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Teerz. Over a hat.
In a Zabrian, I would have considered such a show of emotion a horrific sign of weakness.
In her…
It was a sign of something precious to me. Purity. Goodness. A heart that seemed far too big to be housed in such a little human body.
“It’s just a hat,” I told her, casting a critical eye over the thing. It was thoroughly wrecked. There would be no fixing it. I tossed it into the fire. “Better it than you.”
She started forward with a small cry, as if she meant to pull it back out of the flames.
“Silar! What are you doing! That was your-”
“It is nothing, Cherry.” I told her firmly. “There’s only one thing currently in this house that matters to me. And it’s not a cursed hat.”
Blast. This was not helping. The teerz were coming anyway. Sliding over her soft cheeks like rolling beads of dew.
I tried another tactic.
“I will buy you a new one. Or maybe make one,” I amended, remembering just how empty my credits account was after my most recent purchase. I hadn’t anticipated how expensive it would be to get something transported here from the far-flung human world of Terratribe II. Surprisingly, they hadn’t had what I’d been after on Elora Station, so I’d had to order from further afield. But it was no great matter. The account would be topped up after the next round of cattle grading and purchase. I’d never had much of a reason to use my credits before Cherry.
It was deeply satisfying in a way I could not have anticipated to have someone to spend them on now.
But that did not seem to make her happy, either, because she made a big, gulping sound and pressed her palms to her eyes.
“Sorry,” she gasped wetly, as if she were the one who’d done something wrong. “It’s just… been a tough day.” She wiped her face then gave me a weak smile. “Come on. Let’s get your tail dealt with.”
“My tail?”
She jutted her chin towards the floor, where a puddle of blood was forming behind me.
“Oh. Don’t trouble yourself over that,” I told her.
But she just gave me a look. And I knew. Knew that I would not be able to refuse her.
I hadn’t been able to refuse her anything from the moment that I’d met her.
She led me into our bedroom and pulled out her pretty scarf.
“Not that.”
“We are not having this argument again,” she said firmly as she also retrieved her bottle of antiseptic lotion. “This is way worse than your sunburned ears.”
Without speaking, I opened the second drawer and indicated the small pile of clean, white strips.
“Hold on… are those actual bandages?” Cherry asked, her slim eyebrows crawling nearly all the way up to her hairline.
“Sort of. They’re still made from my old shirts. But they’re more… bandage-shaped now.”
“I told you we’d need bandages so you didn’t have to keep using your shirts. And your solution to that was to just cut up your shirts instead?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me for so long I was certain she was angry. But then she laughed, a bright, beautiful sound.
“Oh, my God. You are impossible. Go sit on the bed, you- Oh. Hold on. The back of your pants are covered in dust and blood.” With the bandages in her right hand and the lotion in her left, she gave me an imperious look and simply said, “Off.”
“Off… what?”
