It was bizarre. I didn’t like the implications, and so to distract myself, I began looking around as I followed Second through the ship, studying the different trees.

They were trees, of that there was no question: they had trunks, and branches, and things that I could interpret as leaves or needles, although they took so many dissimilar forms that only their proximity made them recognizable as connected. Some had trunks like honeycomb, so full of holes that they came pre-drilled for nesting purposes. Others were covered in thorns like bony teeth, and still others actually had teeth, set into openings like pitcher plants. As we walked by, one of those toothy maws opened and spat a neatly stripped skeleton onto the mossy ground.

Second, who saw me looking, waved her tentacles in approval. // we carry every garden with us // she said. // the trees of my host’s garden bring me great comfort and happiness. I sit beneath them, and taste their fruits, and remember the days of my youth. when I seed, my children will know those fruits as well, and understand how delicious was their parent’s garden. //

“So there are going to be Earth trees here?”

// so many, of so many kinds. we will build a paradise in image of your garden, and all will know its glory. we have been here before, and those trees still flourish, on the ships that once came. //

“What did you eat, the last time you came?”

// so many things. // Her tone was evasive; she said nothing else after that, but continued down the path.

“Great,” I muttered. “What killed the dinosaurs? Oh, alien space plants killed the dinosaurs. Next question? Yes, the rights are available, Mr. Shyamalan.”

Second didn’t answer me, but she hooted softly, and I could all but feel her amusement. It was getting easier and easier to read her, to know what she was thinking. I couldn’t tell whether that was familiarity or the pollen at work. I didn’t like that. My thoughts were supposed to be my own, not dictated and revised by proximity to my own species.

The path wound through the trees, apparently allowed to set its own borders. Roots broke through the moss here and there, some stationary and recognizable as kin to our Earth trees, others moving in small, deliberate arcs as they hunted for prey. I gave those ones a wide berth. It was hard to say whether they would consider me edible, but I had no desire to get into a tug-of-war with a tree.

We began climbing a small slope. Second’s tentacles made it easy for her—she seemed to view gravity as something of an afterthought—while I struggled to reach the top. She caught my wrist with one of her top tentacles, keeping me from tumbling over the edge and into a basin filled with flowers. Not the kind that birthed me, which were tall and crystalline: these were much smaller, perhaps the height of an adult tomato plant, with petals like the wings of morpho butterflies, blue and silver and glistening in the light. But they were clearly from the same original world; their structure betrayed them.