CHAPTER NINE | Fiona
Since we hadn’t been expecting a seven-day stay when we’d left for Gahn Thaleo’s mountain in the morning, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening getting organized. We had some supplies in the shuttle, including a couple of spare sets of clothes, but they were all sized for six-foot-something Valeria and there weren’t enough garments to clothe all four of us humans for an entire week.
After talking about the problem with Zaria and some of the other Deep Sky ladies, they volunteered to help make us Deep Sky clothing sized for our human bodies. Tilly was super excited at that prospect. She’d designed and made a lot of her own clothing back on Earth and I could tell she was thrilled to learn about another planet’s clothing production, even if it was all by hand instead of using a sewing machine. Nasrin wasn’t quite as bouncing-off-the-walls-excited as Tilly was about the idea, but she was game enough.
Me?
The last time I’d sewn something was when I was sixteen, trying to make a Halloween costume. Let’s just say that by the end of that process I hadn’t even needed to use fake blood on it. I’d done my fair share of stick-and-poke tattoos on Earth, both on myself and others, but apparently I just wasn’t any good at using a needle unless it was actually supposed to be going into your skin.
But I wasn’t about to make Zaria or any of the others sew my shit for me while I twiddled my useless human thumbs, and I also wasn’t keen on hand-washing my current outfit and being forced to sleep naked every single night. So I plastered a smile on my face and thanked Zaria and Tilly and the other ladies who actually knew what the hell they were doing for the opportunity.
We wouldn’t start working on the clothes until after the vaklok tomorrow, because apparently all the Deep Sky ladies were elbow-deep in preparations for those events. There was a lot of food to be made, it turned out, so we helped out with that where we could, stirring big pots of moonbark batter and getting meat ready for roasting.
Dinner took place in Gahn Thaleo’s big hall. Eating in here was a slightly less nerve-wracking experience than being in Gahn Errok’s hall, because here there was no big wide-open wall where one wandering step in the wrong direction would have you plunging off a very high ledge to certain death.
But that didn’t mean this hall wasn’t as impressive, because it definitely was. Unlike Gahn Errok’s main hall, this one wasn’t a big, open-sided cave built into the mountain. Instead, it actually kind of bubbled out. There was a huge, flat ledge that jutted out from the mountainside that served as the floor for the hall, and it was entirely enclosed by a rounded wall of crystalline aguir stone. The result was that it felt like we were suspended in some kind of big alien snow globe, but with stars and moon-like asteroids hanging overhead instead of fake bits of snow, all of it looking poised to float down around us if someone would only give the whole thing a little shake.
Gahn Thaleo’s people cooked the evening meal communally in the hall. Everyone was seated around a long, rectangular firepit beneath an opening in the clear aguir stone that acted as a chimney. Felkora – a Deep Sky bird reminiscent of chicken – roasted on spits above the fire, alongside their eggs and little pink freshwater fish.
Sitting here like this with all of them after spending so long in Gahn Errok’s mountain, the differences in the sizes of the two tribes became painfully apparent. I knew there were a few men out on braxilk patrol, and without them there were only about twenty males in the hall including Gahn Thaleo. Zaria had been the last woman to be paired off by the matchmaking Vrika, and she sat next to her mate. She’d be adding to the tribe’s numbers soon – her abdomen had the swell of a new pregnancy forming. There were only seven other adult women in Gahn Thaleo’s tribe besides Zaria, and three of them were well past child-bearing years. The other three younger mated women all had between one and three children of various ages hanging off of them. But it wouldn’t be enough. It already wasn’t enough. Not enough women, not enough children. Not enough fresh blood.
While I didn’t exactly agree with him – because hey, we weren’t just available wombs on legs waiting to be filled with Deep Sky babies – I could at least understand some of Gahn Thaleo’s concerns. His crisis was a deeply existential one. The continued survival of his people was at stake, and it felt much more severe here than in Gahn Errok’s bustling mountain. There were more children in Gahn Errok’s territory, plus with Priya and Stephanie they already had two new human ladies added to the mix, not to mention the Deep Sky women there still waiting for their mate bonds. Maybe it was just Gahn Errok’s swaggering confidence (arrogance was probably the better word) but there was a sense of energy in his mountain. The feeling that their future was secured.
There was no such security here. And for everything Gahn Thaleo was, I at the very least knew that he was the sort of Gahn who would do anything for his people.
I stopped chewing mid-bite, the delicious alien chicken suddenly feeling too tough and dry to swallow. I was overtaken by a sudden bout of sadness. Because it wasn’t just Gahn Thaleo staring down the barrel of his tribe’s eventual extinction. I knew the Death Plains’ tribe’s numbers were even worse than these ones. And even the larger Sea Sand tribes with healthier numbers still didn’t have anywhere near enough women for everyone who wanted a family to actually end up with one.
I forced myself to swallow and looked up to find Dalk’s sight stars on me. I flushed under the severity of that alien gaze. Suddenly his words from before came pinging back to me.
Have you forgotten that there are no unmated females left in Gahn Thaleo’s tribe? You may not think that you need guarding, but you do.
I still didn’t think we actually needed guarding. The Vrika’s word was all, and until it decided one of us was meant for one of the Deep Sky males, we would just be guests here, nothing more. But I doubted Dalk saw it that way. He was staring at me like he was just waiting to jump up and snatch me back from the outstretched claws of a Deep Sky male.
I frowned at him, and his sight stars vibrated in response. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he even cared about what the Deep Sky guys wanted. It wasn’t as if he seemed like he wanted to be around us much. Although, Dalk’s tribe had been the first ones to come into contact with us out on the open sands, saving us from the zeelk and carting us away to Gahn Fallo’s territory on their irkdu. Maybe he and the others from Gahn Fallo’s tribe felt a certain sort of finders-keepers possessiveness over us. Something territorial but ultimately impersonal.
Yeah. That was probably it. Considering how little pleasure Dalk seemed to take in his human babysitting duties, it had to be something like that. He wasn’t like Oxriel, who took obvious pleasure in our company, treating us as actual friends that he wanted to be around and spend time with.
I knew Dalk missed his homeland. There were still unmated women in Gahn Fallo’s tribe. Maybe he missed more than just the territory itself, more than just his uncle.
Maybe he missed a woman. Maybe there was somebody out there he was hoping to be bonded to eventually. Had he had a first love? A best female friend from childhood? Was there some Sea Sand lady pining for his return, praying every night that the Lavrika, or maybe the Vrika, would call him for her?
Did he pray for the same thing?
That thought made me feel... weird. Like my stomach was suddenly full of stones beneath a chest that felt far too empty. I didn’t know what the hell to do with the odd and uncomfortable feeling, and Dalk was still glaring at me like a weirdo, so I glared right back and then stuck my tongue out at him.
His sight stars burst outward then back in, surprise momentarily overtaking his usual pissed-off-ness. But his anger came back, because it always did, and before I knew it he was on his feet and closing the distance between us.
There wasn’t much distance between us to close. He and I had been seated at the very end of the rectangular firepit, across from each other as if sitting at the last places at a table, and all he had to do was take one big step around the end of the fire before he was right beside me. He crouched down, giving me a menacing stare.
“What’s wrong with your tongue?” he asked. I would have called it a bark, but it was just too quiet for that. A sort of grumpy snap of sound but meant only for my ears. My poorly-placed, ineffective human ears, that is. Good lord.
“Nothing!” I replied.
His sight stars fell to my mouth and stayed there.
“Why are you showing it to me if there is not something wrong with it?” he asked, still quiet, still grumpy.
“It’s a human thing. Don’t worry about it.”
He gave an ironic sort of snort, as if to say without words that human things were all he worried about these days. And, in fairness, that kind of made sense, given his whole “I’m your unwilling bodyguard” attitude.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, more forcefully this time. “Seriously. You worry too much.”
“You do not worry enough.”
“Ha! I’ve already been drugged, abducted, and forcibly taken right out of my own world. At this point, what the hell else is there to worry about? Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘just go with the flow’?”
“No.”
“It means to just relax and not worry so much. Don’t fight things so damn hard.”
“I would not want to go with the flow,” Dalk grunted. “I do not like water.”
“It’s not literal,” I said with a small laugh.
“Even so,” he said, settling himself into a seated position beside me, because I guessed this was his new spot, “Why would I not fight the flow? I am good at fighting.”
“You’re telling me,” I said with a shake of my head. “But then again, you kind of are just going with the flow, aren’t you? You don’t really want to be here with us. Yet here you are, not fighting it.”
He stilled at my side, his sight stars brightened by the fire he stared at. Without looking at me, he murmured, “I never said I did not wish to be with you.”
I snapped my gaze forward, staring at the fire just like he was, heat creeping under my skin. That you had felt oddly... specific. It didn’t feel like a great big all-you-humans you. It felt like...
It felt like he only meant me.
I was probably just imagining it. But that’s how it fucking sounded and once I’d heard it like that, I couldn’t interpret the sentence any other way. My head was emptied out of possible replies, but Dalk said something else and saved me from having to think of one.
“If there is nothing wrong with your tongue, then what does it mean? To push it out of your mouth like that and aim it at an unmated male?”
Jesus Christ on a cracker. When he said it like that it sounded positively perverted, like I’d been trying to proposition him or something. Which, coupled with the awkwardness I already felt about throwing myself at him at New Year’s, only made everything that much worse.
“It’s stupid,” I said quickly. “Childish. Little kids do it. It’s a way of... I don’t know. Teasing. Or getting someone’s attention. Although it’s also done behind someone’s back a lot, so maybe it’s not about attention...”
“What is it about when you do it?”
I laughed at the fact that Dalk expected me to actually understand my own motivations for something as silly and thoughtless as sticking my tongue out at him.
“I don’t know,” I said with a half-shrug. “You just looked so grumpy over there. I guess I couldn’t resist.”
“Could not resist teasing me.”
“Kind of?”
“Like a child.”
My gaze swung to him sharply, because there was no way that anyone on any fucking planet could think of this hulking, brooding, brutal alien male as a kid.
“No!” I replied shakily, startled.
“I meant you,” he clarified, voice flat. “Not me.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure that was much better. “Do... Do you think of me like a child?”
Now it was his turn to swing his head round and gawk at me. His sight stars spasmed, appearing to go to my mouth, then my chest, then to my eyes, but the movement of the glittering shards was so violent and quick that it was hard to track.
“Certainly not,” he snapped.
“Well, you’re the one who just said it!”
“No. You told me sticking out one’s tongue was something children do. I was merely... gathering context.”
“How about you just go back to your spot?” I said, flapping my hand across the fire. “How’s that for context?”
“Keep your tongue in your mouth and maybe I will.”
Ooh. This bastard. There was a snarky hint of challenge in his voice that, God help me, made me want to stick out my tongue at him even more.
Or maybe give him the finger. Not that he’d understand that, either. He’d probably think my weak human hand wasn’t working properly or something.
“Or what?”
His sight stars glittered in narrowed eyes. And then, the movement so slow and deliberate I couldn’t tear my eyes away, he leaned forward so that our faces were level and stuck his tongue out at me.
I said tongue, but really, it was tongues. And that wasn’t the only difference in how he did it. Instead of holding his mouth tight and mostly closed, his lips tense around the protruding tongue, he actually opened his mouth in a wide, snarling sneer before the black tongue – or tongues – emerged. They rolled out of his mouth, together as one wide organ that reached all the way past his chin, before the three tips of the tongues, trident-like, diverged from each other. The result was actually slightly terrifying – his mouth pulled open in a jagged gash across his face, his fangs glinting like knives, his tongues spewing forth like black tentacles from some dark fucking hell mouth.
And yet...
I wasn’t terrified. Not one bit.
Nope. I was instead overtaken with the batshit crazy urge to reach out and touch one of those dark appendages with my fingertips.
Or my mouth.
I was saved from doing something that colossally stupid by Oxriel’s voice suddenly piping up from the other side of the fire.
“What are you doing, Dalk? What is wrong with your tongues?”
What is it with these aliens and thinking something’s wrong with your tongue?
Dalk pulled his tongues back into his mouth, spearing Oxriel with a dark glance.
“Nothing,” he grunted. “It is a human thing. Do not worry about it.”
“Are you certain?” Oxriel said dubiously. “I have never seen a new woman make a face like that.”
I chuckled, because I was pretty sure that no human, no matter how hard they tried, could have mimicked the exact effect of Dalk’s tongue-out expression from a moment ago. Maybe if they were wearing a Halloween mask...
I was about to stick my tongue out at Oxriel, but Dalk must have seen or somehow sensed that I was gearing up to do it, because he suddenly said, only for me to hear, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t show Oxriel your tongue.”
“Excuse me... I... What?” I asked, blinking at him. “You’re not in charge of my tongue!”
“Of course I am.”
“What do you mean, of course you are?!” I stammered, not sure if I should be angry or burst out laughing at the absurdity of the declaration.
“I am here for your safety. You are, quite literally, in my charge,” Dalk countered, unfazed.
“And you think me sticking my tongue out at Oxriel is dangerous?” I asked, hissing it so that the other male wouldn’t hear.
“For you? Likely not. For him? Absolutely.”
“And why, exactly, is that?”
“Just don’t do it,” Dalk growled, rising up from his seated position. He towered, staring darkly down at me. “Don’t show him your tongue.” He turned and headed back to his place on the other side of the fire, and I would have crossed my heart and sworn on my own Nan’s grave that as he went I heard him mutter, “And do not kiss him, either.”