61

--TheirWorld--

The ‘outpost’ was less what Dassah would have called an ‘outpost’, and more of what she would call an information center. Several garule, large and small alike, sat behind desks. Some were typing furiously, others looked… less productive, to say the least.

In a separate small paddock area, a large garule woman was holding an even larger creature that Dassah had never seen before, as a smaller one was inspecting its yellowed teeth. With wide eyes, Dassah looked at it. Standing at least six feet high with an owlish face, plate-sized brown eyes watching the garule in front of him as they waved a flashlight around its canine-esqe mouth. Great tufts rose at either size of its massive head, and a line of quills that ran from its forehead to the tip of a long, monkey-like tail, ending in something that looked an awful lot like a stinger.

And then her eyes fell to its feet.

Each paw had four enormous claws, like those that Dassah had often seen in books about raptors or T-Rexs.

Feeling lightheaded, Dassah suddenly felt that the garule weren’t so bad anymore.

“Alkiro having tooth problems again?” she heard Sathuren ask as he nonchalantly started walking over to the beast. Dassah raised a hand to stop him, but settled back into a shiver and edged closer to the paddock, trying to convince herself it was just a big hedgehog.

The large garule holding the beast looked up and nodded at him, as the smaller one gave him a side glance and let the creature shut its mouth. “I am quite convinced that if the fool animal would stop thinking rocks were a viable food group, he’d be able to chew his food with lashing out irrationally,” the smaller one said, flicking his tail back and forth. The beast opened its wide mouth and stuck its large pink tongue on his face. The garule’s green and yellow feather’s fully rose as he pushed it away. “None of that now,” he said, pointing at it as it sat and panted at him. Sav and the large garule laughed, and even Dassah smirked, feeling a little bit safer at the puppyish behavior of the unknown animal — at least until it noticed her presence and shot its intense gaze in her direction. She froze in her steps, and lowered her eyes to its feet.

“Alkiro,” Sav’s voice warned. Dassah saw its tail wag — but in a short, guarding way. “Come here, let me see what you’ve done.”

“Who is your human friend?” the large garule asked. She was brown scaled, a similar color to Bahena, but her face was quite a different shape and her eyes were bright blue.

Sav looked back a Dassah and smirked. “My sister’s friend.”

“Bahena’s?” she asked. “Why is she over there?”

“Aside from the fact that garule are a fairly new concept to her,” Sav said, as he opened the beast’s mouth and stuck his head into it without so much as a second of hesitation. “I am a hundred percent certain she’s never seen a athradral before.”

The green and yellow garule nodded as if he understood everything. “Athradral are perfectly magnificent creatures. Magnificent,” he said. “Though, I admit, they are a little bit… tricky. Normally I’d say that Alkiro would be perfect to introduce the species,” he gave the creature a nasty look. “But he’s been eating rocks. Of all things.”

Sav hmm-ed. “Least he knows to ask for help when he needs it,” he said. Dassah scowled at him as he put his hand up against the insides of Alkiro’s molars. “Looks like you’ve done what you can, Ithiko, Muraha.” Removing himself from the threat of Alkiro’s jaws, Sathuren reached for a towel as the athradral rubbed its head quite firmly against him, pushing him off balance. Sav snorted at it as he wiped his hands, then scratched the back of its neck. “Ithiko, do you have some antiseptic and bandages suitable for humans out here?”

The green and yellow garule nodded and looked at Dassah. “Why? Is your little human pet injured?”

“First off, she’s not a pet,” Sav shook his head. “Second off, if she were, she’d be my sister’s.”

Dassah opened her mouth to protest, but instead took to grasping her blouse quite tightly as she hugged herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t have things to say. It was that her voice had left her again.

“Miss Graydon?” Sav called. “Are you alright? Come on over; Alkiro is cautious in the same way most animals are. He won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt him.”

There was a hint in his voice as he spoke that Dassah wanted to argue with, but, with her voice trapped in her throat, there was little point in trying. Slowly, with eyes on as many of the claws in the area as she could keep track of at once, she moved close to the paddock. Sathuren chuckled.

“Stop, stop,” he said, and Guin saw him waving as he leaned on Alkiro’s head. The female, who Dassah assumed was Muraha, handed him a pack with a green paw on it. “It’s fine. There’s bench on the other side. Head over there. I’ll take the kit to you.”

Look at you, Dassah scolded herself as she located a small sitting area, feeling awfully pathetic as the white and purple garule went out of his way to make her feel more comfortable. She couldn’t even finish the thought, she was so frustrated with herself.

Sathuren handed her the kit and sat on a bench across from hers. “Make sure you wash it first,” he told her. “I assume you know what to do from there.” Dassah nodded dumbly as she opened the kit to find some wet wipes, creams, and bandages of various sizes. “I also assume that you didn’t have time to actually get the papers Bahena was supposed to deliver to me between now and when she called me this morning to tell me you were coming,” he said in a bemused voice. Dassah froze and looked at him quickly, but his smirk didn’t tell her much. “So what exactly are you here for, other than lying to my secretary? Killing you in a video game should do the opposite of prompting a sudden visit to a person you hardly know — and don’t really like.”

“I…” she started. I keep seeing you in my dreams and I want to know why, she thought in her head, though it suddenly sounded very silly and not the place she wanted to start, even if it was her main motivation. “I found out what a sutak is,” she said instead, looking up at him. “I can’t say that I understand fully, but… I’m sorry. I guess I really should have done more research about… everything, really.”

He blinked at her. “So you came to me… for what?” he asked. “I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to find me in person, but you could have just said something on the train or at the dojo. Why are you here?”

She stared at him blankly. He wasn’t wrong. Why was she there? Staring at the wound in her hand as she absently wiped a wet cloth over it, she tried to pull words out of mind that didn’t make her sound like an impulsive crazy person. “You know,” she started, looking up. “Honestly. I don’t really know.” Sathuren looked more confused at that answer than he did before. “I’m upset,” she told him. “You were right. I don’t know what I don’t know. I didn’t know that large garuli were female — generally,” she added quickly, looking at the large garule across from her who was decidedly not a female. “I didn’t know that only males were supposed to be colorful. I didn’t know that females had long tails, and males had short, feathered ones. Even if I didn’t know what a sutak was, I should have known these things at least!”

“I have to ask,” he said dully, obviously impressed that her ignorance seemed to far surpass what he thought it did. “Did you fall asleep during your classes on the way over from Earth?”

“I didn’t!” she defended, though after she thought a little longer, changed it to, “Maybe.”

Sathuren sighed. “I didn’t lie to you, you know,” he told her in a quieter voice. “Maybe it was stupid that you didn’t know anything, but… I didn’t really mind you not knowing.”

“Didn’t you? Even though you knew that I thought you were a woman?”

“Well, that didn’t matter so much,” he told her with a shrug. “I don’t think my gender affects how we do or do not get along.”

“Isn’t it important, as a garule though? Isn’t it what makes you a sutak?”

Sathuren’s laugh rang through the little alcove. “Last I checked, this, thankfully, is not my homeworld,” he pointed out. “And if it were, I’d have bigger problems than the construct that is ‘gender’, frankly. I am about as sutak as they come, physically, mentally, emotionally. Exactly what information did you find and where did you get it from?” He laughed out loud again when she told him, causing her face to burn with a great deal of embarrassment. “Now I see,” he said, still chuckling. “Mmm,” he went, looking her over. “How much do you actually care about this?”

“About what?”

“Learning about garuli.”

“...I don’t know,” she told him, biting her lip and thinking about the various reasons she had found her way into this situation.

“What do you want out of it?” Sav leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “This can’t be about the fact that I killed you. One thing had nothing to do with the other, I assure you.”

“Why did you do that then,” she asked sourly, though she already knew the answer.

“I’m a Candidate,” he answered as expected. “There were other Candidates in the area, so I took the points. Also I wanted to see how strong you were with that new class. I’ve never seen it before.”

She glared at him. “So you sit in low level areas to PK unsuspecting Candidates? How great of you.”

Sav smirked. “It seems unlike Miss Graydon to be so spiteful.”

“You deserve it,” she scoffed.

He laughed, but said, “We are getting off track. I want to know: What do you want from me. Bahena? The Enclave itself, even?”

“I certainly don’t want anything from you,” she told him with a glare, but then paused and observed the unfamiliar world around them. The other garuli weren’t paying any attention to her or Sathuren as they sat together quietly. They were all too busy, caught up in their own lives. She envied them their apparent peace of mind. “But,” she started in a small voice. “I want to be able to be Bahena’s friend.”

“Are you free tomorrow morning?” he asked, after a moment.

Dassah looked over at him. “I think so,” she said. “Why?”

“Come here tomorrow,” he told her. “I have a class at 7:45; it just so happens that we are doing a cultural overview. It’s early, I know, and I know I’m not your favorite person, but the offer is there. If you attend, I’ll verify your check-in with the University. It may not answer all of your questions, but at least you would know a little bit more about how much you don’t know.” The last sentence was said with a crooked grin and a wink that made Dassah scowl.

But when she thought about the offer, she was a little bit happy. “Alright,” she said with a nod.

“Good,” he answered, standing. “Is that all you need? Are you going to actually put a bandage on that hand of yours, or just wipe it raw?” Sav pointed to the towel in her hand that she was pressing down on her wound with.

“Oh!” she went, looking at it. The wound had stopped bleeding, and looked like it was already closed. “I’ll live,” she shrugged. “It’s not the first time I’ve scraped my hand.” She held the sealed up bag for him to take.

“You sure?”

Dassah nodded.

“Do you want me to walk you back?” he offered, holding his hand out toward the marked path. “We don’t need you getting lost in here. Last time I found you, it was on purpose.”

“I should be fine,” she told him, feeling considerably better about the trails now that she met a few of the dome’s inhabitants. Sav gave her a very skeptical look. “Really. I grew up in the woods,” she reassured him. “You were what I was scared of earlier.”

Though he snorted at her, he waved her off and stalked back to where Alkito was preening his quills.

But while she was walking, Dassah, sometimes looking in the forest to see a flash of white through the leaves, had a sneaking suspicion that he had followed her to the door after all.