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“Why does it take humans so goddamn long to get ready to do anything?”
Lys made a frustrated sound and finished buckling up her boots. “I’m almost done.”
“You said you were almost done five minutes ago.”
“My sock had a tear in the heel and I had to change it and then I had to put on sunscreen-”
“What is sunscreen?” He tilted his head to the side curiously.
“It’s- oh my god, nevermind.”
He wheezed a little laugh and she realized he was teasing her.
“I’m ready. C’mon. Let’s go. Go, go, go! Can’t wait all day!” She patted a drumbeat onto his bare chest.
He snorted and gestured for her to exit the cargo door first. “Beauty before age.”
“I think the saying is age before beauty.”
“But that does not apply here and I wanted to sound witty in order to both flatter and amuse you. Go, Lys, before Vuze decides to send Ivu with us and we have to behave ourselves.”
He grabbed her ass and she laughed, then stepped out in the desert and was immediately thankful that the suns were drifting down towards the horizon. The Sangheili were much more heat-tolerant than she, a human who had spent the first twenty years of her life in a cool, wet climate.
“It’s too hot!” Lys fanned her face with one hand, plucking at the front of her shirt with the other.
“Pleasant!” He yelled, stretching his arms out and turning his face up to the sky. “Much better.”
“No. It’s so hot, Thev. I’m gonna literally die.”
“Yes, you are. But not today. Come on.” He began to run, ascended a sand dune, and was gone.
“Goddamn fucking Sangheili,” she muttered, and pushed her sunglasses back up on the bridge of her nose.
As far as they had been able to tell, the planet was uncharted, undiscovered. Devoid of any artificial satellites. No beacons or tech showed up on shipboard sensors. They set up camp near a creek tributary to a wider, slow-moving river. Both bodies of water were lined with abundant flora, some of which was edible. There were easy-to-catch creatures in the water which resembled fish in both shape and flavor. At first they had joked they would just claim and settle the world, but after two nights there, the joke had started to take on a life of its own. They discussed where would be a good location for a keep. If the roving, docile herds of quadruped animals roving across desert and plains could be domesticated.
"What if we just disappeared?" Vuze looked out at the horizon, then realized what he had said, and flashed a guilty glance at Thev.
Lys looked between the two, wondering what she had managed to miss. What unspoken thing had just happened. Why the weight of those words felt so heavy between them.
"I am sorry," he said, in a quiet voice.
Thev shrugged it off and waited a moment, before saying, "If you were a more intelligent man, I would think that you were attempting to be passive-aggressive."
"No," Vuze laughed and nudged his friend. "Just prone to talking before thinking."
And so what had originally been a stop to get fresh food and water had turned into a brief vacation, for the sake of Thev’s mental health.
The first two days, the Sangheili had run off together to hunt and bond, and Lys enjoyed sitting on the bank of the river, enjoying the cool breeze and solitude.
When they returned, Vuze had the brilliant idea to send Lys and Thev off on a mission. He has benefited from time with fellow Sangheili, but he enjoys your company, as well. He cares for you. Very much. She hadn’t known what to say, other than, well, I really like him, too. Vuze sighed. I am trying to tell you to tell him that you two should spend time together. On your own.
So she’d brought it up, and Thev had excitedly agreed that they should explore an area that he had seen when they had come in to land, but hadn’t made it out to yet. So here she stood, under the still-too-hot evening suns, hand raised to her brow, sweating from places that she didn’t even realize could generate sweat.
“Thev!” She crawled up the sand dune, then slid down the other side. Sand in her boots and down the front of her shirt, sticking to her skin. One of her most hated sensations.
He turned and looked back at her, his face pure delight. He was so happy here. She didn’t want to get back into the ship and put him through whatever kind of private hell he’d been enduring.
“Let’s stay here,” he said, and pulled her to him.
“Here? It’s just sand and sun. I thought you wanted to check out those caves up the way? Past the stream?”
“No, I mean here.” He gestured expansively. “This world.”
“Yeah until what’s-his-name finds us here and sends goons to bury us in sand up to our necks.”
“But until then…” He squeezed her. “It would be very pleasant. Everything we need is here. Food. Water. Companionship.”
“I dunno. I mean. We could always come back…”
His smile began to falter and she could have punched herself.
“You’re right,” he said, and let her go. “I apologize. I can be unrealistic in my hopes, sometimes.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed, tugged at him until he looked at her. “We could stay. You’re right. It’s beautiful. Would we live on the ship, or build a home?”
“A home, I think.” He looked around, pointed at a far-off cliff. “Sandstone. We could cut it and fit the blocks together. As they do for the keeps on Sanghelios.”
“That sounds nice. Would we let other people on our planet? Or would we kill them and rob them?”
He smiled. “We would allow others.”
“Okay, then who gets to be kaidon? You, or Vuze? Or do you two have to fight for it?”
“No kaidons. No absolute rulers. I have seen what that gets my people… and that is why I do not live like that any longer.”
She continued to hold his hand until he looked back down at her face, then pulled her sunglasses up to rest on the top of her head so she could look into his eyes. “Thev.”
“Yes.”
“I missed you.”
“Missed me?”
“Yeah.”
After a moment, he seemed to grasp her meaning. He stepped closer to her and pulled her into a hug. “Thank you. For taking care of me before, while I was…”
She patted his back and kissed his chest, feeling the familiar, strange texture of his scars against her lips. “Of course. You took care of me when I needed it.”
“I am sorry for my previous mental state. I am… embarrassed.”
“It’s okay. I’m just really happy to have you back.”
-
They lay beside one another, looking up at the sunset from the blanket spread out at the entrance of a sandstone cave. Naked after swimming, the water on their skin already evaporated in the heat.
“Are you going to be okay?” She turned her head just enough to look at his face in the eventide.
“Yes.”
“It’s okay if you’re not, you know. You can tell me.” Lys reached over and took his hand in hers, at least as much as she could. Squeezed his fingers. “We can figure it out. Figure something out.”
He was perfectly still, perfectly quiet for a moment. Stretching the silence into something that felt like a distance between them, until he sat up and looked down at her. She pulled herself up to sit cross-legged. Thev took both of her hands in his.
“I will be okay. I need to be able to do this. It’s been…” He shook his head. “It’s been a problem for a very long time. The… slipstream space issues… did Vuze tell you the cause of my trouble with it?”
“He didn’t tell me anything specific, no. Just that it was uncomfortable for you.”
He sighed and his face twitched in a very human-like gesture of discomfort. “One day. Not today, not now. But I will tell you.”
“If you never want to, that’s cool, too.” She shrugged, leaned forward until she collapsed toward him, on top of his legs.
“Insolence,” he said, and arranged her atop him, her head resting on the top of his chest, her body rising and falling with each breath in and out he took.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Do humans have dreams?”
She laughed and lay her cheek against his hot skin. “Yes. We do.”
“About what?”
A small shrug. “Lots of stuff.”
“What do you dream about?”
“I dunno. Sometimes I’m flying. Sometimes I’m drowning. Sometimes it’s both. Sometimes I still dream about my home, my family back in the village where I grew up. I have a lot of dreams about fixing fishing nets.”
He laughed, and traced a claw up her spine, to the back of her head, and through her hair.
“What about you?”
“I dream of the tedium of my military service. I dream of worlds that I saw glassed, and battles I participated in. I dream quite often of zero gravity. Sometimes, I dream of my children.”
“You have kids?”
Thev took a slow breath in, then let it out. “I believe I do, but I am not certain. But, I still dream of them. The idea of them, I suppose.”
She thought about that. What it would be like to have unknown family members, and realized it was possible that she may. “I left my home when I was twenty. Which is a new adult for humans. I was a middle child- I have an older brother and sister, and a younger sister. My older siblings were married and… they probably have kids now. Shit, my little sister probably has a kid now. I know it’s not even close to being the same thing, but… it’s weird to think about. Other people out there who are like me, who share my genetics, who share some kind of life experiences I suppose.”
He put his hand flat across the top of her back and made a low sound of agreement. She felt it tremble through her own chest, shaking her vision and her teeth, and she smiled.
“Do you think about going home, ever?”
“Nah. It’s not home anymore. It wasn’t for a long time, even before I left.” She watched a small red beetle run along the sand on the blanket beside them, until it disappeared below a shrub. “What about you? You think you’ll ever go back to Sanghelios?”
“I will not,” he said. His voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. “I am a persona non grata there.”
She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck to try to hug him. “Thev. So mysterious.”
He scoffed. “I do not try to be.”
“I know. I just like to tease you.”
“We will find an appropriate time and if you are still curious, I will tell you.”
“If I’m still curious. You crack me up.”
“I did not intend for it to be humorous.”
“I know. That’s why it’s funny.”
“Hm.” He sounded as though he were attempting to not laugh. “I know Vuze thinks he was very clever to suggest that you suggest that we come out here tonight. As if I would not know that it was he who had the idea.”
“I mean… it was a good idea, right?”
“An excellent idea. He just amuses me. You both do.”
Lys smiled and kissed his snout. “Wanna get back in the water with me?”
“Yes.”