CHAPTER 8
The alien beast known as a Rakhii knocks on the rookery door a short time later. Julie makes me open it, extremely distrustful of me and wary of an attack in case I ‘contacted a reinforcement to rob, rape, and murder us’—her words.
There is of course, no imminent attack. However, when I open the door and reveal our guest, Hannah gasps and Julie slaps her hand over her mouth.
Julie slaps her hand over her own mouth, that is, not Hannah’s.
“WHUT THA HELL ISTH THAT?! Whut tha hell isth that?!”Julie shouts, still muffling herself.
His name is Kitmalo, and as he stands just outside the rookery, he’s looking a bit wild-eyed. “What do you require?” he asks. He tosses a rucksack into the rookery. My rucksack. It skids on the wood flooring, not stopping until it runs over the rug in the social activities area. “Thank you,” I tell him. “That was kind of you.”
He shrugs. “I saw you’d left it on the ship and thought since I was headed to you anyway, might as well deliver it.”
I nod my appreciation. “Very thoughtful.” Then I introduce him to my humans. “This is Kitmalo, and Kitmalo, be pleased to meet Julie there, and my…” My mate, I desperately want to proclaim again. Would it distress her to hear it? “My Hannah,” I settle for saying instead, erring on the side of caution. Speedy introductions concluded, I turn to face him and give him the purpose of my Comm. “My new companions require proof that I’m not native to this planet surface,” I explain.
Behind me, my new companions have fallen completely silent.
The Rakhii leans around me, but his curling horn knocks into the doorframe, causing the wood to dent. “Infernofire, sorry!” he curses, then sighs, the scales around his mouth tightening, the quills on his head slapping back until they lie almost flat. His long ears fall low and his dorsal spines raise up in agitation as he slides his gaze to the women. “Jonohkada speaks the truth. We hail from a planet quite a ways from here.” He gestures to himself. “We have been explaining away our strange appearance with a kovare story—”
”A cover story,” I murmur, assisting his pronunciation.
He slides me a mildly harassed look. ”A cover story about shooting movies, but this,” he brings his hand brusquely up and down his arm, making his scales peel up and shift, “is quite real, I vow it to you.” His eyes scan the other rookery doors lining Hannah’s multi-dwelling hallway before they shift back to me. “Now, I have a female to catch. Do you require anything else?”
“You’re… catching a woman?” Julie asks, her voice sounding most odd.
I glance back at her to find her gaze glued to the Rakhii.
“Yes,” he confirms. “She doesn’t know it yet, but we are mates. I’ve marked her well, but I would like to hurry after her before my scent trail fades.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Wait,” says Julie. “How do we know you two freaks aren’t in costume trying to feed us some crazy bullshit story?”
Hannah gasps. “Don’t call them freaks, Julie, that’s rude!”
The Rakhii growls under his breath, ducks under the doorway—and then has to turn his horns because they spread too wide for him to get them through. Hannah and Julie scuttle back as Kitmalo impatiently prowls right into their food preparation area and approaches a black-patinaed iron pan hanging from a hook on the wall. He nimbly frees it and flips it over. He blows a burst of fire into it from his mouth.
Julie shrieks and Hannah yelps.
My cat darts under the tri-seat, her eyes huge with fright.
Not pleased to see that he’s made my companion animal afraid, Kitmalo’s ears fold low and he exhales a smoky breath.
An alarm begins screeching shrilly. Hannah rushes nervously around Kitmalo to a round disc on the wall and pokes a deactivation button. She backs away from him just as quickly.
My wing talons cup themselves high above my shoulders. “Thank you, Kitmalo. I think this display will convince them. We wish you all the best with your female—but do make certain she’s willing—”
Kitmalo shoots me a stern look. “Of course I’ll make certain. We were told not to take women off of the pedestrian travelways and I won’t be.”
“Ah, good.”
He exhales more smoke. He begins to look irritated when the alarm screeches in reaction, set off yet again. “Technically I took her from her bed.”
“What—”I start, but Kitmalo is already leaving.
“Thank you,” I call to be polite. But I have to mightily resist the urge to Comm Dohrein and Gracie back on our home planet. They asked me to keep them appraised of what the Rakhii do. Gracie knew they would prove to be ‘wild cards’ once released on Earth’s surface, and clearly she was right.
“You are welcome,” Kitmalo replies before he fits himself and the massive spread of his curling horns through the door. Once his rack successfully clears the frame, he claps the door shut behind himself.
Julie strides so swiftly to the door she’s nearly running, and she slams a bolt-style lock into its mechanism, locking the door from no doubt the average menace on this planet.
I tap out a quick note of additional thanks to Kitmalo for his assistance. I can”t begin to convey my appreciation and gratitude especially after learning that he paused his own pursuit for his mate in order to assist me in mine. I raise my wings enough that I can tuck my Comm into my rear trouser pocket, Hannah and Julie swing their gazes to me.
“Adequate?” I ask. “Proof, that is.”
Shakily, Julie runs a hand through her hair. “All right.” Her eyes are very wide. “Hard to explain that any other way, I guess.”
I move to the tri seat and crouch down, carefully reaching under the furniture to retrieve my frightened cat. “I am sorry you were frightened, my beautiful feline,” I tell her.
“You should name her,” Hannah offers, her voice sounding steadier than Julie’s. I glance up at her in surprise to find her not nearly as shaken in appearance as her roommate. Not nearly as concerned as I expected. “Got any ideas?” she asks. “What are some nice names from your home that you like?”
My gaze drops back to my cat. “I’ve always thought Saphkarra was indescribably pretty.”
The feline’s narrowed eyes seem to soften and her whiskers shift forward, perhaps in approval. Of course I’m uncertain if she feels anything like approval at all; I’m no expert in reading felines.
“Do you like the name Saphkarra?” I ask her, drawing my thumb along her lanate tail, which has curled around my digit with almost prehensile ability.
My cat doesn’t indicate a no.
“Then I’ll take that as a yes,” I say softly to her.
She purrs in response.
“What kind of a name is that?” Julie asks.
“My dam’s,” I reply.
“Your what?”
“It was my mother’s,” I clarify.
“Oh,” says Julie.
“‘Was?’” Hannah sounds curious and a little hesitant. “Did she… is she gone?”
“She is,” I confirm, feeling a little melancholy. “She was quite advanced in age when she laid my egg.”
“Laidyour egg?” Julie asks, incredulous.
I look up at her as Saphkarra’s sleek form drapes over my arms, stretching out with an agility that is mind boggling. “Why, yes. My kind are hatched from eggs. I was incubated by a nanny Rakhii.” I point to the door Kitmalo exited from. “One of Kitmalo’s relatives, in fact.”
Julie is frowning. “This is either the most elaborate prank anyone has ever played,” she begins—
“Oh, come on, Julie,” Hannah cuts in. “You don’t think this is fake anymore.”
I stroke my alien pet. “Anyway, my dam had long pined for offspring, I’ve been told. She was very broody—”
“Broody? Like a freaking chicken?” Julie starts, but she cuts off with a sharply hissed, “Oww! Bitch!”
“Let him talk!” Hannah hisses back.
“—and when she finally succeeded in laying a viable egg, she wanted to incubate it herself. Me,” I confirm with a smile, trying to imagine such a Gryfala. What a brave princess my dam must have been. But my smile fades. “Between the egg laying and attending to my shelled self, she became too depleted. Her Rakhii guard took over, something he’d been trying to do to no avail all along. Eventually he hatched me. They tell me she got to hold me.” I rub softly behind Saphkarra’s ear. Her steely eyes stare into mine. “I was told that she never looked happier.”
Or more sorrowful,I’ve also heard. Because she knew, as she cuddled me in her arms, that she wouldn’t live to see me grow.
“She… she died?” Julie asks in a small voice.
I nod.
Hannah cries, “Tell me you want to make him leave now!”
My arms tighten around Saphkarra and my wings hunch as I look up at the pair of women sharply.
The lower lids of Hannah’s eyes have turned bright pink, and Julie sniffs, looking curiously less combative. She clears her throat and shoots a look in Hannah”s direction that would be scathing if her eyelids weren’t growing slightly puffy. “If he ends up killing us in our sleep, my ghost is going to haunt the shit out of your ghost. I hope you’re prepared for that.”
“I would never kill you in your sleep!” I protest.
Julie’s eyes narrow. “Would you do it while we were awake?”
“Never!” I exclaim, aghast.
“Julie, stop it! You’re upsetting him,” Hannah says.
Julie’s glare eases and her brows rise as she takes me in. “You know, it’s crazy. But I’m starting to believe you.” With a shake of her head, she saunters to the food preparation area. “All right. If alien Oliver Twist isn’t getting tossed out on his ear, I’m going to eat. I’m starving.” She slides an accusing glare in Hannah’s direction. “I would have picked something up on the way home, but my jerk roommate told me she’d picked up enough of a surprise for both of us.”
“I have been trained in the arts of feeding females,” I offer. “I could prepare you something. My friend Laura is an artist with food, and she kindly tutored me in all the cuisines she believed a fellow human female might appreciate if she was accustomed only to Earthen fare.”
“But do you do dishes?” Hannah asks with a smile, as if the pairing of these traits is a happenstance too impossible to be believed.
“Without being hounded a million times first?” Julie adds skeptically, moving back to the entryway section of their dwelling to retrieve her footwear, which she threw down in order to have her hands free to pelt me with the pillow moments after her arrival. She turns to the narrow table behind their rookery door, to the rack nestled beneath it, and she fits her footwear neatly there before she straightens and moves for the food preparation area again, sidling around what appears to be a freestanding cupboard-with-a-countertop unit to reach the cookery and hand washing station where she begins to wash her hands.
“Of course,” I reply.
Hannah and Julie affix twin looks of interest on me. When Julie transfers her attention elsewhere, it’s to step to the silver refrigeration unit, crack open its door, and reach into it wherein she selects an orange root vegetable from a transparent sliding drawer and bites into it.
Hannah, however, never moves her eyes off of me. “And you like to cook?” she asks me, her heartbreakingly beautiful face nearly avaricious as she scans me.
“Yes. I do.” I give her a hopeful smile. “If you have mammalian dairy milk, eggs—preferably avian in origin—gelatin, finely ground grain, the crystalline form of sugar cane, and the concentrated syrup derived from boiling sweet tree sap, then I have a recipe I’ve been eager to attempt ever since I learned of it. I’ve tried our world’s version, but I’ve been told that Earth’s ingredients make the end product taste a different sort of delicious.” My wing talons rub together in excitement, and I watch both Julie and Hannah’s eyes draw upward to watch them—which makes me nervous.
When I clutch my wings together tightly, Hannah’s gaze drops to me. “What does your recipe make?”
Julie eyes me too, bringing one of her feet off the floor to absently rub at her instep with her free hand.
“Ice cream,” I tell them.
Julie drops her foot and stabs her vegetable at me, making me fall back even though she’s too far from me to connect. “You’re hired. Make us a meal while I take a bath.”
”As you wish,” I hurriedly agree.
I look to Hannah, who shrugs. “I’m with her. Homemade ice cream? What do you need first? I’ll help.”
I stare at her in wonder for a moment. I get to share quality time with my mate. I will treasure this. I am the luckiest of males!
“Jonohkada?” Hannah says questioningly. Julie’s tread changes as the wood-like flooring transitions to a hallway rug, making her self-assured, slapping stride land as softer-padded—but no less confident—footfalls as she stalks down the hall.
She has an alien in her rookery and she still retains her confidence.
I should be able to be confident too. And when I glance down at Saphkarra, she’s watching me as if she knows what I’m thinking. She seems to be telling me, You can do this, Jonohkada.
Squaring my shoulders, resettling my wings, I take a deep breath and look to my mate to see she’s watching me with softly curved lips. “Apologies,” I tell her. “I became a bit lost in thought. But back to necessary ingredients, let’s see. First I need one quart of milk…”