Chapter 9 #2
“Thirsty? No,” she said. She leaned forward, plunking the glasses at her chest down on the counter beside the sink, then placing down the ones she’d held in her hands. “I came to do the dishes.”
“What do you want to do to the dishes?”
“What do I…” Her brows pulled together, then she suddenly laughed. “Rivven, I’m going to help you wash them!”
I was left so breathless – so brainless – by her laugh that it took me a few moments to recover.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Because…That’s what you do? It’s good manners! You made us a wonderful meal, you let me sleep in your bed. It’s the least I can do.”
“You do not have to do this. You should be resting,” I argued. But she had already stationed herself at the sink, examining the tap configuration.
“I’ll rest after,” she said. “I had that nap, and it really helped.”
“But…” It did not feel right, to have this lovely little female doing chores in my kitchen.
Especially when she’d only just gotten here, and she was recovering from being unwell.
I stood there, still holding the plates and tray balanced on my left hand and right forearm, feeling rather useless as she filled the sink with water.
“Just put those down there,” she said, finding the bar of soap I used for dishes and sudsing up the first glass. “I’ll get to them.”
“I can do these ones,” I said. “They are more soiled. And heavy!”
Shiloh gave another small laugh, and turned to look at me over her shoulder, her hands plunged deep in soapy water. “Rivven…If you get married, don’t you think your wife is going to do at least a few things to help you around here?”
If, she said. If you get married. I tried very hard not to dwell on that word.
I did not think I was entirely successful.
“Just let me do this for you,” she said. “You’ve already done so much for me.”
I still did not feel right about this. But she seemed so adamant. And above all, I wanted to make her happy. If letting her wash a few plates was what it took, so be it.
I put down the tray and plates.
I refused to leave her, though. The idea of her alone in here, washing up while everyone else relaxed, was entirely intolerable to me.
I retrieved a clean rag and began to dry the dishes once she had rinsed them.
She glanced at me, but did not argue about me participating this time.
So perhaps this was acceptable to her – even expected.
To work together like this. Side by side.
“You are good at this,” I said. She washed everything with a graceful sort of efficiency. I found myself staring at the way her fingers worked through the water, nimble and stronger than they looked.
“Well, thank you,” she said, passing me a plate to dry. “I’ve had lots of practice. When Daddy was alive, I always washed and he dried.”
“Your father? And he is not alive now?”
She paused to scrub extra vigorously at a spot on another plate, her head bent away from me. “No,” she finally said. “He’s not. I’ve been on solo washing and drying duty for a while, now.”
She really was very focussed on this one plate. She kept working at it even though, to my eyes, it was clean by now. When she spoke again, there was a brittle sort of brightness in her voice.
“How about you? Are your parents around? Do you…I don’t know how this works. But do you ever get news from home?”
Home.
I wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for when she asked me such a question.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever had one.
“I do not remember my parents,” I told her. She finally relinquished that plate so I could dry it. “They both died when I was very young. Before I came here, I lived in the orphans’ barracks at the local village school.”
“Oh.” She said it very quietly. “I’m sorry.”
I was about to ask her what for, because I could think of nothing that would ever require her to apologize to me.
But then I remembered the section on human funeral traditions in the book that Tasha had written.
Apologizing was a common way of expressing one’s condolences.
Warden Hallum had made us study the text endlessly, hosting lesson after lesson here in my saloon, so that even those such as Xennet, who would not be able to read the text on his own, could learn it all by heart.
I could not remember now, though, if there was an appropriate response I was supposed to make.
Even if I had remembered, I was not sure I would have been capable of it.
I was struck speechless, motionless, by what she’d just said.
By the kindness in her. That she would offer her condolences to me when she did not know me and likely did not care much about me.
Maybe they were just words. Maybe they meant nothing at all to her but the completion of some cultural necessity.
But they meant something to me.
“I guess we’re both used to being on our own,” she said, saving me from having to reply. “But…” She passed me the final dish – the tray. “I have to admit. This is nice.”
“Nice?”
“Yeah. This.” Her eyes went to where my hand and forearm held the tray, my tail running the rag over the surface to dry it. Then, they went to my face. “Just having somebody beside me. Somebody to do the dishes with. I hadn’t really…Hadn’t really realized how much I’d been missing that until now.”
She bit her lower lip, drawing my gaze to her mouth and, inexplicably, heat to my loins. She looked as if she might say something else, but then abruptly turned and emptied the sink of water. She busied herself wiping down the edges of the sink and the counter as I began to put the dry dishes away.
“You have hot water.”
“I…Yes?” It seemed an odd observation for her to suddenly make, when she’d just had her arms near elbow-deep in it. “Not all the men do. But it is necessary for cleaning the kitchen equipment I use. When Warden Hallum and I built this place, he helped me fashion the system from scratch.”
“Wow,” she leaned her hip against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. This emphasized the mysterious human softness there. Her breasts. I did my utmost to focus solely on her face and her words. “You guys built this place?”
“Yes,” I replied. “After my injury, it became clear I would not be able to run a ranch as the others did. Warden Hallum had to come up with something for me to do that would support the way of life out here enough to satisfy the Imperial Justice Committee of Zabria.”
“Your injury?” Her gaze stole to my right wrist. I raised it so that she could have a better look.
“Some time after I arrived here, I was gored by a male bracku. Luckily, I was quick enough that it only caught me by the hand and not the chest or belly. But there was no saving it.”
I could speak of the event, nearly detached. Just talking about or remembering what had happened did not gave me the same chest-seizing panic as actually being near a living male bracku.
“My God,” Shiloh breathed. A flicker of some raw emotion moved through her eyes. She clenched her right hand into a fist. “That must have been terrible. To go through that as a child.”
“I was lucky to have had Warden Hallum,” I said.
“He was younger, then. We all were. He’d only just begun his duties on Zabria Prinar One.
He had accompanied Xennet here, and had just taken up his role as the provincial warden, replacing the individual wardens Dorn and I started out with.
But before arriving here, Warden Hallum had extensive military training in the Zabrian Imperial Guard.
This included emergency medical training.
He was the one who performed the amputation. ”
The muscles of Shiloh’s slender throat moved. Her small jaw tensed.
“Out here?” she asked in a croaking voice. “You weren’t brought to a hospital, or…”
“No. Once we are brought here, we are not allowed to leave. There used to be medical facilities on this world, when a larger, non-criminal population lived here. They are all abandoned now. But Warden Hallum got me through it. He tried to save as much as he could. But there was infection, and…” I let my right arm fall back down to my side.
“And there was not much else to be done.”
“Did you have pain management, at least?” she asked.
“Medication? No.”
Her mouth thinned at that. I wondered if it meant that she was now worried about accessing medication for herself in this world. If she was reconsidering her choice to come here.
“But things are changing!” I said hurriedly.
“Zohro, who lives just beyond the border of this province, is a trained surgeon. He has created a surgical suite on his property using funds from the program, and he has access to pain medication and equipment that is calibrated for humans. His wife was pregnant when she arrived here, and he delivered the baby through surgery. And, of course, you are not a convict. You would be allowed to leave any time you required any sort of substantial medical care. So you need never worry about your access to those things!”
“I wasn’t worried about me.”
Then who…
The answer struck me like a fist.
She was worried about me. The childhood version of me. Under the cut of Warden Hallum’s blade without anything to numb it all away.
I wanted simultaneously to run from her care, her kindness, because it was all too sweet, too much…
And to sink into it.
“You need not worry about me, Shiloh,” I told her. My voice came out rasping. Quiet and warmly rough, like smoke. “You need never worry about me.” I raised my arm once more, so she could see the scar tissue. “It was not as bad as it could have been.”
Warden Hallum was incredibly skilled. The stitches had been tight, ordered, and perfectly precise, even while I’d struggled to stay still.
But Shiloh did not look relieved as I’d hoped she would.
“But just because it wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” she said softly, “doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad.”
“I suppose that is true,” I said at length. “There are varying degrees of badness and goodness to everything. I healed well, all things considered. And I believe I am as capable, just as I am now, as any other man could hope to be.”
“Oh, of course!” she said at once. “Though…If I can ask? And just tell me if you don’t want to answer…”
“You can ask me anything.”
“Since you are obviously very strong and competent…And I understand you have other animals to care for besides all the other chores you do…So, why don’t you have the cattle, too?”
“Ah.” How best to explain it? “I ceased ranching after my injury, but not because of the amputation itself. I cannot…I find it very difficult to be around adult male bracku now. My heart feels as if it will beat right out of my chest, and it becomes very hard to breathe.”
I hoped that did not make me sound weak or wrong to her ears. Or defective in some way. I did not like to admit these things to her, in case they might negatively sway her opinion of me. But I’d told her that she could ask me anything. And I had meant it.
I would be honest with her. Always.
Even if it was to my detriment.
But she did not look at me any differently now. She did not seem to be judging me, or finding me wanting for not being able to wrangle a herd, even now, even as a full-grown man. She was merely moving her head up and down in that human way, understanding in her eyes.
“Oh, yeah. That makes sense,” she said.
And I stared at her then. Just stared and stared.
Because never once had anyone said such a thing to me before. It did not feel like she was simply saying, “That makes sense.”
It felt as if she gazed upon me – all of me – and believed that I made sense.
“It’s something like pee tea ess dee, right? I’d have to imagine a lot of the guys here struggle with similar issues.”
“All the others can manage their herds.”
“Oh, no. I don’t mean specifically about the cattle. But even just to end up here, you’ve all gone through something traumatic. I think I already know the answer to this next question. But have any of you ever gotten any therapy?”
My blank look must have confirmed whatever she already thought. Though, really, I was still trying to understand the bit about the urine tea she had mentioned.
“About the tea…” I began. I really did not want to make such a drink for her.
Or drink it, if that was what she was about to suggest.
“The tea? That part stands for traumatic. Post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe that’s not the same name you use in Zabria.”
“It must not be,” I said. “I have never heard of such a thing.”
Warden Hallum had certainly not given the condition a name. He’d merely told me that he’d seen similar issues from time to time in other soldiers in the Zabrian Guard.
I remembered, when he’d told me that, almost feeling worse. Feeling that I had no right to such emotions or experiences. I was not a soldier fighting for the empire. I was merely a young, exiled convict, a foolish boy who’d had a bad time with an angry, overgrown cow.
But perhaps Shiloh did not see it this way. She tapped her chin, her gaze thoughtful.
“There’s art therapy,” she was muttering now, seemingly more to herself than me.
“What was that?”
“Oh! Nothing. Sorry, just talking to myself.”
She smiled, and I found myself smiling back, rather dopily, I had no doubt. I also had no doubt that my eyes were embarrassingly white right now.
“Thanks for telling me all of that.”
Her thanks made me uncomfortable. Because it seemed to me that I had done really nothing of note at all. Certainly nothing worthy of her gratitude. I grimaced and scratched at my jaw.
“You can ask me anything,” I said once more. “I’ll always give you the truth. You deserve to know who-”
Who you might marry.
“-whose roof you’re under.”
“I appreciate that. And speaking of the roof, and the building, and all that good stuff,” she said. “The hot water…”
She was back to this again. She’d mentioned the water before.
“Yes?”
“What do you think my chances are,” she said with a little laugh, “of getting a warm bath?”