<Folk Remedy>
~~~
I slowly opened my eyes to see Rogue half on top of me, making my already laborious breathing more difficult.
The camping trip as fun as it had been had also managed to give me a parting souvenir, a very nasty case of the common cold. Probably had something to do with the woman who had decided to steal all of my body heat as we slept but it didn’t matter now. It had hit the day after we had gotten back, and I was miserable.
“Rogue,” I poked her and she opened her eyes, the ears going back as she yawned and looked up at me.
“You’re so warm!” she said.
“Not a good thing, and it’s hard enough breathing as it is,” I said reprimanding her.
She sat up not looking the least bit sorry, “I’ll make some dinner, no more ordering in!”
I slowly nodded, I didn’t have the energy to try and argue with her about her lack of skill, “Alright but something simple, my stomach’s not going to handle anything with a lot of flavor right now.”
Rogue smiled and practically flounced out of the room, exhibiting an amount of energy that should have been illegal.
Rolling over I grabbed the box of tissues and vainly tried to clear my nose, and after stuffing several tissues into my nostrils I closed my eyes hoping the headache would go away.
~~~
“Wake up!”
I was jabbed in the stomach and violently woken. Gasping through my mouth, my nose still plugged I sat up. Rogue was standing over my bed, a bowl of what looked like soup balanced in one of her hands.
She sat down next to me and held the broth out, tentatively I looked at it, I couldn’t really smell anything at the moment but from what I could tell it was soup without anything to extreme in it, certainly no exotic spices judging by the grayish color.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Dinner, come on I worked hard on this!” she said.
Picking a spoon out of her pocket she scooped some of it out and blowing on it to cool it she held it out to me.
Tentative as I usually was when it came to her cooking I took a small sip of the broth.
A little salty, but otherwise fairly bland.
“It’s good, but I can feed myself,” I said reaching out for the bowl.
She recoiled making sure to keep the bowl steady, “No! If this is going to work your mate has to feed it to you.”
I blinked, “If what’s going to work?”
Her ears wiggled, “It’s an old tradition on my world! The healthy mate feeds the sick mate the healing broth. It’s an old tradition and completely unfounded in medicine, but it can’t hurt to try it.”
“Uh, alright then,” I said half out of curiosity for the tradition and half out of exhaustion.
She smiled and held the spoon out to me.
“It’s curious, your culture seems to have similar traditions. We’re not going to get to play this out in the future though I’m not going to get sick on your world,” she said.
It was theoretically impossible for her to get sick form anything on Earth, biology being as specific as it was.
“What other traditions are similar?” I asked as she continued to feed me.
She paused for a moment considering it, “The new year’s always a celebration, although on my world it was similar to your Christmas. We gave gifts to help someone in the coming year, I suspect the gifts were a little more lavish before the war but they were nice anyway. We don’t really celebrate birthdays so much as the mating cycles. Technically you and I should have had a party exactly a week after I came out of heat to encourage a child,”
I weakly smiled, “You should have told me that would have been fun.”
She shook her head and smiled, “I’m on your world, I should follow your customs.”
“Why not do both? We could have double the holidays! What’s the next one?” I asked.
Rogue thought about it for a moment, “We’re moving into spring right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we need to clean out our home and rid ourselves of the clutter from the cold winter.”
“On second thought maybe not,” I groaned, the prospect of even getting out of bed was too much at the moment.
Rogue smiled and fed me another spoonful of the soup and I relaxed, it was kind of nice having someone take care of me even if I did feel like crap.
“It was hard finding all of the right ingredients to make this though, I had to substitute some things to make it work,” said Rogue.
“Really, what was hard to find?” I asked.
“Eyeballs for one, I had to go clear across town to find them at this cute little shop with different letters on it, Chinatown I think it was,” said Rogue.
I glanced down at the soup, I was usually rather adventurous with food but the combination of the nausea from being sick and the revelation that the soup had eyeballs in it was a little too much.
Moving the sheets aside I tried to make it to the bathroom.
~~~
<Lullaby>
~~~
It was still dark when I opened my eyes the lights from the streetlamps outside the inly light streaming in around the curtains.
A cooing was coming from behind me, it took me a moment but I recognized it as Rogue’s native language. Her speaking was lyrical, there was a slow steady beat behind the words that she was saying.
She was singing, I had never heard her sing in English or her own language before, but her voice was beautiful. I had no understanding of the words, but the emotions behind them were clear enough.
I listened as she repeated it several times, until her voice trailed off and she let out a small sob. I couldn’t remain still any longer. My own eyes were tearing up, and I had no idea what she had been saying. It had been sad though, whatever it was.
Slowly I moved until I was sitting next to her on the bed, she turned away from me trying to hide her face.
“That was beautiful,”
“It’s just an old lullaby, something mothers would sing to their children, or before my people went into battle, it’s older than even my nation was.”
“What’s it about?” I asked.
She shook her head, “Warriors, and lovers. In my culture it was considered more honorable to go into battle with your mate beside you, so that if one died on the battlefield the other would exact vengeance and follow.”
I put my arms around her, “So both the men and women would fight?”
She nodded, “A mother will fight more ferociously than any father when her child is at risk. Why not use that?”
I smiled, “Humans are still figuring that one out, but I think I like you way better.”
Rogue turned to look at me, “are you feeling better? I didn’t wake you did I?” she asked sounding anxious.
I took a deep breath breathing through my nose, “I’m feeling better.”
Her ears happily wiggled, “Good, I have something to show you.”
Getting up from the bed, distracting me for a moment with the rather revealing outfit she had decided to go to bed in she dashed out of the room, only to return in a few moments a small piece of technology in her hands.
She handed it to me, I looked at it and finding a small button on the back hit it.
The screen lit up, and buttons fluidly rose up from it.
“This is?” I asked as I experimentally touched one of the small buttons, which felt very much like the ones on my laptop.
“My tablet, from home,” she said.
I nodded and examined it, for as alien as it was it was the thing looked remarkably similar to an Earth based tablet. From what she had told me, her people had just about reached our level of technology before bombing themselves and being invaded. The tablet had a fair amount of wear on it but besides the buttons rising from the screen operated like any other tablet.
“What do you want to show me?” I asked.
“My world, as devastated as it was from the wars of my own people it was home.”
She pulled up a photograph on the display showing a group of people all gathered in a street, lights were strung up over them crisscrossing from building to building emitting a soft glow.
Everything looked run down and well used, but clean. Behind the people in the forefront of the picture was a visage much like New York’s skyline, with several of the largest buildings missing significant chunks. The Vakurians in the picture were all smiling their teeth on display ears pointed straight up, something I had come to understand as a very happy expression.
It was my first time seeing a male of the species, and although they appeared to be a little larger than me it could have just been the individual in the picture.
“This is my family, my parents,” she pointed to the two in the very back of the photo, the resemblance Rogue had to her mother was uncanny, they looked to be nearly identical save for the wrinkles and chipped tooth the mother had.
The Father by far the largest in the photo had a hard look in his eyes, not cruel but determined.
“And these are your brothers and sisters?” I asked looking at the other smaller looking Vakurians in front of the parents.
“Yes, this picture was taken just before the aliens came.”
She took the tablet and slowly starting flipping through it showing me more of her planet.
The sky was a perpetual gray in every picture, like a stormy overcast day to combat it there were lights strung up everywhere, the people in the pictures looked tired but happy. They had not led a life of luxury but neither were they starving and dying in the remnants of their home world.
I noticed some amount of differences in the coloration of the species, some of the Vakurians had hair that instead of being a uniform color within the normal human ranges was varied, parts of the head covered in blonde hair others in black, the variations continued with differing hair colors never extending past a combination of three.
The skin wasn’t that varied in color perhaps a little darker or lighter than the pale skin that rogue had, teeth were also another dimorphism with several Vakurians display teeth that curved slightly out of their mouths.
“The hair color, is that natural or a style?” I asked curious.
“Natural, it was one of the dividing factors on my world.”
I turned to look at her, “hair color caused your people to be divided?” I asked
“Is it that weird? Your own history has examples like it, your own nation discriminated based on the pigment in people’s skin.”
I nodded, “true, it’s odd how people get caught up on the smallest differences. We’re all human,” I paused and Rogue turned to me her eyebrow raised and left ear twitching slightly, “Sorry it’s a phrase. I suppose it should be amended to we’re all sentient.”
Rogue giggled, “I knew what you meant.”
Rogue looked at the tablet and then slowly she navigated away from the pictures, it seemed that the file architecture for her technology was similar to ours as she moved to another folder and stabbed at the button opening it.
These pictures were different, they were taken from a distance and were for the most part blurry.
“One of my jobs was to scout, you’ve seen how well I can use my camouflage. It’s not really a skill I’m just more genetically predisposed to it. After the initial assault from the aliens we just started running, we knew the ruins of the city so we used that to our advantage.”
Rogue went through several more pictures, a few of them showing up close the aliens. If I hadn’t known better I would have said it was something Hollywood had cooked up. Their skin was a vivid red and all of them were bald, I wasn’t sure if that was genetics or culture but none of them even the women (They had breasts so I was assuming women) had no hair. Other than that and the three fingered hands the aliens looked remarkably Human, or Vakurian.
Three species all with similar phenotypes based on the humanoid form. I had no idea what the odds were but the current biological mantra on Earth was that organisms evolving on different worlds would be entirely alien. Instead we all looked remarkably similar. I wanted to take a sample of Rogue’s DNA and run it through the sequencer at work to compare it to human DNA but the risk of doing that was to high. People would ask where the hell I had gotten my genetic sample from.
The final few pictures seemed to show the interior of a small craft.
“This your space ship, or the one you stole?” I asked.
Rogue nodded, “Yeah.”
“Where is that thing anyway? Area 51?”
“No, it’s in orbit of your moon. I’ve got a remote to call it back if I need to. None of our military tech could pick it up and considering your military didn’t ambush me the moment I landed I guess they can’t either.”
Rogue switched back to the first group of photos showing her family, and for several minutes both of us were silent.
“Have you heard anything?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
~~~
<Shopping Spree>
~~~
“What’s this?”
She reached into the aisle and pulled out a small bottle, colored a garish pink and baby blue with some cartoon character on the front of it.
“Bubble bath, pour that in when you drawing a bath and you get bubbles.”
She looked at me confused for a moment and then back at the bottle.
“Why? Does it help you get cleaner?”
“No, it’s mostly targeted at children. Still,” I took the bottle out of her hand and put it into the cart, “If you haven’t had a bubble bath in your life it’s something you should try.”
Rogue’s hair twitched, her ears were moving as she tried to figure something out.
“You just want to see me in the bath.”
“If that’s what I wanted I wouldn’t suggest a bubble bath, you can’t see anything through them,”
She shrugged, an expression that she had picked up and we continued down the shopping aisle quickly picking up the things we both needed, toothbrushes (something that Rogue need a lot of, her back molar equivalents were serrated so she went through them quickly.), deodorant (She picked mine out since nothing was to her sense of smell odorless), soap and other essentials.
“What’s next on the list?” I asked.
Rogue glanced down at the beat up piece of paper that was the shopping list we had put together a week ago, as we had delayed the actual shopping trip as long as possible.
“Cake mix?”
I smiled, “I thought we might try baking. You can’t cook but baking is follow the directions and mixing the right amounts.”
“I can cook perfectly well, it’s you who’s got the weird sense of taste, all these plants in your diet.”
She threw the bags of lettuce and other vegetables in their refrigerated cabinet a looked that suggested they could burn.
“You eat stuff that’s got plant matter in it, cake for example.” I said.
“Yeah, I can eat it. Doesn’t mean my stomach likes it. Besides cake had eggs and milk,” she said.
I rolled my eyes but didn’t say anything.
We continued to amble through the store, Rogue particularly interested in the snacks on display grabbed several types of the jerky and processed meat sticks. I grabbed potato chips, which she absolutely deplored both because of their processed vegetable property as well as the loud crunching noises they made when I ate them.
I suggested that she try some teas, but Rogue much to my dismay was less interested in trying green or mint teas and more interested in trying the energy drinks.
After those cans made their way onto the cart I beat a hasty retreat towards the checkout lanes.
~~~
Vakurians cannot make cake without setting smoke detectors off.
They do love bubble baths though. In the future to save the bathroom from being entirely covered in bubbles Vakurians should not consume beverages to help them fly before taking baths.
~~~
<Netflix III>
~~~
Rogue jumped, the bowl of popcorn I was eating went flying across the room the large bag of jerky she had been loudly going through following its arc through the air.
I had been looking forward to this actually, it was horrible of me but I couldn’t resist.
In space no one could hear you scream but on Earth I could certainly hear Rouge’s shriek.
On screen the vicious little bugger was working its way out of the man’s chest cavity much to the horror of the other protagonists.
“I told you this was a scary movie!” I said as put my arm around Rogue who was now hiding underneath the blankets, still staring at the screen.
“You’re an asshole!” she said.
“This is a classic!”
Rogue slowly disentangled herself from the blankets, and grumbling to herself in her own language she went across the room and retrieved her snacks leaving my half bowl of popcorn on the floor.
As she sat back down I quickly grabbed a piece of the jerky and popped it into my mouth, Rogue swatted me on the arm but didn’t say anything else, instead simply settling back into my arms.
~~~
A Reason to Fight
(Rogue’s Lullaby)
~~~
* Warriors and Maidens continue the fight.
Carry each other through the night.
The home is destroyed and lost.
The home is covered in frost.
Warriors and Maidens continue the fight.
Carry each other through the night.
The food is old and rotten.
The food is cold and forgotten.
Warriors and Maidens continue the fight.
Carry each other through the night.
The light is here.
The nights end is near.
Warriors and Maidens who no longer fight.
Will be laid to rest in eternal night.
Warrior and Maiden will always fight.
If only to carry each other through the night.*