By the time we arrived back at Finley’s farm, all of us were tuckered out by the long road trip into Houston. The early hours of the evening were showing in Earth’s darkening sky, and I admired how clear the view of the stars was on the primals’ world. Terry tapped me on my left shoulder as I climbed the porch, before sidestepping to the right. I turned around with confusion, though I enjoyed seeing the human laugh. They were silly animals, weren’t they? I felt a lot more relaxed around them after Finley’s remarkable control.

  I could play back and interact with the humans without worrying about them attacking. Elbi had to hear how the violent impulses didn’t drown out their thoughts altogether. I’d been to the human city and sat right alongside attacking primals…and survived. Finley and Terry weren’t slobbering animals that couldn’t be spoken to, which made it all the more baffling that the authorities had been so quick to strike. Even rageful Josh, come to think of it, was still enunciating reasons for its attack while it struck the farmer.

  His reasoning was still working in that moment, justifying the immense anger he felt toward Finley for threatening his children. It isn’t good that their capacity for thought is diminished at all, but what they’re acting on: it’s more than mere whims.

  “Elbi, we’re home!” Terry sang, before spotting my sister at the computer. “Whatcha looking at?”

  Elbi hesitated, then relented to the primal’s inquiry. “Web stories. I wanted to understand how humans…would write other human characters thinking. Many of these tales involve romance, and…”

  “You like them,” Finley said accusatorily.

  “I didn’t say t-that, human. I do not care for obscene descriptions of your impulses. I assumed it would be a calming genre. However, these characters fight and grow…upset with each other often. It is disturbing.”

  “Of course you’re gonna get frustrated around someone, especially if you’re together all the time. All couples fight, just not every damn day. That ain’t healthy. You never had any romantic interests back home, Elbi?” Terry prodded.

  “I have courted other Saphnos, but I didn’t find a lasting pairing. My previous relationship went on for two years…what is the purpose of this questioning?”

  “He or she didn’t get on your nerves at all, in two years?”

  “Please translate your idiom. I don’t follow.”

  Finley gave her a loopy smile, searching for the light switch. “Your partner didn’t ever do nothing that pushed your buttons to where you could about claw their eyeballs out?”

  Elbi flinched at such a callous expression, as did I. “I’d never w-want to do such a vicious thing. I k-know we’re around each other all the time; please don’t do this to me!”

  “I didn’t say I’d do it! Wanting to doesn’t mean you take action on it. My ex made me wanna rip my hair out—”

  “Lord, I hated that bitch,” Terry grumbled. “Scarlet talked down to you all the fucking time.”

  “She did! Didn’t appreciate a simple, honest, hard-working man. That said, I haven’t detached the hair from my skull any more than I ripped out her eyes and threw them in the river.”

  “That’s a suspiciously specific fantasy, Finley.”

  “I guess it is. I could write a webnovel! Make it like Yellowstone.” The farmer flicked on the lights, and seemed to notice me staring at him in horror. “Uh, guess I got too carried away for Craun’s taste. Our violence means we’re not intelligent, right?”

  “What h-happened to your faces?! Did you get into a fight?” Elbi stumbled away from the computer, retreating toward the bedroom while pointing. She switched to our language briefly. “It k-knows we consider it unintelligent because of its anger? You told it about primals?”

  “I had to give some explanation for why the Council didn’t contact them. Finley was getting too close. So I told them they hadn’t evolved away their more violent aspects,” I answered my sister in our language. I turned to face the flaxen-haired primal, who’d definitely understood his name. “Can I have a moment to talk with Elbi in private, please? I want to explain how our trip went and I think it’d be easier to comfort her…without prying ears.”

  Terry nodded. “Of course, you’re allowed to have your own conversations. Take a moment to catch up. Finley and I will work on fixing ourselves some dinner, in the meantime.”

  “I vote for grilled cheese,” Finley grunted, pulling a skillet out of a cabinet. “And we gotta dance while cooking. When you get back, you’re joining us, Craun. If you’re not too busy being scared of us.”

  “I’d love to spend time with you, Finley. You’re a good human,” I said with sincerity.

  “Uh, thanks?”

  “No problem, sweetie! Have fun playing with the cookware.”

  The farmer paused what he was doing and stared at me, before shrugging in Terry’s direction. I left the two primals to cutely fiddle with their mealtime instruments, and pulled Elbi aside into our room. I planned to have this entire conversation in our language, since I didn’t think humans, with their self-awareness, would be able to accept that people didn’t feel anger. The feats of control had impressed me; that impulse was supposed to strip away all higher reasoning, making it uncontrollable by definition. My sister had to hear what I witnessed.

  Elbi doesn’t need to be afraid of Finley succumbing to mild triggers. Shit, I leveled Terry, and he submissively placed the blame on himself without any tonal change. Humans aren’t that savage.

  I huddled conspiratorially, looking Elbi in the eye. “The primal is tame.”

  “No, it’s not, Craun!” my sister insisted, her tone emphatic. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

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  “You don’t understand. Finley was in the middle of an outright conflict with another human, and he got furious at me. He screamed demands at me and was clearly feeling the effects of his anger.”

  “What? I told you it wasn’t safe to go there! You’re lucky to be alive, Craun. What did the primal do to you? Are you hurt?”

  “No! That’s just it. Finley looked at me with animalistic attack eyes and then made a visible effort to adjust his behavior. He was wanting to attack, but just stopped. That’s control, Elbi—tenuous, but impossibly, control!”

  “If the primal didn’t attack you, it’s not because of control or some of your willful insistence on imagining it can have rationality amid that burning feeling. It must’ve had a stronger impulse; it’s still afraid of you, and the fear snapped it out of its stupor when it went to attack. Consider yourself lucky.”

  “Finley wasn’t afraid at all. He responded with empathy. Maybe he did have a stronger impulse, but it was empathy, Elbi. I know what I saw! He was gentle and comforting and…nice. That must be how humans formed a society, when other primals didn’t.”

  “If you really believe that, you’re going to get yourself killed. Not that you might not have done that already for both of us, by coming here in the first place.”

  “The reporter asked questions, civilly. Humans are very curious animals, Elbi; maybe you should give them a chance. There was no…outright hostility to the idea of us from any of them. I think once that article exposes the truth, we’ll have more primals that want to help than to hurt us.”

  “They shot our ship out of the sky, Craun. I nearly died and you act like they didn’t snap at our presence?”

  I paused. “I can’t explain that, but that doesn’t take away from Finley, Terry, Mia, all wanting to help and being civilized enough. Maybe you can try to consider the idea that we’re safe with them?”

  “You speak from a place of ignorance, brother. I’m only doing what I must to appease them and get the slightest modicum of safety from a world where they’re everywhere. Like you said, we have to ingratiate ourselves. Go dance with your primals then, and live in a fantasy.”

  “I think I will. They’re so happy. It’s a sweet offer.”

  Elbi turned away with disgust, and I left her to brood in the room alone; it was a shame she hadn’t seen how Finley buried his rage in seconds, but I trusted the kind-hearted animal. I could see the farmer and his friend listening to some kind of music with a twang, while their simple dish cooked on the stove. Finley and Terry wore matching hats with wide lips, and kept one hand on their belt buckles; the humans stepped and turned around in some kind of pattern, grinning. They cheered as I joined them.

  I grimaced as they brayed loudly to the chorus, and Terry donated his hat to me. The construction worker seemed to like placing his headwear on my skull, for reasons I couldn’t understand. I peeled the cloth bucket off my head and waved it for a few seconds, then tried to place it on the stove burner; I hoped to get it there before they could stop me. Terry grabbed onto my arms and pulled me backward, as Finley snatched the hat away with wide eyes. The farmer had more fingers to pull it free, and began swatting me on the shoulder with it.

  “I’m not your sweetie!” Finley barked. “You’re a bad rock, Craun. A bad rock!”

  I feigned innocence. “I just like my attire heated, like home. Why am I bad?”

  “Oh, you know that will burn up. I guess fire’s not that dangerous to you though, so what’s the harm?” Terry protested, reaching out with a hand and throwing a dish towel over my eyes. “Try to buck me now, Craun!”

  “Let go! Elbi, help! Save me,” I teased, which was answered by the locking of her door. I stumbled blindly into the cabinet, careful not to smash the human hanging on me into it too hard. “I could crush you, Terry. You’re testing your luck.”

  “Shucks, don’t remind me. I just wanna wrestle.”

  Finley cracked his knuckles. “Hey, maybe two of us can take the rock monster! The big, scary—”

  The burner phone rang in Finley’s pocket, and he snapped it up to his ear with sudden seriousness. Terry hopped off my back and took the charcoal-covered grilled cheeses off the stove, which both of them had almost forgotten. The construction worker seemed to want to hear what was being said. We all knew the only person who could’ve called this number: Mia Cheng. Was there an update on what was being published in the paper tomorrow, and confirmation on how my story was being handled? Did she have follow-up questions?

  Maybe she posted the video online, before Barron could take her out, and humans already know I’m here. I hope they take it well.

  “Hello?” Finley asked, his voice hitching from nerves.

  “Mr. Canavan, I’m afraid we’re going to need a little more from you and the Saphnos.” Mia was discernible to my hearing, and she seemed disappointed by whatever she was about to convey. A few follow-ups couldn’t be that bad, right? “My editors won’t run the story unless they see you with their own eyes. They want you to meet with the entire staff tomorrow morning, and to bring Craun and Elbi both.”

  “What? Why?! Did they get to you? Is this a fucking setup? No—if they won’t run it, you just go post it already! I thought you wanted to help!”

  Her sigh was audible over the phone. “I’m sorry, but they’re right. If we’re wrong about this, our professional reputations and the Chronicle’s credibility are gone forever. From their perspective, this could be an AI deepfake, so they want to verify it. They’d like to run tests to confirm that Craun isn’t something like…a really good animatronic too—that he’s biological, inhuman, and not from this world.”

  Finley looked perplexed, muting the phone and glancing at me. “Huh. An animatronic. You’re not, are you?”

  “You saw my ship. Also, do your animatronics break thermometers, bleed, and secrete sand?” I sighed.

  The farmer arched his eyebrows and conceded the point. “I won’t make you do any tests or risk going down there a second time, Craun. I sure don’t think it’s a good idea to bring Elbi there, or to bring a whole buncha people in on this. We gave them more than enough and they won’t do their goddamn jobs!”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to confirm what we are. With Barron closing in on us, I don’t think we should leave Elbi behind. She’s safer tagging along. They probably want to verify her existence, but they can’t make her talk.”

  “I see Craun’s making decisions for me again. I’ll go with you if we must speak to these humans,” Elbi called out. “I don’t like being alone on this planet. They already know of us, so we may as well appease them. They could lead Barron straight to us if not.”

  Terry gleaned enough of the conversation to shrug. “I’m in. We can’t expose the government alone.”

  “We basically have to trust Mia now. It seems we’re all agreed.” Finley shut his eyes wearily, resigning himself to the fact that resolving our publication issue would take another trip. He unmuted the phone. “Tell us where to meet you and when. Pick somewhere a little secluded, okay? The FBI are up our asses.”

  “I know. Thank you for your patience,” Mia answered, relieved to hear that we were on board. “We’ll be careful. I’m texting you the address of a private meeting room that we rented out under a different name. Meet us there tomorrow at 10 AM.”

  “Fine.”

  Finley hung up the call with a shake of his head, and I tried to assure the sweet animal that it was okay. I’d thought the plan of getting a reporter on our side had gone as well as we could’ve hoped for, but I supposed it couldn’t have gone that easily for a story of this magnitude. The Chronicle needed to act faster than the FBI closed in on us, and Mia seemed aware of that fact, at least. I hoped that, assuming exposure to the largest group of primals yet went well tomorrow morning, Elbi would see them as more than savages.