A stiff back was the main cause of Tessa waking up. She realised she’d ended up sleeping on the hardwood bedroom floor, and blinked a few times as she woke up. Turning, she saw ‘Garcelle’ floating nearby, watching her intently.

The strange glow the entity using Garcelle’s form had was less noticeable in the daylight, but Tessa could still see how her eyes and hair were glowing with a red energy, and her hair floated about as if underwater. Along with the rest of her. It?

“H-how long have you been watching me?” Tessa asked, as she took a quick glance to see it was well after dawn outside.

“However long you were sleeping,” the being replied.

“You just… watched me sleep? For hours?”

The being nodded. “I love you. Seeing you makes me happy.”

“That doesn’t mean you…” Tessa trailed off, not really sure how to reason with this… thing.

She stood up, stretching her back out. She glanced out the window to see things looked mostly normal. Except for the annoying car with the alarm looking like it had been hit by lightning.

Turning around, she walked through the apartment. The front door had a hole in it where the handle used to be, but otherwise things looked fine.

Which was confusing.

Why hadn’t they been swarmed by soldiers in the night? She hadn’t slept well, so she wasn’t quite awake yet, but she needed to figure out an answer. She turned to pace about a little, hoping the movement would wake her up, only to find the entity had been floating along behind her. She half jumped out of her skin at the proximity, and took a few steps backwards while letting out a yelp.

“Y-you’re too quiet,” she said, panting. “Floating like that… it’s—can you walk normally?”

The being tilted its head, before apparently deciding to give it a try. Tessa watched it take a few steps, still not making a sound. It was more like it was walking on the bottom of a pool than anything.

“Is that better?” the being asked.

“I… maybe? You don’t really do anything normal, do yo—that’s it,” Tessa said, eyes lighting up. “That’s why we didn’t get attacked in the night. Those military types, they never thought you would just go home. They probably thought you would attack a powerplant or another city or… something.”

She certainly wouldn’t guess a godlike alien entity would return to a one bedroom walk-up apartment like theirs.

But what could she do with that information? They didn’t have a car. She had her licence, but she’d need to give her credit card to rent one, and that was no doubt being monitored.

Where would they even go, anyhow? What was she supposed to do with this entity that was now in love with her? An entity with the power to destroy an entire city. Would they run into the woods?

She had no idea how to live off the land in the woods. Could you even do that in modern Nova Scotia?

Tessa paced about a bit more, trying to work out the next plan, and noticed the entity had gotten bored of standing on the floor and had switched to standing on the ceiling. Which was disconcerting, to say the least.

Right, though. It could fly. They didn’t need a car.

Though, wouldn’t they end up showing up on radar? Then the military would be after them again.

“Gah,” Tessa groaned, rubbing her temples.

She didn’t want to just stay in the city, where thousands of lives were potentially at risk, but what else—

The entity grabbed her head and kissed her. It was passionate, prolonged, and… almost felt like one of Garcelle’s kisses. Tessa was briefly lost in the kiss, and the strange added tingle that came with it, but came to her senses and pushed away.

“What was that?” Tessa asked, her lips slightly numb.

“Kisses are how you make a girlfriend happy, non?” the entity asked back with a smile. “You don’t seem happy.”

Tessa felt her eye twitch. “Well, of course I’m not happy… I have no idea what to do. The US military is after us… or, at least, part of it. I just found out aliens are real and I have to hide one, which is a lot to process. And… and…”

She looked at the entity. At Garcelle’s face. The face of the girlfriend who was gone now. Washed away by whatever this… thing was.

Tessa started to cry, slumping against the wall and crumpling down to the floor, hugging her knees. She hadn’t processed that properly quite yet, that Garcelle was… was… was she dead? Was she still in there?

A line from one of her favourite sci-fi shows entered her mind, regarding aspects of the host remaining. She grimaced as she remembered how being taken over by alien parasites tended to go in that series.

The entity hugged her then. Which just made everything more confusing. The hug felt awkward. Uncertain. It brought that strange tingling with it. Yet… the being smelled like Garcelle.

Did that make things worse or better? Tessa didn’t know.

She also wasn’t sure how long she sat there, crying in the entity’s embrace, until her hunger became too much to ignore.

“I should have breakfast,” she said, with a hollow voice.

“Break… fast… oh. Eat,” the entity replied, floating up towards the ceiling. “You must consume calories.”

Tessa got to her feet, and tried to ignore how it floated just behind her, watching over her shoulder as she grabbed some packets of instant oatmeal to heat up. It wasn’t anything fancy, but she felt too out of it to do any real cooking. Once the electric kettle shut off, she poured a bit of water in the bowl, stirring it with the dried oatmeal, and… just stared at it.

It had to cool down for a bit. Patience was useful.

Was patience useful in her bigger problem? Would the American military types stop watching radar so closely if they hid in the apartment for a few days?

Or would someone come knocking, realising where they went?

The oatmeal was starting to get cold, and her stomach needed food. So she ate. That was a problem she could solve.

---

Tessa had decided to try reading. She had some novels to catch up on. They could keep her busy for a while. She hoped her subconscious would work through her struggles while she distracted herself.

Nothing seemed to distract the entity from watching her with unblinking eyes, though. She did eventually manage to ignore it reasonably well, since it was at least quiet.

Her bladder, however, could not be ignored.

Heading to the washroom, she was annoyed to find the entity following her.

“Could I have some privacy? Please?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I-I’m using the toilet…” she explained.

The entity just stared at her, not seeming to register how that was relevant. She decided to try pushing on its shoulders to get it out of the bathroom, and found it impossible to move.

“I love you. I want to be with you at all times,” the entity replied.

“When you love someone, you respect their privacy,” Tessa replied.

Sure, that was normally about phone messages and time spent with friends, but it was relevant here too. At least a bit.

“…love is complicated,” the entity replied, but it stopped resisting and let Tessa push it out of the room.

She closed the door and let out a sigh, glad to have a moment alone.

When she was done, however, she opened to find the entity simply floating outside the door, like a cat you hadn’t let in or something.

“Baby steps,” Tessa whispered to herself, as she walked over and peaked out of the curtain.

They still weren’t surrounded by police or anything. It seemed normal outside.

Waiting seemed like a good plan. She could pay cash for some groceries, and hold out for another week or two between what she could buy and what she had in the kitchen already. Then she’d… figure out a part two when she got to it. If the entity had learned to behave itself, maybe she’d try to find a friend to stay with?

She wasn’t really sure, but this plan bought her time to think of a better plan.

Except…

How did she get the entity to stay home while she was out shopping, if she could barely get it to leave her alone in the bathroom? That was going to be a—

“We should kiss more,” the entity said, interrupting Tessa’s planning.

“Pardon?” she asked, not quite processing what it had said.

“We are in love. We live together. We should kiss more,” the entity said in a matter of fact tone, floating so that its feet were the highest part of it.

“Do you actually like kissing, or do you just think it’s what you’re supposed to do?” Tessa asked, honestly having no idea.

“It means I get to touch you. It means you love me. So I like it,” the being replied.

Tessa nodded. She could use that. She was willing to kiss… it. It could be quick and chaste and she could close her eyes and try to ignore what she was doing.

“I’ll give you a kiss as a reward for doing what I asked earlier, and more kisses if you do other things I ask,” she said, swallowing the discomfort in being affectionate with the thing using Garcelle’s body.

As the being pounced her to take the kiss, Tessa was once more left feeling like the way it kissed did remind her of a kiss from Garcelle. Was it muscle memory?

Dr. Warrens had called what happened a ‘merger’ of neural signals. As Tessa pushed away from the kiss for air, she wondered about that as she looked in those eyes. Did she still see anything of Garcelle in those glowing red eyes?

She wanted to say she did, but she wasn’t sure. Was she just trying to cling to a false hope? Was it too easy to see signs of Garcelle because it was Garcelle’s face?

Tessa decided she had to ignore that worry for now. She’d have time to think about it, if her plan worked…

She was also curious about the yelling she could hear from outside. Carefully, she moved over to the nearest window, peeking out from the curtain. There was a police car, which made her stomach do more of a backflip than it usually did. There was only one police car, though. The cop was talking to the owner of the car that’s alarm went off at 3am at least once a week.

Needing to find out what they were yelling about, specifically, Tessa slowly opened the window just a crack.

“—is serious! Someone destroyed my car with, like, a laser or something, and you’re brushing me off!?” the owner shouted.

“Listen, pal,” the police officer replied in a tired voice, “have you seen the news from last night? The city’s in chaos. I don’t have time to deal with your car getting hit by lightning.”

“Why would my car be hit by lightning? It’s right beside a tree! Lightning hits taller things! Everybody knows that!”

“I don’t know. Metal’s conductive. I’m not a lightning-ologist, but it seems reasonable to me,” the cop replied, heading back towards his own car. “Unless you can show me someone made threats, I’ve got no reason to think it wasn’t lightning.”

“You’d better write a proper report!” the man who owned the car shouted as the cop got into his car.

The cop drove off, and Tessa slowly closed the window, letting out a long sigh of relief. Logically, it made sense. The whole city would be in a panic right now. She walked over to the computer, deciding to risk booting it up so she could find out just how bad it was.

She hoped there wasn’t anyone specifically watching her computer, but it felt safer than her… wait, where was her phone?

She ran around the room, hunting for it as the entity quietly watched her. After several minutes of fruitless searching, she let out a sigh and turned to the being.

“Can you use your… alien magic powers stuff to find things?” she asked.

“Maybe. What are you looking for?” the entity asked.

“My phone.”

The entity stared for a moment, before giving a slow nod. “Ah. The rectangle… fell.”

“It… fell?” Tessa replied, wanting more information.

“Somewhere over the bay, when I was carrying you home. It fell out of your pocket, into the water,” the being explained. “Sploosh.”

“Ah…” Tessa said, nodding slowly.

At least she didn’t have to worry about being tracked through it. Even if it was a new phone that was annoying to lose.

She pushed that out of her mind to check the news online. She was less than thrilled to discover that the military had been deployed, with claims it was a terrorist attack. Reports that an experimental American naval laser had been stolen and used.

And, delightfully, the entire Halifax Regional Municipality was under curfew. She would have to leave in the next thirty minutes if she wanted any chance to grab food and get home before the curfew.

She glanced over at the entity, and was left worrying if she could trust it alone in the home.