by Amanda Milo
Peelow. I recognize her word now. I move to offer her mine, but Brax shoves his at her first. She shakes her head at him but she accepts his before she rolls over, with more grumbling, and she gives him her back.
Now she and I are facing each other, on our sides, but we are separated by too many clicks of space.
I see the mane hairs above her ears tighten, then strands pull along the top of her head, and I know that Brax is back to bringing any part of her he is allowed to touch back on his side of the bed.
She blows out another breath and I smile at her.
She opens her hand, and gratefully, I reach for it, chirring at her as our fingers rejoicefully reunite.
A noise that could be construed as a growl sounds from behind her, and unperturbed now, she commands, “Stohp.”
The noise ceases.
And I watch her smile as she closes her eyes, and falls into sleep.
CHAPTER 56
BRAX
When her breaths have evened into slumber, I remark, “It means ‘I love you,’ doesn’t it?”
Tac doesn’t hesitate. “I believe so. From her expressions when she says it, this has been my interpretation.”
Why hasn’t she said ‘Eye weel mees yoo’ to me? What can I do to earn this deepest level of her affection?
I will do it.
I will do anything.
“What do you think she prays for?” Tac offers up, his voice pensive.
“Prays?”
There’s a pause. Then Tac makes a half moan, half chirp into his palms. “You’ve been interrupting her haven’t you? How many solars are you supposed to be again?”
I shift uncomfortably.
“That many?” he continues without any input from me. “Huh, well, you can’t tell.” He reigns in his volume. “She does it every rotation. She can get very emotional, and it seems to act as a catharsis. I can’t believe you’ve been disrupting her.”
“I have not.” Not exactly. This answers the puzzle of her sitting on my tail—which is where she rests when she tries to sit her haunches on her heels and my tail happens to be wrapped there. It happens every rotation and it drives me wild with questions. “Thank you. I’ve been so teveking curious,” I admit. “But she never opens the door.” I motion with my untethered hand, still vexed. “And she’s so quiet then.”
For her, downright unnatural.
“You attempt to eavesdrop on her while she’s in the B.C.U., after she closes the door for her privacy’s sake?
I say nothing.
“Brax. That’s disturbing.”
“Uuggh, tuh chuurpeeng ahnd grruwwleeng hos too stohhp,” groans Tara. “Tryying too sleehpuh.”
“Sorry.”
“Apologies.”
With this, she snuggles deeper into Tac, and I move to curl around her back. And I learn another good reason to sleep front-to-front with her.
“Your rump is cold, female,” I tell her. “My ballsack is shriveling.”
“You should feel her feet,” Tac whispers. “On the bright side, it acts as a natural defense.”
“How’s that?”
“It hardly ever warms, so there’s little worry that you’ll poke her awake. Full night’s sleep.”
“I want to break all of the major bones in your body for knowing this from experience.”
“Understood. ‘Night, Brax.”
And that is Tac. Unruffled. Unconcerned. Yet I’m entirely serious.
I look down at her. She’s cried over her males enough already, and I feel eaten with guilt over an act I haven’t committed. Would I have killed hobs?
My brother did.
Would I sentence her to this level of pain?
Because as my gaze moves over the pair, I know she cares very much for Tac. Her hands rest over his heart. When I see his face, angled towards her even in sleep, I think, ‘You MUST stay away, Tac. I can’t do this to her.’
But I know he won’t leave her side.
I wouldn’t.
I won’t.
Somehow, we must make this arrangement work. All we have to do is beat biology.
And history.
CHAPTER 57
TARA
Somehow, I need to relay ‘baby’, and these guys are not charades players. How to explain?
I turn the problem over, absently picking at Brax’s scales as he pets my hair.
It’s not that they don’t pick up on words. It’s that we don’t have enough context to share this one. ‘Rocking’ my arms has gotten absolutely nowhere.
Resolved to try my next plan, I slap a hand down on Brax’s chest and shove myself upward, startling him so badly he’s got me wrapped in his tail before either of us realize it. I sigh and look down at it as it traps my midsection, anchoring my body to his. “Brax, let me up.”
Slowly, reluctantly, he unravels us.
I get down on my hands and knees. I don’t know what else to try.
My thumb sucking thoroughly confused him. His eyes went liquid gold and he had his thumb in front of my mouth so fast…
And I saw the look he darted down at his groin.
Ugh. Men. Focus, BRAX!
My imitation baby-cry freaked him out so badly that he hollered for Tac.
But I know immediately that he is seeing me on my hands and knees and thinking… something totally different.
“Crawling, Brax, Crawling. Like a baby.” Not giving up my position yet, I try a different approach. Bringing my hands together and saying “Small baby,” but instead of immediate, blessed comprehension, he considers my hands a moment before he carefully brings his inside of mine, and expands them to a very specific nine inches.
“BRAX! STOP THINKING OF SEX!”
I widen my hands to the length of a toddler—how much have they grown by now? I’ve already missed so much—
A violent snort of disbelief tears me away from torturing myself. Brax eyes my hands and his chin goes down, his brows rising like his masculinity has just been threatened.
Arrrrghhhh! I throw my hands in the air and start to struggle to my feet. Start, because his tail loops both my elbows and hauls me up without effort.
He can see that I’m upset and trying to explain something, but I know—I can almost see it behind his eyes; he’s surprised I’m fantasizing about a yardstick dick, while I’m desperately trying to have a serious conversation about being reunited with my children.
I’m not getting anywhere. I’m not getting anywhere! Literally! I am stuck here. It’s like they have no idea what a baby even is.
And I still need to figure out how to explain the word ‘Earth’ and preferably, my country too because it will do me no good to land on the other side of the world—my world—with no ID, no money, no way to…to...
I’m so frustrated I could scream!
So I do.
Then I cry.
And when neither of these things gets me more than a sore throat, and puffy eyes, and a bewildered, alarmed Brax and anxious Tac, a Tac who is tapping on a screen and arguing with Brax, while Grake and Lem hover in the doorway—because freaked out or not, it’s still Brax, and he barely tolerates Tac in the room. No way will he allow Grake to so much as cross the threshold.
I lose it.
I can’t give up! But I don’t know how to show—
Show.
SHOW!
THAT’S IT!
“MARKER!” I shout, and everybody jumps. I look up at the big alien, who’s so upset that he’s winding his tail around his own ankle… hock. “Brax! Give me back my marker!”
CHAPTER 58
TAC’MOT
We’d been in the middle of discussing the symptoms of a Gryfala being eggbound, and the logistics of our upcoming departure, when she suddenly begins using her word for the writing instruments.
She drops down to the floor and draws a giant round shape with irregular shapes inside.
Lem notes thoughtfully, “Her language has odd letters.”
“That’s not Gryph,�
� Grake crunches out around a mouthful of cerealmeal.
Brax gives him a look that conveys how dim he thinks the hob is in this moment. “Thank you, Captain Grake. You’ve just been assigned to the ship ‘Obvious’.”
Grake rolls his eyes.
Brax’s brow ridges lift. “It would be infinitely more surprising if she did know how to write in Gryph all this time.”
Grake holds up his fork in a surrendering gesture. “I was simply pointing it out.”
He makes it look easier than it is to eat cerealmeal with a fork. I know, because I’ve had to do this myself now that all the spoons have mysteriously disappeared. Cryptically, Grake had remarked, “I vow it isn’t me who is taking them, but I can tell you that you should make your peace with them being gone if the Gryfala keeps touching them.”
Ludicrous. Tara is no thief.
I return my attention to her to see she’s drawn two rudimentary sticks. With round blobs on top. And… little sad lines in each blob. Next to them is a stick that is a fraction prouder. That one also gets a blob on top, with a sad line also. She begins to fill in dots in what appears to be a random fashion.
Whatever she’s drawing, it makes her sad, and I feel my scalp tighten as my ears fold down in shared sorrow.
Lem hums. “It’s small.”
I shake my head. “Yes, but she’s small. I think it’s her. She’s drawing herself.”
“I can’t identify what language that is, but even I can tell she’s got rotten penmanship in it,” he comments.
Brax examines them thoughtfully. “Maybe this isn’t words. Maybe these are symbols.”
I shush them. “They’re her hobs.”
Grake tilts his head first one way, then the other, before looking between Tara and I most dubiously.
She begins pointing and rapidly discussing the features of her sticks with sad lines.
“If they’re hobs, they have no wings.”
“She has no wings.”
Lem fiddles with a tank nozzle before hooking back over his shoulder. “Those could be land masses.”
We all look back at him in confusion.
“Well either way, that’s the IMT-blue she got ahold of there. Her ugly art will be on Brax’s ship forever now.”
Surprisingly… Brax doesn’t look upset at this news at all. Quite the opposite.
“What’s this one down on four legs? A pet? It has weird legs.” Grake muses.
Stung, I fire back, “It has her legs—it has your legs, you ‘vekwit. It’s crawling.”
Brax smiles for the first time this rotation. “Ah, then it’s a hob.”
Grake’s wings puff at this. When Brax lifts a brow, he deflates. “Perhaps. If their Gryfala likes that kind of thing.” He eyes Tara until Brax growls a warning.
Lem pulls out a laser pointer to indicate where he’s looking. “Does this look like a qiizzibeast? Without a tail? Oh, wait, maybe that squiggle is supposed to be one.”
“No, I think that’s just a mistake. She tried to scratch it out, see?”
Lem widens his eyes, his head shaking back and forth in consternation. “I believe this is one career possibility we can rule out. She has never been, and judging by this, never will be, an artist.”
“Lem!”
“I’m sorry, Tac, but look.” He ignores Brax’s indignant snarling and peers closer. “Holy Creator, what is she trying to draw?”
She’s drawn eight other somewhat sphere-like shapes in the vicinity of the sphere with the irregular patches, and each one has different features. One has large round spots like her skin. One has a set of loops around it. One is incredibly tiny.
When we all steal a furtive glance at her, she bursts into frustrated explanations. She’s trying to point out the finer points of her… art… but it’s difficult to interpret it. It’s all very…abstract?
Even that might be too kind.
She won’t leave the floor. Not even for Brax, who is attempting to coax her to come to him. I clamber down and take the marker from her. “The floor’s already done for, right?”
I draw a round shape. I believe I do a fair job of copying the same symbol, her main point of interest, and she goes wild, and she’s pointing tearfully to the three mismatched sticks. I dutifully copy these too, wondering if she drew them shorter to denote hierarchy, or if her males were physically of smaller build.
I’ve never heard of this. But I feel myself nodding as I realize that perhaps this is how they were overtaken. No wings and small frames—
Tara lands on me, she’s insane with relief, hugging me, crying on me, kissing me.
Thankfully, we’re outside of Brax’s reach.
Grake is happy to see that she’s brightening, and he pretends to grumble, “If I’d known kisses were the reward, I could have drawn a couple of strange pictures.”
“Sore loser,” I manage to get out between smacks on my lips, and her mane is smothering me like a curtain, and I’m growing a bit light headed.
“I am definitely sore,” he laments.
“YOU WILL BE,” Brax promises, and I believe we all forgot that he can breathe fire.
Grake and Lem scramble out of the doorway and Tara gasps and tells him to stohp. She looks like she’s about to go to him but if she does that, we’ll never get out of here in time. I catch her arm. “You and I are leaving, veetling.”
CHAPTER 59
BRAX
“Do it!” I’d told Tac earlier, weary of the building ache in my hearts as she had lain on the floor and sobbed. “You’re… right. If they say they will help: take her.” Still. I’d trumpeted. “Na’riths!”
Tac forwarded the landing codes on the Comm screen to Lem, and had dragged his claws up the back of his neck. “They had a hob. His Comm was, ah, ‘brusque’, but he said he has information we’ll need. He knew we would be having problems with our Gryfala. He said something about medscans, Brax, but the transmission was patchy on our end.”
We’d both cursed. The transmitter system had needed replacing since last solar. There was always another repair that took precedence.
Problems, the hob had said.
Oh, we are having problems indeed. He’d been referring to the Gryfala, but she’s not the direct concern, not now that answers about her health and options for communication are a click away.
No, the problem lies with me. In me.
My hands have already started to shake even with a short time without her direct contact.
Ever since Tac began the preparations to depart, Tara has been ecstatic and the only thing she’s asked for is Lem—not me—and my anxiety level has driven through the starscape. Lem reportedly wouldn’t come out for her, but I don’t care. I’m only relieved that, for the moment, she’s standing before me again. “Let her go, Tac!”
Tac cocks his head, shaking it. “I wasn’t birthed last rotation. If you get her, you’ll keep her. Brax, we need to be going.”
Frustrated, I call to her and watch as her eyes fill with tears.
This doesn’t make me feel any better.
I strain forward, as far as the chain will give me, and she reaches out her hand. Tac keeps a grip on her upper arm as she leans forward to brush her fingertips down my snout. She tries to give me a smile, but it looks heartbroken, and my chest aches fiercely.
Her words though, stop its beats.
“Brax, eye weel mees yoo.”
I want to bellow triumphantly—these are the words I have been waiting for! But I can only manage to hoarsely return them. And I watch her tears fall, and the next tears fall faster at my solemn exchange.
She has mated me. I had hoped she was bonding to me. She just declared her devotion for me.
Why then, does this feel like a goodbye?
CHAPTER 60
TARA
This. Is Not. Earth.
“Tac?” I try again, but it’s as if no one hears me. Tac’s arms tighten around me as another alien brings a scary looking gun to my ear—
“Tac,” I whi
mper.
“Vssshp,” he says, and rubs his chin over the top of my head before pressing down hard enough that I can’t move.
The other alien pulls the trigger.
I scream.
The noise around us seems to magnify—but it hasn’t, not really. It’s just that now, I hear all their words in English.
Tac is howling, and starts to get angry-looking spots and blotches. I hear a chorus of “Get back!” and “Don’t go near him!” as other aliens drag their human women away from us like Tac and I are diseased.
Except for the one who shot me. He is standing here, calm as ever—except for his eyes. Strained, and serious, they don’t match his coolly professional smile. “Speak female. Tell your mate that you are fine now.”
I want to help him out here, but I sound like someone Mickey-Moused me with helium. “My what?”
Tac takes a deep breath, his chest pressing deeper into me, and I watch the spots fade for a moment before I feel him looking down at me. His arms tighten imperceptibly. But I feel it. It’s a Tac-hug, as unassuming and sweet as he is. “Are you alright, my mate?”
I can understand Tac! I can understand Tac! ...I cannot understand Tac. Still heliumed, I can only stutter, “I’m-I’m-you-my—“
Tac’s head whips towards the men he paid to shoot me. “The translator appears to be faulty and you caused my mate pain administering it. I am displeased.”
His skin is flooding with color again.
A woman steps forward and snaps her fingers in my face, and absurdly, I compare her to Brax and want to laugh. Or cry. Really, I need a moment. “Hon, tell him you’re fine.”
I swallow back hysterical tears and parrot, “I’m fine.”
She looks at Tac and angles her chin. “The translators work.” She gestures to the other women who look to be struggling with the same begrudging sort of gratitude as I’m feeling. “Many happy customers.”
“Speak for yourself,” A woman gripes. Called it. Happy customer’s my—