Chapter 10 #6
"I would never presume that an intrusion would be welcomed," Elethenn finished, flushed and miserable. "Although I would be happy to offer my friendship if it is… permissible." He looked torn about who to direct that statement to, and ended up just ducking his head again.
Oh.
Oh. Had Elethenn assumed I was… making myself available? Had he thought that I was coming on to him when I stopped by and chatted about language, when I flashed my bare neck and bragged up his cooking and asked for his contact information?
Well, when I thought about it like that –
And had Araxis assumed I'd found another sinnenthi while off wandering on my own? Someone who had leapt in and kept me safe and who I'd asked about immediately in the interview room at the guard station? Elethenn is important to you, he'd said carefully.
Had he assumed I'd found someone else, someone else who might tend to my needs as virra?
And still, Araxis had asked for clarification and sat down with us and listened until he was able to determine that I didn't understand why it might be a bit weird for a sinnenthi to speak with me, and then he'd spoken clearly about our…
bond, or whatever, and what it was so that we all understood.
I huffed, scrubbing my hands over my face and shoving my hair off my forehead. It was tangled, probably misted with dried blood. Fuck, I needed to get clean. "But you aren't even attracted to me," I ground out, exhausted. "Otherwise I wouldn't have –"
I wouldn't have what, tried to be his friend?
I hadn't even been trying to flirt, although apparently I'd been doing exactly that in an abayan way.
No wonder Araxis had barely been able to look at me when we first met.
The threshold for what constituted flirting or indicating availability was so low that I was surprised every abaya I met didn't think I wanted to fuck them. God, what if they did?
When I looked back up at Elethenn, he was staring at me, confused. Araxis, too, was watching me, head tilted.
I guess, on top of everything else, I was still an idiot about cultural subtext.
I sighed. "I mean, I'd like to be friends, but you're going to have to tell me if I'm being accidentally weird because of cultural things.
And honestly, someone needs to start fucking explaining stuff.
Even Inmadra just shuffles off defining terms for me – which I'd think was one of the big points of having a culture and language tutor – so that I'm stuck compiling my own useless glossary of things I don't understand and that don't have definitions I can find anywhere. "
Next to me, Araxis blinked. "She is your language tutor as well? I – had not realized you had one."
"Yes, I am seeing a teacher. I am seeing her for weeks. Where else would I get a bushel of worksheets?" I said, although my accent came out all wrong thanks to everything about how my day had been.
"Studying with," Elethenn corrected quietly. "Seeing is with your eyes."
Right now, I was seeing a couple of useless sinnenthi, but I kept that to myself. Araxis's face did something complicated that I couldn't quite track, his hand tracing down the long line of my spine. And then he turned, looking directly at Elethenn. "What was your creche?" he asked.
Elethenn's face twitched, a spasm as if he was in pain. "Hanalthi."
Well, that wasn't great. It also wasn't a massive surprise, not with so much Hanalthi presence on station or Elethenn's cryptic comment about having a background in security.
Many of the crecheless abaya who ended up on Sozamia were probably connected to Creche Hanalthi in some way.
And given how traditional and rigid they skewed…
"Hm." Araxis shifted, his hand dropping away from my skin, and I barely restrained myself from whining with displeasure. "You understand how Creche Thiel is different from Creche Hanalthi."
Elethenn's eyes narrowed with worry. "I begin to," he admitted.
"You understand that, in Creche Thiel, a person is as they say they are.
If you are antali in your core, then you are antali; if you are sinnenthi, then you are sinnenthi; if you feel skoshas, then that is how you are.
It is not the place of any here to dictate that for you, regardless of how you may seem. "
Across the table, Elethenn's pale face went perfectly blank, his eyes wide and gleaming in the pink light overhead, wet. He nodded.
"Then," said Araxis, "Creche Thiel will offer for you, if you will declare yourself for us. We will leave in just under four weeks for the empire. You would have a place among us, if you wish it."
A surprised breath caught in my throat: we weren't supposed to start expanding the creche until we got to Thelessia. Next to me, Araxis was still, radiating confidence.