by Amanda Milo
Grimacing, Mandi darts a nervous glance Bash’s way. Then she’s back to connecting eyes with her cat.
Moving to stand beside Bash, I set my polishing rag down on the smithing table, fascinated by this silent interplay.
“What are you doing,” Bash murmurs beside me. “Lazy humans get beaten. At least pretend to keep moving.”
“Guess I’ll take the beating. I have to watch this,” I whisper to him. “Shhh.”
“I did not just receive a shushing,” Bash marvels. “Not when you’re within my tail’s striking distance.”
“Tell your tail to shut up and wait—I want to see what happens with Mandi’s cat!”
“I’ll demonstrate what happens to employees who try to boss their master by lashing you until you can’t walk, human,” Bash warns.
“Your kinky fantasies can wait two seconds,” I tell him, still gawking at Mandi and her alien. Because her alien’s eyes are unimpressed slits, and he’s pinned his ears flat, and his whiskers are all bunched because his lips have curled up over his pronounced incisors. And he’s focusing a serious glare on Mandi’s hands.
Mandi is looking at her hands too. Then she darts another glance at Bash, this time all dread and reluctance.
“I think Mandi’s hands are hurt,” I whisper in a not-entirely-appropriate amount of extreme (worried—totally) excitement. It’s just that this is getting interesting.
Bash makes a derisive sound that thumps in the hollow chamber located in his nose. I don’t comment; it’s a weird Rakhii thing. “Do I seem as if I didn’t notice this? Overseeing operations is my job, you insufferable mite. Why do you think she’s making tiles today and not tearing up her wounded hands with more rough rock?”
All of my attention, every last scrap, shoots to Bash.
Hands on hips, Bash is ignoring me now, surveying the minions he has but doesn’t want.
“You’re going to freak them out,” I warn him, distracted.
Bash slices me a side-glare. “You think I care.”
I’m opening my mouth to toss something back at him… but I can’t. Because I realize that he does. My eyes find the two other women that Bash called out for tile-making duty, and I see that they’re both favoring their hands, frequently cradling their own palms.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh—Bash watches out for us. I’ve heard the bitching from the girls about him doling out stupid jobs. There’s sit-down jobs and odd jobs and all sorts of tasks that have nothing to do with village-building… except that every part of what we do here goes into making a village. Like Bash said, we’re going to need all the pieces to make up the whole.
Mandi is still carrying on a silent conversation with her cat, and she’s wavering, but she’s not quite able to make herself walk up to Bash and ask him to spit-heal her hands. She’s glancing around, I think looking for other Rakhii—any other Rakhii, but it’s early, meaning it’s just hobs and humans here so far. A lot of the Rakhii have families or pregnant mates, and they tend to filter in later in the morning.
Like they’re conjured by my conclusion, Zadeon and Callie appear with baby Baskian.
And Mandi’s shoulders hunch, and her glance Bash’s way is stricken.
I’ve heard that Mandi did not play nice with Callie, not when they all first got here. Things have changed a lot since then I guess, because I’ve never seen or heard Mandi say anything rude in Callie’s direction—but while Callie seems to hold no ill-will for whatever went down, Zadeon glares at Mandi like he’d like to set her on fire just about every other second she so much as breathes Callie’s air.
Clearly, Mandi knows this and is reluctant to seek this Rakhii’s assistance. So much so that it’s obvious she’d rather go to Bash… if only she weren’t terrified of Bash.
“Have some mercy on the girl,” I say under my breath. “She’s scared to ask you for help.” My eyes search out the others, who are lingering but not approaching Bash either. “They’re all scared of you.”
“They’re finally all showing sense,” Bash more or less agrees, his claws dragging under his chin before he straightens and snaps his fingers. He pins Mandi with an attentive glare, but I don’t think he means for it to be a glare as he motions for Mandi to come to him.
The girl jumps, her eyes going wide before she obeys, zooming to us.
While she’s making her way around people to get here, Bash snaps his fingers twice more, pointing at one girl then another—the two others he ordered to the task of tile-making today.
They look startled and pretty much nothing short of terrified, but they don’t make him snap at them twice. They trot up and arrive right behind Mandi.
Bash uses his clawtips to grasp their wrists and turn over their hands, spitting efficiently. As weird as the idea is, there’s an art to doing it clinically and without insult, and Rakhii have this skill down pat. Or at least Bash does. He gets all six hands done, tells them to get on their way, and they do it—faces pinched with distaste and winces and ruefully twisted lips.
But the discomfort the humans feel is nothing compared to what the partners of the humans feel as they watch their females getting tended to by another male. A male who can do something for their female that they cannot. And no matter how much he wants Mandi’s hands all better, the reality of watching another male touch her right in front of him is apparently a special kind of hell for our favorite feline alien.
“Nice murdermittens,” Gracie says to him—and she’s grinning like a crazy person. Mandi’s catman looks down at his paw and retracts his many, many visible big, wicked-curved claws before raising his gaze to her, his eyes narrowing, clearly not sure if she’s giving him a real compliment or teasing him.
I can’t tell either, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first one. She’s hoping hard that he’ll get together-together with Mandi someday—and soon.
“The way you humans spy on each other,” Bash comments.
“What? We’re not doing anything wrong,” I protest, like I’m feeling defensive. I’m not, but I know that I should be. Staring is wrong. Everybody on Earth used to say so. Then again, back on Earth, we didn’t have the MandiCat Channel.
“Let them alone. Your people’s interest in that couple’s affairs is excessive. Are you working or prying?” he asks in a tone that I’m sure is threatening, but I’m too busy staring at Mandi’s cat as the guy stares intently down at Mandi. It’s a heated look, ooh la la.
Something like a fist but not like a fist at all gathers my hair, wrapping it in a hold at my nape. “Isla.”
The solid weight trailing down from my hair tells me that Bash’s tail has grabbed a ponytail-full. His tail gives me a light tug, making my head bop up a fraction, and this is what makes me give Bash my full attention. “Right here, boss.”
He’s giving me judgey eyes.
“Fiiiine,” I moan, sweeping up the rag I’d dropped, my small movement making his tail bounce against my shoulder blades because it’s still gripping me by the hair.
For my capitulation, it gives me another little tweak, an approving one this time, before it drops off of me and slithers behind its owner as he leaves.
***
“We call this elbow grease,” I tell Bash, my arm beyond tired as I scrub a knotted steel-bristle brush back and forth over every surface of the anvil.
Bash frowns, gaze flicking to me, then down to my elbow, and then my hand. “What grease?”
“We call all the arm action ‘elbow grease.’”
Bash looks so confused. “Why?” He looks me over again like he’s wondering if he’s missed something. “You don’t emit grease.”
I pause my steel-scrubbing to pat his hand, which makes his lips part, and it almost looks like his chest seizes. “Chalk this up to another human saying, all right?”
I go back to scrubbing, and after a moment, Bash unfreezes, clearing his throat so brutally my eyes shoot to him.
Ignoring me, he dips his fingers in the jar of polish and applies it to a
rag. “Tell me what you did on your Earth. As an occupation.”
I blink at him for a beat. “Uhh… I’m a set designer and stage carpenter.” My mouth twists, and my shoulder pops up around my ear before sinking down again. “Was. I was a set designer and stage carpenter.”
Bash’s head tilts, the light catching the dark green in his eyes and firing them up prettily. “You miss it.”
“Well yeah. I love my job.” I huff a sad laugh. “Loved. Sheesh, I know my life’s gone, but… yeah, I’ll always miss it.” I concentrate on speeding the steel brush over the anvil top.
Until the brush is plucked out of my hand.
“Hey,” I protest with no conviction. “You taking over?”
Bash’s tail nudges me until I scoot over enough for him to take my place. “I am. I don’t want your shoulder sore tomorrow. How does your back feel?”
“Fine.” I eye him. “You’re being awfully nice.”
Bash curls his lip at me.
“Awww, you’re being thoughtful and downright sweet.”
Bash growls at me, and his tail shoves me further aside with some force.
I laugh uproariously. When I can calm myself down, I manage to answer him about my back. “Doing loads better,” I tell him with a smile.
“Good. Not that I care about the state of your wellbeing any longer.”
“Big liar.”
He snorts, and his tail thwaps me on my thigh. “Your whole race delights in driving me mad. And at the moment you’re the worst of them all.”
“Thanks?” I watch him scrub with more elbow grease than I could manage in a lifetime. “Sounds like quite the achievement.”
His grunt is noncommittal. His return to the subject is not unexpected. “What does a set designer do?”
“We play with a lot of paper. But really it’s about making a blank wooden stage look like whatever world the story is meant to portray. In smaller productions, I constructed the sets.”
Bash frowns. “Whatever world? I was under the impression that your people were not aware of life outside of your own.”
“You mean like aliens?” I eye him from horn tip to his tri-toes. “We didn’t know jack about you people, but I meant worlds as in fictional ones or other-time places in our own history. Like for Swan Lake—it was a ballet production, where a story is told through instrumental music and complicated dance—”
“Hm.”
“—I had done all these sketches for the set. It was the biggest production that I’d worked on, that any of us had worked on. Huge. It was a lot of pressure. One of my sketches, this woodland-marsh scene, got approved, which was great, but it was like… here I’ve got this eight-by-eleven sheet of paper, and it needs to be transferred on a massive and I mean massive stage backdrop. It’s this cloth that—”
“I know what a backdrop is.”
“Oh yeah?” I shrug. “Your translator seems so shitty that I never know what you’re picking up.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome. Anyway, you’d think in this day and age that you could just screen-print something, but in a way, it’s neat that all of that detail is still done by hand. I had to do the math to break the approved sketch into squares so that I could then apply those squares to the blank backdrop, which allowed me to paint this marsh scene identically, just blowing up the pieces so that it turned out to be the perfect size. It felt like it took forever but really, it was done in like a week and a half. It was insane. Most fun I’d ever had to that point, I’d realize much later. I didn’t know it then because when you’re in the middle of the chaos you rarely enjoy it. Or realize that you do. But boy I did. It was wild, but it was a blast.” I swallow, my throat very suddenly tight. “I… miss it.”
Bash shifts uncomfortably beside me. “You could,” he clears his throat, a little puff of smoke escaping from his mouth, “you could sketch for your enjoyment. I will procure you sketching materials. If you would like that.”
“Aww, Bash, wow.” I look up at him in wonder, trying to catch his eye, but he’s studiously avoiding my appreciation, like he could break out in hives or some other type of allergic reaction. “I would! And if you have something like balsa wood—it’s a super thin, super light type of wood—I can make theater model boxes for fun. I had a blast making set models.” I sigh wistfully. “A serious blast.”
“We have many types of wood that should be to your liking. I will find a hob who knows our craft supplies, and I will make him retrieve what you need. Then you shall make your crafts again,” Bash vows.
I smile up at him. “Thanks, boss. You really are sweet.”
Bash makes a disagreeable grumble before he grouses, “Isla?”
“Yeah? Wait—I know. Get back to work, right?”
His tail dumps a tin of wax between my hands. “Prepare to get yourself greased to your elbows. This anvil is ready for a good black patina.”
CHAPTER 17
BASH
(Crying Counter: 15)
Isla is contained in the smith’s stall and for some reason, it pleases me to have her there. I don’t examine it. I barely acknowledge it. Instead, I concentrate on other matters.
Insignificant ones.
It is time to break the humans—and today I am determined to succeed at this with no tears from any of them. I have an impeccable record building up, and I won’t tarnish it today. I have to swallow three cog-damned times to manage speaking to the infuriating little aliens without yelling, but by Creator, I succeed. “Ladies,” I stress while internally supplying the word weevils. Tiny weeping weevils. “Relax in the shade while you feed yourselves.”
One called Lexi raises a human-fragile-boned hand.
“What,” I bite out—not a question because I don't want to encourage interaction. Heaven knows the more I speak with them the more likely I am to growl until they cry.
“So this is a break?” Lexi questions, seeming unsure. I spy her other hand rubbing at a spot low on her back, and I take note of it. Once she’s finished feeding and watering herself and has rested some, she’ll need to be rotated to a task where she’s not straining her back. I’ll be watching the rest of the humans and rotating them for the same reason.
But only after they take their confounded break. Humans have made me grow to hate this term.
I glare at her while trying to moderate my eye contact to a mere stare. The longer I glower at her, the more she shrinks, the more her face crumples, and I can mentally picture that confounded weeping counter losing my good numbers, my hard-earned patience-measurer blown to smithereens if this female can’t get control of herself.
I have to storm away from her and give her my back before I can speak a response through my teeth. “You’ve done well. You can call this your break.”
I don’t know why humans insist on referring to this feeding time as a break. Whenever I think of breaks and humans together, it’s far, far more satisfying.
However, my version most definitely violates the weeping counter’s perfect tally.
I’m stalking past all the gaping smooth-skinned faces when a few of them call out, “Thank you, Bash.”
I stop. Risking a half-turn, I run my gaze over them, finding them all looking at me, some of them are even smiling. Tentative hope plays across many faces.
I try now to scowl. “You’re welcome,” you freakish aliens. “En…” I struggle to swallow, smoke escaping my lips. “Enjoy your meals, then I expect you to rejoin work with vigor.”
I turn away.
Almost as one, the females call, “We will, Bash!”
As I prowl back to Isla, I marvel at how their propitiation actually makes me feel… pleased.
CHAPTER 18
ISLA
When Bash calls an end to everyone’s workday, he applies more spit-made muscle relaxant on my shoulder and arm. “How is your back now?” he asks.
“Feeling normal.” I reach under my shirt to peel off the gel pack. “I’m so good, I think we can quit with this.”
>
He acknowledges this with a grunt and slathers his liniment down my spine before he tugs my shirt down and begins to walk away.
Like an infatuated puppy, I dog his heels.
If he minds, he doesn’t say. And Bash doesn’t strike me as the type of alien to hold his peace if somebody is bugging him.
I could follow my fellow humans on their exodus back to the compound, but I get bored there. And Bash isn’t there.
I wave to a couple of women as they pass us, but I stick to Bash, determined to follow him until he tells me he’s sick of me.
It’s loud as everyone tromps for the exits but I’m used to it now, the noise. I’m even used to the sort of thick taste in the air; it’s the ever-present dust that I suck in with every breath and can’t help but assimilate since it coats my tongue.
Bash glances over to me. “Would you like to see the Narwari barn?”
I’d do pretty much anything to spend a little more time with him. But yeah, seeing where the scary alien horses live sounds especially neat. “Sure!”
Bash uses a toss of his horn to indicate a wagon up ahead. “We’ll take that team.” Bash shouts to the driver, who stops and hops down to let Bash take his place. The driver is a hob, and he moves to the other side of the wagon where he helps a human woman down.
It’s seeing her that causes the flash of recognition to hit me. This woman and this hob were driving the wagon with the alien horse I met on my first day here.
I swing my head to the three horses to find the golden coated animal out of the bunch is already watching me. I jump back. “AHH, I know you! You’re the arm taster!”
The animal’s muscles bunch, and if it weren’t for the tongue of the wagon having a tiny chain that extends to its harness, I think it would lunge for me. Sure, it might meet resistance if the other two animals hitched to the wagon don’t want to turn on me with this one, but they’re starting to look hungry too.
“Calm yourself,” Bash growls.
