by Amanda Milo
I drop Angie’s hand so that I can accept the gloves Dohrein so helpfully offers, then I take the items from Crispin. He firms his chin, his eyes large and his expression open and grateful - no doubt relieved beyond words to be spared from doing this part himself.
I assemble the first syringe, affixing the needle with deft twists.
“Oh my-- that’s… that’s your shot? That’s for horses! Or - more like elephants, is it glowing? Why is it glowing? Oh no, no, no - is there something moving in it?” Her eyes squint as she peers at it. “Spiky… creepy… is that a caterpillar?” She howls, an abrupt, angry sound that causes the hobs, and even me, to shift uncomfortably, and I shake out my ears as I advance and she continues to back away from me. “Be calm, female. It’s just a vector.”
“No way. No! You’ve got to be kidding me! You have perfected fuhreeking space travel but you haven’t figured out how to turn simple vaccinations into a nasal spray or something? Without a bug in it? Seriously?”
I tug a mobile tray towards me so that I can carefully set down the filled syringe.
She relaxes.
Slowly, I sweep her hair over her shoulder, and she tries to lunge forward – but I capture her nape and pinch the skin there. Without any practice at this, I have managed to grasp enough with a firm enough hold that she doesn’t thrash much. My first try! I do not give myself more than a blink to pat myself on the horns though. Quickly, I grab up the syringe.
“Wait! What are you--”
Her scream of protest makes my hearts hurt.
Wings are suddenly in my face and I jerk back to avoid touching them. Not because it will affect me, but because I am averse to having any trace of their dust on my skin at all. Already beyond agitated, I snarl a warning and glare.
“Not the neck, Rakhii! She’s a Gryfala.”
An aggravated whirring rage-bugle builds in my sinus cavity. “Where then?”
“Her… rump.” Crispin says, tone already remorseful for the act we’ve yet to commit as he delivers the bad news. At Angie’s enraged shrieking and renewed (although entirely pointless) struggling, I can tell it didn’t calm her reservations. I bat their wings out of my way and when I can see Angie again, her expression wounds me.
I harden my resolve, grit my teeth with a click, and make a whirling motion with my finger.
"I can't do this - this isn't a good idea, see-"
"It's fine. Long tested."
"That's the thing!" she begins.
"If you'll turn..."
She whimpers into her hands - then rips them away from her face as if she can't trust me not to grab her while she's not looking.
She squeals when she sees that I'd almost had her.
She bounces away fearfully. “Where I’m from, we get shots in the arm - can’t I do that?” she pleads.
The arm? My hands close into fists, my insides twisting, and I hate how her anxiety creates a mirror in my own emotions. And unfortunately, my cluelessness is only exacerbating her panic over what should be a simple procedure. I look to the hobs in exasperation.
“You two need to do this. Not me.” I don’t know what I am doing when it comes to her care, and this fact rubs on me terribly.
Neither one makes a move.
I shove the tray away. I look into Angie’s eyes when I address them, my voice ragged, “Can we do it later?”
She collapses against me in relief. “Yes. Yes, please, far, far, far later is good. Really good.” She is shaking, and the smell of her fear stokes dangerous instincts in my body. I hold her tighter.
I try to tease her back into her normally good humor. “You act like a frightened fledgling.”
She doesn’t remove her face from my shoulder so her voice comes out muffled when she replies, “I’m not mature enough to feel even the tiniest bit guilty. The shot was HUGE, Arokh. Just no!”
The words go on a loop in my brain. I’m not mature enough, I’m not mature enough…
When my gaze locks on the hobs, I find they look almost as relieved for a reprieve as Angie. Perhaps they didn’t hear her words. Or maybe they aren’t surprised to hear them. Either way, I can’t make myself ask them how old she is. I already know that Angie can’t tell me - she has no concept of our time.
All signs point to her being close to maturity.
But close is not always close enough.
Have I… corrupted an innocent?
I feel ill.
“It must be done before we reach planetside,” Crispin cautions.
I just nod, and run my palms over Angie’s mane and back. She is crying a little and I am dying inside and she is babbling thank yous, and she ends it with, “h’Rinok!”
We blink. That’s a word from an old language. From a planet on the far side of our home galaxy, and it burnt up moons ago. I break the silence saying, “That has been happening sometimes. I think something is wrong with her translator. It gets mixed up with other languages and drops words - and some of the phrases she uses have syntax that makes no sense.”
Angie goes very still in my embrace.
“We can add complete files for our language onto her translator chip. Like an upgrade. That will fill and correct any gaps. While we are at it, we can make sure to plug in any languages that are missing.”
“How do we do this?” I ask.
Crispin refolds his wings, looking anxious.
Already, I know that this will not be ideal.
“We temporarily remove her translator, perform the uploads, and reinstall it.”
“You want to take it out of my head? And then put it back in? It hurt bad enough the first time, now I have to do it twice more?” Angie is wailing by the end of her speech.
You’d think we were beating her instead of performing helpful, essential procedures.
“We have something for the pain,” Dohrein intones, his face almost a perfect mask of stoicism. But his wing talons are wringing together behind his head.
“Not another shot…” Angie whines, as if she actually received a first one at all.
And I have to grudgingly give him credit because he takes the unenviable task of becoming the one she fears; he is already moving, gloving up then deftly filling a syringe. “This one has a mild paralytic and a numbing agent to numb your ear for translator removal,” he says almost dispassionately. But even I can tell this is costing him.
“What? No more shots! No paralyzing SHOTS!”
“Sweethearts, you won’t want to feel its removal.” I murmur.
I look to the other two for backup and click my teeth when her plaintive eyes and begging words cause their expressions to finally crumble. I growl. “How do hobs manage to perform any medical treatments when they melt at her every piteous look?”
Dohrein’s wings snap straight, and Crispin gives her his hand, and Angie…
Angie leaves me to cling to it.
I think one of my hearts stops beating.
Crispin just earned himself the most adorable leech in the galaxy. He is instantly thrilled with this result but my desire to rip his wings off was perhaps only surpassed by Dohrein’s clearly visible feelings of betrayal. Because Angie is looking at him as if he is a monster.
I am perversely glad not to be the only one.
He sighs, covering his eyes with one hand. He holds out the syringe to me with the other.
I swallow down venom. But I take it. “You are already aware that this will help fix the breach between our languages.”
Her mouth opens, then shuts. Then she shouts, “I don’t care! I’ll keep it the way it is. You will NOT come near me with any more sharp things!”
Her beseeching gaze is causing me to falter in my resolve. I lock my eyes on the syringe and prepare to lose her favor. “No.”
“No?!”
“No.”
Both hobs looked aghast. I am ignoring a direct command. I know the hob way is to continue to wheedle and explain, and reason. But they don’t know Angie like I do. She is stubborn. To them though, it s
eems I am overstepping my bounds.
“But it’s my body! I am not giving you permission to-“
“I am not asking.”
I say it firmly, even while my hearts shrivel. Her expression; crushed. Panicked. Betrayed. “Angie,” I say with a sigh and I see a flicker on her face where, for one moment, she thought I was relenting again. Until I grab her mane in my fist.
“Hey!” she cries and the bay erupts with shouting.
“UNHAND HER!” this from besotted Crispin, still clutching her to his side where she’d latched herself.
“Cease! Rakhii-!”
I sense Dohrein moving behind me, but the fact that neither actually attempt to stop me is telling. They agree this is a necessary procedure. They are merely reacting in a protective manner to her distress.
Her entire body flinches when I swab a sterilizer the moment just before I slip the needletip under her skin and press the plunger. Hobs might grow up learning of all the ways to serve and please their Gryfala, but Rakhii in the gladiator class learn to manage medical procedures on fellow fighters and themselves. We are taught to be quick and decisive, and we learn early that while many tasks in life are unpleasant, they are imperative.
I’ve sewn up my own scales more times than I can count and this? This should be easy.
If I could only avoid withering under the look she is now leveling at me.
I turn away and act as if I am assembling the instruments I’ll need, but they are all in place. I am merely giving the area a chance to numb. And in truth, I am giving myself time to recover from her expressive emotions, which are tearing my hearts ragged.
“There, there.” Crispin rubs a thumb over her brow and coos reassuringly. Teveking coos! Dohrein, clearly jealous of their closeness, stiffly pats her shoulder.
Then his expression turns curious as he feels the area her wings should be.
I try to ignore them as I shove forward and angle the light beam for better illumination behind her ear. “You’ll need to be held very still.”
Both hobs look reluctant to restrain her, and perhaps even a little sick at the thought. Tentatively, Crispin ventures, “Wouldn’t it be better to…” he strokes a lock of her mane and tugs it over her other shoulder, out of the way.
I want to rip off his fingers. And feed them to him.
Slowly.
“You have an alternative? I am ready to hear it.”
Instead of speaking, he begins to purr.
And then both hobs are catching her when she goes limp.
The realization is like a punch to my innards.
I am clearly underutilizing their training. As much as it galls to admit it, they have had years of schooling in how best to handle this beautiful, captivating, slightly high-strung female of their species.
My bullish, brutish ways highlight my rough, unsuitable upbringing; Gryfala-free, useless and ignorant where her needs are concerned. I am nothing like her. And as Angie sprawls in their arms – safe, languid, no fear of anything now - I can see her similarities to them even more than before. I see their expressions as they stare down at her. Ready to fulfil her every need, and possessing the tender enough touch to complete her every whim to satisfaction.
Unlike me.
She is a Gryfala. I am Rakhii. My place is at the floor by her bed, serving when she calls, protecting her when I’m not fighting for rank in the ring. Never to rise above the superior hobs.
I shake off my regrets, and move in to peel the translator out of her skin. I feel the reverberation of the hobs’ purring in my instruments as I work, as if they were tuning forks instead of scalpel and picks. My rooting causes her to whimper even through the analgesic and hob-hypnosis. This blasted chip is set in deeper than I even knew, and I silently curse when I am required to dig a bit in order to free its prongs from her flesh. “Sorry,” I murmur.
But Angie doesn’t respond to me at all.
Dohrein shifts the data to a main screen in the bay so we can all see. Crispin readjusts Angie’s arms so that they are no longer dangling in the air as they cradle her between them, Crispin still running his purr.
I want to snatch her from them.
Only, I can’t give her this. When I purr, she isn’t rendered into a stupor. Normally, I’d say that’s a good thing but for now, she needs them.
Not me.
Dohrein taps screens one handed, shrinking and expanding and dragging boxes of information as he surveys the findings. “A few of these are the common languages the slavers tend to speak, although there are some strange files on here. Must be collected from assorted auction “rarities”. Obviously, our language is on here but – ah, the reason why we’re seeing the limitations and the program plunking in borrowed words from other tongues, is this version is designed specifically with a large command dictionary for… pets? Creator, with this, she can recognize thirty-four versions of the word 'heel'.”
Both hobs swivel their heads to stare at me.
I feel my horn bases heat. “I didn’t exactly have an alternative at my disposal. You have to admit, it’s performed well thus far.”
They don’t complain though. Instead, Dohrein mumbles to himself as he begins typing, muttering something about their system downloading from the auction chip in order to update their own language data file – because one of the languages is the one she was raised speaking. This action will have far reaching results; all hobs will receive an update to their chips, and that will make rescue of the other auctioned Gryfala a little smoother.
And credit will go to this hob for being the first to complete it.
Having access to what he needs, he hands back the chip, and Crispin and I prepare for the replacement of it into Angie’s head. When Dohrein taps to open a file, I glance over to see characters that make no sense to me suddenly filling the screen.
I didn’t notice until then that the purring had stopped.
Angie goes wild.
When we don’t understand her anymore, she speaks louder, gestures more.
“Activate remotely?” Crispin asks, expression strained as he sees her distress.
Dohrein nods, mesmerized eyes not leaving the pleasantly bouncing body in front of him.
I snap my teeth. They both leap to attention, and the reinsertion of the translator is only a little less traumatic. Once in though, it is a relief to be able to understand even Angie’s curses. Rubbing her ear, she quickly turns her attention to the screen again.
“Hey! That’s French! That might be… German? Wait, there’s mine! English.” Angie puts a hand to her mouth in wonder.
Dohrein looks at her clinically. “You are recognizing different dialects from where you were contained?”
“Yes!” She bites her lip in a way I’ve come to recognize is a sign she is reluctant about something. “Well, languages.”
The grim contours of his face manage to reposition enough to convey confusion. “They don’t all speak the same one?”
“It’s a big place. Lots of different cultures spread out across a big blue planet.”
Crispin cuts in, looking down adoringly at the female still in his arms. “It is concerning then that they managed to have several large file speech samples from the planet you were on.”
“Why? And who controls that?”
He inhales slowly, never breaking eye contact. He looks like he can’t believe his good fortune right now, to hold the entirety of a Gryfala’s attention. “Whoever manufacturers the translation software uploads, I’d venture. Slavers, most likely. But this must mean they have taken several beings from this colony prior to your abduction.”
I am stalking over to rip Angie from Crispin’s hold when Dohrein leans back and declares, “I’ve never seen this before.”
The results from her bloodwork are complete and on the main screen now.
And when all of us are staring at it, trying to piece together what is in front of us, Angie backs out of Crispin’s arms and nearly climbs my body.
And I don’t car
e anymore what the computer says. Because Angie chose me, Angie is holding onto me, and her head is tucked into my shoulder.
It feels like absolution.
I bask in this until Crispin utters a horrified, “She’s not a Gryfala.”
20
AROKH
“Angie, you say you are called human.”
Dohrein is thumbing great swipes across the screen, rapidly searching for this race and apparently not having any success.
Her lips twist upward. “Yeah. I’m what my… ah, people… call a human. The other women I was with are just like me.”
Crispin’s eyes are glazed over. “And there is an entire planet of females. An entire planet. Fascinating.”
Angie opens her mouth, then closes it.
Dohrein is running his free hand up the back of his head, still taking it in. “I’ve submitted her information in order to catalog human as a newly identified species. I’ll Comm the findings to the search parties so they are aware.”
Angie’s fingers are flexing against the muscle of my forearm, nails scraping intermittently along my scales, and I like it. She addresses Dohrein. “Search parties?”
“Bands of bachelors disembarked when word reached us that Gryfalas were being auctioned.”
“Will they stop looking when they find out we aren’t Gryfala?” she asks worriedly. “They still need to be rescued!” She looks at them pleadingly and I feel my face form into a scowl. I do not like to see my female begging other males for favors, but if she must do it, then they had better do what she is asking.
I needn’t have bothered to worry.
Hobs are notorious for spoiling their Gryfala, and apparently, a female… human – the word is so alien, and so bland, and does not fit my Angie at all - is no different.
Understandably, Crispin has gone to mush for Angie’s begging. But it is seeing curmudgeonly Dohrein reduced to a poleaxed stupor that has me suddenly roaring with laughter.
His expression darkens. “What is it, Rakhii?” he bites out.
“You should see your face-“ Abruptly realizing that I don’t want to cause him to refuse Angie, I cut off my teasing immediately. “It’s alright, she has that effect on all of us it seems.”
