Page 66 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

Silence blanketed us again. I didn’t like how serious the air felt around us.

“So, how many people… your kind, I mean, live in these snow globes?” I smiled, imagining a bunch of them in my winter wonderland globe I put out at Christmas time.

“I do not know what a snow globe is,” Cyro looked confused, “but approximately a third of our species currently reside above water.”

“A snow globe is—” I stopped. Maybe explaining to them that I’d pictured their people inside a glass orb filled with water and fake snow, wasn’t the best idea— “You know, never mind.”

Kalith chimed in. “You know, if they’d just let me optimize the other globes, the existing resources would go further.”

“Like when you optimized the salination tanks in the trench laboratories?” Cyro almost glared at him.

“Hey. It wasn’t my fault that the pressure readouts weren’t accurate. If they had been, the tanks would have stayed intact.” Kalith shrugged.

“Instead, they shattered, releasing two years’ worth of research into the wild,” Cyro’s voice was devolving into a growl. “Pixarian eggs can only be found near active lava tubes. Raising them to maturity to test their adaptive abilities could have revolutionized our hull materials against intense heat input.”

“That research was a waste of time,” Kalith volleyed back, “Paralarva know that mature pixarians would have eaten right through the salinity tanks. I was simply testing out a coating to keep that from happening.”

“A coating that—” Cyro began, but Vantor cut him off.

“Enough,” he gave a strange, gurgling sigh.

“It is not my fault that Kalith is insufferably reckless,” Cyro huffed.

“And you’ve always been a know-it-all,” Kalith retorted, but his tone was affectionate. “Cyro had few friends before us. His peers found his conviction in his own superiority somewhat... challenging.” He reached out with one arm that split mid-extension into tentacles, poking Cyro playfully in the sides.

I watched with fascination as Cyro’s dignified facade cracked, his body jerking away from the tentacles with what looked suspiciously like ticklishness. For a moment, they seemed so human—friends teasing each other, reminiscing, giving one another hell.

Then Kalith’s expression shifted, something wistful passing across his features as his tentacles retreated back into human form. “I miss my mother’s sea flower cakes,” he said quietly, the non sequitur hanging in the night air between us. “She would infuse them with bioluminescent nectar that glowed as you ate them. They tasted of home.”

The simple admission carried such weight that I felt my throat tighten. These weren’t just aliens with a broken ship; they were beings far from home, missing their families, their foods, their skies. I searched for something to say that wouldn’t sound hollow or trite.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to comfort them. None of them had taken a single sip of coffee. I could bake something. Though, I had zero idea what would taste like glowing nectar, sea flower cakes. Maybe marzipan?

“Coffee helps,” I finally offered limply, lifting my mug in a small toast. “Not with homesickness, necessarily, but it’s warm and familiar and makes everything seem a little more manageable.”

They looked at their untouched mugs with varying degrees of suspicion, then all three took simultaneous sips in what seemed like an act of solidarity. The reaction was immediate and dramatic—Cyro’s face contorted in disgust, Vantor spat the liquid onto the ground with patented efficiency, and Kalith made a sound like a drowning cat.

“This is...consumable?” Cyro managed, holding the mug away from himself as if it contained toxic waste.

“It tastes like licking a Snarzback!” Kalith added, his tongue visibly distended as he fanned it with his hand.

“Tactical error,” Vantor stated grimly, using his sleeve to wipe his mouth. “Flavor profile inconsistent with biological compatibility.”

I couldn’t help it—I doubled over laughing, nearly tumbling from my perch on the fence. They watched me with identical expressions of bewilderment, which only made me laugh harder.

“If you guys want to cosplay as human ranchers,” I finally managed between hiccuping breaths, “you’re going to have to learn to like coffee. It’s practically a requirement.”

“I prefer to focus on more critical adaptations,” Cyro sniffed, setting his mug aside with evident relief. “Such as repairing our ship’s communication array to signal for extraction.”

My laughter died in my throat. Of course they were working on leaving. They had lives, careers, families back on their world. This was just a temporary situation for them—an expedition gone wrong, an unplanned detour. The thought of them leaving created a hollow ache beneath my ribs that caught me completely off guard. A tremor ran through me, and I clung to the coffee mug so hard I thought I might bust its handle. To keep from doing so, I set it down on the rail.

Kalith must have noticed the change in me. It would be hard to miss—body quaking slightly, a frown, my Omega scent shifting.

“The ship repairs are complicated. They will take time,” he assured me, looking at me through lowered lashes, his tone so sincere that I couldn’t help but believe his words. “And we will not leave until we’ve fixed what we destroyed.”

“And the protective systems remain incomplete,” Vantor added, his confident bearing returning as he scanned the dark perimeter of my property. “I will not leave your ranch vulnerable.”

Cyro gave me a strange, considering look, his head tilted slightly in that way that reminded me he wasn’t human, despite his appearance. “The research here is fascinating. I am learning a great deal from the horses. Premature termination would compromise data integrity. The original mission can wait.”