Halley
The silence ticks by. I can’t tell if they’re waiting for me to say something else or if they’re considering my apology. Regardless, I decide to keep my mouth shut, not wanting to accidentally say anything else stupid and risk ruining their good opinion of me forever.
Then, too quick for me to see, Keelo and Eot separate into their individual forms. Keelo’s got Rin in his arms. She’s still sleeping—that’s how smooth the transition was. He stands, moving to a bedroll and tucking Rin into her blankets, one of her spare tunics acting as a pillow.
Eot returns to his seat on the stones I gathered, perched on the edge as if the rocks aren’t actually all that comfortable.
“Rin is…” He pauses in his whispering, pursing his lips and clearly hunting for the right words to explain.
“Rin is hurting because…she’s missing home?
” I suggest, putting together the small pieces of Rin’s life I’ve observed so far—her too-big clothes, which clearly weren’t made for her.
Her tiny collection of treasures and her sparse belongings.
The way she rushed from the cockpit when Eot mentioned them never returning home.
And how it's taken her four days to speak to me, as if she’s had little to no interactions with people outside of her own species.
“No. Rin is hurting because, akh…” He glances at Keelo.
“Because Rin is missing her mom?” I make another guess, although I don’t have as much evidence for this hypothesis. More than likely, I’m projecting my own feelings onto Rin.
Again Eot shakes his head.
“Rin is female,” Keelo says, stepping closer to the stove and crouching with his hands outstretched toward the heat, as if he is suddenly aware of the cold, now that he’s not combined with Eot.
“Well, I’d guessed that much.” I roll my eyes.
“But the Elders Coalition back on Annka,” Keelo says, naming their home planet, “believes she’s male.”
Oh? I snap my mouth shut. Oh!
“And that was a problem? Them accepting Rin?” As soon as I’ve asked the question, I realize the answer. Keelo and Eot can literally meld their bodies together. So what would’ve happened to Rin had she been paired with another Arrok and told to transform?
I change my question. “Can all Arrok shapeshift?”
“Yes,” Keelo says.
“We’re partnered with our other half when we reach our maturity,” Eot explains. “And with that person alone, we can shift into our monstrous form.”
“And biological boys are always partnered with boys?” I point between Eot and Keelo, using them as the example for my question.
“Yes,” Keelo’s answer is final.
“No exception?”
“None.”
“That’s why she couldn’t stay on Annka,” Eot adds. “That’s why we stole her—so that they couldn’t force her into a partnership she doesn’t want.”
“Wait a minute.” I raise a finger. This conversation is traveling at the speed of light, and I’m beginning to have trouble keeping up. I understand the part about Rin being transgender. What I’m having trouble processing is… “For a second I thought you said you stole her.”
“Yes.” Another straight answer from Keelo, said with a straight face too. The master of the understatement, apparently.
“You mean Rin isn’t your family in any capacity? Your sister or your niece or...” I struggle to think of another possible relationship. “Your ward? Your apprentice?”
“She’s ours now,” Keelo says, and even though he’s still whispering to keep from waking Rin, his voice is a growl. He’s getting angry again.
But, come on. How’d he expect me to react to learning that Rin had been abducted? They stole a child. A literal child! That’s way worse than what happened to me.
Except…is it? I look past Keelo to where Rin’s sleeping. She’s got both her hands tucked under her chin, and even asleep there’s a tension in her shoulders that tells the story of her stress. Yet it’s obvious she trusts Eot and Keelo—much more than she trusts me.
I think back to how she reacted when I said that the guys had put her in danger. She got so angry at me, insisting that they were protecting her, not endangering her. As if whatever situation she’d been in before had been so much worse than us trudging through the desert on the hunt for a trikon.
That thought is a punch to the gut.
The need to apologize once more is so strong that I almost wake her up, here and now, just so I can try to make things better. I feel way worse than I ever did with Xile. At least with Xile, he was the bad guy. Here, I’m apparently the one who needs the reality check.
“I’m sorry.” The words are bricks in my mouth. “She’s yours now,” I agree. “She’s all yours.”