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“Why?”
“Because you are different.”
“In what way?”
“You are...” His glittering sight stars slid over, watching me from the side before he slammed them forward once again. “You are not purple, for one thing.”
“Good observation,” I said with mock seriousness.
“And you have... other attributes. Human things. And... female things.”
He said female as if the word was something secret and mysterious. Considering how few alien ladies there were on this planet, maybe that was kind of accurate.
“Got it,” I said. “It’s OK for me to like water without it saying anything about my intelligence because I’m a human with boobs.”
“What are boobz?”
Of course, that lovely little word had come out in English. There weren’t always equivalents in the Sea Sand language to colloquial human phrases.
Do I really want to go down this road?
Did I really want to start explaining what breasts were to a hulking, grumpy, seven-foot-tall alien warrior covered in weapons who I was pretty sure I was already on the verge of sexually harassing?
But then again... he asked. And he was the one bringing up my female things in the first place!
“They’re breasts, Dalk.”
Dalk’s next movements were so exaggerated and disastrously comical that I could have been looking at a cartoon animation of him. His big head swung to the side so he could gape at me, his sight stars doing a hilariously obvious sweep from my face down to my chest and then back up again.
Unfortunately, his feet had never faltered during this whole debacle, and the result was that he didn’t see an outcropping of blue stone directly ahead. He walked into it with his sight stars still fastened to my face.
“Oh, shit! Are you alright?” I asked, instantly stopping as Dalk jumped back from the wall and glared at it.
“Of course I am,” he hissed. “No respectable Sea Sand male could be injured by a rock, no matter how poorly placed.” His tail thwapped the stone floor in irritation. “Who in all the strides of the Sea Sands would put a boulder in the middle of a walking path like this? You see?” He brandished an accusatory claw at the blue rock, as if that proved some vital argument. “Not a half a brain among them. And half is probably generous!”
“I don’t think a Deep Sky male put this boulder here,” I said gently, trying not to laugh. Now that I knew he wasn’t hurt, it really was hard to hold back the giggles rising in my throat. “I’m pretty sure it’s just part of the mountain. And it isn’t in the middle of the walking path, it’s well off to the side...”
“Mere details,” he muttered, swinging his hand violently as if to slice right through my words. “I still stand by what I said. The Deep Sky men are fools and I will never count myself among them.”
“But we kind of are among them, aren’t we?” I probed as we resumed walking. “I mean, we’re here. We’re in this mountain. In their territory.”
“That does not mean I have to like it.”
He said it with such bitterness that I was actually quite taken aback. He was definitely one of the grouchier males in our group, but even so, I very rarely heard him speak with such vehement venom.
“Do you miss it? The Sea Sands.”
He was silent for a moment, no sound in the hall but the clicking of his claws and the scuffing of my boots on the stone. Our friends were now so far ahead and around a curve in the hall that I could no longer see them.
“Yes,” he finally growled. “But not the settlement. Gahn Fallo’s lands. That is where I was born. Territory I have devoted my entire life to protecting. The red cliffs and plains, the hills with their axrekal bushes and rindla flowers...”
“You told me once that you didn’t like flowers much before.”
“Yes. Well.” He paused and adjusted a heavy leather strap with multiple knives at his hips before continuing. “There is a saying in the Sea Sands. That you do not know the warmth of the wind until you no longer feel it blowing.”
“You never know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone,” I supplied softly.
“Precisely.”
