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While I was casually having this silent mental breakdown, my feet kept on walking, carrying me along with the group as we followed Gahn Thaleo and Warrek out of the big open circle in front of the main mountain. We moved through a short valley, the blue stone of the mountains all around us turned to shades of copper and indigo by the orange light of the rising sun. Eventually, we exited this narrow valley into another more open area of aguir stone surrounded by mountains on all sides. The translucent turquoise rock was smooth beneath our feet and in the dawn light looked even more like silvery ice than usual.
It looked like the rest of Gahn Thaleo’s tribe was already here and waiting for us. The women, children, and mated men were all seated on stone benches raised in an ascending line against a bank of rock that made me blink and think for a second that I was looking at Earth bleachers. If bleachers were made of glittering blue stone and were built for aliens bigger than 99.9% of humans, anyway. The participants of the vaklok, now joined by Gahn Thaleo, Warrek, Dalk, Oxriel, and Zoren, were gathered in a loose knot on the stone, awaiting instruction.
Valeria and Grim went to scope out the stone bleachers, finding a spot at the top where Grim’s giganticness wouldn’t obscure anyone else’s view. Nasrin and Tilly gave the Sea Sand lads some words of encouragement, telling them “Good luck!”
I stared at Dalk’s back like a dope in silence until my friends pulled me away to the benches.
The three of us settled on the second row. There was no one sitting in the first row of benches, and it felt weirdly exposed there, like we might get hit by some stray projectile or something. Zaria, one of the Deep Sky women who’d befriended us, was in the second row alone, and she told us that her mate was currently out on a patrol. I scooted in beside her, followed by Tilly and Nasrin on her other side.
“What is all this?” Zaria asked, casting brilliant sight stars down at the papers I’d almost forgotten I was holding.
“Oh! Good. You brought them. I wasn’t paying attention,” Tilly said, noticing the papers in my hands for the first time.
“They’re posters. Like... Signs.” I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain something like a poster to a culture who didn’t seem to have anything of the sort. Instead, I just shuffled through the papers on top.
“Oh!” Zaria said, her sight stars misting like frost across her dark eyes before zooming back in to focused points. “These are the Sea Sand men!”
“I know! Aren’t they incredible?” Tilly asked, and Nasrin nodded enthusiastically while I blushed.
“They’re not that good,” I said with a laugh.
“Yes, they are,” Zaria said. “The likenesses are uncanny. I can tell which man is which by first glance.”
I’d always loved art and had spent a lot of time in my youth drawing in the hopes of becoming a tattoo artist someday. The posters, though, were definitely no great work of artistry. They were simple, cartoony renderings of Dalk, Oxriel, and Zoren on three separate sheets of paper. We would have just written their names, but realized that they might not be able to read them. Or, even if they could read them after receiving their Valentine’s Day cards, they might be too far away to actually see the letters.
So I’d suggested putting their faces smack dab in the middle of the posters, one face per sheet of paper, right above the name on each one. The result was that I currently held a big, grinning Oxriel face; a serious, pink-sight-starred Zoren face; and a fiercely frowning Dalk face.
Some of the children had noticed Zaria’s interest in the posters and came creeping closer, some from behind, and two bold young girls coming towards the first row of benches in front of us, sliding their blue bums along the stone until they were in front of us and could see the posters for themselves.
“Are these your mates?” asked one of the girls, the smaller one, seriously.
“No, Wanda,” said the other one with the stern authority only a slightly older child could muster towards a younger one, “If those were their mates, then they would not be participating in the vaklok. The vaklok is only for unmated men.”
“Oh.” Wanda looked chastened, casting her gaze down at the posters and avoiding eye contact.
“Is your name Wanda?” I asked her gently, bending forward towards her.
She twitched her tail, indicating yes, bright blue sight stars still aimed downwards.
“Did you know that Wanda is also a name where we come from?”
That had her whipping her gaze up to mine. Big round eyes, wide with surprise.
“Really?”
“Yup!” I said, unable to keep myself from smiling at her. I tried to figure out how old she was. It was always tricky with little Sea Sand or Deep Sky nuggets, because they were just so much bigger than human children, plus I had very little experience with kids in general. But if I had to guess, I’d probably place Wanda around a human five or six, the other girl probably closer to something like eight.
“And what’s your name?” Tilly asked the older girl with a kind smile.
“Vanda.”
“Wanda and Vanda. Love the rhyme scheme. Are you two sisters?” I asked.
The girls twitched their tails in unison.
“Here,” I said, shuffling the posters of the Sea Sand boys to the bottom of the pile and revealing blank pages. “Take these.” I gave them all the blank papers I had in my pile, along with a spare pen from my pocket. Nasrin and Tilly also rummaged around in their pockets, pulling out a pen each and passing them over.
“These are called pens. They’re like little paint brushes with the ink already inside.” I clicked on one of the pens, a bright red ball-point, and drew a small line in the corner of a white paper. Wanda audibly gasped at the red mark left behind. Vanda stayed quiet, as if pretending she knew all about human pens and wasn’t impressed in the least, but I could tell by the intensity of her young gaze that she was dying to try it for herself.
