AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But I wasn’t about to make Zaria or any of the others sew my shit for me while I twiddled my useless human thumbs, and I also wasn’t keen on hand-washing my current outfit and being forced to sleep naked every single night. So I plastered a smile on my face and thanked Zaria and Tilly and the other ladies who actually knew what the hell they were doing for the opportunity.
We wouldn’t start working on the clothes until after the vaklok tomorrow, because apparently all the Deep Sky ladies were elbow-deep in preparations for those events. There was a lot of food to be made, it turned out, so we helped out with that where we could, stirring big pots of moonbark batter and getting meat ready for roasting.
Dinner took place in Gahn Thaleo’s big hall. Eating in here was a slightly less nerve-wracking experience than being in Gahn Errok’s hall, because here there was no big wide-open wall where one wandering step in the wrong direction would have you plunging off a very high ledge to certain death.
But that didn’t mean this hall wasn’t as impressive, because it definitely was. Unlike Gahn Errok’s main hall, this one wasn’t a big, open-sided cave built into the mountain. Instead, it actually kind of bubbled out. There was a huge, flat ledge that jutted out from the mountainside that served as the floor for the hall, and it was entirely enclosed by a rounded wall of crystalline aguir stone. The result was that it felt like we were suspended in some kind of big alien snow globe, but with stars and moon-like asteroids hanging overhead instead of fake bits of snow, all of it looking poised to float down around us if someone would only give the whole thing a little shake.
Gahn Thaleo’s people cooked the evening meal communally in the hall. Everyone was seated around a long, rectangular firepit beneath an opening in the clear aguir stone that acted as a chimney. Felkora – a Deep Sky bird reminiscent of chicken – roasted on spits above the fire, alongside their eggs and little pink freshwater fish.
Sitting here like this with all of them after spending so long in Gahn Errok’s mountain, the differences in the sizes of the two tribes became painfully apparent. I knew there were a few men out on braxilk patrol, and without them there were only about twenty males in the hall including Gahn Thaleo. Zaria had been the last woman to be paired off by the matchmaking Vrika, and she sat next to her mate. She’d be adding to the tribe’s numbers soon – her abdomen had the swell of a new pregnancy forming. There were only seven other adult women in Gahn Thaleo’s tribe besides Zaria, and three of them were well past child-bearing years. The other three younger mated women all had between one and three children of various ages hanging off of them. But it wouldn’t be enough. It already wasn’t enough. Not enough women, not enough children. Not enough fresh blood.
While I didn’t exactly agree with him – because hey, we weren’t just available wombs on legs waiting to be filled with Deep Sky babies – I could at least understand some of Gahn Thaleo’s concerns. His crisis was a deeply existential one. The continued survival of his people was at stake, and it felt much more severe here than in Gahn Errok’s bustling mountain. There were more children in Gahn Errok’s territory, plus with Priya and Stephanie they already had two new human ladies added to the mix, not to mention the Deep Sky women there still waiting for their mate bonds. Maybe it was just Gahn Errok’s swaggering confidence (arrogance was probably the better word) but there was a sense of energy in his mountain. The feeling that their future was secured.
There was no such security here. And for everything Gahn Thaleo was, I at the very least knew that he was the sort of Gahn who would do anything for his people.
I stopped chewing mid-bite, the delicious alien chicken suddenly feeling too tough and dry to swallow. I was overtaken by a sudden bout of sadness. Because it wasn’t just Gahn Thaleo staring down the barrel of his tribe’s eventual extinction. I knew the Death Plains’ tribe’s numbers were even worse than these ones. And even the larger Sea Sand tribes with healthier numbers still didn’t have anywhere near enough women for everyone who wanted a family to actually end up with one.
I forced myself to swallow and looked up to find Dalk’s sight stars on me. I flushed under the severity of that alien gaze. Suddenly his words from before came pinging back to me.
Have you forgotten that there are no unmated females left in Gahn Thaleo’s tribe? You may not think that you need guarding, but you do.
I still didn’t think we actually needed guarding. The Vrika’s word was all, and until it decided one of us was meant for one of the Deep Sky males, we would just be guests here, nothing more. But I doubted Dalk saw it that way. He was staring at me like he was just waiting to jump up and snatch me back from the outstretched claws of a Deep Sky male.
I frowned at him, and his sight stars vibrated in response. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he even cared about what the Deep Sky guys wanted. It wasn’t as if he seemed like he wanted to be around us much. Although, Dalk’s tribe had been the first ones to come into contact with us out on the open sands, saving us from the zeelk and carting us away to Gahn Fallo’s territory on their irkdu. Maybe he and the others from Gahn Fallo’s tribe felt a certain sort of finders-keepers possessiveness over us. Something territorial but ultimately impersonal.
Yeah. That was probably it. Considering how little pleasure Dalk seemed to take in his human babysitting duties, it had to be something like that. He wasn’t like Oxriel, who took obvious pleasure in our company, treating us as actual friends that he wanted to be around and spend time with.
I knew Dalk missed his homeland. There were still unmated women in Gahn Fallo’s tribe. Maybe he missed more than just the territory itself, more than just his uncle.
Maybe he missed a woman. Maybe there was somebody out there he was hoping to be bonded to eventually. Had he had a first love? A best female friend from childhood? Was there some Sea Sand lady pining for his return, praying every night that the Lavrika, or maybe the Vrika, would call him for her?
Did he pray for the same thing?
That thought made me feel... weird. Like my stomach was suddenly full of stones beneath a chest that felt far too empty. I didn’t know what the hell to do with the odd and uncomfortable feeling, and Dalk was still glaring at me like a weirdo, so I glared right back and then stuck my tongue out at him.
His sight stars burst outward then back in, surprise momentarily overtaking his usual pissed-off-ness. But his anger came back, because it always did, and before I knew it he was on his feet and closing the distance between us.
There wasn’t much distance between us to close. He and I had been seated at the very end of the rectangular firepit, across from each other as if sitting at the last places at a table, and all he had to do was take one big step around the end of the fire before he was right beside me. He crouched down, giving me a menacing stare.
“What’s wrong with your tongue?” he asked. I would have called it a bark, but it was just too quiet for that. A sort of grumpy snap of sound but meant only for my ears. My poorly-placed, ineffective human ears, that is. Good lord.
“Nothing!” I replied.
His sight stars fell to my mouth and stayed there.
“Why are you showing it to me if there is not something wrong with it?” he asked, still quiet, still grumpy.
“It’s a human thing. Don’t worry about it.”
He gave an ironic sort of snort, as if to say without words that human things were all he worried about these days. And, in fairness, that kind of made sense, given his whole “I’m your unwilling bodyguard” attitude.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, more forcefully this time. “Seriously. You worry too much.”
“You do not worry enough.”
“Ha! I’ve already been drugged, abducted, and forcibly taken right out of my own world. At this point, what the hell else is there to worry about? Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘just go with the flow’?”
“No.”
