CHAPTER 71
BRAX
“I needed a sympathetic ear.”
Needed. She needs me.
I hold her even tighter. “You have both of mine,” I assure her earnestly. I am relieved that she is choosing me for comfort.
“Let me sum it up for you: no Culc? No money. Grake had to pony up the down payment refund since you guys are flat broke. And because he paid for my translator, which, I’ll have you know, was crazy expensive, he’s now as broke as we are—”
It warms me that she refers to us as ‘we.’
“Tac also warned me that my food supply was ‘dwindling due to unforeseen circumstances.’ He thinks I don’t know, but truth is, I have an idea and I don’t want to know—but I think I overheard him telling Lem my ‘food’ went into stress hibernation and he could ‘feed off the hibernated’ to me, or wait for them to wake up. I’m going to presume my food needs to get frisky in order to make me more food.”
She takes a huge breath, then another.
Then: “It’s bugs, isn’t it?”
Cautiously, I gauge her. “Y—”
“No! No, don’t tell me!” She violently shakes her head back and forth, then seems to pretend we didn’t have this section of conversation. “So we’re broke, we’re running out of food, and we have to WAIT. There is nothing we can do to speed things up. The hobs are working on organizing their own fleets, and Tac says the protection will be good, plus he’s going to try to work out a deal so they pay for our gas. Otherwise, we’re stuck.” Her hands slap down onto the bed.
Gas? Fuel. Fuel cells. My nasal crest builds an aggravated noise as I curse all our losses the moment the Culc died from injuries more severe than we at first believed. I want to rage at the sheer injustice of her situation: everything hung on this, yet a Culc is one of the few creatures that don’t heal with the assistance of Rakhii saliva. “I regret that you suffer due to our dire financial straits.” That they are suffering from this—though I don’t voice this last. It is agonizingly cruel that she was taken away from her offspring, and I’m afraid to ask her who might be caring for them now, because I can’t determine if it is a release for her to discuss the possibilities and her fears, or if it only builds more anxieties to fuel her nightmares.
Her nightmares. She calls out for them, crying in her sleep. She wakes up sharing shame-filled whispers of, “Sometimes, I’d say, ‘I’d do anything for a break!’ Now...I’d give anything to have them back.”
It tortures her.
But the simulated sunsrise of the next rotation always sees her sewn back together, looking a little more ragged and worn, but whole.
At least on the outside.
I pet her.
“It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. It just… I just can’t believe I’m in this situation and can’t get back home because I’m too poor, is all. I made it all the way into outer space, I have TWO men who’ve made all my little heart’s dreams come true—,”
All her hearts’ dreams come true? Truly?
“—and I’m still too te-click-vking—”
My ears twitch at her butchered pronunciation of the curse word. Her translator needs expletive calibration.
“—poor! And this isn’t like ‘oh, I’ll just substitute water since we’re out of milk until payday’—this is ‘an exotic attacking zoo-specimen died, we had to refund, and now our spaceship floats nowhere until we get some cash.’ And I’m not blaming you. You have to know I’m not. This is out of your hands—out of everyone’s hands. I feel so powerless. I’m just… I’m wallowing in the cosmic unfairness of it all right now. Give me a moment.”
It is my deepest instinct to please my female, and not being able to correct or even assist in this situation leaves me unsettled and miserable.
We’re a pair in that.
A trio. Tac’s been working nonstop to secure funds and supplies. But for now, we’re stuck. I tuck her face into my shoulder, and suffer impotently along with her as her silent tears roll down my scales.