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A tax write-off?
Would they get tax back for my depreciation?
It might be irrational but it made me angry.
I’d been abducted through no fault of my own and now I was part of someone’s profit and loss accounts?
We turned to another corner, identical to so many others we’d turned before.
I expect to see nothing but rolling sand dunes as far as the eye could see.
Pretty soon, the suns would set and we would be left in semi-darkness from the grey moons that circled in the suns’ wake.
Instead, I saw a figure.
I was shocked to see another person out here and immediately came to an abrupt halt.
Egara slowed but did not stop.
The figure stood with his hands held in front.
His robes were long and tickled the sand’s surface.
I wondered how he could possibly survive wearing such black clothes in such a climate as this.
“Follow my lead and move slowly,” Egara said out the corner of his mouth.
He released my hand and walked with his hands swinging on either side, putting the shivs tucked in his waistband within easy reach.
Sunlight winked off their wicked edges.
I might have mistaken the figure as a fellow escaped prisoner except he looked far too at ease to be anything of the sort.
He had a heart-shaped snubbed nose with two thick slits for nostrils and wore a curved cap on his head that hid any hair he might have underneath it.
I had seen similar species to him in the prison but there were enough differences for him to occupy his own subcategory.
There was something very pig-like about the creature, and with it came all the negative associations of the poorly-regarded farmyard animal.
Maybe it was his small squinting black eyes, virtually invisible beneath the goggles that clung tightly to his face.
I had an immediate revulsion to the creature, irrational and unfounded, perhaps, but it was still there.
I didn’t trust him.
As I drew alongside Egara, I placed my hand on his in a signal for him to be careful.
Funny, I thought, me giving Egara advice on how to talk with alien creatures.
During his years as the captain of a pirate ship, he must have come in contact with many other species—far more than I had—and he likely had to deal with this piglike creature too.
Still, with the way the creature eyed both Egara and me, it set my teeth on edge and my stomach to grinding like an old cement mixer.
“Evening,” Egara said pleasantly.
“Evening,” Piggy said, barely even moving his thick lips.
“We came this way looking for a merchant ship,” Egara said. “Is it far ahead?”
