by Amanda Milo
Luckily, my skin is Bash-wither-proof. I smile at him and reach up to tug his tail away from my face.
Before my fingers can close around it though, he yanks it away and it curls up on his other side, like it’s afraid to touch me all of a sudden.
I don’t take any offense. Maybe his parents taught him that aliens are gross and it’s given him deep-seated acceptance issues. Or maybe his parents are great and they did the best they could with him but he still grew up to be an ogre. Either way, he’s weirdly compelling. He’s like the first cactus plant you ever get to see: you know it’s spiny and prickly and could hurt you, but you’re driven to poke at it anyway.
So I keep him talking, or give it my very best try. Wholly at my persistent, persistent insistence (and in as few words as possible) Bash reluctantly begins telling me about his employees. And I learn—much to what would probably be everyone’s surprise—Bash knows everybody’s name. But this incredible phenomenon doesn’t stop at mere employee monikers: Bash is informed on all the aspects of his crew down to their kids’ names. More than anyone would ever know to give him credit for, Bash pays attention. Bash—prepare yourself—cares about the people who work for him.
Obviously he doesn’t admit that in so many words, but actions speak louder than growls, or so they say, right?
I’m fascinated, but I know we’re entering into the back half of the rock-gathering area of the quarry (which means our ride will be coming to an end soon) when we pass the blueprints stand. It’s where blueprints of the town—which aren’t blue like the quintessential architect sketches from home, but are instead scratched out on cream parchment paper—are displayed beside more professionally-drawn layouts. Closeup sketches of stone cottages and stone rookeries (the traditionally-built housing here meant for Gryfala and hobs—a sort of wide tower) are also rendered digitally, the thin screen always left backlit and available for anyone to view. Sheets of glass protect these town-planning guides, allowing the sketches to serve as a constant visual of what everyone’s working toward.
“We made it,” I declare. “Alive.” Both of us—you didn’t strangle me!
“So we did.”
I almost nudge him with my shoulder, but his expression is stony and forbidding and I’m pretty sure he’d dislocate my arm for me if I tried touching him, so I settle for a simple, “I’m happy to see everyone again.”
He couldn’t be less enthusiastic, his long ears held flat, his lids low, really showing off his happy face (i.e., scowl). “I won’t say the same.”
I drop my hand to my lap, making a clapping noise against my leg. “Quick, was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
“No. And female, I cannot fathom how you could have more to say.” His eyes widen imperceptibly, a tell for his surprise or bafflement, I’m not sure. But he’s not yelling, and he’s showing emotion (even if it is only a flicker), so I’ll take it. “Practice silence or regale yourself with more of your stories, but wait here.”
CHAPTER 6
BASH
I could have sent Isla back to her work station by herself. Perhaps I should have. Instead, I thought to stalk away from her chattering to retrieve the hob who normally acts as this wagon’s driver. I don’t know what I expected of the quiet that followed. After hearing her voice nearly non-stop in my ears for half the damned day, wouldn’t it be logical for my system, which operates best without social interaction of any kind, to pine for silence?
Instead, she’s managed to trigger that strange quirk of the Rakhii; the absence of her person is causing an immediate, keen desire to seek her out. Following my refusal to return to her, my instincts rear up, and if I were a weaker male, I would have spun around and lumbered back to her, panting for more of her attention, loyal and already besotted.
How can this sabotaging happen so soon? I want to rail… But this is the way of my kind. I grit my teeth as I accept that I got too close to this female. Something about her drew me and in the space of a blink, she’s conditioned me to nearly crave her—her and her verbal malfunctioning. I’ve virtually become her aural hostage. I want to hear whatever nonsense she has to say.
Which is utter insanity.
I take a detour to retrieve my anti-bonding spray. Rather than the recommended dose, I nearly empty the bottle’s contents on myself—and then I drink the rest of it for good measure. Where bonding repression is concerned, one can’t be too careful. Task of locating the Narwari wagon’s driver completed, I return to Isla and help her down from the bench seat, leading her to the rock wall that I intend to work next.
Isla, of course, fills every moment we are together with her endless waterfall of words. As if my ears are dry, crumbly sponges, they absorb the rush of her chattering, satisfied anew to hear her.
My mind though, is not as enamored with her lip-flapping trait. Although I can admit I am occasionally amused. And I’m oddly never bored. Certainly am never at risk for being alone with my thoughts, if being alone with my thoughts was something I ever thought to avoid. She begins discussing her-world’s paper dollars versus coins, and it’s madness, but I don’t shout at her, not once, while we work side-by-side and she prattles my ears off about things that will never matter to me. I just absorb her voice, and we work.
If it were anyone else, I would have killed them when they began babbling through an explanation of smoked mozzarella cheese. A cuisine that, I’m reluctant to admit, sounds appealing. But Rakhii are fond of all smoked foods.
Isla’s in the middle of telling me what a French fry is—some odd, probably unhealthy ration stick by the sounds of it—when I turn my head away from her to bellow, “I NEED THE HUMAN-SAFE ADHESIVE STRIPS!”
Isla pauses briefly in her explanation of what a drive-through is when a hob races between us and hands me the sterile strips designed to hold sections of human skin together or to cover a gash wound and keep the human’s wound clean should they be injured with no Rakhii around to spit-heal them.
Isla is explaining what an automotive vehicle is—it’s a ground transporter, but she’s describing her-world vehicles as if I’ve never driven my own spaceship, the brazen wretch—when I use my claw tips to carefully peel back the adhesive papers from the sterile strip itself.
And Isla is explaining what rubber tires are when I lift the adhesive strip, carefully line it up, and seal the top and bottom half of her mouth shut.
Isla’s shocked eyes fly up to mine. Her strange grey eyes look rather fetching in this startled shade.
Then she bursts out laughing.
***
“You could have just told me to be quiet!” she chuckles later, after peeling off the strip as if I placed it there in jest and not as if I put it there with purpose.
“I would have. You didn’t stop to take a breath; I had absolutely no chance.”
Isla chortles loudly, and the sound should grate on my nerves.
It doesn’t.
She even dares to question me, eyes dancing. “Why encourage me to talk all day if you’re tired of hearing me?”
That’s the mystifying thing. The whole of the day, to my surprise… I have not tired of you. Not the sound of your voice or the preposterous statements that walk boldly out of your mouth. I’m not even irritated by your questions that never seem to cease. I’m afraid I’m becoming desiderate of your very being. I nearly gulp as I try to keep the words forced down. What I utter aloud is, “Before you told me of your unfortunate condition—”
(Isla explained she was born with motormouthia, which is incurable, sadly.)
“—it occurred to me that I’ve heard many humans chatter due to pent up nerves, or what have you.” I toss a rock into the wagon, and Isla drops her smaller addition beside mine. “Therefore I thought that perhaps you simply needed to release your verbal energy in order to heal yourself to silence. Like a tire, if I let you take your verbal cap off, you'd run out of steam eventually, surely—”
“You have inflatable tires here?!” she dares to marvel. “Like
ours?”
I turn an incredulous, offended look on her. “Female, it sounds like you barely have the beginnings for airships. How dare you ask if we've invented mere inflatable tires, you primitive-societied twit.”
She snickers until I raise my tail, threatening to strike her.
Suddenly, it feels as if we have every eye on us, everyone making sure I don’t bring my limb wailing down on a female.
They needn’t worry. Where Isla is concerned, I never would, but there’s blessed silence for two trips to the rock wagon and back.
Then Isla puffs, “For a primitive society, where I’m from,” she heaves another rock into the wagon bed, “we at least have figured out how to use explosives to break up the rock.”
I send her a raised brow. “We use explosives as well.”
“Oh.” There is another welcome silence between us for several moments. Then: “All right, I give up. Why are you beating the rock to death by hand if you can just push a button? Kachow—it’s busted up.”
“It’s beat the rock or bring my foot down on every human here—‘catch cow,’” I copy her strange alien phrase, “they will all be ‘busted up,’” I tell her.
She blinks, perhaps uncomprehending.
Nervously, a hob named Wirav—one of Gracie’s downtrodden minions—leans near her to whisper, “It’s thought that Bubashuu would be less inclined to destroy humans in a rage if he tires himself working rock all day by hand.”
Isla makes a drawn-out, “Ahhh,” noise. “Probably a good call.”
I place my chisel on a fissure of stone and bring my mallet down. As the rock makes a slicing break, I profess, “It was. Otherwise, I’d have rampaged through all of you.”
We work until I can smell Isla. Until her scent is drifting to me over all of the other human stink. Hers though is not unpleasant. Alarmingly, it’s quite the opposite. Citrus, I decide. Some type of alien citrus is her scent. And while many of the humans smell somewhat like me due to the application of my saliva over their wounds—a fact which would unsettle any Rakhii, having his scent on females who weren’t his mate—I don’t unconsciously bristle to scent myself on this human.
It’s pacifying a long-buried yearning.
Hmm. Pacifying may be a stretch. My instincts are urging me to take this woman and finally, finally quench my lifelong desire to have a mate.
Something I vowed to myself I would never require. I don’t need anyone. After the broken mess I was in after my last attempt at securing a mate, I learned to find peace in my own company, and be glad for it. Definitely not to burn for something more.
Yet… I can feel that yearning calling to me.
I clamp down on the craving and bellow an immediate halt to the workday. It’s been my custom to shore up human morale by telling them I’ve grown sick of having them underfoot and ordering them away until the morrow. Today though, my earlier feelings of contentment make my bugle almost placid. I don’t even feel like cursing the males who sired this lot. I don’t wish them well, but I don’t chase them out of my quarry with my customary aggravation either.
Of course some of the humans notice. Especially Gracie’s little pack. When I cut my gaze their way, they all straighten from where they were huddled, whispering. They’re thick as bandits, that bunch. I send a growl their direction to get them scampering. (Although that iron-hearted Gracie only saunters away, uncowed, daring to smirk at me.) Their males, including Gracie’s mate Dohrein, give me warning looks, ones I ignore.
“Baaaash! Buuuubaaaashuuu…”
My eyes cut to a lone female by the stone steps that lead out of the canyon. It’s Isla.
She raises her arm and waves with ridiculous exuberance. At me.
Itching scores the top of my tongue as pleasure bumps, more of them than earlier, break over it.
While I’m soundly cursing this development, without my conscious permission, my tail waves back.
From across the canyon, Isla beams at me.
My tail coils around itself in idiotic bliss.
And alarmingly, when she turns to leave, I just barely manage to check myself from following her. I turn a hard scowl on my feet and direct a blistering kick at my happily wagging tail.
CHAPTER 7
BASH
The next morning, I’m waiting. Watching. I’ve seen all the humans struggle in their early days of labor here. I expect Isla’s muscles to pain her, and for her body to be reluctant to work because of it. But rather than finding a spot to sit down to rub at her shoulders, neck, and arm, she gets right to work. I peer in her direction and wait for the murmurs. The angry mutters of my name. The curses on my dam and sire… but they do not issue forth from her lips.
Instead, she laughs. “I feel like I got run over by a truck!”
The women near her laugh too and chime in to share a litany of where they are feeling pains. Then some of them take this sharing as an opportunity to stop working, to sit, and complain bitterly. Normal behavior.
Isla though keeps on moving rock.
If I wasn’t watching her so closely, I wouldn’t see the hitch in her movements. The grimaces she makes would go unnoticed—because she’s smiling even as her face contorts. Another rock hits the wagon bed courtesy of her effort.
She’s sore; she isn’t stopping. I am impressed. “Isla?”
“Yeah?” Then she turns and sees me. “Hey, Bash!”
Her features brighten at the sight of me. Today she wears a well-fitted blouse, and stretchy-comfortable bottoms with reinforced knees, inner and outer thighs, and colorfully patched calf sections. The whole outfit showcases her body and entices the imagination, and if Gracie lent her this outfit, she should be beaten.
“Here,” I say, shoving the jar I brought into Isla’s hand. “Muscle salve. It will help with the soreness.”
Isla looks stunned. “Wow, Bash, thanks.” She peers at the jar’s contents, a primarily green mixture made from a variety of soothing herbs. When she tips the glass container, the salve sluices stickily to the other side of its housing, leaving a trail of ground leaves and natural alkaline solution. She watches it, a furrow in her normally smooth human brow, like a forehead frown. “Um, normally I can put on stuff like sunscreen and lotion no problem, but I can barely lift my freakin’ arm.” Her face clears, and she offers me a smile. “I'll find some help and be right back to return this, hang on.”
I catch her at the collar of her shirt. “If you’d close your mouth, I will be able to inform you that I’ll be the one to see to your needs. I vow I’ll be quick.” I tug her sleeve back, baring her shoulder. My fingers rasp over her flesh; my senses receive a shock at her softness. I have to ignore the almost electrical charge that hits me care of touching her here. It happened yesterday too, and my tail seemed to like getting shocked. It kept making contact with her.
I took care of that problem though. I soaked it in anti-bonding spray half the night. The rest of the night, I devoted myself to wondering what a chatterer like Isla did when she wasn’t working. If she didn’t speak to someone, I half-expected she’d shrivel up and blather miserably, wasting away with only her own company.
Of course, that led me to wonder if she was alone. Perhaps she has a male at the preserve.
The very idea saw me slinging back half a bottle of anti-bonding spray.
“Does that line work on a lot of ladies?”
“Hmm?”
No, she can’t have a male. I’d have smelled him on her. Sharply, I inhale her—and relax. Only Isla.
“Your promise that you’ll see to their ‘needs’ quick.”
“I’m efficient. If you hold still, I can finish in a blink.”
She snickers.
I tug her towards myself so that I can lean over her and peer down at her face with narrowed eyes. “Why do I get the sense your question is doublespeak? You should be grateful I went to the trouble of chewing this for you,” I grumble.
“You what?” She tries to duck from my hands.
I catch h
er sleeve and shake her until she stands straight. Nearby hobs shout protests, but I spread the blades of my tail and wave them slowly as my tail curls around Isla and myself.
I slather the salve—a mixture of herbs prepared by manducation and my saliva, to her muscles, and she winces.
I halt. “Does this hurt?”
Her shoulder curls in until it nearly touches her neck, forcing my thumb to brush her cheek. She makes a face I cannot read. “No…”
“Then cease with your squirming.” My movements are brisk and clinical. When I’m finished, I drop my hand (and bare my teeth when my hand only responds to my command after much reluctance to leave her skin) and step back.
Isla stands rooted to the spot, grimacing.
With a careful fingertip, I nudge her. “Move.”
Isla slowly drops her shoulder, rotating it by sticking out her arm and manipulating her muscles. She releases a textured sigh and tosses me a wry look. “Don’t take this the wrong way—”
I scowl. “A simple thank you would suffice.”
Isla’s gaze moves around my face and she laughs. “Sorry. I am grateful.”
“Then what are you preparing me for with a cautionary statement like that one?”
Her lids lower to half-mast and her lips curve higher.
This has a strange effect on my midsection. And the area below that.
“Where I come from—”
I huff, and smoke escapes my nose and mouth. “Oh, this is bound to be riveting.”
“WHERE I COME FROM,” Isla repeats, speaking over me. “Our salves are clean. And your abrasive brand of sarcasm gives me warm fuzzies.”
