by Amanda Milo
Four humans that I have at one point or another in the last two days… made cry. I narrow my eyes on them.
They nearly run over each other to flee.
I step forward, intent on capturing and questioning them, but a chilled, human-soft palm wraps around my tail.
Slowly, with a great arrow of disbelief hitting me square in the chest, I turn around to see who thought to catch me, to stay me.
It’s Isla. And by the mildly terrified look in her eyes, she realizes she will live to regret this.
We both look down at where her hand holds me. “So...” she fairly squeaks. “I have you by the tail.” Her swallow is audible.
“So,” I agree, “you’re about to lose your hand.”
The gasps of the closest thirty or so aliens (and hobs, and Rakhii—damn the traitors with their human-softened hearts) nearly deafens me.
Glancing quickly around the shocked mob of them, Isla snorts a small laugh—but she surprises me by continuing to hold me by my tail. “Come on,” she calls to them. “Did anyone really peg this guy for Prince of Political Correctness?”
“I am no prince,” I tell her.
She grins up at me. “Oh, I know it.”
Distracted by her touch (and spending not nearly enough consideration on the serious implications of the frequency in which our skins have made contact—the potential for bonding increases, or so it is believed) I don’t know if it’s because I see her gaze shift slightly, or if I’ve simply developed an extra sense where a certain human is concerned—but I twist to turn my glare in the direction of my chair—and teveking yes, yes, I find Gracie lounging in it.
“What,” I ask conversationally, “in the slow green rut is under your about-to-be-deceased rump, female?”
Gracie has the nerve to tip her face up and send me a dashing smile. “My new throne.”
My muscles tense. Isla flings herself on me, protecting this female she associates with, and suddenly Gracie’s mate swoops in too, literally, and it’s about teveking time.
“Watch her better,” I order her harried-looking male.
Dohrein turns a beleaguered look on his mate. Which Gracie ignores. She’s keeping her eyes on me, still wearing her baiting smile. “Ha ha,” she laughs.
“Shut up, Gracie, seriously,” Isla pants, shoving at me as if she can push me back and keep me from wrapping my hands around my target of that human’s throat.
“Human,” I warn—and I don’t even know which one I’m warning. The center responsible for my higher thinking is experiencing an accidental diversion of my thought current because Isla is touching me everywhere.
Instead of growing angry, my irritation sits, sparking slightly but not, I note with no small surprise, is it taking over the whole of my thoughts.
My chief thought is… Isla Is Touching Me.
My focus snaps back to Gracie when she kicks her legs so that they rest over one arm of my chair, and she falls back so that she’s resting her upper body on the other arm. “I already know what you’re going to say,” she informs me. “You’re going to boot me out of this spot every time you catch me, blah-blah.”
“Blah... blah?” I ask in wonder. “Have you no fear of a slow death? I could pluck all of your limbs off and toss you off the highest wall of this canyon, you nonnative hornache.”
She brushes away my statement with unconcerned fingers. “You can’t protect this spot all day and would you really deny a seat to a woman in my condition?” she asks, a deceptively large smile on her havoc-wreaking face.
“Would that condition be whole and as yet unbroken?” I tip my horns. “Yes.”
“I’m pregnant,” Gracie says, like she’s informing me of something I don’t know.
“A female can still whelp if her arms and legs are crushed. And you, female,” I warn, voice beginning to vibrate with my irritation, “you’re about to find out how.”
Isla surprises me by placing her hand as high on my shoulder as she can reach. “You have to try to be nicer, Bash. Do me a favor and don’t do anything: I’ll be right back. I think I know something that can help.”
***
When she returns, she’s brought me a small baked treat humans refer to as a cookie, which looks like nothing more than a disc-shaped Narwari treat that’s had three black-backed beetles get baked in it, and two drinks in clay mugs. She forces the treat on me first, and although I’m reluctant, I grunt agreement that it is surprisingly decent. I don’t say it, but I suppose it’s even good. I finish it in two bites. Then Isla is focused on getting me to take the mug she brought specifically for me. Humans favor mugs. They go nowhere without them and are constantly pressing their mouths to their mug rims, eternally sipping at their nutrient-heavy lifeforce liquid. In the mornings, you almost can’t find a human who doesn’t have such a mug attached to their hand. Hobs set up tables specifically for the women to set their drinking vessels on, stored upside down to keep out rock dust.
And before me, looking so sincere, is Isla, thrusting one such mug out to me. “Here! I have a feeling it’d probably take a crate of Jose Cuervo to loosen you up, but still—you have to try this. Coffee is magic. Maybe a hit of caffeine will do amazing things for you.” Then, to herself she mutters, “Either that, or you’ll be able to kill us all hyper fast…”
“I could manage that anyway. Without a boosting drink.” Scowling down at the dark, questionable liquid, I inhale. The rich, earthy scent is a familiar one, and surprisingly pleasant. Of course I’m well aware of the necessary addiction that humans have for this drink, and as I’ve said, I’ve seen evidence of the same. We’re told that humans need the nutrient this drink provides—java, joe, battery acid, their liquid drug goes by many names—but as a Rakhii, I do not rely on any such thing, and I’m loath to gain an addiction to a drink. Loath to gain an addiction to anything.
I move my stare to Isla.
And for some reason—perhaps it’s the so-hopeful look in her luminous eyes—I find myself taking a long pull of the coffee, simply because some part of me wants to… please her.
I scowl. And not only at my system’s interest in pleasing Isla. It’s this scum-awful ‘drink.’
“Oh my teveking Creator,” I grimace. “Isla, no. Why would you look forward to this miserable brew?”
CHAPTER 9
ISLA
“You don't like it?” I say with disbelief.
“Of course he doesn’t like it,” a girl named Mandi mutters. “It’s not the blood of crying women.”
Bash must have ears like a bat. They prick upright, and he snaps his fingers at her. “I would drink that.”
All of the women in our vicinity edge away.
“You really don’t like coffee?” I can’t help but repeat. “And ‘miserable?’ Really? Huh. Maybe your miserable is my awesome.”
“Hm,” Bash grunts. Then he turns his mug over like it contains poison, and dumps it.
“Hey!” I shout, shocked.
He grabs my own mug right out from where my short arm is clamping it and proceeds to turn it over too, pouring coffee on the ground.
“You just…” I stare at the ground, at the kinda cool-looking swirly reddish-purple rock striation patterns (which is the way the rock normally looks here, and it is cool) now turned a dark sepia-purple by the coffee. “You just wasted coffee!” And sugar. And creamer.
“It was already a waste. It tasted foul. I’m appalled on water’s behalf that you tainted it with that swill.”
Something not-nice is swirling up inside me. Disgust at the sheer carelessness, the sheer waste of a precious drink is part of it. And I’m not just thinking this because it’s coffee, although this stuff is precious here. But it’s more than that. Bash tossing out the drink right in front of me… well, it feels like a rejection. He doesn’t have to like the drink, but he doesn’t have to be rude about it either. “You don’t just throw it out. I would have drunk it—yours AND mine.” My eyes are getting hot. My glare snaps up to his rapidly melting scow
l. “Damn it, Bash, that wasn’t nice.” I throw my hand out. “And it’s not like we can run to the store to buy more. I guess your people grabbed a bunch of it from Earth when they visited, but it’s still finite. It’s rationed until we can get a decent crop here on this planet. People—your people as well as my people—are bending themselves backwards trying to grow this stuff for us. Because they know how much it means to us and they care.” I try to cut him down with a look. “You appreciate hard work and not wasting time and supplies? Well, that—” I stab my finger in the direction he dumped our drinks, “—takes a lot of time and back-breaking work to plant, and harvest, and process. Out here, that stuff is worth more than gold!”
I’m not imagining it that Bash’s normally bullish expression has formed into something less disapproving and dominating. That it’s softened into something more… maybe contrite.
Since I’m sharing, I share one last thing. “And you tossing it away felt like you threw away a gift. You’ve hurt my feelings.”
Something flashes across his expression, too quick for me to be sure. But I think it’s at least a little regret.
When he doesn’t say anything though, I shake my head at him, turn around, and walk away.
CHAPTER 10
BASH
Isla turns on her heel, abandoning me with her words.
Everyone scrambles in extraordinary promptitude to flee from the warpath that I create after that. Soon, everyone is applying themselves diligently to work. It’s so settled after I get done bellowing until there’s charred marks on the stone ground from where I blew fire as I shouted at females, Rakhii, and hobs. It’d almost be worth the disruption of every morning if it meant peace like this for the rest of the shift.
Yet I’m unhappy. I regret that I offended Isla.
When we’re working across from each other again, I growl at her, but she doesn’t hasten to join me. No, she glares at me. She glares at me all the day long.
And, I admit, with fair reason. I have wronged her.
Her hot anger is better than a Gryfala’s cold, punishing withholdment.
When I crook the end of my tail at her, she does not come near. When I glare back at her, she makes a show of being very involved in her work. Not so involved that she can’t send me stares that speak to some tortures she wishes me to undergo, but all the same, she makes a show of studiously gathering and collecting stone. Rather than join me, she works alone and maintains the loudest silence I’ve yet been subjected to in my lifespan.
Staying several lengths away from her, I allow her space to simmer. But I stay in her orbit. Even cross with me, she is still strangely companionable. When I raise a pickaxe and bring it crashing down on rock, I feel her stare like claws raking down my back. I crave it, even if I shouldn’t.
Part of me wants to stalk up to her and order her to forgive me. I also desire to keep my ears though. She’s reminding me of a Rakhii female, and if I’m right, should I be fool enough to corner her and force her into interacting with me, she’ll let loose a fury that will render me deaf. So I keep our distance, even when it means I see her back at the end of the workday without her calling my name and waving her enthusiastic goodbye.
“ISLA!” I bellow.
Nearly all the humans drop to the ground. (Either from my unexpected shout, the sheer volume of it, or the fact that they’ve sensed the buildup of tension all day and my shout broke their nerves.) Isla’s visual path then is clear to me when she whips around and pins me with a killing look.
The challenge in it causes my blood to fire. The desire to answer her challenge by chasing her down is strong, but I refrain. Instead, I raise my hand to her—and wave.
Her head snaps back. I’ve managed to surprise her.
Before she can reject my wave, I drop my arm, and turn away, allowing her to leave.
CHAPTER 11
BASH
(Crying Counter: 0)
The next morning, I stand at the coffee-ing station, scaring back all the other humans who normally collect here. It’s not my intention to frighten them, but I’ve managed it all the same. They all eye me fearfully, as if I’m a predator that crawled into their watering hole. None of them are thirsting desperately enough to test if I’ll bite.
I wave them closer. “Get your coffees.” I learned the hard way early on that what hobs claimed of these creatures is true: humans need coffee for their survival. The first early shift when I rushed the herd to work without letting them coffee proved them utterly useless. The lot of them were no better than corpses barely revived by witchcraft. They spent the afternoon snapping at each other like frazzled beasts, the rest of the time they were in a fugue state, thus we solved the issue by setting them up a coffee-ing station. They drink the moment they step foot here, and they breathe life and they fight less with their daily brew of necessary magic beans.
Yet none of them are moving for their drink. I scowl. “Did I stammer?”
“No offense,” one human says with wide eyes—Mandi, she is called, “but none of us want to die today.” Then she leans around the others, evidently searching for her male, the one that Gracie calls ‘Mandi’s kitty-cat’—and I’m surprised he’s not at her side. Apparently, she’s surprised too. She’s looking around for him anxiously.
“Where is your herd’s leader?” I ask her. Gracie will get her people to drink. Yes, I’m aware that I could move and they will surely accomplish their drinking, but I want to be here the moment Isla arrives. It’s important that she sees me right away, that she recognizes that I am making an effort at reparation. I am afraid if I step away that I’ll miss her and she’ll serve herself. My gesture will mean less then, and I have misstepped with her. I owe it to the both of us to make this right.
“‘Herd leader?’” Mandi mutters with incredulity.
My gaze slices to her.
Her eyes go wide and she hollers, “GRACIEEE!”
“Never fear, your queen is here,” Gracie calls back. She’s descending the quarry steps almost lumberingly. I feel my brows dip in concern. She’s been growing heavy with pup; she’s reached the time when she really can’t be working in the quarry. Unfortunately, this means I’m going to have to argue with her, as it goes without question that every discussion becomes a verbal battle with this human. If I’m lucky, her mate will agree with me that her condition has become unsafe—and with more luck, she’ll mind him.
...Creator. That won’t take luck. That will take a miracle.
When Gracie makes it to the coffee-ing station, she sees me and her eyes briefly show surprise. “Have we converted the great Bubashuu to coffee?” she asks in disbelief.
“No,” I say dismissively, and this is the only answer she will have from me on the subject of their swill water. Except to order her to make her people drink it while I stand here. “I’m not leaving this spot. Tell your followers to water themselves.”
She widens her eyes and raises her browfurs expectantly but rather than explain, I bring up another subject. “Your time here has ended.”
Gracie almost reels back. “Excuse me?”
I glance down pointedly at her stomach, and her hands immediately come up to shield and cover the swell of her belly. But she argues anyway. “I’ve got weeks and weeks to go yet. I’m fine.”
I tilt my horns, indicating the steps. “You are struggling with your balance. What if you fall?” I haven’t failed to notice that even bending down is difficult for her now. I shake my head. “It’s not safe.”
Gracie makes a flat ‘gerrr’ noise—the human approximation of a real growl. They form their effort in their mouth, not their throats or their nose. Mostly, they use their version of the sound to relay irritation but sometimes it also indicates danger, a warning to herdmates that their inner-aggression is reaching a peak. I have witnessed this human in particular making the noise before she attacks another member of the herd.
I cross my arms, mindful of the hot mug of liquid I’m holding, and send Gracie a speaking look that
I hope conveys how much I dare her to try and follow up her laughable attempt at a threatening sound.
If she were to actually attempt an attack on me, I’m uncertain if I’d be amused or… disappointed. I admire this female, and there’s no shame in admitting this. One has to have respect for her shepherding skills. She manages her people decently. These humans—they aren’t easy to lead about.
(This human in particular, as it happens.) “You can fuck off, Bash! This is my baby.”
My expression must show my confusion.
Gracie gestures around the quarry. “Building the village—it’s my deal, it’s my thing, those—” she points to the plans she drew, the ones we’re following, the ones we set right in the quarry for all of the humans to see so they stop complaining about how hard the work is and begin visualizing what their futures will look like once they complete their new homes.
They still complain though. Constantly you’ll hear the humans moaning and whining and occasionally weeping. Early on, Gracie proved useful because she would round on her fellow humans and send them out of the quarry entirely if they carried on too loudly. She wants willing workers here as much as I do, perhaps the only thing we’ve ever easily agreed on.
Infernofire. If I send Gracie away, she won’t be here to police her people. But I can’t have her losing her litter here because she falls and gets hurt.
“—those are mine,” Gracie continues passionately. “My idea, my vision, my baby,” she explains. “I want to be here to see it all happen.”
“I can understand the desire, why you feel this way,” I start, and watch surprise color her face for the second time this morning, “but if you injure yourself or your offspring—”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t know that,” I grate harshly. “There could come a point when you can’t prevent a fall. Be reasonable.”
But asking a human to be reasonable is like asking a tree to uproot itself and dance. Utterly impossible.
“You’re being unreasonable!” she argues.
