wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and felt a pain in his stomach. Hunger. Damnit, why did he always have to become hungry? He went to the pump for water and thought about going into town for supplies.
    The human would need things for a baby, and he would