I also sense that the stress of our liaison is not going to motivate you to destroy yourself as happened with one of the others, and may happen with the second male. Although it cannot be pleasant for you, knowing that I am inside you.

I said that it was very unpleasant. I supposed that it was equally unpleasant to be inside an alien’s brain.

Unspeakable. This union is normally used for times a human would call sacred. The specific word came through, echoing. You yourself would not employ that word.

I said that I would not use it in a religious sense; that gods were the inventions of men, sometimes women. I tried to communicate that I was nevertheless capable of appreciating transcendence, numinism.

Let me show you something godlike. Rise and follow.

I stood up and stepped into blinding light. Orange with ripples of yellow and red. We seemed suspended, no gravity.

You are seeing heat, not light. We are in the center of your planet Earth. If it were desirable, or necessary; I could open a passage from here to the surface. Within hours, the planet would be a dead ruin.

I asked What could cause you to do that?

You.

Though I personally wouldn’t have to do it. We were suddenly back in the forest’s humid darkness. Any of us could do it, as an expression of will, if you cause it to be necessary.

I told it that I did not want the responsibility.

It must be an individual. You may suggest another.

I thought about that and said No, as well me as anyone. If this is a test, I have some talent for that.

The first thing we want you to do is simple. Stop them from killing us. You have one day.

The tendril slid out of my head, trailing wetly on my brow for a moment. The creature disappeared, then reappeared with my robe and dropped it at my feet. It was stiff as cardstock, so cold it stuck to the skin of my fingers.

I would wait for it to thaw. There was a faint yellow light, three or four kilometers away, that I assumed was Hilltop, but I didn’t want to go crashing through the woods in the dark. Sunrise in an hour or so, and I had some thinking to do. Some feelings to get under control. I touched the icy fabric again, to reassure myself that this had really happened.