by Amanda Milo
“Oh. Um, thanks for killing it for me anyway.”
Bash’s tail waves at the vines… What’s left of them. There’s still a lot—all things considered, it’s still a huge pile. Buuuut there would have been more if the bugs hadn’t scared me and Bash hadn’t reacted in my defense.
The fact that he did defend me was really nice of him. And, well? Kind of surprising.
Bash’s words are measured. “It’s common for grape beetles to infest vines. That’s why we have a wagon full of them; these aren’t pruned vines; they’re eaten vines. Our load will be crawling with these.”
I shiver. “Oh.”
“Don’t fret about it further. They’re burned now,” the other Rakhii says helpfully and holds up two more bug shells, the glitter of their backs not destroyable by fire, apparently. He peeks at Bash, then nudges him with his elbow. “Just think. You can sell the husks to Gryfala. They love to collect them.”
“Ugh, why?” I ask, horrified. “What the heck do they use bug shells for?”
Smoke is curling around Bash’s head. It’s coming from his mouth now, not the remains of the vines under his feet. “Jewelry. Is it common for humans to overreact to insects?” He’s staring at me like he’s not sure I have the sense God gave lice.
“Hey!” I protest. “It was really scary!”
“It was a vine beetle.”
The other Rakhii moves to the end of the wagon, making the frame of the vehicle shake with his heavy steps before he hops down. “Better check where we’re at on the fire’s circuit. Bet the flames are about ready to come back around now.”
Grimacing, I look to Bash. “I’m sorry.”
He grunts and his tail sweeps at a burned-black gnarled mess of vines… and we both watch the pile crumble into dust.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I add. When he doesn’t say anything, my voice squeaks as I try to joke, “Any chance this was all going to get burned anyway?”
Bash’s stone-faced expression appears somewhat menacing with the way his facial scales glimmer slightly under the sunshine. It gives him a real reptilian/dragon-esque look, a massively unimpressed one. “I don’t know,” Bash exhales on a contemplative breath, “what your planet is like, but here, there is a great difference between useful charcoal and useless ashes. This,” he flicks his tail to indicate the powdery dust under his alien toes, “was meant to be charcoal.”
“Hmm, actually, our planets might be the same in that way,” I muse, biting my lip. “Damn alien bugs.”
“Yes. Damned alien bugs,” he says flatly, his eyes fixed on moi. “They cause me all sorts of trouble.”
***
He lifts me back into the wagon and goes back to working, and hesitantly, I start ‘chattering’ to him again. When he doesn’t tell me to stop, I keep the verbal barrage rolling. I can’t tell if I horrify him or astound him with my inability to shut up.
Although, it’s entirely possible he’s feeling both those emotions at the same time. I catch a couple looks at me before he shakes his head, his eyes going a little wide.
I bet we work for close to twenty minutes in relative harmony until I make the mistake of innocently asking, “Hey, Bash? When do we get a break?”
My employer experiences a somewhat extreme overreaction, as far as I’m concerned. “Not you too!” he thunder-growls, like there’s a line of people who’ve been whining at him all day and me asking for a break is the absolute last straw. He digs his pitchfork into the tallest stack of vines—no, not ‘digs.’ He GUTS through the vine pile, stabbing the tines in. “You nanoscopic alien hassles and your desire for breaks!”
I blink at him. “That is the first time in my life I’ve ever been called ‘nanoscopic.’
His extremely grouchy face does not relax.
I readjust my stance in the cart and crunch my pitchfork into vines, so that it stands up by itself. “Maybe you aliens are different, but it’s completely normal for my people to need to answer the call of nature a couple of times a day, and guess what? It’s time for me to answer it right now. I gotta pee.”
Bash sends me an incredulous look when I mention answering nature’s calls and then he’s pointing a berating claw at my face. “You people are nearly incontinent.”
“Pah!” I scoff. “We are not. You’re exaggerating.”
My calm doesn’t have a huge mellowing effect on him. “I have never come across beings who have to void as often as a human. What the hells does your planet surface look like? Are there stations on every corner to serve the near-constant leaking of your people?”
I do not confirm that every major and many minor waystations, attractions, and public anythings are pretty much expected to provide restrooms. “You have like thirty seconds to tell me if there’s somewhere special I should go, otherwise I’m hopping down and finding a spot behind anything that will cover my ass.”
“Infernofire, cog-damned irritating space creatures with faulty bladders...!” Bash mutters heatedly under his breath—but he offers me a hand down.
Or, at least that’s what I think he’s doing, until he takes my hand and puts it on his shoulder, then wraps an arm behind my waist and yanks me down from the wagon.
“ACK!” I yelp.
“What is this noise for?” the alien asks, squinting at me, our faces close because he’s still holding me. His pupils dilate, making his slitted eyes look black—and just like that, he suddenly seems less irritated. A lot less. His gaze moves over my face like he’s searching for the explanation to my squawk.
“I wasn’t expecting you to grab me,” I explain. “I have a completely normal fear of falling, and thereby, a heightened fear of being dropped.”
Bash’s expression goes from something sort of soft, the softest I’ve seen yet on his face, to thundercloud. “Isla, you thought I would drop you?”
I’m squirming. “Save it—you’re sort of squeezing me and I’m going to—”
Bash sets me down—extra gently, with a whole lot of see how carefully I did that and did not drop you, you bizarre little shilpit?—and he quickly takes me by my short arm and fast-walks us around the kiln house, past lots of curious Rakhii workers, and lots of staring Narwari, to a spot where there are a couple of trees and a quaint little outhouse.
An outhouse made of some kind of almost-plastic. Since I was preparing to pee behind the biggest boulder I could find, I’m thrilled. “Woo!” I exclaim. “Seriously, thanks.”
I dart in.
When I exit, I must be making a face, because Bash—who waited for me—asks, “What is the matter?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing. You know, it’s an outhouse—”
“You call it an… out… house… why?”
“—and I guess they’re the same on any planet: kind of icky.” I wipe my hand on my pants.
Bash leans around me to look inside the outhouse. “What in the…”
He doesn’t finish his question. He spits on me, takes me by my short arm again, and walks me back the way we came. He doesn’t acknowledge any of the aliens who work for him, not until we come to our wagon and the Rakhii who’s been helping us.
Bash verbally jumps on him. “That recrement station is not fit for a Krortuvian! Explain to me why that is.”
The other Rakhii doesn’t seem bothered to have the boss sort of chewing him out. But he does look bemused. “Are you actually surprised? You have a crew of eleven Rakhii manning the area but no one’s assigned to cleaning the station, that’s why. You should be thrilled we manage to keep the wipe dispenser stocked.” When Bash doesn’t look like this is a good enough answer, the Rakhii tips his horns, sort of like a person would shrug. “There’s no piss on the floor, the sanitizer is full—if you want obsessively clean, hire a hob.”
To this, Bash gives a conceding flick of his ears. “Hm.” He turns away to help me back onto the wagon bed. I’ve just picked up my fork again when the other Rakhii says, “If you two keep up the same pace as you’ve been working, you’ll empty the wagon well be
fore the flames come back around.” He waves to us and takes a backward step. “I have some cubes of clay to finish hauling out of the pits today if you want the next batch of tiles drying before the suns go down.” The male sends me a playfully beseeching look. “I will miss having the company of a pretty female while I work.”
I, for one, am flattered.
But Bash warns, “Be glad you have that work.”
The Rakhii doesn’t look away from me. He does smile wider though. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Isla. Maybe I’ll see you again. I’m—”
“About to be unemployed,” Bash finishes for him.
He doesn’t sound like he’s kidding.
One side of the mystery Rakhii’s mouth jumps into a higher half-grin. “Sounds like I’m about to have some free time.”
Bash snaps, “Begone!”
***
Just the two of us again, and we go back to emptying the wagon of vines. Without Bash asking, I go back to talking. “What are the wheel caps on a wagon called?”
“Hubcaps.”
I gasp. “You call them hubcaps?! We have the same thing for our cars!”
Bash stops forking to stare at me. “Hells fucking Creator, I should hope so. It’s a damned wheel. How many ways can you possibly attach it to the spindle?”
“Spindle?” I shake my head. “I don’t think we have spindles. Not unless you’re spinning wool.”
Alien eyes colored with disbelief take me in with thorough deliberation. “No, not possible. If your vehicles ride on wheels, you have to use spindles. Axle shafts? Something, anything.”
“Axles sound familiar. I’m no car buff, but I can confirm we use those.”
Looking both condescending and relieved, Bash blows out a breath and walks more vines to the building. As he returns, he’s Mr. Diplomatic as he heckles, “Even for a society as backwards as humans obviously are, you have to be more advanced than you’re making your people sound. Even Krortuvians have mastered the art of basic ground transportation.”
“You are really judgmental, and we totally have ‘basic’ ground transportation covered. Our ground transportation would blow your mind.”
“Oh, I’m sure it would,” he mutters.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that Krortuvians are a species of alien?”
“A dreadful one. What subject are you going to fill my ears with next? You mentioned wool. Perhaps you’d like to extol to me the methods for making yarn?”
“Hey, the manufacturing of yarn is no joke. Not where I’m from. Not unless you want to get stabbed with a knitting needle and earn a crochet hook up your nose.”
“Give me your hand,” Bash says suddenly.
I stop, and hold my hand up, peering at it. “Why? It looks fine.”
Bash takes ahold of my fingertips and spits on my palm. “To prevent blisters. Continue,” he motions for me to go back to forking him vines. “Speak on.”
“Aww, thanks. A news article I read when I was back on Earth was about a paleontologist doing a dig in Nebraska, where he discovered the remains of rhinoceros and African cranes. Cranes that do not migrate! Rhinos that you’d think would only have ever been found halfway around our world, on a whole other continent. Except that they were in the middle of nowhere on the wrong continent. Africa to Nebraska? Oceans would have prevented migration, so how’d they get there? It’s super interesting.”
There’s a long pause as Bash walks his forkful to the chamber and stalks back. “Well? How did they come to be in such a far off place?”
“No one knows for sure. There’s a Pangea theory. That’s where it’s believed we had one big supercontinent on our planet before some catastrophic event broke up the land into chunks and scattered them across the Earth’s water.”
“What was the catastrophic event that officials propose did this?”
“No one knows that either. Depending on who you listen to, it could be anything from a comet hurtling down on the planet surface to a religious overthrow known as the katabole where God stomped Satan’s ass for trying to take the throne. Neat stuff.”
Bash grunts. “With no answers.”
“No solid conclusion, depending on who you listen to. Hey!” I cheer, grinning down at him. “We cleaned out the wagon!”
Bash’s tail scrapes the ground as he sweeps his appendage sort of moodily. “We finally did.”
“Hmm. As team motivation speeches go, yours could use some work, boss.”
“I have spent another day among humans, and not one of your people has died under my hands. How’s that for motivational?”
I cluck my tongue at him. “I don’t think you know what it means.”
“Get over to me and get down from there.”
I drop my pitchfork along the inside of the wagon where he shoved his, and I move to the tailgate, placing my hand on his shoulder, and again he helps me down. “Thanks,” I say.
“Hmph,” he grumbles, but what I think he means is, You’re very welcome, Isla. It was my pleasure to be chivalrous and assist you in alighting from that great height.
When he sees me shaking my head at him, he gives me a warning sort of look and uses his tail to shoo me around to the wagon seat’s high steps.
“Where do you get your clothes?” I ask.
“Let’s return—” Bash starts, then his ears flick twice before he tosses his horns, clearly thrown. “Conversational whiplash is a grave concern when conversing with you.”
“I’ve had that accusation leveled my way a time or two.”
Heavy brows jumping as his gaze pans off to the side, Bash mutters, “Consider me unsurprised to learn that.” But as he helps me into my seat and moves around the Narwari, checking on them and giving them ear scritches before he climbs up beside me and takes up the reins (from the dashboard), he tells me that he purchases his clothing from a hob tailor, like most Rakhii do.
“No Rakhii tailors?” I ask.
“Mm, no, not many of us work with textiles. Females, I suppose, but that’s more for ceremonial finery, not everyday wear. We Rakhii can be found helping hobs in the fields, and as you know, doing quarry work. Then there’s forestry and timber framing.”
“Timber?” I’m confused.
“Timber. A tree’s trunk. Logs,” Bash shares.
“Yeah, I know what timber is,” I tell him, sounding only a little insulted.
Which makes Bash laugh. “How could I be certain? You’re an alien whose civilization only recently proved that heat kills bacteria,” he points out.
During one of my ‘chattering’ sessions, I’d shared the history of pasteurization. Bash was not impressed. Coming from an alien who can breathe fire and heats everything, I can sort of understand his derision that it took a microbiologist until the late eighteen hundreds to prove that thermal processing inactivates harmful microorganisms. But I can’t let him get away with the scoff he emits. “I told you—we just needed to see how! We probably already knew the why.”
He snorts and fire zips out in front of his nose. “‘Probably.’ Creator.”
“I was only surprised because timber seems like it’s coming out of left field—or, forest, I guess, ha ha, when we’ve been doing nothing but picking up rocks for like forever.”
“Even castles need timber. We have forests and foresters and loggers and logging carts and log yards and we drag logs to the river and convey them to other areas as the most economical means of moving them—”
“Wow, hey, my people do too!” I tell him proudly.
“That’s amazing,” Bash marvels, tone dry as tree bark.
“You are very sarcastic. And your people may have tons of skills, but some of you are lacking in sociability and social niceties.”
A crackling noise happens in the bridge of his nose that has me eyeing him sideways.
My jaw drops. “Did I just make you laugh?”
Bash sneers—and his smoke wafts in my direction.
I turn away from him, smiling.
Al
though the Narwari are pulling an empty wagon (not counting us, that is), they’re working a little harder on this return route because of the slope of the quarry floor. We’re on just the slightest incline. My brain wonders why that is. I glance at my guide. “Through exhaustive prodding I’m absolutely up for tackling, I will get you to talk to me.”
“I am talking to you, female.”
I tap his thigh with my fingers, making him flinch and glower at me. “You’re so literal. Hey, this is going to sound random—”
Bash’s eyes flare, he snaps his head in the direction of the Narwari, and he orders, “Whoa.”
When they’ve come to a halt, their heads turning to peer back at him like they’re as thrown as I am as to why he stopped us in the middle of Nowhere, Quarrysville, Bash transfers his stare to me. “What in the mystifying hells do you consider ‘random?’”
A goofy smile spreads across my face, making his eyes narrow. I wave down to the ground. “Why is the quarry bottom tilted?”
Two beats of silence pass where I can’t tell what Bash is thinking.
I shrug. “Don’t worry; I just thought you’d know the answer, that’s why I asked—”
Bash’s tail thwaps over my lips, creating a scaly seal. “Would you,” he breathes, exhaling little orange and red flames, “give a male a moment to respond?”
When I start to answer, he squishes my lips even more, pressing his tail over my mouth more firmly with a growl. “Shush, you. Shush!” He shakes out his ears and takes up the reins, clucking moodily to the Narwari, starting the wagon’s climb again. “The quarry floor is deliberately cut at a slope.” He manages to make his horns make a ‘look down there’ gesture with the way he jerks them to indicate the ground the cart is rolling across. “This is done so that all of the rainwater will wash down to the far end we just left. It collects behind the kiln buildings, softening the stone ground, creating a mud pit. A natural lake also rings the back half of the quarry, and when summer heat dries these over-watered areas up, the sections can be clay harvested. It’s quite the process, extracting clay. It takes dozens of males, and more have been hired to compensate for the upcoming human-village project.” His gaze skewers the path ahead of us. Like this explanation is very tiresome. “The hirelings’ jobs are to collect clay, shape it, lay it out for curing, then fire it in the kiln house. The pottery buildings where they do the shaping and curing storage are collectively referred to as ‘the brickpit’—but they make all kinds of pottery, all the way down to bowls—not simply bricks and tiles.” With that, he levels a skin-withering glare on me. “Have I answered each and every one of your potential queries?”
