Date Point 10y9m AV
Quarterside Park, Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Ava Ríos
Folctha’s Multi-Faith Center was the oldest human-built permanent structure on Cimbrean, unless you counted the repairs to the alien palace. Nearly everything else from the original colony days had been steadily replaced, demolished, paved over or moved, but the Faith Center’s unassuming wooden rotunda remained a landmark, standing in the middle of Quarterside Park.
Ava hadn’t been inside in years but the building was plainly in regular use, to judge from the worn bald tracks in the grass where people ignored the concrete path and took shortcuts over the turf.
It seemed to be silent for now, though. Sunset was coming up, the nightly rainclouds were sweeping in, and there was surprisingly little light visible through the center’s windows.
She dithered on the path outside for nearly five minutes before finally stepping up to the automatic doors, which swung open with a businesslike hum.
There were a couple of human children sitting on the beanbags in the central area with its bookshelves and vending machines, chatting with a Gaoian in monastic robes. They glanced up at her as she entered but didn’t pay much attention beyond that.
She headed for the double doors with the cross-shaped window inserts. The church was supposed to be pan-denominational but that was difficult to the point of being almost impossibility. Among other things, it was tended by the Reverend Sian Scaife, who reported to the Bishop of Cimbrean Doctor Joanne White. It was a Church of England arrangement from top to bottom which didn’t quite gel with Ava’s Catholic upbringing. The Vatican still maintained that only celibate men could be priests, so for the Christian presence on Folctha to be headed up by two married women…
Ava realized she was stressing over something that inherently didn’t matter. She was there for help, not for Papally sanctioned theology.
But the church seemed empty.
She cleared her throat. “…Hello?”
Nothing.
“Hello-o?”
The room had good acoustics which made her voice ring for a second, but that was about it.
She was still wondering what to do with herself when the door opened behind her and the robed Gaoian poked his nose through.
“All okay?” he asked.
“I was… is anybody here?”
“Reverend Scaife had to go home early. Sick daughter. Nobody usually come for her this time.” he explained, in the slightly broken English that seemed to plague Gaoians above a certain age no matter how long they’d been around humans. “Doctor White on Earth for a seminary.”
“…Oh…”
“Not seen you for a long time, Ava.”
Ava turned and studied him. “…I’m sorry, have we-? Oh! Uh… Gohan? Goten?”
“Gyotin.” he flicked an ear and chittered slightly, amused.
“I’m sorry, I-”
“Is okay. Been years for both of us…Hot chocolate?”
“Uh…”
“You look like you need talk.”
Feeling transparent, Ava nodded, but shrugged as well. “No offense Gyotin, but I’m not a Buddhist…” she glanced back at the front of the church. At some point a donor had paid for the big cruciform window to be filled with a stained glass summary of the Bible from the swirling gas and planets representing Genesis to the Gospel as shown in a panoramic view of the crucifixion on Golgotha and above that, angels. It was beautiful.
“Then not a Buddhist talk. Just old friends, catch up. Maybe scratch whatever itching you.”
Ava softened. “…Okay. Sure. I’d like that”
He duck-nodded and led the way back into the hub, where he busied himself with preparing a couple of hot drinks. Unbidden, Ava selected a beanbag and sank into it with a sigh and ran her fingers through her hair.
Gyotin settled in opposite her a couple of minutes later. He kept a small square cup of tea for himself, and handed Ava a large mug of hot chocolate, decorated with a fat pink marshmallow that was already starting to melt and spread out.
“So!” he said. “How you been?”
Ava psyched herself up with a deep breath. “…Not great, really…” she confessed. “I, uh… things are difficult right now. That’s why I came here.”
“I guessed,” he said, kindly. “You were troubled last time you were in here too…”
Ava sipped her hot chocolate just once, and then a mad rush swept her up and compelled her to set the drink down and tell him everything.
She left out the classified stuff, obviously, but he was spared nothing else—the words were just overflowing and relentless like a year’s worth of rainfall and the dam had just given way. There was no crying or stammering or self-pity this time, just a steady litany of the facts. What happened, when, how she felt about it… everything she could share was shared, and Gyotin listened to every word with his ears up and forward..
Reaching the present moment felt like running off a cliff. She wanted to keep going, but there was nothing there to draw on, and she covered for the strange floating feeling of having run out of story to tell by picking up her mug and sipping it.
It was lukewarm at best, and she instinctively pulled a face.
Gyotin made a chirruping noise that might have been something like a short laugh, and took it off her to run it through the microwave.
“I’m sorry…” she said. “I didn’t mean to-…I just…”
“No sorry,” he said. “You sorry for being burden? No burden.” He handed her the freshly reheated chocolate and sat down when she took it. “Question is, why come here? What do you want, what do you need?”
“…Advice? Help? Direction?” Ava shrugged. “Something.”
“Hmm…” Gyotin duck-nodded solemnly while his ears pricked and angled themselves thoughtfully.
“Honestly, you’ve helped just by-” Ava began. He held up a paw.
“You think you’re selfish?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You want to not be selfish?”
“Yes!”
“Then you’re not selfish.” He bared his teeth in what was definitely a cheeky grin.
Ava frowned at him. “I… but-?”
“Think. What is selfish, hmm? Is… just doing for me, yes? But you think, that’s making you unhappy, is hurting you. Why?” He chirruped again when Ava just shook her head uncomprehendingly. “Truly selfish person? Not even care. Just take take take take and never feel guilty, never feel hurt by it. So problem is not that you’re selfish, is that you’re not meeting standard you set yourself. Is that you’re confused.”
Ava blinked as she considered that. “If… you say so?”
“Okay, simpler,” Gyotin said. “When was the last time you did something just because it make somebody else happy?”
She thought about it while drinking from her reheated mug. When had she done something just for the sake of brightening somebody else’s day? Try as she might, in ransacking her memory she couldn’t recall even one occasion.
“I… don’t think I ever have,” she confessed.
“Well, there was time you pointed a confused Gao at a bookshelf…” Gyotin chittered, waving his paw between himself and the bookshelf in question. “That made me very happy, in the long race. So, you see? That’s something you can do. You just don’t do it enough, I think. You got your… what’s that word? Your priorities all muddled up. Focus too much on trying to be happy for yourself that you forget, best way to be happy is to make other people happy!”
“So I should… what, do my good deed for the day?” Ava asked, trying not to sound like a skeptical brat. “Help an old lady across the road?”
“Why not? If you get a smile out of it, good! Positive reinforcement! You keep getting it wrong when you try big gesture? Okay! So practice on small gesture!”
“But if I’m doing it just because I think it’ll make me feel better then I’m still being selfish, aren’t I?” Ava pointed out.
“So there’s bad selfish and good selfish,” Gyotin suggested. “’I want to be a better person’ is selfish, yes, but is good kind of selfish! See?” He twitched his ears self-effacingly. “Besides: By that standard then everybody is selfish.”
“If you’re going to be a selfish person, at least be the right kind of selfish,” Ava summarized.
“Exactly! Selfishly want to feel good about yourself by helping people! Selfishly want to be the best thing that happen to them all day! Selfishly want to see them smile because of you!” Gyotin chittered again. “Bite-sized pieces. You can’t go from selfish to perfect altruism in one go, so try and get the effect first and worry about enlightened motive second, yes? Crawl, walk, run.”
“I… guess that makes sense.”
“So! Who could you make happy, right now?” Gyotin asked. “Doesn’t have to be big thing! You’ve got a phone?”
“…Uh, yeah?”
“Call somebody!”
“What, right now?”
“Yeah!” Gyotin duck-nodded emphatically. “Right now! Make somebody happy right now! Is going to feel silly, but do it anyway.”
Ava opened her mouth to object, and then drew a blank on any remotely credible objection. She stared slack-jawed and stupidly at him for a stretched second, and then finally fished her phone out of her bag.
She swiped across to her favorites and sat there staring at them, completely lost for what she could say to any of them that might put a shine on their day.
“…I don’t know what to say,” she told Gyotin.
“So just call. Say hi.”
Ava blinked at the phone some more, then made a call. Charlotte picked up on the third ring. “Darling! Are you okay?”
“Uh… Honestly? I wasn’t. But, I’m feeling better now.”
”Do you want me to come over?”
“No, no. You enjoy your evening. I’m at Dad’s anyway. Are you guys okay?”
”We’re fine! Ben’s washing up and I’m watching Covenant…are you sure you don’t need me?”
To her surprise, Ava felt grateful tears spring up along with a heartfelt emotional smile. “I’m sure, Darling,” she said, echoing Charlotte’s term of endearment, “but thank you. It… means a lot.”
“…Okay, darling. If you’re sure.”
“Madre de dios, Charlotte!” Ava laughed. She caught Gyotin’s eye—he was making an urgent encouraging gesture. “…Look, seriously?” she said, “I love you. You’re my very best friend and I’m grateful for everything you do for me. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
There was a long silence and then a familiar kind of watery laugh. ”Oh, Ava… thank you. I actually really needed to hear that.”
“Go have fun with Ben. Can I come over tomorrow? I have some, uh, important things I need to tell you.”
“Darling, of course you can.”
“Good night.”
“You too.”
Ava hung up, and Gyotin applauded as best a Gaoian could considering that neither his paws nor his shoulders were entirely the right shape. “First step,” he said. “Well done.”
Ava smiled for him and examined the warm little glow that the gesture had lit in her. Even though she still felt a little fraudulent for having an entirely self-centered motive for calling Charlotte, the authentic strength of her friend’s happiness was doing an excellent job of declawing that sense of nagging shame.
Maybe Gyotin was right.
“First step,” she agreed.
Date Point 10y9m AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Julian Etsicitty
“Oh. Oh no. No no no, this just won’t do at all.”
With Xiù away visiting the Female commune, Julian and Allison had been left to make their own entertainment. Fortunately, according to the Folctha guidebook there was a craft brewery just outside the Alien Quarter with an utterly unpronounceable name whose Vzk’tk proprietor produced truly excellent craft beer.
The guidebook had not been lying. It was highly, highly alcoholic because if ETs brewed booze at all they did so because they enjoyed the taste rather than for the intoxicants, but below the ethanol hit was a refreshing, light and fruity wheat ale that wanted nothing to do with the bitter craze for hops that seemed to have driven every brewer on Earth insane over the last twenty years.
Their Panzanella alla Cqcq was pretty spectacular too. As ways to relax on a warm summer afternoon went, it was perfect.
Almost perfect. Being accosted by a Corti who had stopped literally on the other side of the street and then sashayed across it to glare accusingly at his prosthetic foot was an intriguing condiment to the experience.
The Corti in question had stuffed his hands onto his narrow—nonexistent, really—hips and was studying Julian’s foot as if it had personally offended him.
“Uh…can we help you?” Allison asked. She sipped her beer and set it down while Julian tried to navigate his foot away out of sight under the table. The Corti moved to keep it in view.
“Oh dear, what happened? No, this just isn’t acceptable at all, no no.”
A large part of Julian wanted to laugh. It was patiently waiting its turn in line behind the larger part of him that was just confused as hell. “Uh…?”
The Corti looked up at him. “What unskilled barbaric hack did this to your leg?!”
He was speaking English, Julian realized. It was hard to tell because the natural cadences of the Directorate language weren’t far from English anyway, but this particular Corti seemed to be unusually bereft of cybernetics—there were none of the usual surface features, no delicate lines of subcutaneous circuitry, not so much as a hardline port—and while he was festooned in the usual assortment of bags and carrying pouches that were an ET’s answer to clothing he didn’t seem to be carrying a translator.
He sounded like a fashion designer. Being small and slender and narrow-chested drove his speaking voice up well into soprano territory, which combined with the characteristically clipped and precise Corti manner of speaki ng to give him the general air of an English hipster. Though, with mercifully less ’swish’.
“…Did… what, now?” Julian asked. “Blew it off, or-?”
“No no no,” The Corti flapped a hand irritably. “What savage bolted this… this crime onto you?! Oh, dear…”
Allison laugh-coughed around her beer and came up with a white foam mustache. Julian felt the need to stick up for his foot. “Y’know, that thing’s about the most sophisticated prosthetic ever given to a human being…” he pointed out.
“You poor thing.”
Julian cleared his throat. “Well,” he commented laconically, “When the original was blown half-open, then crushed, then sawed off the rest of the way without anaesthetic, I wasn’t in much of a position to complain about the replacement.”
“Ugh, how horrid.”
No. Not a hipster. Like Anthony Daniels playing C-3PO, and with just as much distracted disingenuousness.
“Look, do you want something, or…?”
“Or do you just have a foot fetish?” Allison asked.
“Well, not for this foot!” the Corti exclaimed. “Oh goodness me, no.”
Allison and Julian quirked their eyebrows in unison.
“What. Do. You. Want?” Julian asked.
The Corti straightened up and looked him in the eye for the first time. “Did you know that the human genome contains a number of latent DNA sequences which enable the regeneration of amputated limbs?”
“I did, actually. And they’re latent, which suggests it’s probably best they stay that way.”
“Thinking like that just gets in the way of progress. Surely you’d rather have a nice healthy human foot rather than this-?”
“Lemme stop you right there.” Julian gave the little grey irritant his best annoyed look. “I ain’t your guinea pig, pal.”
“You were somebody’s-” the Corti gestured at the foot, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was treading on some sore mental ground.
“Yeah, I was. Six years. Planet Nightmare.”
“…Oh. Oh my.” Difficult though it was for pale grey skin to blanch, the Corti somehow managed it.
“Yeah.” Julian growled. “So take yer Doctor Freakshow science bullshit and shove it.”
“Oh, very well.” The Corti made to leave, breaking visual contact with the foot as if it physically pained him to do so. “But if you ever reconsider my office is just-”
“Are you bothering my friend, Nofl?”
It was news to Julian that he was friends with the new arrival—she was by a wide margin the biggest Gaoian he’d ever seen and absurdly she was carrying a sword, as if she needed one. She flexed a paw at ’Nofl’, flashing a set of claws that would have done a Harpy Eagle proud. She was such an impressive sight that it was easy to miss Xiù standing in her shadow for a second.
“Ah. Sister Myun. No, I was just, ah…”
Xiù’s not-so-tiny ‘tiny cub friend’ bared her teeth at him, and Nofl cleared his throat. “Yes! Well! Best of luck in your future endeavors mister, um… Anyway.”
He mumbled something and made himself scarce with all the catlike dignity that Corti mustered when they didn’t want to look like they were running away.
The moment he was gone, Myun ceased to be a looming barge of shaggy fur and fangs and instantly became something much less threatening. She practically bounced at the opportunity to sit down next to Allison as if they were the oldest and bestest friends ever. “Hi!”
Allison gave her a wary look “Uh… hi? Wow, uh… from Xiù’s description I was kinda expecting you to be, uh… Less, uh…”
“Huge?” Myun chittered, which was an oddly high-pitched sound to come out of such a massive creature. “I grew up. It’s a thing that happens.”
Xiù sat down with an embarrassed smile. “I didn’t even recognize her.”
Julian gave her a sidelong hug. “Five years in stasis. I guess it’s- you okay?”
Xiù had winced, but she waved his concern off with a goodnatured smile. “She tackled me like she was still a cub!”
“I waited years to finally be good enough to knock you on your butt!” Myun chittered again. “Sister Shoo taught me how to fight,” she added with superfluous enthusiasm.
“I never imagined you’d get so big though!” Xiù shook her head. Myun duck-nodded enthusiastically, though if Julian was any judge the set of her ears was a smug one.
“Mama Ayma used to tell me off for eating so much,” she crowed.
“And Mother Yulna would sneak you second helpings when she wasn’t looking,” Xiù recalled. “I remember. I guess I should have seen this coming, but… wow!”
“Well, it’s, uh… nice to meet you.” Julian cleared his throat. He hadn’t met many Gaoians before, and the few he had were all dark silver brindle specimens about Xiù’s size. Myun was a chocolate hulk with a luxuriant tuft of fluffy white fur in the middle of her chest. Xiù had never mentioned that they came in such variety.
To judge from her slightly stunned expression, Xiù hadn’t known either. Then again, she had been an honored guest, living a fairly cloistered life in just one commune and moving in fairly select circles. There were two whole planets full of billions of Gaoians out there, and millions of expatriates. If an alien visitor to Earth had spent their whole time confined to Washington DC and visiting the White House, they could probably never have inferred the existence of, say, Māori rugby players, the Maasai people or even just an average American redneck.
“Its nice to meet you too,” Myun replied, making a kind of low trilling noise in her chest that was probably an expression of happiness. It wasn’t quite a purr, but it was close. She wriggled closer to Allison. “Shoo said you both make her very happy!”
Julian saw Xiù go a little pink, but she nodded. “And she makes us happy,” he replied, which made Xiù’s happy glow deepen a few shades.
Allison nodded, though she was looking a little crowded by the huge Gaoian.
Myun’s almost-purr intensified and she downright snuggled into Allison. It was a heck of a reminder that Gaoian concepts of personal space were different.
“Thank you,” she said, surprisingly softly considering how bullishly affectionate she was being.
“It’s… uh, there’s nothing to thank us for…”
Xiù said something in Gaori and Myun distinctly whined, but she relented when she saw the expression being levelled at her and backed down. Julian reflected that Xiù seemed to have slightly different body language when interacting with Gaoians. She moved her head in slightly strange ways, angled her body differently. It was identical to Gaoian body language if you ignored her shortcomings in the ear department.
For her part Myun grumbled something in a strangely high-pitched tone and gave Allison some space again. Xiù laughed.
“I’m not a mother, Myun,” she said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Yet?” Myun asked, looking suddenly eager. She leaned over and snuffled Julian with her impressive nose. “You smell of each other… have you been mating?”
It was Julian’s turn to feel a little overwhelmed. “I, ah…uh, sorta. But-”
“I knew it!” several heads turned as Myun sat up and chittered triumphantly.
“It’s not mating, Myun-” Xiù had gone crimson as she hastily batted her friend’s arm to try and get her to quiet down. Several nearby human diners hastily covered their mouths and looked away.
“Oh, right. You told me about this. Humans just have sex without the babies, don’t you?”
“Myun, for fuck’s sake-!” Xiù rarely swore, but Julian couldn’t blame her. A nearby diner had outright hidden his whole face behind a napkin and his shoulders were heaving. Fortunately, it got through Myun’s enthusiasm enough to make her look around and take stock.
“…Did I say something wrong?”
Allison sighed. “I’ll go pay the bill,” she said, and stood up abruptly.
Myun watched her go with her ears at an uncertain angle and whined quietly. “…I upset her?”
“Allison likes her privacy,” Julian explained. “Most humans do.”
“Myun, how long have you been living here? You really should know by now that there’s some things we don’t just… shout about in public.”
“Why not? A lot of the people here had sex recently, I can smell it. Why are you so… what?!”
Every human in earshot had gone very still and awkward, and Xiù was giving her a full-blown glare.
Julian cleared his throat. “Maybe you two should go have this conversation in Gaori somewhere less, uh…”
“Less here,” Xiù finished. “Come on, Myun.”
“But-”
“Myun.”
The enormous Gaoian whimpered again and got up hang-headed. “Yes, Mother…”
They vanished toward the commune with Xiù somehow managing by body language alone to manage the neat trick of looking much larger than her old friend. Julian was left alone at their table with his beer and several people pointedly not looking at him.
Fuck it. Refuge in audacity time. He drained the last of the beer. “Well that was an education…”
It wasn’t great, but it broke the ice enough. Several of the nearby people laughed and relaxed, and there was a sudden sense that, having all shared the same moment of mortification, everybody got a little bit more open.
The man who’d hidden his face behind the napkin leaned over. “So… Erm, are you really Julian Etsicitty?”
Julian nodded self-effacingly. “For my sins. I’m sorry about our friend, there…”
“No, no, not at all. Erm… look, I’m sorry to ask but would it be okay if I could take a picture or something?”
“Sure!” Julian scooted over to their table and caught Allison’s eye as he did so. She hesitated, then joined him. A few other people drifted over from nearby groups and pretty soon tables were rearranged, beers purchased and a surprisingly natural and normal impromptu party took shape. By the time Xiù returned a few hours later without Myun, somebody had fetched a guitar and that led to Julian, well lubricated with the beers that people were buying him, being pressed into doing some impromptu karaoke.
His version of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” went down a storm. Somebody else sang “Star of the County Down”, Allison apologetically explained that she was entirely tone-deaf especially when drunk, Xiù was eventually coaxed into a passable rendition of Sixpence None The Richer’s “Kiss Me”…
Eventually, Cimbrean’s predictable nocturnal rain came along to break them up but by the time it did they were happily drunk, had scrawled their signatures on lots of things including a photo to go up behind the bar, had chatted, laughed and sang themselves hoarse and probably created a town legend that would make people who weren’t there jealous for years to come.
The quiet of the cab back to the starport was a shock to the system.
Allison was the first to break it. “Wow…” she murmured
Julian put his arm around her waist. “Y’okay?”
“Yeah!” there was a definite tipsy slur in Allison’s voice. “I actually enjoyed that!”
“You didn’t sing!” Xiù mock-pouted, barely holding back a laugh. She was a happy drunk and had enthusiastically dived into every selfie she could reach.
“Pff.” Allison waved an uneven hand. “Y’really don’ wan’ me to.”
“Come oooon, bad Karaoke is th’best Karaoke!”
“It was a guy with a guitar, no’ Karaoke!”
“He was great!” Julian enthused. “How does one guy know all those songs?”
“Magic…” Allison rested her head back and sighed happily. “…I really enjoyed that.”
They drunkenly enthused about their night all the way back to the starport, all the way back into the hangar, up Misfit’s ladder and fell into a happy tipsy triple cuddle on the bed with an unsteady “wu-ah!” from Julian as the girls dragged him down.
“Whooah, we haven’ bin drunk in… ‘ow long?” he asked, wriggling comfortably into place between them.
“Months,” Allison reckoned. “Not since, uh…. back at your grampa’s place? Izzat right?”
“Feels like years… right Xiù? …Xiù?”
Xiù woke up enough to mumble something affirmative and nod, then fell asleep again, burrowing a little more into his chest. He chuckled softly and turned his head to point her out to Allison, but Allison too had put her head down and looked to be already out of contact with the waking world.
He chuckled to himself, kissed them both fondly and then put his head back and joined them in closing his eyes on a very good day.
Date Point 10y9m AV
Uncharted Class 12 Deathworld, Near 3Kpc Arm
Vemik Sky-Thinker
Children screamed. It was a fact of life—babies screamed when they wanted a teat, the older children’s games regularly inspired ear-stabbing shrill squeals for no reason that adults could determine and either way the tribe knew the cadences of those screams as background noise and largely ignored them.
This scream was neither of those. This one was a chorus of terrified children in mortal peril, and it coincided with a horrible roar unlike anything Vemik had ever heard. As soon as it rang out the men stopped what they were doing and ran with their spears and axes ready to descend like living murder on whatever had made the mistake of threatening the young ones.
They found the three who had made that scream all still alive and well, thank the gods, huddled together a short distance outside of the village. All three were soaked and trembling, and the air was still heavy with a steamy drizzle of strangely hot water that was thick enough to plaster Vemik’s crest to his scalp and spine as he looked around for a threat.
The only thing out of the ordinary was the water, though, and when nothing more dangerous than an impromptu rain on a clear sunny day showed its head, the men slowly relaxed. Spears were lowered and leaned on, hand axes were put back in pouches, and quiet jokes and trills of amusement flitted around the group, dispelling the tension.
The oldest of the three was Vemik’s nephew Yatak, who was soaking wet and still wide-eyed, but had calmed down now that the tribe’s men were around. He stood up and tried to scrub the water out of his crest, and several of the men chewed down their smiles as the boy made an elaborate show of having never really been scared. Yatak was old enough to want to be a man, but still young enough to think that men were never scared of anything.
Vemik decided to let him have his dignity and sat down next to him. “What happened?” he asked.
“The water roared and jumped in the air!” Yatak claimed, pointing at the offending pool.
They had already discovered that the standing pools of water in the High Forest were hot, some of them hot enough that when Yamma had dipped her hand in to drink she had yelped and leapt away shaking her hand from the pain, and the blisters had taken a few days to heal.
This one was usually cool enough that the adults didn’t mind for the children to play near it. Right now it was rough on the surface and turbid where usually it was serene, still and clear.
Vemik had absolutely no idea how to reply to the accusation though. “That’s… I see. Hmm.”
He got up and took his time in approaching it, alert for any grumblings or burps in the ground that might herald a repeat of what Yatak described. He licked a finger and dabbed experimentally at the surface of the water, then winced and backed off. It was much hotter than usual, nearly hot enough to cook in.
“Do you believe him, Sky-Thinker?” Yan asked.
“You said just yesterday this mountain is strange enough to baffle the gods,” Vemik replied, pondering the lake. The middle of it was bubbling, just like the water in a pot did when hot rocks from the fire were dropped in.
“Fire that flows like water, water that’s hot like fire, stinking air from the lakes, and now the lakes try and jump into the sky,” Yan grumbled. “Everything about this place wants to be something else.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t ’mm’ me, Sky-Thinker. You can see why nobody lived here.”
Vemik looked at the big Given Man and twitched his ear slightly in a gesture that was both apologetic and not.
“…Sorry,” Yan relented after a second. “I’m just not like you, Sky-Thinker. I don’t like what I don’t know.”
“You don’t like pretty much everything then, Yan,” Vemik said, then realized that what he’d said could be taken as an insult and held up his hands straight away as Yan scowled at him. “Not… You know plenty. You know more than me! But I think the number of things we don’t know is so large that even the man who knows more than anybody else still knows almost nothing.”
“Sky thoughts,” Yan spat, and sighed. He came to stand by Vemik on the lakeside. “No fish in these waters,” he grumbled.
“No Yshek, either.”
“Must you always have a reply like that ready? Let a man complain in peace!”
Vemik trilled and scrubbed some more water out of his crest. Yatak and the men were heading back toward the village. “…I have a question,” he asked, as soon as they were alone.
“Ask.”
“I gave some thought to how long we can hide up here.”
“Two or three hands of years maybe,” Yan estimated, flexing the three thick fingers on his left hand for emphasis. “Four at most, before we must find another tribe and trade daughters.”
“One at most,” Vemik corrected him.
“Don’t be silly, Sky-Thinker, we can last more than one hand…”
“Not one hand. One year. We may have escaped the death-birds, maybe. But what about all the other tribes? When they and whatever it is that follows them wipe out the other tribes, who will we swap daughters with then?”
Yan punched his own head. “Stupid,” he chastised himself.
“No, you’re not stupid. But you don’t sky-think, Yan.”
Yan sighed. “…this is why the men are looking to you, you know,” he said in grumbling tones. “You see further than most. Even your father lets you lead these days.”
Vemik slipped around that uncomfortable observation. “The Singer needs an apprentice, too. Sooner rather than later,” he said.
“Then why even wait a year?”
“Because the cold season is coming and we have a village to build, and maybe other villages to start building ready for other tribes. And I want to train a boy to make bird-spear throwers. And we need to find where the Werne are around here and mark the trails and-”
“Yes, yes. I see.” Yan grumbled again. He stooped, picked up a rock and tossed it into the water where it made a thick slap–BLOUNK noise. “…These are strange times. Birds of rock and lightning, lakes that leap into the air, young men leading the old. What next?”
There was a kind of burping noise from deep under their feet and the bubbling out in the middle of the lake stopped. With their instincts humming danger at them, both men took several careful steps back and Vemik watched as the water out in the middle actually dipped and sloshed.
He became conscious of an increasingly loud noise coming from the earth below them that he couldn’t quite describe. It was like rain on a hut roof, but… fiercer, somehow. Angrier. They backed away some more and Vemik was about to propose they shelter behind a tree when the water bulged, surged upwards and a white plume thrust high into the air with an enormous roaring hiss. Hot mist dropped on them and soaked them both, and the high forest’s distinctive taste intensified hugely as the cloud swept over them.
Yan spat and scraped water off his arms. “…What,” he demanded, “was that?!”
“…I don’t think you should throw rocks in there any more,” Vemik decided as he shook himself off. “There must be something living in there that doesn’t like to be disturbed…”
Yan cast an alarmed look at the water. “We angered something?”
“Maybe. It’s probably harmless if we stay out of the water, but…” Vemik began.
“Maybe we should leave some food for it,” Yan finished.
“Good idea. Though… hmm. Perhaps it’s-”
“Sky-thinker…!” Yan protested, in charitably tolerant but exhausted tones.
“…Fine, fine…”
Come on. We have a village to build.”
Vemik cast a longing glance back at the jumping lake and followed him.
Their campsite—it was much too early to start calling it a village, yet—was abustle with people listening to Yatak’s increasingly outlandish account of what they had just heard. They looked to Vemik and Yan as they returned and Vemik had to spend several minutes diplomatically scaling back the boy’s exaggerations before he finally got the chance to catch up with the Singer and get her insight.
She was carefully packing a pot full of hot ashes and poisonous Talo roots. After a few days she would hang the roots in her hut, and sometimes she would give one to a young woman to chew on. She had declined to share why, insisting that it was women’s magic, and had trilled laughter when he’d asked if he could chew one.
“No, no. Trust me Sky-Thinker, it wouldn’t do anything for you,” she’d said.
Vemik had dropped it. He knew his burning need to understand everything had its limits in that there was so much everything, and it was common knowledge that men didn’t really understand women’s magic anyway.
Then again, very few women understood male magic.
“All safe?” she asked on his approach. She gave him that smile, the one that did funny things in his chest. The one that seemed to be only for him.
“Safe enough, I think.” He sat down next to her. “The mountain is so strange…”
“So how much truth is there in little Yatak’s claim that the lake tried to fly?”
“Some.” He mimicked the eruption he’d seen with his hands. “It went ‘SPLOORSH-SSSSS!’ and spat water as high as the treetops after Yan threw a stone in.”
They paused and listened as the noise of the angry lake swept across their campsite again.
“…Like that.”
“Have you looked at the rocks?” The Singer asked.
“I have! They’re very strange. They’re sort of… folded up aren’t they?”
“They look like guts,” she said, bluntly.
“I wasn’t going to say it.”
“I’m not a wet-eyed girl, Sky-Thinker. I know you remember the day of my trial of manhood.”
Vemik nodded. She’d taken the trial of manhood a few moons before him. It had been an important part of her training as the Dancer, to spend some time living as a man, hunting like a man. The tattoos around and between her eyes permanently marked where she had anointed herself with the blood of her prey, just like Vemik and all the other men did whenever they made a kill. They were a lifelong reminder that she stood as the bridge between male and female and had practiced the magic of both, as were the two Werne-blade knives she wore over her heart just like Vemik’s.
“I remember you brought back a bigger Werne than Yafek’s. I don’t think he’ll ever quite forgive you.”
“It’s not my fault he’s less of a man than I am,” she said, with a smile that was equal parts evil and smug.
“Even if that’s true, he isn’t as pretty.”
The Singer stifled a high trill and finished wrapping the pot in hides. She put it in the hole she had dug and started scooping earth back on top of it, obviously pleased at the compliment. Vemik awarded himself a victory.
“…Where were we?” she asked as she pressed the dirt firmly down.
“The rocks.”
“Yes. Hmm…. the rocks near the old village were like a pile of hides,” the Singer said, gesturing with her hands to suggest layers stacked on top of one another.
“And these ones look like guts. And the water is hot, and it smells, and the ground moves sometimes and makes noises and my father said one of the caves further up the slope had wind coming out of it. I think this whole mountain is alive.”
“It’s the only hiding place we have…” the Singer pointed out.
“Then we had better be respectful and hope that it likes us.”
“The moon will be balanced in three nights…” she pointed out. “If you could hunt a really big Werne and bring it back by then…”
“An offering.” He nodded understanding. “I can do that. We need to mark the trails anyway, this is a good chance to do two useful things at once.”
“Thank you. I’d come with you, but…” she waved a hand to indicate the whole campsite and all the people who needed her.
“It’s okay. Is there anything else I can do?”
“No, no. Well… I’m thirsty?”
He handed her his waterskin with an amused noise. It was nice and full and cool and she drank almost half of it, and gave him an apologetic look once she was sated.
He took it back off her. “You’ll be no use to the tribe if you fall down dead from working too hard…” he cautioned.
“I know… But you help. Thank you.”
Vemik put an arm around her and they touched foreheads. “Call for me if you need me,” he promised. She nodded and smiled, and let him go.
Vemet was waiting outside her tent as he stepped outside. Something about the air on the mountain wasn’t agreeing with him and he had been constantly nursing a headache ever since they arrived, for which the only thing that seemed to work was her infusion of Nafi leaves and Ketta sap. He gave his son a welcoming clap on the shoulder.
“Don’t keep her all to yourself,” he teased.
Vemik made an amused noise, but didn’t bite. Vemet had been dropping hints about a grandchild ever since they reached the high forest, and Vemik was deriving some small enjoyment from keeping him guessing.
Besides, they had more important things to do right now. “I’m going on a hunt,” he said.
“Right now?”
“We need an offering for the mountain and we need to scout the trails. Would you come with me?”
“Hmm. It might do my head some good…” Vemet mused. “Yes, I’ll come. Just let me get my…”
The Singer threw open her tent flap and handed him an aromatic steaming beaker with a patient look. “Go,” she ordered.
Vemet trilled softly, knocked back his medicine in a single eager slurp and went to fetch his spear and knives. Vemik handed the beaker back to the Singer.
“I’ll see you when we get back,” he promised.
“Hunt well.”
“Always.”
He fidgeted with one of the pouches on his belt as he turned away. He had all the beads he needed, the only thing he was missing was two matched trophies to hang with them and once he had those he’d have a finished pair of pledge necklaces.