We were standing apart and taking each other in. The man was huge, with wide shoulders that were exposed in the tight t-shirt he was wearing. My eyes blinked like a camera shooting picture after picture – trying to capture the oddity in front of me. His dark unruly hair stopped at his jaw and wasn’t braided or finely combed like the men I was used to seeing. Looking deeply frustrated he scratched his long beard, muttering words that I never thought I would hear in real life.
It was certainly English, but from the forbidden category, and yet he stood there, speaking those words so blatantly.
“What the fuck is this?” As he moved closer, the sun reflected on a thin silvery scar running up to his right temple, and even if he hadn’t been scrunching up his face so much, his features were much too sharp and masculine for him to be considered pretty. This man had the most piercing gray eyes I’d ever seen, and they were locked on me with a hostility that made me forget to breathe for a second. I’d never felt so intimidated in my life.
Stand your ground. Show no fear!I chanted internally and forced myself to step forward and meet him with my hands outstretched.
“May peace surround you.”
He jerked when I took his giant hands and looked into his eyes as a proper greeting required.
We didn’t make it to the ten-second mark, because the large man spoke up. “Why are you staring at me and holding my hands?” he asked.
It rattled me a bit. “It’s considered a formal greeting.”
“I don’t like it,” he said and pulled his hands back to place them on his hips. “What I want to know is, who the fuck are you?”
My eyes widened at his rudeness, but I stayed calm. “I’m Christina Sanders, the archeologist your ruler has asked for.”
He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “But you’re a girl!
The condescension in his last word lit a roaring fire in the pit of my stomach. Never had I been so offended, and I didn’t care that I had to lean my head back when I looked the big ogre straight in the eye again. “Do I look like a child to you?”
“No.”
“How would you feel if I called you a boy?”
He raised an eyebrow challengingly.
“Exactly. So, don’t call me a girl. I’ve been a woman for more than a decade and will not be belittled by you.”
“How old are you?” he asked, and this time there was less disgust and more curiosity in his voice.
“Thirty-one. How old are you?”
“Why?” He narrowed his eyes. “Who wants to know?”
“I do. It’s called small talk and it’s used to get to know one another,” I lectured him.
He gave me a grumpy stare and looked down to my suitcases. “What’s this?”
“That’s my suitcases. We use them to transport items.”
“Don’t be a smartass, I know what a suitcase is.”
I gaped at him. I’d known him for less than three minutes and he had used more profane words than I’d used in my entire lifetime.
“You can’t talk to me that way!” I said firmly.
“What way?”
“That thing you just called me, it’s offensive.”
“Yeah, you already told me that you’re not a girl.”
I shook my head. “I meant you calling me a smart-you-know-what. I know what that word means.”
The ogre rolled his eyes and walked back toward the large drone. “This is going to be a fucking nightmare,” he muttered while I stood paralyzed. I had naïvely thought I was prepared for the worst, and yet I had underestimated how different it was to study something from a safe distance compared to interacting with it up close.
