CHAPTER 26

 

TAC’MOT

 

“We take one of these,” my hand goes into the basket, and I dig around for one of the washable marking pens.  “And we mark the corresponding number on the floor where the level indicates.”  I bend down, and this time, I do put a hand on the floor in order to keep my balance.

Tara—that is her name: we finally know the other’s name!—doesn’t seem bothered by this though.  But she is perplexed by something else, something I hadn’t even considered would worry her.  She points to the floor and says a few words before looking over her shoulder in concern.  And I think I hear her say the word ‘Brax.’

Ah!  I chicker.

And I chicker harder at the way she slowly looks back at me, studying my laughing sound.  “It’s all right, Brax wants us to do it this way.  Watch,” I say, and I drag the tip of my tail over the data to demonstrate that it wipes off.  “The floor is fine, see?  This is an easy way to keep track, a temporary rotation log, if you will.”

I hand her the marker and have her transfer the number displayed on the machine to the floor.  Her writing is crude, like a child’s tracing—as if the numbers are unfamiliar.

Like everything else seems unfamiliar to her.

I turn and go through the basket again until I find the IMT-blue.  She seems captivated by the way it glints, which makes laughter crowd my throat.  Gryfalas are well known for their love of shiny things, and my companion is proving this true with the way she watches the contents of the marker shimmer, the ghostly luminescence of it extra attractive to her eye.

I close my fingers over it, my palm covering all but the nib so that I have her full attention.   “Now we take this one, and tally it over here,” I move to the log book, and she dutifully follows.  “In a permanent record, because this makes our final count.  Follow?”

She nods to indicate she heard me, but with the way her eyes can’t leave this indelible marking tool, I decide it best to end our session here on a successful (if simple) communicative interaction.  “Let’s clean up for meal.”

 

***

 

“Why doesn’t she carry m—where is her scent?”

Brax’s voice is almost a bark of alarm.  My cirri slowly climb my forehead, and Tara’s eyes follow their movement as if they make her curious.  I hand her a bowl and try to concentrate on him.  “What do you mean?”

Brax seems to ignore me as he opens his mouth and runs a forefinger over his tongue—the masking on his face turning unusually dark.  The look of shock he shoots Tara makes her freeze in place.

He snatches his fingers away and closes his mouth with a snap of his teeth.  He levels a glare just above Tara’s head—which lands his gaze on the wall behind her.  With a look that dark, it’ll be a wonder if the surface doesn’t combust in raging flames.  I pity it as I attempt to determine precisely what has affected his mood.

He grits his fangs.  “My olfaction is not faulty: I am detecting everyone but her.  She smells… chemically wiped.  Her aroma is gone.”

He says this like it bothers him.  Like it bothers him not to smell her aroma at the moment.  Truth be revealed, I was surprised too, when she rejoined me with a fresh face of happiness and no scent at all.  Still: her choice.  I feel my ears lift.  “She’s female.  Perhaps she prefers to strip off all trace of musk; whatever transfers from us.  Maybe one day we can ask her.”  Lem spills his meal and curses softly, drawing my attention for a click before I return it to Tara.

I tug her to my side and pet her mane.

But even this irritates and disturbs Brax today.

“You’re doing it wrong!” he snaps.

My hand stills.  I look down at Tara, who—because I stopped—is tipping her head back to look up at me.  She gives me an unsure smile.

I frown.  “I don’t think I am.”

“Trust me.  You are.”

“I think you're suffering from an unreasonable mood this rotation, and it's bleeding out into everything else.”

The sweetener he’d been carefully turning this way and that to get it to drain is slammed down onto the countertop when he turns on me.  “You’re going to be bleeding out into everything else.”

“Enough of THIS,” says Lem as he shuffles off his stool.  “All this disruption is going to give me dyspepsia.  I sincerely hope you two resolve this dissension before the next eating cycle or I might have to consume food in my control room!”  He scuttles off as if we’re chasing him.

Brax doesn’t argue and remind Lem that he is the owner of the ship so it’s technically his control room—because Brax is still watching my hand petting the Tara’s mane, with an oddly intense look that I can’t begin to decipher.

Uncomfortably, I acknowledge that I’ve never seen him stare at anyone or anything like this.  And when his gaze lifts to mine, I acknowledge that it is making me intensely uncomfortable because in his eyes I see it clearly: threat.

‘Remove your hands from her’ is what his look says.  ‘Or I’ll remove them for you.’

I gulp.

Tara chooses this moment to take my fingers and give them a squeeze.

Brax’s eyes cut to her connection to me.

Where her fingers are warm, and soft, and gentle against mine.

I straighten my spine.  Then I bravely return her finger-hug.

She smiles so pretty.

Brax bares his fangs at me.

Brazenly, I attempt to ignore him and force the corners of my mouth turn up.  When I see her expression sink into a frown, I know I’ve failed.  Her eyes settle into squints and the glare she turns on Brax is accusatory.  I’m unprepared for the effect her mild show of censure has on him.

He grimaces and ducks his head in shame.

This causes his horns to tangle in the suspended light fixture—only briefly, but it’s enough of a distraction to alter her comportment to concern.

It’s the whites of the hob’s eyes that catch my attention: out of the corner of my own eye, I see that his shift almost imperceptibly as he darts a shocked look between the three of us.  I drag him into the debate by addressing him.  “Grake?”

His spoon clatters into his now empty bowl.  He stands and tries to take his princess's empty dish but she won’t let it go.

Perhaps not ‘his’ princess then.

His wings drop at yet another refusal—but she is left looking just as confused at this exchange.  When she tries to follow him to the sink, he turns—hopeful, expectant—but she motions that she’ll do the washing: not him.  Her delicate confusion turns to complete bafflement when Grake reacts to this like she’s rejected a qiizzibeast-sized diamond by throwing it back in his face.

This is too painful to remain silent.  “I don’t think she’s deliberately rejecting you, Grake.  It seems like she has no idea what she’s doing.”

“Just like you when you side-swipe her mane,” enunciates Brax.

I scoff.  “That’s how she does it,” I defend.

“No, that’s how she gets her forelock out of her eyes.”  This time, it’s Brax who drags Grake into the discussion by the power of a threatening look and a deadly-sounding command.  “TELL.  HIM.”

Grake sighs.  “They prefer to be stroked from here,” he points to the hairs at the forefront of his forehead.  “Backward.  Though obviously,” he is quick to side with me, “this one doesn’t mind when she’s brushed from her temple to the opposite ear—otherwise, she would have put a stop to it.”

Not possessing lengthy tresses on my head, I didn’t realize this.

I scratch just above my cirri.  None of my people grow long, flowy manes.  I grew up with Lem who has no fur at all and Brax who has quills on his head instead of silky, down-soft strands of mane.  I have had no criteria to establish the way this should be done.

Although… she might have tried to demonstrate the proper way to claw-stroke through her accumulation of hairing.

Thinking back, and armed with this new information, I can now see the times she’d take my hand and guide it to the top of her head for what it was.

At the time…  I shrug helplessly.  “I just thought she wanted scritches—so whenever she’d move my hand, I gave her a scalp massage.  She seemed to like that very much, for the record.”

Brax rumbles a sound that could be disgust, or irritation, or it’s simply the low raspy honk he naturally makes when he expels air with any amount of force from his nose.

It’s difficult to tell, sometimes.

He stalks out of the galley, and I see he is leaving a lineup of ingredients next to the sweetener bottle.  It looks like quite a bit of preparatory effort has been put into whatever he is doing.  For her.

...Curious!

I’m pondering what to try making for her myself when, just as abruptly as he left, Brax returns, and as he passes her, he drops a blanket over Tara’s shoulders.

To my absolute horror: it is the blanket.  And it bears an eye-wateringly strong reapplication of Brax’s scent mark.

I swing my gaze to him, half in disbelief, and half in accusation.  He however, is projecting a nearly casual air about this atrocity he has committed—completely careless that he just deposited this hideous monstrosity in our midst.

I have to close my eyes against the sight of the Gryfala snuggling her face into it.  This poor creature.  Noseblind.  She must be.  No wonder she doesn’t enjoy food.  I’ve heard this happens when a being lacks a sense of smell.

My eyes pop open when the possibility crosses my mind that the slavers may have done something to her, something that damaged it.  Unfortunately, now that I’m looking at her, I watch her—nearly buried up to her ears in the fabric—suck in a great breath.  Like she’s holding a box of simulated ‘field of pleasant flowers’ room freshener.  I grimace when she makes a disturbingly happy noise.

Metark.  Surely this isn’t normal.  Though, the fact that all Gryfala apparently have difficulty finding food they can appreciate could be a sign of a species-wide defect.  But surely not.  Gryfalas can’t normally be so… so attracted to this, this—

She sweeps it open and resets it on herself, which makes the scent waft around the entire galley like an odious, foreboding cloud of pure warning.  And I vow right here and now to toss that vile thing in the nanocleanser at the earliest opportunity.

When I move to rub my nose, I see Grake’s wings are fully flared, and his jaw is dropped comically wide.  I shuffle my long feet in order to angle towards him.  “I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but Brax doesn’t normally smell offensive.”  I don’t know why I feel the urge to defend him.  I study Grake and try to pinpoint if it is because of something I am seeing in his expression.

Woodenly, Grake replies, “Oh, I believe you.”  He doesn’t look at me when he says this; it’s as if he almost can’t peel his eyes away from the sight of Tara doing unsanitary face cuddles with the frightful thing—but then his gaze is shooting past me, aimed above my head.

Slowly, I turn, and yes, just as I suspected: looming above me is a cantankerous-looking Brax.

And he is glaring down the hob most menacingly.

Grake precipitously gains his feet, the stool he was resting on nearly toppling over until he cups his wing around it, letting it steady back on all four legs.  It’s plainly obvious that he’s distracted (rightly so, the stench is so pervasive and thick it’s making my skin tighten and prickle most uncomfortably), and this is proven by the mere fact that he is using the inside of his wing to level the stool.  The inside of his wing.  The careful-wielding-that-around-our-Gryfala side.  His wing powder will have an extreme effect on any female of his species, one they only appreciate if they’ve accepted the hob that dares to touch her with it—and because she’s so very clearly not accepted him, he’s been unfailingly mindful of his body’s natural… ehm... inducement?  Attractant.

That he’s so absorbed in this scene that he’s forgotten himself above all else illustrates the true depth of his discomfort.  “I-I’m going to retire,” he says hoarsely.

Instead of acknowledging him in a civilized manner, Brax storms towards him and uses the back of his hand to smack Grake’s wing off the chair.  He swipes a sanitizing cloth over the shimmery powder clinging to it before hurling the cloth into the sink.

Grake’s wings draw up immediately and he backs with all haste towards the door.  “My apologies.  That wasn’t in any way intentional.  May you have restful sleeping cycles… everyone,” he finishes weakly.

I’m staring after him, more than a little envious at the idea of escape.  But I need to force myself to turn, I need to look at Tara and remind myself why it is worth suffering through this—

My nose nearly bumps into Brax’s.

I leap back.

He’s got his arms crossed, like he wants to appear relaxed—and it could be a convincing show—if he wasn’t nearly vibrating and leaning over me.  And not entirely unrelated comes the passing observation that it’s not often I see Brax in this definition.  He’s quite tall.

The definite lack of personal space between us is remarkably uncomfortable.  His imposing figure and his reeking smell are at fault, I’m certain.

His brows are low, his eyes intent on mine, his expression intense and as clear a warning as his scent mark all over that defiled blanket: she belongs to ME.

I shock us both when I grit out, “No.  Teveking.  Way.”

I expect him to sigh, reach out, and snap my neck.  Instead, he ramps up his glower, and I wonder just what he’s waiting for.

The Gryfala’s elbow landing under his ribs is all I see of her at first.  Then Brax is sidestepping so obediently, so rapidly, that he’s on the other side of the galley before I can blink.  If I leaped away from him a click ago, he is equally as cowed—by her—now.  Maybe more.

I chicker at that little irony.

Smoke curls from Brax’s nostrils, and my amusement dries up at once.  Wanbaroo are frightfully flammable.

Our staring contest—if one could call it this—is interrupted when Tara steps between us.  And she may be too short to truly break the antagonizing eye contact Brax and I were escalating towards, yet she is so very effective at stealing our attention, I note uneasily.

She turns to him, and lifts the blanket up a little, gesturing with it to emphasize whatever point she is trying to make.  “Yoo can bee soo nyce.  Trry beeeng nyyce noww.  Tac is yoor friend!”

I sink onto my heels, my muscles bunching in preparation to leap to her defense—because the look stealing over Brax’s countenance is one of murder.

But then… he looks down at her, at the apprehensive smile she is giving him—and his eyes warm.

His face softens.  His scales are no longer puffed out and resembling a pinecone from a Resinosa tree.  And he returns her smile.

My teeth chatter in shock.  Metark.  It’s a good thing he was able to return that pretty little smile of hers—because when she turns to me, I can’t.  My face is frozen.  My eyes are glued to hers; I’m stunned.

What has my Gryfala done to Brax?