When I first saw him, he was lying unconscious in my garden. He was wearing these strange clothes and had these weird goggles on his face. I didn't know who he was or how he got there, but I didn't get a bad feeling from him so I waited quietly while he slowly came around. He had the most unusual hair color I had ever seen. It looked natural on him but not natural for a man to have with or without hair dye. It was something like a black-green color. I think I had seen it in a picture book once of travels in Germany. I think the picture was of something they call the Black Forest. His hair was the same dark, dark green as the needles on those fir trees.

He didn't wake up slowly. He sprang straight up from a lying down position to on his feet with no unnecessary movements between. Right after that I was staring at some tree thing that looked kind of like a rifle! It looked even more like a rifle when the barrel of the tree thing was facing my head. After many shocks to my system (and I think his), I finally got him convinced that I wasn't this imperial prince of his that he seems to hate so much.

He took off his goggles and stared at me with eyes so dark that they seemed to draw in light and not reflect anything. His face didn't reveal what he was thinking either. He seemed a complete mystery to me. Why was he in my garden in the first place? Why did he have this strange weapon that he thought would be effective even though it looked like a dead twig? I went to grab it out of my face but as soon as I touched it, things started to sprout all over the place.

His entire face changed at that. He looked intently at me and grabbed me around my shoulders. He was speaking perfectly normally except that he kept telling me that I was a "sand sprout" for some reason. Since he was speaking complete gibberish, I decided to take him inside with me and feed him. Like I said, I didn't get a bad feeling and I tend to trust my instincts in cases such as these. Plus aren't you supposed to have someone lie down that was unconscious a few minutes ago? I'm not sure in that case but I at least got him sitting down with some tea in his hand while I asked him a few questions.

This intense creature kept looking at me like he either wanted to protect me or eat me. It was sort of in between and I couldn't really tell. I felt kind of nervous under that gaze and didn't really know what to do with my hands. So I fiddled with my pencil as I wrote down what I thought at the time was pertinent information. His name is Senrou Chigusa. I am a sanome, a sand sprout, whatever that means. He is a man from another planet that is dying because it has no plants. Sanome's grow plants so he needs me. He had a plant that fired like a weapon that I by accident turned into a tree.

Yeah sure I could process all of this. I suppose he thinks he's telling the truth, but if it is the truth then I think we need more tea. At this point, it was getting late in the day and I decided that he should stay the night. So we both needed to get cleaned up.

45 minutes later…

How can anyone NOT know how to use a bathtub?!? It was so embarrassing! I had to help him undress and then get him in the bathtub. Then he didn't know how to soap his body down or how to rinse himself so of course I had to do all of that for him. I could not get the image of his wet body getting all soapy under my hands out of my mind. I kept blushing at odd intervals all that evening following the fiasco in the bathroom. Plus all I had for him was an oversized robe that used to belong to my grandfather that kept gapping at random times. Well, you try to not get a good visual access angle for 4 hours while trying to sort out where everyone sleeps!

After I got him settled into the spare room downstairs, I made my way slowly up to my own room. I lay awake for another hour going over all that I had seen that day.

"How could this handsome man show up at random in my garden? Why am I so confused about him staying with me when he obviously had nowhere else to go? I hope I didn't do something to make him dislike me." And with that thought I couldn't keep my eyes open any more.

When I opened them again, I saw a blurry white log resting on my chest. When I wiped my eyes to clear the sleep-fog, I saw that the log was Senrou's arm. And when I turned my head, I saw that he was two things. One, he was smiling. I had never seen that before. Two, he was naked. I had seen that before. The smile totally distracted me from the main object, which was trying to scoot away from him. I just stuttered at him instead.

"W-w-w-why are you in my r-r-r-room?"

"Because you are very precious to me." He replied.

"Well then why are you n-na-na… unclothed?" I asked him, twice as nervous now.

"Because I am going to win you, Rakan." Senrou said in a very unadorned manner and then began to stare at me with those bottomless eyes as he smoothed my hair away from my forehead. The hair thing started shivers rippling down my body and goose bumps to rise on my skin far far away from his touch. The problem was I could feel my face and neck flushing from the embarrassment as I realized that I liked his touch.

Senrou put both of his hands against my cheeks. He looked at me deeply. "I need a sanome. I can't regenerate from wounds without one to help me. There hasn't been a sanome on my world for 15 years." He let go gently and I felt like I could breathe again but only for a second.

"I need a sanome." He repeated. "But I want you." And then he very gently, very carefully, pressed his lips to the underside of my jaw. He raised even more goose flesh and I am sure he could feel my heart thudding out of my chest at that point.

I inhaled shakily. He grasped my wrist and placed my hand against the smooth plane of his chest. I could feel his heart beating slowly and steadily. I didn't know what to do. I was only 17 and as I lived alone and had to work so hard to keep up the home, the garden and my schoolwork, I had not had any experiences with girls or boys.

"It's okay, Rakan. You can touch anything you like, I won't bite you." Senrou said with that small hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. It's not even really a smile, more of a softening of his whole face but only the smallest fraction of a percent. I really liked the way his lips become a bit softer. They almost look as if they are slightly plumper and moister too. And the color is something similar to an unripe peach where it is still pale but has a rosy pinkish color all the same beneath the coolness of the white tones.

"-kan… Rakan. Are you still here?" Senrou's voice finally snapped me out of the close examination of his face. Well if I were being honest with myself, his lips. As I swayed a little I realized that I had been holding my breath all this time. I let it out with a bursting sigh.

"What were you staring at?" he asked me. It didn't even seem like he was faking interest or acting coy.

Instead of answering, I just leaned forward a little bit more like I was still dizzy. He caught me as somehow I knew he would. He gently lowered me back onto the mattress and leaned on one hand and lay on his side staring at me. I ran through many scenarios at once in my head. I could fake faintness and see if he knows mouth-to-mouth. That was way too needy, manipulative and sort of just sad. I could grab his neck and pull his face down to my waiting lips. That was way too aggressive and so not me. I settled for the middle path.

"Senrou, will you kiss me?" I couldn't even meet his eyes as I asked. There was absolute silence for what seemed an eternity. It was probably more like 30 seconds but it stretched in my head to fill eons. "I mean you don't ha-" was all the further I got in conversation. His kiss took me seriously by surprise. It was firm but his lips remained soft. It was decisive but it did not push beyond what was freely given by me. It was the most delicious overwhelming sensation that I have ever felt in my 17 years of life. I never wanted it to stop. But it did.

"You're grunting."

"Wha- what?"

"You're making grunting noises. In the back of your throat. When I kiss you." Senrou seemed amused.

"I would never do such a thing!" Furious I turned away from him and then tried to hide my head under the covers. Problem was, Senrou was under those same covers. His cool forearm slithered across my rib cage and then he gripped me to him, spoon fashion. I could smell the scent of his skin. It was like sandalwood mixed with the green growing-things smell of vetiver mixed with a deeper hint of musk. It was then that my overloaded brain realized an important bit of information.

I was naked too.