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“Oh, heck yes.”
Grace glanced out his window and grinned. The flag on his little mail box was up. Setting his dispenser to start making his breakfast, he threw on a shirt and trotted down the little shingle beach to the mail box by his airlock. Someone, with enormous care, had tried to make the xenonite box look as authentic as possible, down to the little red flag.
The hot pink flag, rather. Eridians weren’t great at shades yet.
He opened the flap. There was the slight smell of ammonia, and a wonderfully familiar looking folded card.
A lot of Eridians worked very hard to keep him alive, and the most prominent were the group of three he had privately named Thumbs, Pinkie and The Bird, who referred to themselves as the Eridian Welcoming Committee.
Well, they called themselves that. After a truly staggering mistranslation on the welcoming banner, Grace now permanently thought of them as the Eridian Fisting Committee.
He rather suspected Rocky might have had something to do with that. It was the sort of thing that rogue loved to do.
Everything else, though…
The Committee worked incredibly hard to provide him with comfort, enrichment and communication, with the slight caveat that they were. Well. Bad at it. Not that they were aware, of course. The three hard working Eridians did their absolute best, and weren’t going to let their complete and total lack of cultural context, slightly dodgy grasp of English, and tendency to gleefully follow their first train of thought to utterly buckwild conclusions get in their way of helping Grace settle into his new home.
He kind of loved them for it.
Grace had once gently suggested that they could always show up on his door and just tell him what they needed to, but the leader, Thumbs, an enthusiastic fellow with a voice like a mouse playing a flute, had insisted.
“According to our research, receiving mail is a cherished human custom, and provides a safe and harmless thrill when a surprise letter arrives! It is our duty to provide you with such enrichment!”
The other two committee members had chimed in with gleeful agreements, and he’d folded.
He had to admit, they were right. He was always delighted to see the thick welcoming committee card stock. They loved sending these cheerful little messages that never failed to be inappropriate, ominous, completely insane, or some combination of the above.
“What is it this time, fellas?”
He sat down at his table and opened the card.
“Be prepared to spread your cheeks for inspection! We have made tools! Kind regards, the Eridian Welcoming Committee.”
By now he really should have learned better than to drink his vitamin shake while opening his morning mail.
Grace laughed until he ached, helpless tears rolling down his face as he wheezed for air. Oh, this was absolutely one for the hall of fame, what the heck, lads?
He took a moment to compose himself. Then another when a glance at the card sent him into conniptions again.
Time to figure out what in gods name they were on about this time. He was pretty good at this by now, he could decipher maybe 4 out of 6 on average.
Who would have thought, after everything he'd been through, the most useful skill he'd ever developed was the one honed while doing the cryptic crossword every day at lunch?
Right. Spreading cheeks…what precisely do they mean by cheeks? Well there’s…the obvious one, but that’s not likely. There’s the ones on his face-
Oh! Hadn’t he been talking to his medical team recently about his concerns regarding the teeth he’d lost during his hard-fought battle with scurvy?
Of course. The card just meant he was soon to be provided with dental care, though knowing the meaning didn’t make “we have made tools” any less ominous.
Well, mystery solved. Good job, team. God, he loved these linguistic train wrecks.
He tucked the card away in the little box he kept them in. Say what you will about his oblivious little administrators, he felt very loved.
It was difficult, sometimes, when the loneliness crept in late at night, the knowledge he would never see the stars again pressing its terrible weight down on him. It was always nice to keep a reminder he was cared for. These clumsy, sincere, painfully earnest slips of card were precious to him.
The day those little idiots got their act together and sent a halfway coherent message would be a rather sad one.
He hoped that would never happen.