CHAPTER 58

 

TAC’MOT

 

We’d been in the middle of discussing the symptoms of a Gryfala being eggbound, and the logistics of our upcoming departure, when she suddenly begins using her word for the writing instruments.

She drops down to the floor and draws a giant round shape with irregular shapes inside.

Lem notes thoughtfully, “Her language has odd letters.”

“That’s not Gryph,” Grake crunches out around a mouthful of cerealmeal.

Brax gives him a look that conveys how dim he thinks the hob is in this moment.  “Thank you, Captain Grake.  You’ve just been assigned to the ship ‘Obvious.’”

Grake rolls his eyes.

Brax’s brow ridges lift.  “It would be infinitely more surprising if she did know how to write in Gryph all this time.”

Grake holds up his fork in a surrendering gesture.  “I was simply pointing it out.”

He makes it look easier than it is to eat cerealmeal with a fork.  I know, because I’ve had to do this myself now that all the spoons have mysteriously disappeared.  Cryptically, Grake had remarked, “I vow it isn’t me who is taking them, but I can tell you that you should make your peace with them being gone if the Gryfala keeps touching them.”

Ludicrous.  Tara is no thief.

I return my attention to her to see she’s drawn two rudimentary sticks.  With round blobs on top.  And… little sad lines in each blob.  Next to them is a stick that is a fraction prouder.  That one also gets a blob on top, with a sad line also.  She begins to fill in dots in what appears to be a random fashion.

Whatever she’s drawing, it makes her sad, and I feel my scalp tighten as my ears fold down in shared sorrow.

Lem hums.  “It’s small.”

I shake my head.  “Yes, but she’s small.  I think it’s her.  She’s drawing herself.”

“I can’t identify what language that is, but even I can tell she’s got rotten penmanship in it,” he comments.

Brax examines them thoughtfully.  “Maybe this isn’t words.  Maybe these are symbols.”

I shush them.  “They’re her hobs.”

Grake tilts his head first one way, then the other, before looking between Tara and I most dubiously.

She begins pointing and rapidly discussing the features of her sticks with sad lines.

“If they’re hobs, they have no wings.”

“She has no wings.”

Lem fiddles with a tank nozzle before hooking back over his shoulder.  “Those could be land masses.”

We all look back at him in confusion.

“Well either way, that’s the IMT-blue she got ahold of there.  Her ugly art will be on Brax’s ship forever now.”

Surprisingly… Brax doesn’t look upset at this news at all.  Quite the opposite.

“What’s this one down on four legs?  A pet?  It has weird legs.”  Grake muses.

Stung, I fire back, “It has her legs—it has your legs, you ‘vekwit.  It’s crawling.”

Brax smiles for the first time this rotation.  “Ah, then it’s a hob.”

Grake’s wings puff at this.  When Brax lifts a brow, he deflates.  “Perhaps.  If their Gryfala likes that kind of thing.”  He eyes Tara until Brax growls a warning.

Lem pulls out a laser pointer to indicate where he’s looking.  “Does this look like a qiizzibeast?  Without a tail?  Oh, wait, maybe that squiggle is supposed to be one.”

“No, I think that’s just a mistake.  She tried to scratch it out, see?”

Lem widens his eyes, his head shaking back and forth in consternation.  “I believe this is one career possibility we can rule out.  She has never been, and judging by this, never will be, an artist.”

“Lem!”

“I’m sorry, Tac, but look.”  He ignores Brax’s indignant snarling and peers closer.  “Holy Creator, what is she trying to draw?”

She’s drawn eight other somewhat sphere-like shapes in the vicinity of the sphere with the irregular patches, and each one has different features.  One has large round spots like her skin.  One has a set of loops around it.  One is incredibly tiny.

When we all steal a furtive glance at her, she bursts into frustrated explanations.  She’s trying to point out the finer points of her… art… but it’s difficult to interpret it.  It’s all very…abstract?

Even that might be too kind.

She won’t leave the floor.  Not even for Brax, who is attempting to coax her to come to him.  I clamber down and take the marker from her.  “The floor’s already done for, right?”

I draw a round shape.  I believe I do a fair job of copying the same symbol, her main point of interest, and she goes wild, and she’s pointing tearfully to the three mismatched sticks.  I dutifully copy these too, wondering if she drew them shorter to denote hierarchy, or if her males were physically of smaller build.

I’ve never heard of this.  But I feel myself nodding as I realize that perhaps this is how they were overtaken.  No wings and small frames—

Tara lands on me, she’s insane with relief, hugging me, crying on me, kissing me.

Thankfully, we’re outside of Brax’s reach.

Grake is happy to see that she’s brightening, and he pretends to grumble, “If I’d known kisses were the reward, I could have drawn a couple of strange pictures.”

“Sore loser,” I manage to get out between smacks on my lips, and her mane is smothering me like a curtain, and I’m growing a bit light headed.

“I am definitely sore,” he laments.

“YOU WILL BE,” Brax promises, and I believe we all forgot that he can breathe fire.

Grake and Lem scramble out of the doorway and Tara gasps and tells him to stohp.  She looks like she’s about to go to him but if she does that, we’ll never get out of here in time.  I catch her arm.  “You and I are leaving, veetling.”